"Dronebase has a very good operating…"

Dronebase has a very good operating platform that makes it easy to see what is required for your mission and to upload the shots. Their training for different kinds of missions is very nice. They pay very quickly.

"Good company, low pilot payout and infrequent missions..."

Drone base is trying to provide a valuable service to it's customers. Their team is pilot friendly for the most part. However the pay is very low for the time required for pilots to deliver good results, especially for SITE mapping jobs which can take 2 - 8 hours or more (not counting drive time) to complete with a single drone and pilot. There are also very few jobs even offered to pilots. It took me a few SITE jobs to streamline my workflow for best deliverable and then the SITE jobs in my area dried up. Could be related to Covid-19, not sure.

"75% OF MY BUSINESS IS DELIVERED READY…"

75% OF MY BUSINESS IS DELIVERED READY TO SHOOT WITH AN APP THAT IS SIMPLE. $$$$ I CALL IT THE UBER FOR DRONES

"My love and hate relationship with DroneBase as a pilot."

First, let me just say that I have made thousands of dollars with DroneBase as a remote pilot. That money, however, has come with a lot of frustration. There is lots of room for improvement. It’s a new industry so I hope DroneBase will improve.

1) the training is lacking. You are told how to do the task but you aren’t given enough information to adapt to situations that come up on the job in the real world. DroneBase instruction needs to include a lot more about why you are doing a certain task and what your customer needs to get out of the image or video. That way a pilot can adapt to less than ideal real world situations and still deliver a good product to DroneBase’s customer.

2) technical support from the DroneBase staff is too slow and inconsistent between different employees. I think they only have three or for tech support people for the entire United States. The only way to contact support is through email. When you send an email you have no idea how long it will take to get a response. I believe the entire staff is based out of California. So if you have a job you are starting at 8:00 a.m. on the East Coast and need some help it seems like you need to wait for the West Coast team to wake up and get to work before you get an answer to your question. In the meantime the pilot is left dealing with the customer, often at a stand still, until the pilot gets a reply to the email. I had it take a couple of minutes and I’ve had it take a couple of hours to get help.

3) because the tech support people are not equally proficient in the proprietary apps that the pilots are required to use the quality of the help you get as a pilot varies to the point of being a crap shoot. I find myself requesting help from certain support staff. When that person isn’t available I know I am pretty much going to have to figure things out myself through trial and error. Once you find a fix that works you hope you have enough drone batteries left to complete the job.

4) the remote pilot needs to be pretty resourceful. Meaning he or she needs to be able to think like an app to troubleshoot problems. Most of the problems encountered are software (app) based. You need to say to yourself “what conditions are not being met for the software to be able to complete this task?” Is there interference from some other app running in the background on the device? Does this app need to have another app working in the background to complete the task? Do I need to be connected to LTE data or WiFi for this to work? Can this app work offline? Do I need to disconnect the controller from the device to make this process reset? If I close out this app completely while the drone is in the air will my drone crash or fly away while it reboots? Will my work be saved or do I need to restart the task? Can I even restart the task without having someone rest the mission? Nearly all these questions will be answered by the pilot while waiting for tech support to respond. Often times the DroneBase staff will want you to to their customer’s tech support. This is also hit or miss. If you are working with Lakeland Innovations you will probably get support fairly quickly, but if you need support from HANGAR just know you aren’t getting any help at all. At least not in a timely enough manner for the help to be useful. DrobeBase support does not have enough information on third party apps to be helpful with them. Most of the good advice you get comes from the fixes other pilots have come up with in the field and relayed back to DroneBase. The developers of the third party apps frankly doesn’t want an outside agency (even a partner like DroneBase) to have too much info about their proprietary app.

5). THE PAYOUT SYSTEM FOR JOBS SUCKS!!!!!!! The pay for jobs like insurance jobs is inadequate. Commercial Real Estate and construction jobs pay ok. Instead of paying direct to the pilot, they use Qwil. Qwil is very frustrating and I hate them.

"Some missions are worth it, and some are not."

Some missions like real estate shoots are paid appropriately.
Commercial Inspection missions are for the most part, not paid for the time it takes to complete and upload data. I spent 6 hours on a huge project, just flying time, that was said to take only 2 hours. Then I had to spend a couple days to get the approximately 2000 images uploaded. All for a $200 payout. I’m more careful on the missions I except now.
But the staff have always been there to help me and seem to care.
I still plan on working with them, when I can.

"I don't believe the payout is worth the…"

I don't believe the payout is worth the work, the average shoot is $200, the pilot should at least take $100 home!

"Easy to accept and review missions"

Easy to accept and review missions, as well as a painless upload, and quick payment. What I do not care for is Quill holding my earnings for an arbitrary amount of time, and the low pay per mission.

"Not enough work and when there is, pay is pretty low"

Dronebase just doesn't have enough work to offer pilots. I literally go months before an assignments pops up. When assignments do come in, most come between 1:00AM - 5:00AM. You never know when they will drop and you have to fight with other pilots to get the jobs.

In addition, the pay on most drone jobs is pretty low across the board. Pilots are fighting for scraps. If you have a problem, you can not call Dronebase, everything has to be done via email. I've used similar smaller companies and they are simply better, more jobs, higher pay, and live support staff that can be reached via phone.

I'm surprised they are still in business.

"Your pay levels are simply too low"

Your pay levels are simply too low. I value my expertise, and it seems that Dronebase is driving down the market value on my skills. Competition is one thing, but undercutting is another.

"Lack of communication and rude."

Lack of communication and no direct phone number to call made doing jobs especially commercial jobs very difficult. If you email someone you get different replies from different people. They are rude even though it’s your expensive drone doing the flying. The jobs are maybe 1 every other month. Over all a bad experience.