Av8Chuck

Don’t worry about the length of your post, all good questions. Scaling a service company is very difficult. By hiring you as a contractor they’re trying to shift the burden of expense to you. Not unusual nor is it a bad thing. However, generally you need to travel a lot, do they cover your expenses? If so how? Do they pay a flat rate per diem? Do they pay mileage or cover your fuel? Also, how they deploy you is important. You don’t want to have to travel 300 miles to a location, then turn around and travel back within 10’miles of where you started when you might possibly be able to do multiple missions in one area and then travel the 300 miles to rinse and repeat. What happens when you travel 300 miles, it’s raining, you have to spend the night and it’s raining the next day. Can you afford to wait for the weather to clear or will they pay a reduced rate to wait or do you only make money when the drones in the air? Insurance sounds really high. Our UAVs and payloads are valued at about $50k for $1200 year with $4M liability. Aviation insurance is a bit different in that this is also our business liability insurance. You can get drone insurance by the hour but I don’t think it covers your business outside of the flight. Either way $3500 seems pricey. Do you mind sharing who it’s with? most companies like PrecisionHawk are paying contractors $500 day for flight days, $300 for training and weather days plus room and board. They supply the I2 or M200. Not only is the rate important but so are the terms. When do they pay expenses and when do they pay labor. Net 60 is not unheard of although we would never ask our contractors to do that. We generally try to pay our contractors on the same pay periods as our employees. That can be effected by the contract we have with our customer so occasionally we can’t meet the same pay schedule but we won’t go beyond net 30. If they’re legitimate it might take a month or so to sort out the details but generally once you e figured out a system that works for both of you it can be very lucrative. Good luck.

Please take pictures and let us know how it goes and if any UAV Coach members attend. This is the sort of activity we should sponsor rather than giving away free stuff on threads that have no apparent reason for being... good luck and have fun.

I thought I already replied to this, not that it matters. But I’m from Geelong so I especially enjoyed it.

Welcome to the forum. There are several insurance-on-demand services available which might be more affordable depending on how much you fly. https://www.skywatch.ai/lp/us-google-ads-lp?gclid=CjwKCAiAgqDxBRBTEiwA59eEN7psZM0B9-kzn3YHDco-ZI7Ry668N7cJs_4-kP_7xv9pZTqQ-kQuQBoCvVEQAvD_BwE

Is this a summer school program? Good luck with this. Looks very interesting and rewarding.

Wow! DJI knows how to have a sale.

Not sure when this was posted? Yes there are higher resolution SWIR cameras but there much more expensive.

Or it could be that there were never any drones in the first place and everyone was starting to feel a little stupid and just wanted this to end. As far as I have seen from the reporting there has not been one shred of evidence any UAVs did anything. Maybe. We have flown several “top-secret” missions for different military customers. It wasn’t so much that what we did was all that secrative, they might have been using a piece of tech, a technique, or if the experiment failed they didn’t want to share with the public. Private companies do this all the time and it doesnt make it nefarious. When we do this sort of thing it’s generally 25 miles or more away from prying eyes on test ranges in the absolute middle of nowhere. All of this speculation is how conspiracy theories get started. The fact that I think this is much-to-do-about-nothing probably means they found the second gunman from the JFK assassination. I’m always wrong about this stuff.

Just befor Christmas someone reported some lights in the sky. They thought they were drones although they couldn’t identify what kind of drone or what they looked like. Then the Daily Mail published a salacious article about the mystery drones in Colorado. THERE ARE (probably) NO DRONES! The author of the DM story is laughing all the way to the bank. They are making fools of us. And even if there, were why does anyone care?

Sorry I couldn’t be of any help. If it were me I’d want to be there for sure. I’m not even sure where to look to find the answer? good luck and let us know how it goes.

This reel is from 2013. Its interesting to me how things have changed and the variety of projects I had the chance to work on, travel, architecture, aerial, Kenya, airplanes, automobiles, airports, commercial, educational.

That's a great question. If your company has a Part107 and the waiver, I would think its OK for them to fly for you as long as your present at the location when they fly. I would imagine that you'd still be responsible for the flight. Basically, I have no idea if its legal to subcontract the flying under your authorization. The authorization is for your company and if someone subcontracts with you then they work for you.

Me too, but I agree with what I’ve read so far.

It’s interesting how we all see this through our own prism. The idea that everyone would own the airspace above their property to 200 feet would cripple this industry yet people who fly FPV think it’s what will save them from the RID rule. As if all of a sudden they’ll be aloud to fly in parks etc..

Just some food for thought. I think your trying to make sense of these rules from a 107 perspective. This NPRM was highly influenced by people and organizations that are not interested in Part107 or hobbyists. The FAA has been trying to implement user fees for decades, DJI, AirMap, UTM and RID is providing the technology to implement it and use it as an excuse to cover the additional expenses to justify it. Hobbyists and most of the low flying 107 are in the way. Why do you think there was not true commercial representation on the DAC? @Spitfire76 would you happen to know josh Bixlers email address? Alan I would like to talk to you.