![]() The drones used by the W&A team can fly for about 25 minutes before their batteries must be exchanged. “You’re really just there to make sure nothing goes wrong.” “Once the drone is in the air, the work is pretty easy,” Sexton said. Then, the pilot programs the plan into the drone using the iPad, travels to the project site, and sends the drone off to capture data and take photographs in a grid pattern, ensuring that the site is flown in its entirety. Once a surveyor is presented with a site, the process is simple.įirst, a flight plan is created to give the drone specific instructions on where to fly to capture every incline, every dip in the land, every tree, and every feature. Introducing drone flight into land surveying presents a whole new world of opportunities for land surveying and aerial photography. “That could have taken a ground crew over two weeks.” The Drone Technology Th drone can fly 100 acres in an hour,” Sexton adds. Three years later, he regularly performs complex aerial surveys with only a compact drone and his iPad by his side. When the opportunity came around for select land surveyors at W&A Engineering to begin training with photogrammetry, the use of drone photography to gather precise measurements of terrain features, Sexton was quick to volunteer. “Drones are going to cut the time we spend in the field in half.” I’m not always right, but I’m really glad that I was right about that,” Sexton laughed. ![]() “A few years ago, I stepped back, looked at the industry, and figured that surveying would eventually go drone. With over 30 years of experience working in the field, Sexton predicted that the land surveying industry would welcome advancing technology and volunteered to become a fully licensed drone pilot. Wes Sexton, 44, is a certified UAS pilot and Survey Crew Chief with W&A Engineering in Nashville, Tennessee. Land Surveyor Wes Sexton, for example, is taking advantage of the advancements in surveying and embracing a life with a new trick up his sleeve: surveying by drone. With the spark of the technological age shining brighter than ever before, advancements in tools and tech are saving tradesmen time, energy, and money.
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