Russ Putnam

I regularly fly in cold weather for work purposes. I initially found my problem to be the phone battery died mid-flight, so ever since then I throw the Mavic battery and phone on the truck dash on the defrost heat high for a couple minutes while I fill out some forms. These couple minutes seem to do the trick as my 8 to 12 minute flights have never been adversely affected since I’ve been doing this.

Good morning, I recently received a warning screen on my phone when I turned my Mav Pro on, that DJI would soon no longer support anything requiring upgrades, older than IPhone 10. I ONLY use my drone with my iPhone and use it ONLY for flying cell towers for work. For a number of reasons not worth getting into, upgrading to an IPhone 10 is NOT an option, but purchasing an Ipad is, but without a data plan (wifi capable only). My final product each day is ONLY short 5 to 10 minute videos of the towers and equipment up close. This brings me to a couple questions: If I waltz into Best Buy and

I only fly cell towers. I have my settings all on the highest quality settings. At 9 minutes, which is approx 4gb, it automatically creates a second file. I lowered all my settings once and was able to get 12 and 13 minute uninterrupted videos. While I achieved the goal of longer uninterrupted video, the quality was poor Why cant I record constantly for the length of the battery life in a single flight on high res settings? Am I doing something incorrectly? thx Russ

Hi Josh, not really. I’m the ultimate rookie, kinda. I just started last Fall and I’ve flown 47 towers since then. I know all my towers well enough I’m just TRYING to find reasons to fly. Mostly, it’s just to get line of sight video of equipment that’s difficult to see from the ground, for auditing purposes. I have found some deficiencies , saved some tower climb costs and a few other things. Because I’m so busy, I try to limits my flights to 9 minutes, which is 4gb , which is one single video file. What I try to do is refocus the camera often throughout the flight to maintai

Interesting discussion. I manage hundreds of cell/radio towers for one of the big tower companies and I’ve been doing it for 17 years. I got a drone last year and started flying my towers. My employer is getting into the 3D modeling aspect but I can’t see the usefulness of it, yet. So far it seems to me to just kind of be artsy fartsy droning. As the final user of a 3d model, I can’t think of any circumstance on the towers and tenants I manage where 3d imaging is as practical as what I can accomplish as I always have. Flying the tower with regular video mode , and knowing what I kn