I have been involved with flying the Wingtra One for over two years and have built up a lot of time flying the Gen 1 model in various conditions. Three months ago, in my previous role as Senior Surveyor for FQM, I had the pleasure of sharing my experiences with the Wingtra One with the team at CR Kennedy for an article published in the Mining Review.
https://survey.crkennedy.com.au/blogs/news/2022/Feb/2/FQM_and_Wingtra_Flying_High
At that stage we had been using the Wingtra One at the mine for over a year and had come to rely on it heavily, especially for end of month surveys. The weather and ground conditions were challenging, and in winter became very muddy. Most of the time you did not have a lot of space to take off and land.
The Wingtra One’s flexibility provide to be a winner and its ability to fly large survey areas quickly also helped a lot on days there was a very tight weather window on site (which, being the south coast of Western Australia, proved to be a lot of them!
The Wingtra One’s ability to maintain and fly very precise flight lines even with wind speeds at the limit of its operation tolerance (11m/s) was also a great asset. Not once did we experience a survey model failing because of wind and poor overlap.
All round, the Wingtra One’s dependability and efficiency really impressed me. In fact, I was so impressed I bought my own Wingtra One, even upgrading to the Gen 2 model!
The concept of setting up a drone mapping business has been in my head for a long time. The main barrier to starting the business though was deciding which drone system to purchase to yield the best results for my clients and my business.
I have many years of experience survey with drones and had used many different systems. They all had their advantages and disadvantages, but none seemed to have that winning combination of endurance and range, flexibility and reliability; all things that you need in a commercial drone mapping operation.
During my time at FQM, the Wingtra One exceeded our expectations and proved to be an excellent choice. So, when it come to my own business it was obvious which system to go with. I am excited to bring the capabilities of the Wingtra One to clients in the agriculture, viticulture, mining, forestry and construction industries.
