a buddy of mine who does telecom work mentioned that a lot of companies are starting to use drones for tower inspections instead of sending climbers up and he thought i should look into it. i honestly hadnt thought about that side of things at all, i mostly do aerial photography stuff. but he made it sound like the pay is pretty solid and theres a lot of demand right now because the 5g rollout means theres new towers going up everywhere and existing ones needing audits.

i dont really know where to start though. is this something where you just need your 107 and a decent zoom camera, or do companies want you to have specific certifications or training on top of that. and does anyone know if you typically get hired directly by the telecom companies or is it usually through some kind of inspection contractor middleman situation. feel like ive been leaving money on the table sticking to real estate

yeah this is a real thing and it does pay well but its not quite as simple as just showing up with a mavic. most of the serious contracts want you to have some kind of RF safety awareness training at minimum ? working around active antennas is a whole thing and the companies are pretty strict about it for liability reasons. theres also often expectations around the reporting side, like they dont just want raw footage, they want annotated inspection reports with defect documentation and sometimes integration with their asset management systems. ive seen guys pick up third party software certifications specifically for this work, stuff like Scopito or similar platforms.

the middleman thing is accurate too, at least in my experience. most of the big telecoms outsource to inspection companies who then subcontract to pilots. the margins get cut a bit that way but it also means you dont have to go land enterprise contracts yourself which is hard when youre starting out

i looked into this a while back and kind of got overwhelmed with the certification rabbit hole and dropped it. might revisit now that youre bringing it up though. the RF training thing is real, my cousin does tower climbing and they are very serious about that stuff. probaly worth a weekend course if the contracts are actually there