The Drone Trainer Podcast

Latest Episodes:

074. Women Who Drone Founder Elena Buenrostro May 08, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

Have you heard of Women Who Drone? They're a global community that inspires, educates and empowers women and girls with drone technology! Join in this week as I chat with founder and CEO, Elena Buenrostro!

Elena is a drone pilot with a background in video production. Her love of drones started with a trip to the Great Wall of China a few years ago. As she was planning her trip, she started thinking of what kind of equipment to take with her... and guess what? A drone quickly became one of her top choices! She picked up a DJI Mavic Pro, and successfully flew at the Great Wall! Since starting off with the DJI Mavic, she's also picked up the Mavic 2 Pro, Mavic 2 Zoom, and Mavic Air. Who else is envious that she's 4 for 4 in acquiring the Mavic line?

Elena prefers to edit with Adobe Premiere, leaving Final Cut Pro X in the dust a few years ago. She's still working on a MacBook Pro, and finds that Premiere works just fine on the apple platform. It's interesting as I've heard that the Adobe products work much better on windows computers. Either way, I still like Final Cut Pro and likely won't be switching to Premiere Pro anytime soon.

A few months ago I spoke with Camilla Dellion on the podcast, and she is the one that connected me with Elena. During the chat, I discovered that like high school teacher Erin Knoetig, Elena is also teaching children how to fly. I love hearing about the cool things kids are doing with drones and the Swift programming language, so I commend both Erin and Elena for what they're doing. Keep up the good work!

Drone project pricing is a common discussion point on my weekly drone mastermind meetings, and we also discuss Elena's pricing model during this chat. There are many different factors to keep in mind, so be sure to listen to what Elena recommends as it's some very solid advice. Also, if you're interested in checking out our weekly online meetings where we chat about drones, just send me a message and I'll invite you to next week's meeting!

Well hopefully you enjoyed this week's chat with Elena Buenrostro, the founder and CEO of Women Who Drone!

073. Awesome Drone Photography with Tom Noske May 01, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

Tom Noske is a drone pilot from Melbourne, Australia, that is creating beautiful pieces of art with his drone. Yeah, we're going to learn all about his shooting style and editing process during this chat!

Tom is currently flying the DJI Mavic 2 Pro, and absolutely loves the larger Hasselblad sensor. He was flying the original Mavic Pro, but since upgrading he's caught the bug for larger sensors. Yeah, that means that the Inspire 2 is on his list for his next purchase.

On the commercial side of things, Tom is working with sports teams and fitness professionals. He works with rugby teams, rowing teams, and wants to get into shooting music videos. He's also doing corporate work like real estate, but admits that he doesn't like it as much as the other areas.

His editing workflow starts in Adobe Lightroom and then moves into Photoshop. He starts with camera calibrations, tone curves, white balance, and some other basic adjustments in Lightroom. Once in Photoshop, he adds and removes new things, creates atmosphere, moves subjects around, and then returns to Lightroom. Why back to LR? Well, you'll have to listen in to get that detail!

One of Tom's biggest tips is that you should always shoot at sunrise or sunset. He loves using the natural light, and creating large scale photos. How about you? Do you like shooting at sunrise or sunset? Do you find that in the summer sunrise is too early to catch, so you find that sunset is easier to make?

Ok I hope that you enjoyed this week's chat with Tom Noske from Melbourne. As you can see from the photo above, and his instagram profile, he is creating some incredible art. Are you fired up to try and create something along the same lines as well? Show us what you've got! And if you liked the show, please share it with someone else who loves drones :)

072. Precision Agriculture Drones with Cheyenne Laux Apr 24, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

Cheyenne Laux is a drone pilot based in Kentucky, who is operating a drone business with his brother-in-law. His company is called AgDrone PRO, and they concentrate on providing actionable drone data for precision agriculture.

Precision agriculture is a farming management concept based on observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field variability in crops. Cheyenne and his company utilize drones to capture data, which they can turn into direct action for farmers. Long gone are the days of wasting resources on the entire field! Now you can simply apply to the areas that need it, instead of covering the entire field in the same amounts.

With large areas of land to cover, Cheyenne is utilizing a combo of multi-rotor and vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drones to capture his data. In addition to the drone, he's also flying a variety of multispectral sensors to capture everything from RGB (red/green/blue) to NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index). So far he's been flying the AeroVironment Quantax, and has recently started working with the BirdsEyeView FireFLY6. Both systems are VTOL, and can carry Slantrange sensors.

