Drone Surveying and Life as a Chief UAS Pilot with Zara McGregor

Nina Young: 00:00 hello everybody and welcome to This Is Surveying. Today I am joined by Zara McGregor who is a chief UAS pilot for Ploughman Craven and I know a lot of you are going to be interested in listening to this episode because I know many surveyors

Nina Young: 00:16 who absolutely love their drones or ask a lot about drones or are interested in getting started with them. And I think we’re going to hear a lot of interesting stories from Zara, welcome to the show.

Zara McGregor: 00:26 Thank you, excited to be here.

Nina Young: 00:28 here.

Nina Young: 00:29 I’ve heard some really good things about the work you’ve done. I’ve seen some amazing things that you’ve shared on LinkedIn, which is great. I think we need that kind of thing to see more and more, especially using drones, what they are capable of. And I really like the work that you do with that on the social media, because I think it’s a really good way of spreading awareness. And as I tend to start off with everybody.

Nina Young: 00:51 How did you end up becoming a chief drone pilot? kind of where did it? I’m sure you did just wake up one day and go, that’s me.

Zara McGregor: 00:58 it’s been the dream since day one. No, so I became a drone pilot by saying yes to all my opportunities and also creating ones myself. I originally when I was at school, I was a bit stuck and I didn’t want to follow everyone going to uni. I didn’t know what to do. I thought it’d be a waste of my time and a load of people’s money. So I thought, let me think of something else. I did work experience at a railway company called

Zara McGregor: 01:26 way and throughout that process I learned all about like 3d point clouds and they said that they use drones and I was like that’s very interesting I didn’t know a lot about them but I did like photography and later on that year then bought myself a little DJI Mavic Air and I started playing around with that and it was like the thumb muscle memory because I’ve always been a bit of a gamer so thought this this is quite fun I could get used to this so I

Nina Young: 01:49 Yeah.

Zara McGregor: 01:53 did a degree apprenticeship for two years at Dudley College, had an amazing time although it was through Covid, my college assessor Khalil was really really fun to work with and I still have a lot of information that I recall from that entire course that I use in my day-to-day so that’s been worth my time.

Nina Young: 02:10 So what was

Nina Young: 02:11 the course called? Right, okay. okay.

Zara McGregor: 02:13 It was a geospatial technician course, so it was a level three and I think that

Zara McGregor: 02:18 it matches the A level standard. I was happy I got a qualification and I thought I’m earning and learning and if I didn’t like it anyway, it was just experience, but it turns out I did. I just thought, let me stop working on the railway as a land surveyor. I’ve had enough of night shifts on that. But I had a great time. It was very humbling.

Nina Young: 02:32 Hehehe. Hehehe.

Zara McGregor: 02:37 and I moved one of my other apprenticeship mates on the course, he was working at a different land survey company and said he uses drones and he actually flies them and I was like, oh, so if you’re able to and you’re similar to my age, maybe I will, maybe I can do this. He was in a different office, so I thought, cool, I’ll go to the one in Nottingham where I was from at the time. And I applied, there was no job role,

Zara McGregor: 03:00 I just put my CV through the website as if it was asking for a survey and I was like, this is me. I’m interested in doing XYZ. I also like drones.

Zara McGregor: 03:09 And then I got an interview off the back of that. I was then working as a CAD tech, doing floor plans, elevations, which was really fun because I quite like detail oriented stuff. that was like my sort of like focus and just Zen. I really enjoyed doing that. And then I was able to start flying the drones for the company. I thought, is so exciting. That was the first time I’d flown a DJI M350. Actually, I’m going say that again. I said that wrong.

Nina Young: 03:19 Okay.

Nina Young: 03:35 Are they?

Nina Young: 03:36 they? Go on, go on.

Zara McGregor: 03:36 It was an

Zara McGregor: 03:38 M300, I do the M350s now. And I remember thinking, whoa, this is an absolute beast of a drone. This is super cool. Like if my parents could see me right now, they’d be like, what are you doing with that giant piece of equipment? Like a meter width?

Nina Young: 03:41 Hehe.

Nina Young: 03:49 How big are they? How big are they? mean…

Nina Young: 03:54 Right, okay.

Zara McGregor: 03:54 I’d say with

Zara McGregor: 03:55 the propellers and stuff, should know this off by heart, but it’s a decent size. Yeah, quite big. It weighs around nine kilograms with the desired payloads that you get on it, like the cameras or the LIDAR cameras, whatever you want to pop on for your survey. But that was super cool. So I was there for a bit. And then I moved to a startup company where I was flying the same drones again.

Nina Young: 03:58 No, it’s no, just an idea.

Zara McGregor: 04:18 I was actually working a four day working week. So I thought I’ve peaked. I was like, who doesn’t love this? I’m like 21. I was like, I’ve already got it in the bag. I’ve sorted. Yeah. it was. And I was very naive to what a startup company was. So straight away it was like deep end.

Nina Young: 04:26 You’re a bear! It’s like the ideal isn’t it?

