Drone mapping on a 2-acre site beat my old tape measure method

Last month I had to lay out footings for a small warehouse job outside Toledo. Normally I'd spend a whole morning with a measuring wheel and string lines, probably mess something up, and redo it. A buddy from another crew talked me into borrowing his DJI drone with the RTK module and some mapping software. We flew the site in about 20 minutes, got a topo map with centimeter accuracy, and I staked the corners using the exported coordinates on my total station. It took 2.5 hours total versus the usual 6 or 7, and zero rework so far. The weird part is the software flagged a low spot near the north edge that I never would've caught with eyeballing. Now I'm wondering if anyone else uses drones for smaller residential pads too, or is this just overkill for anything under an acre?

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nathan1931mo ago

That RTK setup pays for itself quick once you see the saved time on grade checks, even on small pads. Do you run the same flight settings for residential work or drop the overlap down to save battery?