Since they're running a team of drone pilots across the country, they need a management solution to keep tabs on all their equipment, pilots, and missions. Recently, Cheyenne was contacted by the Kittyhawk team about their drone fleet management software. They've just started using it, however love what they see so far. If you're also managing a team of drone pilots, this may be of interest to you too.

Anyway, we had a nice long chat about Precision Ag and VTOL drones. Hopefully you enjoy listening in, and if you have any questions feel free to reach out to us in the comments below. Also, if you like the show, we'd love for you to share it with another drone pilot! Thanks in advance!

071. Globetrotting Drone Pilot David Rule Apr 17, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

David Rule is a globe trotting drone pilot, who calls Pinedale, Wyoming home. He got into photography about 2 years ago, and pulled the trigger on a drone just over a year ago. The drone was the no brainer addition to his toolkit, to help bring his passion for photography to the next level!

Being a full time pro, David is shooting both ground and aerial shots for a variety of clients around the world. He's recently returned from Africa, where he had a company reach out to him through Instagram to shoot a project with LifeStraw. During the shoot, they travelled around to schools and villages in Africa, and captured footage of the children using their new water filtration systems. Supplying clean water is one thing, but another awesome benefit is that he had a blast flying around the kids. Listen in as he describes how the drone was pretty much the star of the show!

When not travelling the world, David has a thriving business serving local real estate agents. Notice how I used real estate agents instead of the word realtor? I learned something new this week as one of my connections in the UK let me know that realtor isn't a word over there. Instead, they call them estate agents. So I guess as a combo of both, real estate agent is probably a good mix that makes sense to most? I can only hope! :) Anyway, David said that his agents have grown to expect drone shots, and pretty much demand them for every listing.

David's marketing efforts are almost entirely centred around his Instagram presence. As mentioned earlier, he has a lot of people and companies reach out to him via Instagram, which is entirely organic. He's not into faking what he's doing, and tries to be super real with everything he does. When I asked him if he would do anything different if he moved to another country, he said that he wouldn't change a thing. Instagram is a killer for him, and is obviously bringing in some awesome opportunities to travel the world with his drone.

070. Adelaide drone pilot Steve Adcock Apr 10, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

Steve Adcock is a drone pilot from Adelaide, in South Australia. Actually, he's not right in Adelaide, but he's 30km to the east. Regardless, he's flying all over the area, and is having a blast with his drone business. He's currently flying a variety of drones, including several DJI drones from the Spark all the way up to the Inspire 2. He thinks that he's had 13 drones so far, with 3 of them being written off. Good ratio I guess? haha

He's been flying in a variety of industries, including real estate, construction, military, and agriculture. Most of his work self described as "pretty pictures and video." He's also done a lot of work with production houses, and enjoys the pressure working in that environment. For a lot of his work, there is only one chance to get the shot, so he makes sure everything is ready before the shoot. Listen in to the podcast to hear how he describes a shoot where a large ship was leaving the dock. Yeah, that's one of those operations where you can't press pause and have the boat start all over again!

Being from Australia, Steve isn't familiar with what it's like flying in some of the freezing temperatures that we get here in Canada. If you're looking for winter and cold temperature flying tips, have I got the answers for you! Check out the link in the previous sentence, as well as my tips during our discussion.

Beyond the weather and stressful shoots, we also discuss marketing ideas, video editing, and advantages of dual vs single operator flight. We also talk about the massive advantages of practicing ATTI mode flight. Be sure to listen in and subscribe to The Drone Trainer podcast, wherever you get your audio!

069. Drones in Italy with Filippo Canepa Apr 05, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

Filippo Canepa is a 35 year old drone pilot from Turin, Italy. Along with his brother, he is operating a real estate business, concentrating on renting, sales, and a new builds. And guess what? He's looking to use his drone to promote his real estate business! Filippo is flying the Mavic Air, Inspire 2, and is looking at picking up a DJI Spark.

