okay so before anyone says anything, i know. i know. the mini 3 pro is not really what you'd call an industrial inspection platform. but the client needed a quick visual on a 200ft guyed communication tower and their usual vendor fell through last minute and i had my drone in the truck so.

wind was moderate, maybe 12-15mph steady with some gusts. flew around the tower in a kind of manual orbit keeping about 15 feet off the structure. got decent footage of the guy wire attachment points and the top section but honestly i was sweating the whole time because the signal was getting a bit sketchy up high and there's all that RF interference near the antennas. drone held position okay but i was not comfortable and i kept wanting to be further away from the structure than i was.

ended up giving the client usable footage but i told them for anything structural they really need someone with proper inspection software and a more capable platform. just felt weird flying a consumer drone in that environment. anyone else done tower work on improvised equipment and lived to tell about it

yeah RF interference near telecom towers is no joke, ive had a phantom 4 do a little wobble dance near a cell site before and that gets your attention real fast. the mini 3 actually handles RF okay in my experience compared to older dji stuff but youre right that it's not what you want for serious tower inspection. proper tower work really wants something like a skydio 2+ or one of the freefly platforms where you can set a fixed orbit radius and let it fly itself while you focus on the footage review.

not judging the call though, sometimes the job is the job and you do what you can. glad it worked out

the real issue with using consumer gear for tower inspections isn't even the RF, it's documentation and liability. if a structural issue gets missed because the sensor quality wasn't up to it and something fails down the line that's a problem. clients sometimes don't know what they're asking for when they say 'just get some footage' of critical infrastructure.

i do a fair bit of industrial inspection work and i basically have a minimum equipment standard now that i wont go below for certain asset types. towers, bridges, anything load bearing ? i wont fly with anything less than a platform that has proper obstacle avoidance and redundant GPS. takes the fun out of it but the liability math is pretty clear