Frequently Asked Questions

It comes down to whether vegetation is in the way. LiDAR fires laser pulses that can find gaps in canopy and return the bare ground underneath, so it's the right tool for wooded right-of-way, brushy tracts, and anywhere you need terrain that a camera physically cannot see. Photogrammetry builds its model from overlapping photographs, so it needs a visible surface — but on open dirt it produces excellent color imagery, accurate volumes, and a site record anyone on the job can read at a glance. Plenty of projects use both.

No, and you should be skeptical of anyone who says it does. Drone mapping is a data product for planning, estimating, monitoring, and documenting a site. Determining legal boundaries or producing a sealed survey document is the work of a licensed professional surveyor, and it stays that way regardless of how good the aerial data is. What our data does is give you an accurate picture of the ground so you can bid, plan, and track work — and if a licensed survey is required for your project, good aerial data makes that engagement shorter, not unnecessary.

Accuracy depends on the sensor, the flight altitude, and — most of all — the ground control. We fly with our own D-RTK 3 base station rather than relying on a network correction service, which matters on rural sites with unreliable cell coverage, and we can shoot independent check points on the ground so the aerial data gets verified against something rather than simply trusted. Relative accuracy, which is what earthwork volume comparisons actually depend on, is typically tighter than absolute accuracy. Rather than quote a single lab number that may not hold on your site, we'll tell you what's realistically achievable there and what ground control it would take.

A DJI Matrice 400 carrying one of three interchangeable payloads: a Zenmuse L3 for LiDAR, a Zenmuse P1 45MP full-frame camera for photogrammetry, and a Zenmuse H30T for radiometric thermal. Ground control comes from our own D-RTK 3 base station and survey pole, and processing is done in-house in DJI Terra rather than shipped to a service bureau. Full published specifications for each payload are on our equipment page.

That depends on the sensor and what you need to do with it, but typical deliverables include classified point clouds, a bare-earth terrain model (DTM) and surface model (DSM), contour lines at your specified interval, high-resolution orthomosaics, and volume or clearance reports. We deliver in the formats your existing software already opens, so the data drops into your workflow rather than requiring new tools.

That's the goal, and it's worth settling before the flight rather than after. Point clouds are commonly delivered as LAS or LAZ, surfaces and contours in formats that import to civil design software, and imagery and vector data in GIS-ready formats. Tell us what your team actually works in — civil design software, GIS, or a plan set someone prints and marks up — and we'll match the deliverable to it.

Usually not. What we do need is site access and permission to be there, plus a heads-up about anything on the ground that affects flight planning — active equipment, blasting, overhead lines, or a nearby airfield. For most jobs you can send us the boundary and go back to work.

Wind, precipitation, and low cloud are the usual culprits. Photogrammetry also depends on light: flat overcast is often better than harsh midday sun, because deep shadows hide the ground. Thermal work is timing-sensitive in a different way — heat signatures read most clearly when there's a real temperature differential, which often means flying early or late rather than at noon. Weather is the one part of this we don't control, so we plan schedules with some slack in them.

Corridor and substation work is a core part of what we do, and it's flown with the appropriate procedures and standoff. Airspace is the bigger constraint: flights near controlled airspace require FAA authorization, which is routine to obtain but is not instantaneous. If your site sits under controlled airspace, tell us early — it affects the schedule, not whether the job can be done.

Aerial mapping is generally scoped by the size and shape of the site — acreage for a tract, corridor length for a right-of-way — along with which sensor the job calls for and how much processing the deliverables require. A compact open site with a single deliverable sits at one end; a long wooded corridor needing classified LiDAR and clearance reporting sits at the other. Send us the location and what you need to make a decision, and we'll scope it against the actual site rather than a generic rate card.

Three things: currency, resolution, and dimension. Satellite and public aerial imagery may be months or years old, which is useless on a site that's actively moving. Drone capture is flown for your project on a date you choose, at a resolution measured in centimeters rather than meters, and produces three-dimensional data you can measure volumes and clearances from — not just a picture to look at.

For active earthwork, monthly is a common cadence for progress and volume tracking, tightened up around pay applications or major grade changes. Vegetation and right-of-way work runs on a much longer cycle, driven by growth rate and inspection requirements, with unscheduled flights after storms. If a site is being flown repeatedly, keeping the flight plan and ground control consistent matters more than the interval itself — that's what makes each capture comparable to the last.

No. Everything we capture for you — imagery, point clouds, models, flight logs — and anything you tell us about the job belongs to you, and it isn't shared, sold, or reused for anyone else without your written permission. We fly for contractors who may be bidding against each other, and that only works if each client's data stays with that client. American Terrain Solutions came out of the contracting side of this industry, so we know exactly why that matters — and no other contractor, including the operation we grew out of, ever sees your data.