Before he gets going in his real estate business, he's working on studying for and passing his drone license exams in Italy. One of the hurdles that he has to overcome is passing the practical flight exam. This exam is a hands on flight test, where he has to fly with and without a GPS signal. The test even takes things a little further by not allowing use of a screen during testing. Yeah, you have to fly 100% by keeping your eye on the drone, all while in non-GPS mode. If you're looking for training for how to fly in ATTI mode, I have just thing thing for you right here.

We also discuss the commercial and recreational drone flight rules in Italy. Currently there is a division between what you can do as a licensed vs non licensed operator, and we go over all of it during our chat. If you'd rather read about the Italian drone rules, check out this resource for everything that you need to know about flying in Italy.

Filippo is running a few instagram accounts, both personal and a collaboration with his friend Ben Skaar.

I hope you enjoyed this week's drone podcast with Filippo Canepa! Once you've had a listen, feel free to leave a comment below so that Filippo and I can hear what you think!

068. Drone IMU Calibration Apr 01, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

This week while the temperatures were hovering just above freezing, I decided to conduct a IMU calibration on my DJI Phantom 4 Pro. After completing the calibration, I wondered what the rest of the drone community was up to, and reached out to find out all of the best practices!

What is a drone's IMU?

IMU (inertial measurement unit) calibration is one of those things that is critical to keeping your drone straight and level. The IMU is a sensor that detects motion along a horizontal plane, as well as increases and decreases in altitude. Having a tightly calibrated IMU is critical to having the drone know what zero motion feels like. Without a good IMU calibration, your drone will potentially think that it's drifting off in a certain direction, and then create an opposite input. Yeah, it's going to become very difficult to control and won't be stable in flight at all!

My IMU calibration

This week with the temperatures just above zero, I conducted a IMU calibration in the middle of a wide open field without any interference. It's important to do them without any interference, as a bad calibration can lead to disaster once in the air and away from the "calibrated" interference. Same goes for the compass, but I'll leave that for a separate discussion.

During the calibration, the DJI tutorial showed the drone with the props removed, however I did mine with the props still attached. There are three reasons that I can think of that they'd recommend props removed during the calibration. First is if the drone was to somehow start up during calibration, you likely wouldn't have control. Second is that you may not get the drone totally level during calibration. And finally, depending on the composition of your props, there is a possibility they could interfere with a clean IMU calibration.

Anyway, even with the props on I was able to precisely calibrate the IMU. I was further able to confirm this by taking the drone to another location with a lot of interference, and was still able to fly it without any issue at all. Thats a good thing to remember if you're looking for a place to calibrate your drone's IMU. Choose a location without any interference, or as little as possible, and then move to your area of higher interference to fly. Don't do it the other way around, as I mentioned above, it can cause all kinds of problems.

What does everyone else say?

Knowing that it's always best to share information so that we can all improve, I decided to ask my drone community what their best practices are when it comes to IMU calibration. There are a variety of responses and techniques, and I'm sure you can pick up a little tidbit of info from each one. Let's see what the community has to say in this week's episode!

Final thoughts on drone IMU calibration

As can you see by the comments above, there are some varying opinions when it comes to calibrating your IMU. Some say if it's not broke, don't try and fix it, while others are suggesting doing it before every flight. I think that doing it, over not doing it at all is a good idea, but make sure that you do it in an interference free area. Keep it away from all metal, bluetooth, watches, cellphones, power-lines, vehicles, rebar, and anything else that you think could cause interference.

Also to answer a few of the above questions, yes temperature can play into your IMU calibration. I'm not 100% sure about high temperatures, but colder temperatures definitely have an effect on calibration and allowing your drone to operate in cooler weather. I have a full article on winter drone flight tips, where I discuss the benefits of calibrating in a cooler environment. As I don't live in a screaming hot place, I'm looking to you to let me know if you've experienced differences in calibrations in high temperatures.

What do you say?

After reading all of the opinions above, what do you think? Are you going to modify the way that you conduct your drone's IMU calibration? Or are you going to keep on keeping on? Regardless, let us know below in the comments so that we can keep on learning from each other! When you're finished leaving your comment, get out there and fly! Have fun, and be sure to keep the spinny side up!

067. Iowa Drone Pilot Danny Engesser Mar 28, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

Danny Engesser is an IT professional who has been running his drone side hustle for the past year. He started off with a Parrot AR, and has since moved up to the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced and now the Inspire 1. So far he's been working in a variety of industries including energy, car dealerships, and corporate group photos.

