Kewadin-based drone service thriving
By DAN NIELSEN
KEWADIN — Nuclear weapons, television weather forecasting and the Michigan House of Representatives all are part of Greg MacMaster’s past. These days he spends his time shooting video with a tiny drone.
“We had remote control helicopters when I was a kid,” he said. “Add a camera and, voila, you have yourself a whole new industry.”
MacMaster and his wife, Kim, launched Eagle Eye Drone Service in spring 2015. The company markets aerial photography and videography services to clients including real estate agents, tourism bureaus and manufacturers.
“There really is no limit to what we can do,” Kim MacMaster said.
Kim is Eagle Eye’s primary video producer and marketing strategist. She uses a tablet computer to monitor telemetry, remaining flight time and control camera functions. Greg pilots the drone. The two stand side by side and communicate verbally while the drone is in the air.
The new company was so busy in its first summer season that the MacMasters hired four people to keep up with the workload. An additional pilot enabled the company to handle two shoots simultaneously. Extra video producers enabled it to quickly crank out the edited footage.
“You can’t do this as a profession with only one drone,” Kim said.
A single pilot can’t get along with a single machine. If technical trouble disables a drone, a professional needs to have a backup to complete the job. And the little drones do crash.
The drone industry is young, and technology isn’t perfect. The MacMasters discovered even the best drones suffer from instability in some conditions, especially when trying to hover a drone over open water. The software in the machines interacts with global positioning satellites to help maintain a hover position. The system works best when it can access a single satellite. When the drone locks onto multiple satellites — an ideal situation for ground-based GPS devices — aerial drones can begin to dance erratically as they respond to the different signals. That’s particularly true if whitecaps or other moving water below the drone confuse the navigation.
