Happy holidays everyone! It’s that magical time of year again when everything you do should be carefully documented for future memories. Want to remember your uncle cutting the turkey this year? Don’t forget to use a household drone for the overhead shot ;)
Things at EAP are looking as good as ever as we prepare for 2022. Business is rolling in, allowing us to expand our services and team while pushing the boundaries of what drones can do!
But we won’t DRONE on anymore (see what we did there?). Check out our latest updates below.
Cheers,
Mark and the EAP Team
Tethered drones and onsite construction cameras, oh my!
What Is a Tethered Drone?
More importantly, WHY a tethered drone? Simply put, it's a way to power a drone using a generator or other supplied power instead of a battery, for missions that need to last longer than 15-30 minutes. The required hardware and software is sophisticated, but the payoff is worth it.
Security, crowd monitoring, traffic studies and even COVID thermal scanning are just a few of the kinds of missions that benefit from keeping a drone in the sky for longer.
Most recently, we’ve used drone tethers over 5 intersections covering 15, eight-hour days of flying. We captured video for traffic and pedestrian counts, and wear and tear on roads. After this experience, my whole team has come to the conclusion that pedestrians don’t need to fear vehicles - it's drivers who need to fear pedestrians… It was incredible how many times we saw people deliberately play chicken with 6,000lbs of SUV. There were even high school kids dancing in the intersections until they got enough honks to win “the game” they were playing. Please be careful near busy roads.
In any case, drone tethers are an exceptional way of gathering lots of aerial data over time. Check out our video above and let’s put these systems into more use.
With new video AI, anything in frame can be analyzed, collated, calculated and reported - it’s truly mind-blowing.
New Onsite Construction Camera Service
Why start this now? Well, after many requests and saying no to clients, I was able to find a high-quality, low-cost system that is easy for us to service. So, picture this (sorry for the pun), we mount to a wall or a pole, fire up a solar panel slab add a cell phone modem and in minutes start feeding you hi-res images and 5.3k video through your custom portal. We can then edit these images and footage into a timelapse for you. With the solar panel, backup battery and camera battery onboard, this setup could even run on Mars indefinitely. If any of the comms fail, we get alerted and run out to reboot while everything is stored to the backup SD card just in case. Super cool, super affordable… just super all around!
Say Hello to Our New Employees!
Amy Imbrescia
Amy grew up in Southern California and moved to Arizona in 2000. After a few years, she got into the construction industry and worked for Blue Book, where she advocated for applying drones on a grand scale, like EAP does. She enjoys seeing how far and how quickly drones have been integrated into the construction industry. And is becoming a huge part of helping you with all your drone needs and requests.
Anthony Romero
Anthony graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with a BA in Unmanned Aircraft Systems and a minor in Cyber Security and Intelligence. He previously interned with Extreme Aerial Productions a couple of summers ago, which gave him lots of experience for his current career with the company.
Highlights From Our Recent Projects
State Capitol Building
We were very proud to be asked by SD Crane to spend three months capturing the progression of the copper dome being restored and replaced using Arizona Copper. Please check in for updates in our next newsletter. This is a landmark project and our favorite of the year!
Thanks to SD Crane for allowing us to chronicle their great work using drones and our time-lapse cameras.
Willmeng Civic Center
We got an awesome opportunity to showcase how Willmeng is renovating the Scottsdale Civic Center Park. We started the project droning, driving and videoing the existing conditions, and are now documenting their work as they improve the space for Scottsdale. You can follow along and see how things change from one week to the next:
Oklahoma Drone Survey
We may have to establish another office in Oklahoma if the work keeps coming in. Earlier this month, we completed a 1100-acre drone topo, surface, linework, CAD exports, etc. Then, we went back last week to begin a 900-acre survey, and in the first week of January we will be back out there filming 70 miles of pipeline. We are very proud to be entrusted with projects like these, especially around critical infrastructure. If you have ever wondered how to plan and execute such a mission, check out these images:
11 Miles of Lidar and RGB for Power Lines
As we have said in the past, it is clients like you, our readers, that have helped our little company grow, as they challenge us every day with our favorite question… “Can a drone do that?”
One thing we have proven possible is flying our fixed-wing drones by Quantum Systems.
Thanks to Ridge Nelsen at Sitech for the hookup on the fixed-wing LiDAR unit by Yellow Scan. Getting good data from a fast-flying fixed-wing has been difficult until now, as we commonly fly lidar equipment like this:
But, with the boys at Sitech helping us out, we flew 11.9 miles of power lines for an expansion project on the Gila River Indian Community reservation. The data came out amazing, with LiDAR and RGB images creating a hyper-accurate surface and volumes of linework being generated, all engineering and survey-grade.
Thanks to amazing work at A TEAM engineering for helping us get the client what they needed and coordinating a complicated local coordinate system and translations.
Stuck During Nevada to Arizona Road Expansion
When Fisher industries called and needed a OG Topo, we said, sure! We looked at this image and were like, no problem! We have been in much gnarlier terrain like old abandoned mines etc.
You can probably see where this is going, but what can we say? Even the best prepared get stuck. Now, some will say this wouldn't have happened if it was a Ford or that a RAM would have gotten out of it, but Aaron isn’t just a drone pilot, he’s a humvee expert and former Scout behind enemy lines. Good thing this was just a peaceful drone project, because the desert definitely got the better of him this time. Just wait to see the new Can-am 6x6 that arrived recently to help us in these remote situations so we don’t get the guy pulling us out stuck too. Thanks Ashley for your help.
Pioneering First-Person View Flying
Lastly, keep watching our Instagram and even LinkedIn page as we start to push the boundaries of FPV - first-person view flying, especially on the job site as we safely fly through tight spaces showcasing your work. Up until this year, FPV was mainly analog and the cinematic quality wasn't there with smaller drones. But now, with more miniaturization and higher bitrates for streaming etc, we can really up the game for engagement and immersion in our flying for our clients.
In the spirit of giving thanks, it would be a huge help to EAP if you left a review of our services on Google. Every review helps us reach new people and take on new projects. Happy Thanksgiving! Insert review link here
TEASER: We’ve been working on a couple of TV shoots, so stay tuned for our next newsletter!