Two new flying archaeologists!
Congratulations to our two new drone pilots, Adam Yates and James Ladocha. They recently passed the theoretical and practical flight exams to gain the British National Unmanned Aircraft System Certificate or BNUC-S.
This professional qualification is endorsed by the Civil Aviation Authority and is the preferred pilot qualification required by many National Aviation Authorities before a Permission For Aerial Work (PFAW) is granted to an operator. All bodies offering any form of paid drone service are required by law to have a valid PFAW, and the CAA maintains a list.
We now have three qualified pilots and we have increased our fleet to three aircraft, offering landscape, site and building survey and inspection. Both visible and Near Infra Red (NIR) imagery can be captured with these drones, which we then process using digital photogrammetric software to create metrically accurate and fully geo-referenced vertical orthomosaics and 3D models. Our aircraft are proving to be particularly valuable for survey of rural sites both pre and post machine stripping, for rapidly capturing information on exposed archaeology in the intertidal zone, and for detailed assessments of historic buildings.
We also recently became the first archaeological organisation in the country to execute a drone mounted LiDAR survey, as part of archaeological investigations of a historic monument in support of a planning proposal.
