FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
The following Frequently Asked Questions are meant to inform and answer questions you may not have thought about when considering hiring OTech Aerial Drone Services Inc., to secure drone video, photograhy, mapping or detection services. If you have additional questions not answered here please contact us with your unanswered questions. We will be happy to discuss with you, maybe add your question to our list.
Yes. We carry $2 million in liability on a standard shoot, and that can be increased if necessary (additional fee).
No, drone services are paid on an hourly or contracted cost basis. Payments are made after services are rendered.
Prior to each flight it is our requirement to complete a Plan of Activities. The FAA does recommend the pilot to have a Plan of Activities in hand. The POA is document that clearly states: Who is flying the drone, What drone they are flying, Where the drone is flying, When they are flying, and Why the drone is flying. You can think of the POA as a flight plan and we will always have one written up for commercial operations.
We fly state of the art DJI drones, Maverick, Inspire and our ALL weather Matrice 210 rounding out our current fleet.
If your business is located close to an airport the first thing we will do is assess the airspace at your location. If you are outside of a Class G airspace we will need to request a waiver. To request a waiver to fly a drone near an airport we will request an airspace authorization from the FAA. This process can take up to 6 weeks but often take less than that.
Our drones are maintained to the highest possible level following the manufacturers recommendations. In the event of a malfunction we will ground the drone in question and rely on our backup drones to complete the mission. We will never fly a drone found to be defective or that fails to pass our preflight checklist.
No. If there is rain or snow, we can fly our Matrice 210 which is sealed from rain & snow and will protect the sensitive electronics. Winds over 12mph are problematic, mostly for highly stable video, but also for flight. Weather is usually predictable, and we have mobile access to weather radar and other forecasting tools. We will usually know and plan in advance if we have to delay the shoot by hours or by days.
Video: From full HD – 1920 x 1080 down to standard definition (720 x 480 widescreen). Real 4K video is available. Stills: 12MP Wide: 4000×3000 pixels. We provide the raw video and photo stills when finished or process them for you and send when completed. .
No. While the images that we capture on the camera's memory card are of the highest quality for use in all situations, the live feed to the ground monitors are suitable for flight-control use only.
Yes, and we encourage your active involvement. That said, you don't need to be on site once we agree to the site and video plan.
We can be up and running in about 30 minutes. That gives us enough time for safety checks and for other preflight considerations. This is one of the biggest advantages of our kind of equipment over traditional aerial photography methods.
Yes. Each rig has a video downlink that allows us to monitor what is being shot in real time. This allows the producer to direct the pilot to fly the rig to a particular spot and be able to rotate the camera to the exact angle to get the best shot. We can also immediately review and evaluate what has been shot once the rig lands. If we need to re-shoot, we just pop in a fresh battery and take it back up.