Utilizing the LAANC system (Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability), Danny has been able to fly missions in a variety of controlled airspace. So far he's found the system to be fairly straightforward, and hasn't had any issue on obtaining airspace permissions. While in the air, Danny prefers to use the DJI Go app, however has been tinkering with Litchi as well lately. I've used litchi myself, but we also discuss my personal preference of Hangar's Autopilot.

Danny mentions that he had some trouble with the Inspire 1's firmware, and figured out a way to downgrade it to the original settings. It takes some work, but he has posted instructions for how to make this happen. I haven't had to try something like this, but it looks like a good option for drone pilots that are having issue with their firmware and want to start over from scratch. Alternatively, you can use my method of refreshing the firmware to keep things up to date with a clean install.

For insurance, Danny choses Verifly to cover him on a flight by flight basis. So far he's had pricing ranging from $10 up to $130, with the increase likely based on the operational airspace. There may be a few other factors that cause the price to jump, but in his tests he's found that small adjustments have caused significant price changes.

066. Flying drones in El Paso with David Angulo Mar 25, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

El Paso drone pilot, David Angulo, has been flying for the past two years. David was experiencing some heath problems, and in attempt to make a few extra dollars, he decided to pick up a drone on Black Friday. While it was risky to just pick up a drone and then learn how to use it, it's really worked out for his family as he's now making some great money flying drones.

So far David is working in real estate, commercials, and short films. When he does some real estate work, he flies the mission with his drone and then edits with Photoshop and Davinci. Speaking of Davinci, if you're looking for a great piece of free video editing software, make sure to check them out! On the other hand, when he shoots for short films or commercials, he captures the footage in D-Log, and then hands it over to the production company so they can work their magic.

David is looking to get into mapping and modelling, and we had a good discussion about my Drone Mapping 101 training course. If you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, take a look as I cover off everything from start to finish to create highly accurate maps and models. In the course, I cover off the big 3 photogrammetry processors, Pix4D, Drone Deploy, and Maps Made Easy. If you're interested in learning how to create high resolution drone maps, be sure to check it out!

One of David's favourite projects has been on We Will Not Be Tamed: Xochitl Rodriguez which was featured on Texas Monthly. The other that he really enjoyed shooting and then taking about on the show was over at Spaceport America. David is also taking part in International Drone Day, so if you're in the El Paso area, be sure to hit him up and join in on May 4, 2019!

065. Channel Islands Drone Pilot Marc Le Cornu Mar 20, 2019

Show notes

If you're looking to make the jump from sporadic revenue to scalable and consistent growth in your drone business, TDT Pro is for you!

Check out The Drone Trainer Pro right here!

Marc Le Cornu is a drone pilot based in the Channel Islands. He's currently a full time firefighter, but as of next week he's going to be retiring from public safety and taking his drone business full time! He's been running his commercial drone operation for a few years now, but once he retires from fire, he will be able to really hit the air and take on everything that comes his way. Speaking of that topic, Marc made comment that he's had to turn down a few jobs and opportunities due to his day job getting in the way. That's all going to change next week though!

Marc's current drone fleet consists of the Mavic 2 Pro, Phantom 4 Pro Obsidian, and Inspire 2. Quite the nice fleet, and his current favourite is the Phantom 4 Pro as he says it performs better than the Mavic 2 Pro in low light. He has plans to tackle the low light even more with a future purchase of the Zenmuse X7 for his Inspire 2.

Back to his public safety drone operations, Marc's team had been flying the Matrice 210 series. Had is the keyword there, as they've since taken it out of service. Can you guess why? They were unfortunately victim of the DJI TB50 and TB55 battery firmware failures, and their drone fell out of the sky. Marc went through all of the regulatory followup after their incident, and everything has been administratively cleared, however they've lost all faith in their M210 unit. It's truly unfortunate as the M210 is a beast that suffered a major flaw. Anyway, here's hoping that they get their systems back in the air shortly.

So how did Marc start out with drones? Well, he wanted to make enough money to pay for his ski trips. Since he's now in a position to retire, I bet you can imagine how things have gone since then! Anyway, I won't reveal the entire conversation here in the notes, so head on over and have a listen to this week's chat with Marc. You can listen right here on this page, or wherever you get your podcasts by searching for "The Drone Trainer Podcast" :)

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected