Getting My First Paying Inspection Job (And What I Wish I'd Known)

I want to write this down while it's still fresh because I made a bunch of small mistakes that nobody really warns you about when you're studying for your Part 107 and watching YouTube tutorials about commercial work. The broad strokes are covered everywhere — get your license, get insurance, have a preflight checklist. Fine. But the actual texture of doing a real job is different from any of that prep work.

How It Came Together

A property management company that a friend's dad works for needed aerial documentation of a flat commercial roof. They'd had some water intrusion and wanted photos to send to their insurance adjuster along with photos from the roofing contractor on the ground. Nothing fancy. No thermal imaging, no 3D model, just clean stills showing the whole roof surface, drains, HVAC units, and the areas around the parapet walls where the flashing looked questionable.

My friend basically vouched for me, which meant the pressure was both lower (they weren't expecting a production company) and higher (I didn't want to embarrass him). We agreed on a flat rate for the job including a basic edited photo package. I'm not going to publish the exact number but it was in the range you'd expect for a solo operator doing a first commercial gig in a mid-sized metro area — not premium pricing, but not embarrassing either.

The Prep Work Took Way Longer Than I Expected

I'm used to flying recreationally where I check the weather, throw my bag in the car, and go. This was completely different. I think I spent four hours on the prep for a job that took maybe 90 minutes on site.

First thing was airspace. The building is near a regional airport, well within the ring I needed to check. I pulled it up on and then cross-referenced in the FAA's DroneZone to confirm whether I needed LAANC authorization. In this case the ceiling at that location was low enough that I did need to go through LAANC. I used Aloft to request it, got auto-approved for the altitude I needed, and made sure I had the authorization documentation on my phone before I showed up.

Then there's the actual shot planning. I flew the mission manually rather than using any automated flight path software, but I still sat down the night before and sketched out roughly where I wanted to position the aircraft for each pass. Flat roofs sound simple but there's a lot to think about — sun angle, shadow from the HVAC equipment, keeping the lens mostly nadir for the documentation shots versus adding some oblique angles to show the parapet condition. I also looked at Google Maps satellite view of the building so I wasn't orienting myself from scratch when I got there.

I checked the weather obsessively. Wind at 10 feet is different from wind at 200 feet, and roof inspection work really does require stable conditions if you want sharp photos. I had a backup date ready to go in case conditions weren't usable.

On Site Reality Check

A few things caught me off guard once I was actually there.

The roof had a lot more HVAC equipment on it than the satellite image suggested. Some of it had been added recently and wasn't in any overhead view I'd seen. That changed my hover positions for a couple of the shots because I had to account for the rotor wash potentially affecting the lighter sheet metal covers on some of the units. I wasn't worried about damage — the drone wasn't that close — but it made me more deliberate about positioning.

There was also a person on the roof for part of the flight. A maintenance guy showed up about 20 minutes in to check something unrelated. I landed immediately, talked to him, made sure he knew I was operating, and waited until he was back inside before I resumed. This is just the right thing to do and honestly it wasn't a big deal, but I hadn't mentally rehearsed that scenario and for a second I kind of froze before the obvious answer (land, talk to him) became clear.

The contact from the property company had asked for "a lot of photos" without giving me a specific number. I ended up with about 85 keepers after culling in Lightroom. I wasn't sure if that was too many or not enough for an insurance documentation package. In the end I delivered 60 organized into folders by roof section and they seemed happy with it. But I wish I'd asked upfront what the adjuster actually wanted to see — file count, resolution requirements, whether they needed any specific metadata embedded. I just assumed and it worked out, but that was luck.

The Gear I Used

I flew my DJI Mini 3 Pro for this one. I know some people will say you should show up to commercial work with a more serious aircraft, and I understand that argument, but the Mini 3 Pro does genuinely excellent image quality and for a roof documentation job the resolution and dynamic range were completely sufficient. My main concern was wind — it was forecast at around 12 mph with gusts to 18 mph at ground level. The Mini 3 Pro handled it fine for the most part, though I could see it working harder on the longer hover positions. If the gusts had been higher I would have rescheduled.

I also brought a spare set of batteries (flew on one and a half of them total) and my tablet setup instead of just the phone. The bigger screen makes a real difference for checking image sharpness in the field before you pack up and drive away.

What I'd Do Differently

Have a proper client brief document ready to go before the job even starts. I've since made a one-page intake form I'll use for future clients that asks about deliverable expectations, required file formats, deadlines, any site access specifics, whether there will be people on or near the site, and any known obstructions. It takes five minutes to fill out during a call and would have saved me some uncertainty on this job.

Also — and this is a small thing — I should have confirmed parking. I ended up circling the area for ten minutes looking for somewhere to put my car that wasn't going to get me towed or block a loading dock. Not the end of the world but it was an annoying way to start a job where I was already nervous.

Overall

It went well. I delivered the photos, they were happy, and I didn't screw anything up badly enough to make my friend regret recommending me. That feels like a decent bar to clear for a first paid gig. The money is almost secondary to the experience of actually doing the workflow start to finish for a real client with real expectations.

I've got another potential job in the pipeline — similar kind of documentation work, different type of structure. I'll write about that one too once it actually happens. Assuming the weather cooperates.