so ive been doing tower inspections for about 2 years now, mostly with an autel evo II pro and honestly it does the job but the gimbal has been giving me grief lately and im looking at upgrading. company i work for is starting to pick up more telecom contracts so i need something that can handle close proximity work around the tower structure itself, climbing the full height to check antenna mounts, junction boxes, that kind of stuff.

been looking at the mavic 3E mostly because of the mechanical shutter and the 4/3 sensor which would be great for the detailed still shots the clients want for their reports. but a coworker keeps pushing the M30T because of the thermal and he says thermal is becoming a table stakes thing for tower clients now. i kind of agree but the price jump is significant.

anyone actually running either of these on telecom towers specifically? curious how they handle in the wind up high, ive had some sketchy moments with the autel when there's crosswind above like 200ft and the tower itself creates weird turbulence. also wondering about the magnetic interference issues, ive read some stuff about compass errors near towers but never had it be a serious problem myself, knock on wood.

ran the M30T for about 6 months on tower work and yeah your coworker isnt wrong about thermal. had a client ask for thermal on literally every job after the first one because we caught a hot splice they didnt know about. saved them a significant outage. but honestly for pure visual inspection the 3E image quality is noticeably better, the M30T camera is fine but its not the same sensor.

the compass stuff near towers is real but its more of an annoyance than a crisis in my experience. i put the aircraft in ATTI mode sometimes when im really close in but you need to be comfortable flying that way or it'll stress you out. wind above 150ft on a lattice tower is no joke regardless of what aircraft youre on, just have to give yourself more buffer than you think you need.

dont sleep on the zenmuse H20T if budget allows, i know its enterprise territory but the sensor fusion on that thing for tower docs is genuinely different. zoom plus thermal plus laser rangefinder in one payload is kind of insane for generating inspection reports.