so ive been doing cell tower inspections for about 8 months now as a side gig alongside my regular aerial photography work and honestly the learning curve on the industrial side was steeper than i expected. not flying-wise, that part was fine, but just understanding what the clients actually need. like the first couple of jobs i handed over footage and they came back saying they needed specific close-ups of the antenna mounts and junction boxes and i had no idea what i was even looking at half the time.

been running an M30T for most of this which has been solid but the zoom on it is doing a lot of heavy lifting when you're trying to stay at a safe lateral distance from the structure. anyone else doing tower work and have opinions on how close you actually get? im keeping about 5-6 meters off the structure itself but ive talked to guys who get way tighter than that and im not sure if thats just confidence or if theres an actual reason for it.

also the report side of things is taking me forever. dont have a proper workflow yet, still kind of cobbling together annotated screenshots in photoshop which feels really amateur. is there software people actually use for this or is everyone just figuring it out themselves

the distance thing really depends on the tower type and whether theres live RF being broadcast. ive had sites where the RF interference was messing with my compass readings at like 8 meters out and other monopoles where i could get within 2 meters no problem. you should really be asking the client for the RF exposure report before you fly, most telecoms are supposed to have them. some guys use a handheld RF meter before they commit to a close pass which sounds overkill but honestly probably isnt.

for the reporting side, Scopito is what a lot of the utility inspection guys use, its built specifically for asset inspection workflows. there's also DroneBase if you want to just hand off the data side entirely but then you're giving up margin. i went through the same cobbled together photoshop thing for the first few months and switching to actual inspection software probably halved my post-processing time.

curious how you're handling the FAA coordination side ? are these towers near airports or in controlled airspace at all? i keep looking at this kind of work as a possible direction but the authorization overhead sounds like it could eat into any profit pretty fast if you're not already set up for it