How to Prep Your Site Before a Flight

Prep is light: a drone maps the property as it is. A few small things make the flight faster and the maps cleaner.

The essentials

1. Sort out access. Make sure we can get through every gate into the mapped area. Share codes or leave gates open, and give us a ground contact.
2. Give people a heads-up. Tell staff, tenants, crews or guests a drone will be overhead.
3. Flag hazards you know about, such as power lines, towers, guy-wires, ziplines and tall rides. Tell us the tallest structure, for safety and for the angled passes.

Timing that helps your data

1. Pick a window that fits your goal. For construction progress or stockpile counts, fly before a big move of material. For marketing, pick when the property looks its best.
2. For venues, plan a closed or low-crowd window. Flying over crowds is restricted, so closed hours or early morning work best.
3. Leave the weather to us. We watch it and reschedule if conditions would hurt the result.

Small things that make maps cleaner

None of these is required:

• Move what you don't want frozen in time. Vehicles and equipment appear in the map where they sat. If a clean as-built record matters, tidy the key areas.
• Clear around what you want measured. Move obvious clutter away from a stockpile, pad or feature.
• Know that heavy tree cover hides the ground. A standard photo map sees the canopy, not the dirt beneath. For bare earth under brush, include a LiDAR scan in your package.

Areas you want kept private

Tell us before the flight about back-of-house, cash-handling, security or ride-control areas. We can plan redaction zones, blurred on the shared map for everyone who opens the public link.

Tip: When in doubt, tell us. A short note saves time: 'north gate locked, tallest thing is the water tower, keep the maintenance yard out of the public map'.

Quick pre-flight checklist

• [ ] Gate access and codes confirmed, ground contact shared
• [ ] Staff, tenants or guests told
• [ ] Known hazards and tallest structures flagged
• [ ] Timing chosen (closed window for venues; before or after key changes)
• [ ] Key areas tidied if a clean as-built matters
• [ ] Private or back-of-house areas named for redaction