Gidday folks,
Just a quick introduction, I am reasonably new to forums in general and completely new to open source software. I have been an interstate truck driver for most of my working life (well I have had a couple of deviations from it) and am taking a leap of faith into the world of areal photography and photography in general as a new way of eating an income (hopefully) in the future.
I have been interested in radio controlled aircraft for close to twenty years now. My interest was primarily fixed wing planes in the early days, then helicopters and more recently multi rotor aircrafts and wings.
Being a uni qualifies photographer and photojournalist, I recognised potential to make money from UAV’s back in about 2003 when I purchased my first helicopter. Unfortunately I didn’t have the resources to get a camera up in the sky back in those days, however I did manage to mount one to the top of a mast attached to my 4WD and had some success with that.
I bought my first quad back in 2010, online, and it arrived in kit form. It was a very primitive setup and I struggled with it for quite a while, until it was no longer reparable actually, from its many crashes.
In 2016 however, I bought a DJI phantom 3 standard and things took a very positive turn. It is now still in my collection along with a phantom 3 pro, a phantom 4 pro, an inspire 1 and many other non DJI drones.
I have been operating in the sub 2kg class here in Victoria, Australia since 2018 but three months ago I decided to ramp things up a notch or two. I now have a Sub 25kg RePL with my REOC being currently processed.
My goal is to move full time into photography and areal photography within the next year during which time I will supplement any income earned with income from other casual employment. At this stage I’m not to sure exactly where things will take me in terms of an area of specialisation but with experience in the real estate industry and local contacts I’m hoping to make a start there.
I have little or no computer programming knowledge but hope to be able to use and contribute to open dronemap in any way I can and thank you all in advance as I’m certain to have plenty of questions as I learn the software and apply it to what I’m doing. what a great idea this open source development is!
Randal Dell-Spector
Bendigo, Australia