been doing cell tower and some broadcast antenna inspections for about two years now and we recently got a contract on a 500ft AM broadcast tower and im kind of nervous about it. done plenty of cell work but AM towers operate at much higher power levels and ive heard some horror stories about compass interference and erratic behavior even at distance. running an M300 RTK with the H20T payload right now.

the client wants close inspection of the guy wires and the antenna mast itself which means getting within maybe 10-15 meters at points. anybody done work around high power AM or FM broadcast infrastructure? curious if the M300 handles it or if youve had to switch to attitude mode and basically hand fly the whole thing. also wondering about the RTK signal in that kind of RF environment, seems like it could get ugly

yeah the M300 will handle it better than most but you're still going to get compass issues depending on how close you get and what the tower is actually outputting. we did an FM broadcast tower last spring, not AM so probably less intense, and had to disable the compass assist and basically treat it like a manual flight once we were inside 20 meters. the aircraft still flew fine in atti mode but you need to be comfortable with that before you're 400 feet in the air near a structure.

RTK is going to be basically useless that close to an active broadcast antenna in my experience, the signal just gets hammered. we ended up using visual references off the structure itself and keeping a very close eye on altitude hold. make sure your return to home altitude is set high enough that it clears the tower if something goes sideways, that part is obvious but worth double checking before you get out there

not done AM towers specifically but did some inspection work around high voltage transmission lines last year and the interference was gnarly even at what i thought was a safe distance. ended up getting a lot of phantom drift and the gimbal was doing weird things. ended up having to reposition a lot and it took way longer than expected. i imagine AM broadcast is a different animal but the lesson i took from it was to have a very consertavie flight plan and never assume you know where the interference is worst until youre actually up there