Oglethorpe County’s new Parrot ANAFI USA drone will be used for mapping and surveying. Emergency Management Administrator Douglas Spencer said he is testing out the drone as the first of three purchased by the Board of Commissioners for the county’s drone program. (Submitted Photo)
The first of three new drones has arrived in Oglethorpe County.
The Parrot ANAFI USA drone, roughly 15 inches by 15 inches in size, will be used by the county for mapping and surveying purposes. It can aid the tax assessor’s office in the property appraisal process or be used by inspectors with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and National Dam Safety Program to routinely inspect Oglethorpe County’s dams.
“With properties, what you do is ‘photogrammetry,’” said Emergency Management Administrator Douglas Spencer. “You take a bunch of photos, and you put it in a piece of software, and it creates a map for you, and so it can tell you if somebody has added a barn or they have expanded an existing structure, things like that.”
Kem Caldwell, Oglethorpe County’s chief tax appraiser, said he’s excited about the potential of the drones and will start using them once the Board of Commissioners gives the authorization.
“I often say that we in the (tax assessor’s office) are only as good at our job as the information we get,” Caldwell said. “I believe that we can use drones to effectively and efficiently gather information that we need to make full, fair appraisals on each and every property in the county.”
The drone will also be used to create a pre-incident plan for the new elementary school to prepare first responders and the county’s 911 system for emergencies.
At its April meeting, the Board of Commissioners green-lighted the $25,000 purchase of three drones — the Parrot ANAFI USA for mapping and surveying, the Teledyne FLIR SIRAS for search and rescue operations and an “Amazon” hobby drone.
“An ‘Amazon’ drone (is) … a drone that's cheaper and easier to start with,” Spencer said. “So that's the one that we'll use when we start training pilots that have never had any aviation experience before.”
For now, only Spencer and several community volunteers are trained pilots, but eventually, more will be sent to FAA drone school for training.
“I'm terrified at the thought of flying a drone,” Caldwell said. “I'm hoping it will come with its own human operator, otherwise I'm going to require some intensive training. What's that saying about an old dog and new tricks?”
The Teledyne FLIR SIRAS, which is made of weather-resistant materials and outfitted with thermal cameras, is set to arrive next week and will be fully ready, with new pilots trained, by the beginning of fall.
“Ironically, the fall — September, October, November — is when we have the most missing people because we get inundated with hunters … so the probability of actually needing the search and rescue drone goes up,” Spencer said. “I didn’t plan it that way, but it’s a happy coincidence.”
The drones can be operated in two ways.
With one method, the drone must stay in the line of sight and within a two-mile range of the operating crew, per FAA guidelines, and below 400 feet in altitude.
The drone can also be flown remotely with a FAA-registered flight plan.
Spencer hopes to present his findings to the BOC at its August meeting after using July to practice different techniques and situations for which the mapping drone could be used.
“I feel like there's a lot of support from the board. I kind of wonder though, if that's because two of them are pilots,” Spencer said. “That has its perks for wanting to get this drone stuff through. (Commissioner David Clark and Commissioner Tracy Norman) both gave me some sympathy when I told them I was going to have to get an FAA certificate of waiver. Both of them kind of chuckled and said, ‘Good luck.’ But so far, that's going well.”