so ive been doing cell tower inspections for about 8 months now with a mavic 3t and honestly the thermal side of it has been more useful than i expected. started using it mostly for the zoom camera to get close to the hardware without actually climbing, which saves a ton of time and obviously keeps the climbers off stuff that doesnt actually need hands on attention.

the thermal has been picking up weird heat signatures around some of the cable runs near the base which flagged some issues the client didnt even know they had. that part was a nice surprise. but im running into a problem where some of the tower companies want a specific resolution for deliverables and the 3t is kind of in a weird middle ground ? good enough for most things but the bigger ISPs want data that really needs something like an M30T or higher end kit.

curious if anyone else is doing this work and what drone you ended up going with. also whether youre doing the reports yourself or using any third party software to generate the actual inspection outputs. ive been doing everything manually in excel and its becoming a nightmare

yeah been doing tower work for about 3 years, started on a P4P before switching to the M30T last year and honestly thats where i'd be pointing you if the clients are asking for higher res deliverables. the 48mp on the M30T wide camera is what most of the big telecom guys seem to want now, and the laser rangefinder is genuinely useful for logging distances to specific components which some of the inspection reports require.

for software we use DroneBase for some clients but honestly Pix4D for the photogrammetry side when they want a 3D asset. the manual excel thing is not gonna scale, you'll burn out. look into Scopito or even just building something basic in Airtable if budget is tight. the M30T is expensive but if you're billing inspection rates it pays back pretty quick

dont the tower companies usually require you to be like certified or something? im asking because ive been thinking about getting into this kind of work but wasnt sure if there were extra hoops beyond part 107