Field notes

Flying the monsoon shoulder. The window between squalls is longer than it looks on radar, but it closes fast. We now plan two sorties per site visit and treat the second as unlikely. Clients would rather hear that upfront than get a reschedule call.

On stacking progress flights. If the frames are going to stack, the discipline has to be absolute — same waypoints, same altitude, same time of day, same focal length. Drift a little each month and by month twelve the timelapse jitters and there is nothing to be done in post.

Why we stopped quoting per-hour. A shoot day is mostly waiting for light and weather. Charging per flight hour punished us for the planning that made the flights short. Day rate is simpler and both sides argue less.

On close-quarters flying. Between buildings the GPS gets unreliable and the airframe wants to drift. Fly it manually, fly it slowly, and brief the ground crew properly. Nothing clever about it.