Aerial mapper and surveyor Michael Jones is fighting the North Carolina surveying board after it said he was operating without a license – something Jones said isn’t needed as he wasn’t marking property lines in his aerial photos with legal accuracy.
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Brazilian drone maker Nuvem UAV has released its Spectral 2 mapping drone with support for a wide range of plug-and-play payloads. The Spectral 2 has support for MicaSene, FLIR, and its own custom mapping sensors.
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DroneU offers a multi-day drone mapping training course in New York for anyone interested in turning their hobby into a profession. If you have been thinking about making money with your DJI Phantom 4 Pro well this course will teach you how, and how to do it well. I had the pleasure of flying with drone mapping expert Paul Aitken and his team of DroneU instructors last year at the NTSB facility in Ashburn, VA and we had a blast. The DroneU instructors are thorough, knowledgeable, and share a wealth of hands-on experience with the students. It is a course I can highly recommend.
As DJI and drone mapping further disrupt the civil engineering, surveying and GIS fields, there seems to be a common debate amongst most drone mappers about the practical application of the Phantom 4 RTK replacing ground control points (GCP’s) and checkpoints. With the evolution of the Phantom 4 RTK is there still a need for ground control points or checkpoints? Many argue there is no need for GCP’s and others argue that drone mappers always need a control. These questions have come up numerous times and even caused outright yelling matches at some recent conferences.
The question is, will the Phantom 4 Pro RTK replace GCP’s and checkpoints and the necessity for traditional survey equipment?
What does the new firmware update for the DJI Phantom 4 RTK mean for drone mapping experts and other commercial drone pilots who use this drone for their day to day business? We checked in with Paul Aitken, a drone mapping expert, and from DroneU to get his take on the latest firmware update for the DJI Phantom 4 RTK.