Suggestion for drones for surveying very large areas

Posted by RG on December 28, 2015 at 1:37pm

We need to survey about 23,000+ Hectares of agriculture land and wondering what drone options we got given

(a) We have to survey really large area and small amount of time.

(b) We need to scan whole area say 3-4 times in a 8 months, over the season of crop to record growth.

(c) RGB + NDVI camera is good enough for now.

(d) Drone which is easy to repair, as I am sure there will be many crashes during operations..

Would it make more sense for to assemble it our own given we would need bunch of them, and we would need quick turn around time in case of repair/crash...

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Replies

    • Paul Meier > Patrick Duffy December 31, 2015 at 10:47am

      As @Antonio said.......: good luck

  • wrostek December 31, 2015 at 4:21am

    Hi RG

    I'm interested in your resolution requirements as well.

    My assumption is that higher resolutions (e.g. 1-2cm) will give better advantage
    to UAV vs manned aircraft. Am I right here?

    regards
    Wolfgang R.

    p.s. interesting project, thanks for all infos here

    • Antonio Vigoni > wrostek December 31, 2015 at 8:02am

      1-2 cm resolution in 23.000ha?  Good luck

    • Cala > Antonio Vigoni December 31, 2015 at 8:49am

      Resolution you need depends what you want to investigate, monitor, not always better, sometimes is a problem.

    • Jose F Moreno > wrostek December 31, 2015 at 7:02am

      Is it true that higher resolution is always better? Should the question be: What resolution is good enough? What about the tradeoff: resolution/acquisition cost/agronomic value?

  • Matthew December 29, 2015 at 12:46pm

    One option may be the Lynx M by Swift Radioplanes. Lynx flies for 3 hours with payload and can carry the 5 band Micasense Rededge camera in landscape orientation for ideal coverage. 

    http://swiftradioplanes.com/lynx-uas/

    • RG > Matthew December 29, 2015 at 1:13pm

      Thanks Matthew, do you know the price of Lynx M?

    • Matthew > RG December 31, 2015 at 10:41am

      RG,

      Please email support@swiftradioplanes.com for pricing information and detailed specs. 

    • RG > Matthew January 3, 2016 at 9:40am

      Just sent, looking forward to learn more.

  • Mauricio December 29, 2015 at 7:28am

    May I suggest these two otions:

    Aeromapper Talon: Aeromapper Talon: Easy to repair, dual camera options NDVI + RGB simultaneously, really affordable, parachute landing, long range, 80 nins endurance, easy for ANY terrain.

    And Aeromapper 300: Aeromapper 300: Carbon fiber, 90-100 min endurance, also dual simultaneous sensors NDVI + RGB, parachute landing, great area coverage per flight as cruise speed is a little faster than Aeromapper Talon, long range.

    Both units are dependable, very reliable, mature and with great support. Spare parts are also affordable.

    For the current price of other long endurance, long range UAVs out there you can get several Aeromappers...

    For large projects like this where you will encounter difficult terrain surely a great thing to have is the parachute landing and dual sensor, both of which Aeromao's UAVs offer. Dual sensor will cut youf flight time by half, and the parachute.... I can't describe how helpful this is as this will bring down the UAV intact every single time.

    Even with other low speed UAVs that belly land automatically they will at some point hit a tree or a rock, or just the ground, breaking something, but the parachute saves the plane and saves you tons of time and headache.

    We did thousands and thousands of hectares during 2004 to 2008 using UAVs and we would have given ANYTHING  to have something with a parachute system at that time.  Parachute landing is the way to go for large ops.

    info@aeromao.com

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