so ive been doing cell tower and transmission line inspections for about two years now mostly with a M30T and honestly im still not sure im getting the most out of the thermal side of things. like at 50-60 meters up shooting a tower leg or a connector block, the thermal image is kind of useless unless theres a serious hot spot, and even then the resolution makes it hard to pinpoint exactly where the fault is.

my clients keep asking for thermal deliverables because they read somewhere that its the industry standard but when i try to explain that visible zoom at 30x is giving me way more actionable data they kind of glaze over. anyone else running into this or am i missing something about how to properly interpret thermal on steel lattice structures

thermal on towers is really only useful for electrical components ? junction boxes, insulators under load, that kind of thing. if youre shooting structural steel yeah its basically pointless unless you suspect corrosion thats trapping moisture and even then you need the right delta T conditions to see anything meaningful. we pair it with RGB most of the time and only pull up the thermal layer when the client specifically needs it for electrical reporting. your 30x zoom instinct is correct for the structural side of things.

had the exact same conversation with a utility client last month. they saw a webinar about thermal drones and now they want thermal on everything regardless of whether it actually applies. i ended up putting together a one pager explaining use cases and it helped a lot ? basically thermal for energized equipment, high res visible for physical defect documentation. once they understood the why they stopped asking for thermal on every single deliverable. might be worth doing something similar if youre dealing with procurement people rather than engineers