ok so this has been bugging me since this morning. we got contracted to do a visual inspection on a 200ft guyed tower, standard stuff, antenna mounts and the guy wire anchors at the base and mid section. ive done maybe a dozen of these before but today was just weird from the start.

first the RF interference was way worse than expected, i knew there were active transmitters on the structure but the client said they couldnt power anything down during our window. my Autel EVO II was doing this thing where the compass was just... not happy, kept getting warnings and at one point it went into attitude mode for like 3 seconds before i got it back. nearly put it into the upper guy wire. got the shot but honestly that was too close.

im thinking about switching to a GPS-denied mode workflow for tower work, maybe relying more on visual positioning and manual flight, but thats a whole different skill set. or maybe i need a different airframe thats less susceptible to the RF. anyone running inspections on active towers regularly, how do you handle this

RF on active towers is genuinely dangerous for any magnetometer-dependent flight, doesnt matter what airframe you're on. the Autel is no worse than a Phantom or Mavic in that environment. what some guys do is pre-plan the inspection with waypoints set well clear of the structure and then take manual control for the close-up passes, so at least if things go sideways you already have the overview data. also worth having a spotter watching the guy wires the whole time, second set of eyes on those things while youre focused on the screen. ive seen experienced pilots clip them because the wires just disappear in the video feed depending on the light angle.

we had a similar issue on a broadcast tower last year, the client absolutely would not power down and the interference was making the bird twitch constantly. ended up switching to a Skydio 2+ for that job because the obstacle avoidance gave us a bit of a safety net on the close passes, though i know some people dont trust it near guy wires and honestly they're probably right. didnt solve the compass issue but at least it wasnt going to fly into the lattice on its own. not sure thats the right long term answer but it worked that day