Drone survey training
The Royal Forestry Society’s open course on drone survey in forestry, and private training on your own ground.
Why we offer training
The more regularly land is scanned, the better it can be managed and studied. We hope that training people to fly sites for themselves will become one of the most effective ways to increase the data available about our environment as it changes, both in real time and in very high detail. Drones are easy and quick to deploy, and we can use them for monitoring, reporting, investigation and verification.
Teaching others to do what we do is perhaps a business risk. It is one worth taking, particularly given the burgeoning climate crisis. We would like to increase the regularity with which sites are flown, familiarise people with the use of the data, and reduce our carbon footprint with less travel.
If you only want to learn to fly the way we do, that is fine. We are also experienced in delivering flight planning, site layouts with repeatable GPS alignment, feedback on data quality, the processing pipeline, and the results carried through to finished maps. We can support you with any of these additional tasks, and save you an enormous amount of time.
Jamie, Landscan UK
Please note, we do not offer legal training or certification for drone use. Interested parties will need to arrange their own legal permissions and accreditation. Our training covers the practicalities of good data capture for land management purposes.
We come to your site and fly it with you
Landscan can offer private drone survey training. The sessions are tailored to your needs, and will give you all you need to capture your own high-quality data.
We meet you at a site of your choosing and work through a drone scan together: how to fly it, the specifics of that ground, and the collection parameters that decide how good the data turns out. We work on your own aircraft where you have them, so what the team learns transfers straight to the work. Equipment can be provided for the day where a team is yet to buy its own.
Landscan can set the whole thing up as well. Advice on equipment, your flight plans built and ready, your site georeferenced, and the processing handled afterwards, so your team can concentrate on the land rather than the software.
Topics covered
Indoors
- Rules and safe operation: the UK regulatory framework from an operator’s point of view, airspace checks, permissions and pre-flight planning
- Survey principles: how flight height, image overlap and ground resolution affect woodland data quality
- Mission planning: setting up automated mapping missions, including sloping ground and tall canopy
- Camera settings: configuring for consistent, sharp survey imagery in woodland conditions
Outdoors
- Pre-flight routine: site assessment, checklists, take-off and landing area selection, return-to-home settings
- Controller familiarisation: layout, flight modes, on-screen information and emergency procedures
- Manual flying practice: supervised hands-on exercises to build confidence and control
- Automated survey missions: each trainee plans, launches and monitors a woodland mapping flight
- Data checks: downloading imagery, quality checks, logbook records and a debrief
Groups are kept small so everyone has a proper chance to operate the aircraft, and by the end each trainee can plan, fly and check a woodland survey mission.
We can advise on equipment if you have yet to buy. Trainees flying their own aircraft will need a CAA Operator ID and Flyer ID and drone insurance. The site needs an open take-off area and the landowner’s permission to fly, and we can help identify a suitable one. Outdoor sessions depend on the weather, and we will agree an alternative date if conditions call for it.
Interested in a session for your team?
Talk to us about your survey requirements, and we are happy to advise.