Question about using a drone to check a dredge line

I was working on a big project in Mobile Bay last month, and the boss brought in a drone to fly over our dredge line. I thought it was a waste of time, just a toy for the office guys. But then the pilot showed me the live feed on his tablet. We could see a clear sand bar forming about 300 feet ahead of the cutter head that we couldn't spot from the deck. It saved us maybe two hours of repositioning blind. The detail was crazy, you could even see the water color change where the bottom was softer. Now I'm looking at getting my own license to fly one. Has anyone else here started using drones for survey work, and what model are you using?

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3 Comments

holly_walker764mo ago

Fancy toy" maybe, but try spotting a buried sandbar from the deck in murky water.

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skylerp315mo ago

Still seems like a fancy toy to me, even if it helped that one time. Most jobs I've been on, a good pair of eyes on deck is all you really need. How often does that perfect scenario actually happen?

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emery_lopez5mo ago

Yeah but that's the thing, @skylerp31, it's not about the perfect scenario. I read a case about a crew doing a routine check on a bridge support. Eyes on deck saw some rust, but the drone with a thermal camera spotted a serious heat difference in a steel beam you couldn't even see from the walkway. It was a crack starting inside. That's not a toy, that's catching a major problem before it fails. Good eyes are key, but they can't see everything. This tech gives you another angle, literally.

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