Zara McGregor: 04:35 like rejigging some people, they chop and change the way that the company works to get rid of some people, get more people in. And I just thought, gosh, I hope they don’t do that with me because I just moved to London and everyone knows how hard it is finding a place and also paying the rent each month. So that was a bit of pressure, but I was there for almost two years. And then I saw this job role crop up on LinkedIn and it said Chief UAS Pilot. And I thought, that would be really funny if

Zara McGregor: 05:02 I didn’t even think about the end process. just thought I’m gonna give that a go and just see, if I don’t get it, then where am I at to get to a higher level than what I was currently at. I applied for that. I got speaking to my director, James, and he’s got a wealth of experience. And my interview with him, I just remember thinking, even if nothing comes of this, I’ve just had a great conversation. And like this man has been all over the world. He’s been on oil rigs, doing all these…

Nina Young: 05:25 Yeah.

Zara McGregor: 05:29 of the things that I’ve got no experience in I thought oh wow like that sounds great I’d like to try that maybe not all the time but I’d like to give that a go we’ll see and I’ve wound up here now I’m almost I think May that’ll be my one year at Ploughman Cravings so yeah

Nina Young: 05:34 Yeah.

Nina Young: 05:46 So what is it you’re actually doing? Like describe a typical day of what it is you do.

Zara McGregor: 05:52 So there is no typical day, which is what I quite like. Obviously everyone who is a surveyor will know that, it depends on what your role is obviously, but you’ve been out on site, get the data, bring it back, process it if you are processing it and then pass it off to the client. So there’s a lot of like office work, site work, which is quite a nice blend. But my role now.

Nina Young: 05:54 Mm. Yeah, okay.

Nina Young: 06:11 Okay.

Zara McGregor: 06:12 it’s evolved since starting here. I had to obviously get to grips with the team, how they function together, how they do all their plans and rams, because that varies from company to company. You just got to get yourself intertwined with all the documents, making sure that what we say we do, we do. So I was out on site quite a lot when I started and then now I’m evolving.

Zara McGregor: 06:33 more of a regulatory and compliance role making sure that we’re sticking to the rules from the CAA.

Nina Young: 06:40 I’m

Nina Young: 06:40 going to say, so because there’s has been some changes, I believe, with things.

Zara McGregor: 06:44 There has been so many changes. evolving I’ve learned a lot in my, I don’t know, is it, five or six years of actually droning on. the rules have changed multiple times and you can get so caught up in what you think you know. And if you don’t stay up to date, you could actually be doing it like out of…

Nina Young: 06:57 Mm.

Zara McGregor: 07:00 you know, what you’re supposed to do, which can flag up really is like that’s operating outside of your boundaries. So it’s then therefore illegal, which that word I have heard in the past and I’m like, that frightens me. So I’m very much a stickler for making sure we get everything ironed out, making sure the positions that we are using are valid and we can track our flights. We can see the distances we are from the drone because a lot of our projects are like,

Nina Young: 07:17 Okay.

Zara McGregor: 07:27 go beyond the 500 meters visual line of sight so you need to plan where your takeoffs are to make sure that you know you’re carrying on you’re with the drone at all times

Nina Young: 07:30 All right, okay.

Nina Young: 07:37 I’m going to say because there are areas I know that you can’t fly obviously, restricted zones. Do you come across that quite a lot

Zara McGregor: 07:41 Yeah, yeah.

Zara McGregor: 07:43 London. We do quite a lot of inspection work. So a lot of rooftop inspections, which obviously that’s not you flying far or flying very high, but you’re in like the London.

Zara McGregor: 07:54 Restriction zones, so we have to apply a lot for that through different websites and one of our big sort of softwares I don’t know if it was a software or just like online tool that we used to have called Altitude Angel that at last year was like put into administration so then you couldn’t rely on that and it really nicely synced up with a load of the restricted areas or Flight restriction zones around the airspace so you could easily go I’d like to fly here and it takes the page and do it all

Zara McGregor: 08:24 for you but then that got taken away so had to go old school, get the contact details, ring up the airfield, ask them hey can you send me a doc, I’ll fill out what I want, serial numbers on my drone etc so it’s made it lot more lengthy but it’s sort of fact-checked everyone.

Zara McGregor: 08:39 think it’s quite a good thing, some of these rejigs you don’t, realise you shouldn’t be relying on one thing, which I’m sure everyone in the drone industry sort of was, it was such a great tool. And we, still, operational now, but there’s doubts because we haven’t heard a lot of stuff in the news about it, whether it’s, I think it’s been bought, but I don’t know the full outcome and how we can rely on that as much. I have a little look, but the majority of stuff’s not bad.

Nina Young: 08:59 Interesting. After this call I’ll have to do a bit of research because I imagine it sounds amazing.

Nina Young: 09:06 it sounds really good does that. I would have just assumed that all those tools would just there’d been multiple ones that people have built because drones is huge.

Zara McGregor: 09:15 well we’ve got like the standard Nats website which that’s always a source of truth. It publishes in no time. It’s just harder to visually read. Altrund Angel made it very easy for like hobbyist flyers for us to plan things. You can see it really, clear. Whereas now it just means that you have to put in more effort to find things which…

Nina Young: 09:24 Yeah.

Nina Young: 09:35 Yeah.

