What a camera upgrade is worth, what a survey day really costs, and what to charge
Three questions a coverage calculator cannot ask. What a camera upgrade is worth: a bigger sensor flies higher for the same ground resolution, and the saving is mostly at the desk, not in the air — on the worked comparison the processing time saved is six times the flying time saved, so pricing an upgrade on flight time alone understates it several-fold. What a survey day really costs: flying is under 5% of it once travel, setup, ground control and processing are counted, and weather aborts compound rather than add to the cost. And what to charge: minutes per hectare falls almost thirtyfold from a five-hectare job to a five-hundred-hectare one, so a flat rate per hectare is wrong at both ends and the small jobs are the ones quietly losing money.
Every table is computed from the same modules behind the calculators on Thopter. No market figures anywhere: no camera prices, no day rates, no typical margins. Every number is your own or off the quote in front of you. Commercial only — airspace, permissions and flight safety are regulatory questions this pack does not touch.
What’s inside
Height compounds — why a bigger sensor flies higher, and what that does to passes and photos
The saving is at the desk, not in the air — pricing a camera upgrade properly
The flight is the short part — a real survey day, minute by minute
The weather is a cost, not an excuse — aborted visits, compounded
Why a flat rate per hectare fails, across a range of block sizes
The floor — the minimum hourly rate before any job is even priced
The price, built from the real day rather than the flight alone
The same job priced across block sizes
Your own numbers: the ten figures the pack runs on, as a sheet
Before you quote a survey — the questions that make a quote safe
Plus a second PDF, worked out for you
Run one of the free calculators first and buy from that page, and this sheet is computed from your own figures. Buy from here and the pack still arrives complete — the sheet simply has no numbers of yours to work from yet.
14-day refund, no questions asked. If the pack is not what you needed, email support@graburl.com and we refund you in full — you do not have to justify it or delete the file. Full policy.
$19.00 including any taxes · PDF, 11 pages · instant download, link valid 7 days and 5 downloads. Sold by GrabURL. The charge appears on your statement as GrabURL. Refund policy · Terms of sale · support@graburl.com
