so a buddy of mine works for a telecom subcontractor and mentioned they're starting to look at drone inspection for their tower portfolio instead of sending climbers up for everything. he asked if i'd be interested and i said sure but honestly i have no idea what that actually involves from a drone ops standpoint. i've done some construction site progress work and a few bridge underdeck jobs but towers feel like a completely different thing.

from what i understand the RF environment up near active antennas can do weird things to your aircraft and the GPS situation near a lattice tower is apparently not great. also i assume you're doing this under Part 107 but are there additional certifications or insurance riders that telecoms typically require before they'll let you on site. dont want to show up with my Mavic and look like an idiot

any of you actually doing this work regularly would love to know what gear you're running and whether the margin is actually there once you account for the extra prep and presumably higher liability coverage

tower work is legit one of the more technically demanding inspection niches out there, not trying to discourage you but there's a reason a lot of guys who are solid at construction or roofing work still struggle with it early on. the RF interference thing is real - near active panels you can get compass errors and the flight controller can do some really unpredictable stuff. most experienced tower inspection guys i know either fly in ATTI mode intentionally or use aircraft that handle degraded GPS gracefully, some use the Skydio 2 specifically because of its obstacle avoidance but honestly near a lattice structure the avoidance sensors can also freak out from all the metal reflections so thats its own problem.

on the cert side, yes Part 107 is baseline but most carriers and tower owners are going to want to see a COI with minimum $1M liability, sometimes $2M, and some specifically ask for aviation liability not just general. a few of the big ones like Crown Castle have their own vendor qualification process you have to go through before they'll even let you bid work. its worth doing but go in with realistic expectations about how long it takes to actually start generating revenue

not doing tower work myself but did one utility transmission line inspection job last year and the interference near the conductors was genuinely concerning, kept getting compass warnings even at safe lateral distances. i can only imagine what its like actually close to active cell equipment. did end up switching to manual/ATTI for portions of it and it focused the mind pretty quickly lol. if you do get into towers i'd say practice ATTI mode a lot before you need it in a real situation, not fun to discover you cant handle it when you're 180ft up next to a guyed tower