Sorry to loop back around - curious if you did this with a temporary airman's Part 61 certificate (resulting in TWO temporary airman's certificates?) That's where I am in the process.
I'm not THAT desperate lol. Going to PSI stresses me out! hehe
Thanks so much for the info. I'm not really sure that I want to make a full-time (or even part-time) business out of it, but I definitely like to fly my drone for more than the love of flying, so figured I should do the transition and get the certificate. I'm not much of an artist but I did figure I could probably get away with doing inspections (maybe even gutters, roofs, antenna towers? I don't know!). I wonder if utilities and municipalities might actually hire 107 remote pilots for these jobs. What has your experience been with that? Or maybe a better question is, what kind of aerial videography have you been doing for 3-4 years?
Sorry, was out of town this week! Didn't see the thread get bumped.
I had a PPL certificate years before I went to get my 107. I just went and got current again before I went to the FSDO (current flight review required to get your Part 107 through Part 61). Once I went in with the paperwork required, they printed me off a Temporary Part 107 and I got the plastic card later in the mail.
PSI is crazy stressful and always a pain to deal with. Not super happy that we're back to having to go through them for all initial exams again...
As cleanly stated above, there's a ton of drone pilots and companies and a lot of them aren't worth a thing. People who don't follow airspace or drone regs and undercut drastically on price on everything. Pretty much the best way to run a drone company in my experience is to separate yourself from the pack based on quality, reliability, and honesty. Be there when you are asked to be, turn in the best work always, and then be honest about what you can and can't do. Respond quickly and reach out when things go sideways. That'll put you ahead of like 80% of drone companies out there right now.
I've been an internal drone pilot for my whole career so far, so it's not quite the same as most people just signing up for pilot networks and doing jobs. I was hourly at first, then after a couple of promotions went to salary and now i'm 3 companies in and have always been a full-time hire. The work has always been changing, from roof inspections all day every day to survey and ortho work, to cell tower inspections and disaster relief work, to thermography and LIDAR and power pole inspections at oil and gas sites, plus some other neat stuff. Video was only really asked for as an add-on type deliverable to the imagery for the most part.
Most companies outsource the risk for drone pilots to drone networks full of people with a drone and a dream but no discipline or sufficient practice to be really good at flying/collecting data. If it was me, I'd start shooting for going in-company to get some experience and starting to get some stick time and familiarity with drones that you normally couldn't afford on your own (M200, M300, M600, Inspire 2, Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced, etc) and sensors (MicaSense RedEdge, Phoenix MiniRanger, Zenmuse XT2, Zenmuse H20T, etc) and then apply that elsewhere (your own business, other drone companies hiring, etc). Municipalities usually go through the COA method (certificate of authorization) for their police and fire sUAS operations so they can kind of follow Part 107 but with exceptions that allows them to do more than the 107 regs allow. Utility companies can have internal drone pilot programs but it depends on how deep their pockets are and if they've done the math on return on investment.
I did some training for some insurance companies that use drones for roof inspections, auto accidents, and etc, but those tend to be tacked on to their job duties instead of being a drone pilot only. In those cases it depends on what else you know other than drone operations to get a job at those places. Hope this helps!
I'm one of the professional drone pilots on POA and have about 3-4 years of experience so far.
