Just a little introduction…
I’m Edwin, I study Agriculture at the University of Reading but I am currently on a work placement with DroneAG for the year.
I will be honest, before I came to DroneAG I didn’t really think drones were used on farms and didn’t see how you could use a drone for anything helpful apart from checking the odd roof. Well I was wrong! I had my own drone, a small DJI Mavic Pro that I used to video the tractors and combines while I was working over harvest. They allowed for a different perspective and the pictures and videos you could get from them were breathtaking, this is where my interest stemmed from.
I have completed both the hands on and online training course which is a new feature that has just been added to the website. I was very surprised at what information you could get from an off the shelf drone but apply a multispectral camera and the information you could gather from a quick flight was almost endless. Emergence, plant health, stress, weed counts and variable rate all available at the press of a button. Immediately I thought that this would benefit agronomists all over the country as they take on more and more land.
The hands on courses are run exceptionally well and the amount you can learn over the two days is quite incredible. I went from “knowing how to fly a drone” to full automated mapping within the first day and was quite impressed with my own progress along with the other participants.
The online course covers the exact same content as the hands on course but it allows you to do it in your spare time at home. It has a few small 5 answer quizzes, one for each module just to help you remember some of the information you will have learnt and also has a video run through of the course to help you with the software. I personally found these very helpful.
I’m going to stop ‘droning’ on now…(couldn’t resist)
If anyone has any questions about the farm drone courses then I would be more than happy to answer any, just send us an email or ring the office!
