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Cell Tower Inspection Questions

Joined
Nov 10, 2016
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Location
London, ON Canada
I am planning to do a cell tower inspection with either my H520 or one of my 2 H480's. With that in mind, I was wondring if someone who has done this has any advice. Most obvious question is - did you experience any interference with the signal - either 2.4 or 5.8ghz? If so at what distance? What would be a "safe" distance to take photos/video and still maintain good detail for inspection? Is there a particular altitude on the tower at which the RF cell signal is strongest - ie directly out horizontally from the rectangular box antennas? Any other advice?
 
I’m actually wrapping up a month long project of cel tower inspections. In my case I’m actually using my Mavic 2 Pro, but I can at least add some insight from my experience.

Try to not get directly in front of any dishes on the tower, as they emit microwaves. They don’t seem to cause any interference, but I was told by my trainer that they can potentially ‘fry’ your electronics. I have had varying degrees of interference from tower to tower, but most of the time they’re nothing more than minor annoyances. I’ve been told though that AT&T towers tend to cause more interference than other carriers’ towers, but I have no personal experience to support that claim...

In our case, I’m doing three orbits of the antennas and two orbits of the complete tower. For the antennas, I get as close as I can until my obstacle avoidance starts to chime, and then I back off a few feet to set my radius. OA on the Mavic 2 is supposed to kick in at 25’, but I find in these cases my radius ends up being around 45’.

I take antenna orbitals at ~2mph shooting a timed photo every two seconds. This seems to give good overlaps for our post production team. I do one orbit from a bit above, tilting the gimbal down about 20-30 degrees, then one orbit looking straight on and lastly one orbit from a bit below, tilting the gimbal up at a similar angle as from above.

For the full tower orbits, I back off somewhere around 100-200 feet (I think, never measured it) depending on the height of the tower, and rise up above the tower so I get the entire tower in frame, looking down on it at probably about a 130-150 or so degree angle. The goal is to be as close as possible while still capturing the whole tower. I then do at least two full orbits at around 4-5mph. This works for our post-production team to give them good detail of the overall tower, but you may prefer to back off the tower more to reduce the angle. I guess it depends on your desired result

Hope that helps!

I am planning to do a cell tower inspection with either my H520 or one of my 2 H480's. With that in mind, I was wondring if someone who has done this has any advice. Most obvious question is - did you experience any interference with the signal - either 2.4 or 5.8ghz? If so at what distance? What would be a "safe" distance to take photos/video and still maintain good detail for inspection? Is there a particular altitude on the tower at which the RF cell signal is strongest - ie directly out horizontally from the rectangular box antennas? Any other advice?
 

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