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Written By | Tom Comet
At DroneBoy we have owned and operated our own aircraft for a couple of years now. Our awesome Cessna 337G has been a valuable business tool and has opened a lot of doors for us. It easily transports a two-person drone crew and all the gear we could ever need for everything but the largest scale drone shoot. Our aircraft has given us access to many adventures that would have been impossible to experience any other way. It tells the rest of the aviation community that we take flying seriously, whether it is drones or airplanes and that is a very good thing. It is also a lot of fun to fly and we love it!
These days during the Covid-19 Pandemic our airplane has been even more valuable as it has enabled us to continue to travel to drone shoots far away and even to other provinces in Canada with little to no exposure risk to our Team or to other Canadians. Take our job last week for example…
Our client asked us to capture a series of relatively simple exterior drone shot of two factory properties. One factory was in Toronto and the other was in Moncton New Brunswick. The shots needed to match up so it was critical that the same team shoot both locations. In normal times this would be really easy. During Covid-19 times, not so much…
Obviously, we drove to the shoot in Toronto but getting to Moncton NB was a little more challenging. Canada is big and Moncton is quite a ways from Toronto! Commercial air travel is not currently available to that part of the world and even if it was available it would have been risky. Driving too would have posed too big an exposure risk and would have not have made any sense at all. Also, due to C-19 there was the “Atlantic Bubble” to contend with but it was relatively easy to get a letter of exemption from WorksafeNB when we outlined our safe travel and shoot plan to them. Here is what we did to make this shoot happen.
Our plan had us loading up the aircraft with the drone gear and all our food and drinks for the day first thing in the morning. We flew directly from our base just outside Toronto to Moncton Airport (4 hours enroute). We then loaded up all our drone gear on to bicycles, biked the 1.5km to the location, got the shot and shared it in realtime via streaming software with the Client in New Brunswick and Director in Toronto for their approval. We then biked back to the airport and flew home the same day. Apart from tapping one credit card terminal to pay for fuel we interacted with no one face to face, stayed safe and got the job done! As a bonus, we were above the clouds and there was a beautiful moon to keep us company for the relaxing return trip complete with our homemade inflight dinner. Priceless!
Contact us today to learn how DroneBoy can use our airplane to fly to your next shoot.