What it’s Like to Fly Drones for Pollen Systems

Pollen Systems is on the cutting edge of agricultural technology, and this summer marks my third year as Pollen Systems’ primary drone pilot in Washington and Oregon. If you are one of our clients, then you may have seen me on site previously with a Phantom 4 Pro, but our latest tool is a DJI Inspire 2 with a MicaSense Altum sensor, which has the multispectral and RGB imaging that clients have traditionally received, plus we have sharper imaging and now have the availability of thermal readings.

I live in Moses Lake but travel throughout Washington and Oregon, most frequently to Benton City’s Red Mountain AVA, Walla Walla’s AVA’s vineyards stretching across the state border into Oregon, Royal City, George, Yakima, and several other sites along the Columbia River.

With well over 500 hours of drone flight time, my drone flying experience and expertise helps me contribute to the team by ensuring that any flights over your farm are not only safe, but produce the highest-quality images to offer farmers the best information available to stay on top of their crops, whether they’re grapes, apples, pears, cherries, or even cannabis, used in making marijuana.

We aren’t the only company offering spectral imaging to farmers. Some imaging is done by satellites with much lower resolution (generally one pixel of the image represents 32 feet) and manned aircraft offer images that are a little sharper (approximately 50 inches per pixel), but drones are able to provide images of 2 inches per pixel. Not only do drones help farmers see what’s going on in their field with much more accuracy, but when the West Coast endured fires over the last couple of summers, satellite images and manned aircraft were unable to provide images to farmers. The smoke didn’t slow us down at all. Of course, we fly at 400 feet rather than 8,000 feet or 488 miles above earth.

Pollen Systems isn’t just a guy who stops by to take pictures of your farm, but includes a large team, each with our own specialties that we bring to the table, whether it’s drone flying, image processing, or coding a portal with a great format for all of the information to be easily digested by the farmer. Contact us if you’re ready to increase your farm’s crop yields and quality.