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Rant: A foreman in Austin told me my drone mapping was garbage
Honestly, I thought my orthomosaic was solid until this guy pointed out I was shooting at noon with harsh shadows. He said the ground control points were off by a foot because I placed them on grass that moved in the wind. Switched to morning flights with painted targets on pavement and my model accuracy went from plus/minus 6 inches to under 2. Has anyone else had to rework their whole workflow based on site specific conditions like that?
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kai_chen212d ago
I used to be pretty dismissive about ground control points and schedule, figured good enough was good enough. Then a job for a county road project came back with serious elevation errors after a noon flight with light wind. It took three more trips to get it right, and that really drove home how much the little details matter. Now I'm militant about painted targets on hard surfaces and shooting between 10am and 2pm only. You learn quick when your paycheck depends on the results.
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the_brian12d agoTop Commenter
Learned that lesson the hard way too, sun angle kills accuracy more than people expect.
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Kai said "your paycheck depends on the results" and that's the real gut check. One thing nobody brings up is that even perfect targets and time of day won't save you if you're flying a cheaper drone with a rolling shutter sensor. Those CMOS sensors warp the image at speed, and noon light makes it worse, but it's baked into the hardware no matter how good your workflow is.
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