so ive been doing cell tower and transmission line inspections for about two years now and we recently started getting asked about doing more detailed close-up work on the lattice sections and guy wire attachment points. right now im running a M300 with a Zenmuse H20T which handles most of what we need but the thermal on that thing isnt really the right tool when the client wants to see actual structural detail on rusted bolts and cracked welds

thinking about swapping to the H20 (non-thermal) for the detail shots and then doing a separate flight with the T if they need hot spots but that feels inefficient. has anyone tried doing this kind of work with a different payload combo or am i overcomplicating it. the towers we're working on are anywhere from 150ft to 400ft guyed monopoles and lattice, usually in rural areas so airspace isnt usually the issue

also curious if anyone has dealt with the RF interference problem on the taller lattice structures. had a weird signal dropout situation a couple months ago and im pretty sure it was the antenna arrays messing with the OcuSync link but cant confirm that

yeah the RF thing on active towers is real and it gets worse the closer you are to the antenna arrays. i usually try to stay at least 10-15 feet lateral distance from the arrays themselves when im doing close visual and that helps a lot. on one job we had a site with like 6 carriers all stacked on a 300ft monopole and below the arrays was fine but once i got up near the top it was sketchy. ended up doing those sections with manual control and shorter stick inputs just to be safe

on the payload question i actually went a different direction and picked up a Matrice 350 with the H30 when it came out. the zoom range on that thing is genuinely useful for tower work because you can stay further back from the structure and still get the resolution you need for the report. not cheap obviously but if youre billing inspection hours it pays back pretty quick

dont have tower experience specifically but we do a ton of high voltage transmission line patrol work and the interference issue sounds familiar. what firmware are you on because there was a specific build a while back that seemed to handle link drops better in high EMF environments, or at least recovered faster. might be worth checking if youre on an older version