Hello all!

I am working to create a spreadsheet that will refrence a table with estimated flight times according to a specified elevation and area. I work professionally as a drone surveyor and would like to be more consistent in my estimations for time. Does anyone know of an existing table or program that has this information? The attached image is an example of my sheet, with some estimations created through DroneDeploy.



The process of gathering this information was incredibly slow, and likely inaccurate. DroneDeploy will only round area up to the nearest Acre, so it is impossible to be sure if the boxes I make are 3 Acres, or 2.7 Acres.

Thank you for your help, any information will be greatly appreciated!

DE

Don't know of a published sheet like the one you're creating, but I bet there are some out there.

Presumably you're keeping along- and across-track overlap and oversampling ("coloring out side the lines") constant, as well as assuming a square or rectangular area ("box"), b/c in addition to altitude they're the other major variables that affect flight time vs area mapped.

And wind. Wind can have a huge effect. But for what you're doing it makes sense to leave wind out of it, and just acknowledge that it could potentially affect your flight times.

If I understand correctly you're doing this by creating lots of flight plans in DD and typing the flight times into your sheet. You should be able to do it mathematically without using DD, or at least using the DD results you have you can find the relationship and use it to populate the rest of the sheet.

Good luck!

patiam Posted at 4-15 09:35
Don't know of a published sheet like the one you're creating, but I bet there are some out there.

Presumably you're keeping along- and across-track overlap and oversampling ("coloring out side the lines") constant, as well as assuming a square or rectangular area ("box"), b/c in addition to altitude they're the other major variables that affect flight time vs area mapped.

I appreciate your optimism regarding my mathematical skills! I have been utilizing Pix4D mapper, as it will allow me to create regular (equal length sides) squares and displays the measured sides of each area I plot. This is of course just for estimations, and wind, altitude, battery exchanges, ground maneuvers and the like will be assumed later.

Once I have gone through all of my required parameters, Ill be sure to share my findings.

Well, here we are folks. Please keep in mind these numbers are only estimates, and have been rounded to the nearest 1/4 minute. This estimation was done using Pix4D mapper instead of DroneDeploy.
- I chose to use out Mavic Pro as the sample Drone, as it is the slowest in our fleet.
- Front image overlap is 80%, Side image overlap is 70%.
- Camera angle is at 70%
- Drone speed is fast - Naturally
Again, these are all just estimates. It is also worth keeping in mind that battery changes were not accounted for.

If you ever have a spreadsheet need, let me know!

Neat idea.   I’ve been using GS Pro and will map the area I’m going to fly before hand and arrive at times that way.   What would be the difference/benefit here.   Trying to understand.

@DillonE - Good work. I knew you could do it. Did you calculate each cell using Pix4D, or find a relationship and use a formula in the spreadsheet?

And why does it take as long to do 1 acre @ an elevation of 400 as it does to do the same acre @ 200? The general expected trend for a given survey area is the lower the altitude, the longer the flight. (I can think of reasons...)

@Rvrrat14 - I think the goal was to have a single reference for a range of altitudes & acreages rather than having to fire up GS Pro or Pix4D or whatever to create a survey just to get an estimate.