so ive been doing tower inspections the old way for about 6 years now, climbers, rigging gear, the whole deal. company i work for is looking at bringing drones into the workflow and honestly im kind of on the fence about it. not because i doubt the tech but because the airspace stuff around some of our sites is a nightmare. we got towers near class D airspace and a couple near approach paths that are basically a LAANC no-go unless you apply manually and wait forever.

the actual inspection side seems solid ? we tested with a mavic 3 enterprise a few months back and the zoom on that thing is genuinely useful for checking antenna mounts and coax entry points without putting a guy on the structure. but im wondering if anyone here is doing this regularly at scale. like do you have a dedicated part 107 guy or does everyone on the crew just get certified? and what are you actually doing about the waiver situations, just eating the delay or is there a workflow that makes it less painful

we run a small inspection outfit and do maybe 40-50 tower jobs a year now with drones, mostly monopoles and guyed towers for telecom clients. the LAANC thing is honestly not as bad as it sounds once you get used to it. most of our sites ended up being coverable through the automated system after we got familiar with reading the UAS facility maps properly. the ones that arent we just submit the manual waiver well ahead of schedule and build it into the project timeline. clients dont care as long as you warn them upfront.

we ended up having two guys on the crew get part 107, not everyone. it just made more sense operationally. the enterprise drones with the thermal add-on have been huge for us actually ? catching heating issues in equipment shelters is something the climbers obviously couldnt do before.

curious what zoom level you were actually using on those antenna checks. ive heard mixed things about whether the mavic 3E tele is enough or if you really need something like the zenmuse H20T on a matrice to get useful detail on connection hardware. seems like it matters a lot for whether you can actually replace the climb or just supplement it