Zara McGregor: 09:35 It’s fine, we can do that, but it is a little bit irritating at times when you’re so used to one thing, the comfort.

Zara McGregor: 09:41 But everyone’s in the same boat, so it’s all good, it’s fine.

Nina Young: 09:43 Yeah.

Nina Young: 09:46 What is it you enjoy most, would you say, about the drones or what you do?

Zara McGregor: 09:51 I think the wow factor of turning up to certain sites, I don’t know, I can’t speak as a man, obviously, but speaking from a woman’s experience, it’s quite hilarious sometimes turning up to construction sites because I will say this story, me and my old colleague, Rashin, I’ll have to send this to her so she listens, we turned up to a site that we’ve been to multiple times, we’d flown the drone, it’s actually Broadway East is the project.

Nina Young: 10:00 Hmm.

Zara McGregor: 10:18 it’s in Bethnal Green, it’s at these steelworks, I they’re old gas columns or gas cylinders and they’re all being turned into flats and they’re gonna look amazing and we turned up once and this guy was like hi, what’s your names, we said our names and he was like you’re the cleaners

Nina Young: 10:24 yeah.

Zara McGregor: 10:33 And I was like, no, we’re not actually, we’re here to do a drone survey. And he was like, okay, sorry, Anyway, we get all our stuff out, you whip the drone out, start piecing it together. Like I said, it’s big and it’s impressive. And then all the guys just sort of look and they’re like, okay. And we’re like, this is cool. Cooler than a mop and a bucket. Like, sure.

Nina Young: 10:38 you

Nina Young: 10:46 You

Nina Young: 10:51 just classic. I mean because you must get that a lot actually.

Zara McGregor: 10:54 definitely. Especially with my male colleagues, like throughout all my site works, even though I know what I’m doing, and I’m a drone pilot, the client or whoever will always just sort of gravitate towards the guy. It’s not a problem. I don’t care at all. I just think it’s funny.

Nina Young: 10:54 Mmm.

Nina Young: 11:08 I’m gonna say, how do you deal with

Nina Young: 11:09 it?

Zara McGregor: 11:10 I just stand there and I just smile because I’m a professional anyway and I’m like I know that it’s natural like people don’t assume that it’s not the stereotypical thing like I know things these days it’s like yes women can do a lot of men’s jobs now which is great but the representation like we were talking about earlier like there’s not a lot of people posting about it and it doesn’t round me up I don’t get mad I don’t get irritated I just find it funny because then if they do ask I’m able to tell

Zara McGregor: 11:38 and they go, do you want to fly then? I’m like, well yeah, I was going to because it’s my job.

Nina Young: 11:43 delightful

Nina Young: 11:43 I love this because that’s exactly like throughout my whole life, that’s my, always been my attitude and I don’t know why but it’s just reminded me of something when I was younger because I’ve always been heavily into cars, know, it’s embarrassing the amount of cars I’ve had. It’s like women have handbags, I have cars. I love them and I remember I was taking cars to garages and they were like, I said look, this one with my, I had one of the original minis and

Nina Young: 12:07 something wrong with the brakes and they were like does it need new discs? I said no it’s not it’s the Austin Mini it needs it’s got drums are you sure? and I went yes I am sure sorry it was the opposite round it had discs and they were like that should have drums shouldn’t it? I said no it’s been converted it’s got disc brakes at the front are you sure? and they had to go out they had to check it

Nina Young: 12:27 And I’ve had this throughout with garages, like I understand, I used to change spark plugs and things when you could do that with cars. And the perception, and I just went along with it until the light bulb starts and then they go, I start talking about cars and what about this? And they’re like, you know a lot about cars, don’t you? But it’s better than that getting it, because if you get offended, it doesn’t get anything. You wait for the penny to drop. I like that.

Zara McGregor: 12:33 Ha ha.

Zara McGregor: 12:48 Yeah, I found that

Zara McGregor: 12:49 way more entertaining as my own game to be honest. It’s like more more powerful. think it’s just you just wait and it’s never ever bothered me the only times I’ve been really irritated at the lack of equality was on the railway when I was like, so women’s toilets like there’s a key. haven’t seen that for 20 years and you’re like, so where are we gonna go?

Nina Young: 12:55 You

Nina Young: 13:09 Do want me to just squat down here?

Zara McGregor: 13:09 you can use like the men’s, I’d

Zara McGregor: 13:11 love to go in the men’s toilets. Disgusting.

Nina Young: 13:14 a lot of that across all of the areas of surveying and the built environment and construction. But that’s why you stand out I think, it’s because firstly, drones, surveying, there’s not a lot of that on LinkedIn anyway. Female drones, pilot, none of that.

Zara McGregor: 13:20 Yeah.

Nina Young: 13:32 In fact, I think you’re the only one that I’m aware of that does anything on LinkedIn. And I think, but it’s really important because it’s drones, like anyone can operate drones. it has nothing to do with gender, but I think it is mindset, I think, all of this, there’s this inherent bias, is that there’s assumptions when you turn up, you’ve been a cleaner, why would you even think that?

Zara McGregor: 13:49 Yeah.

Nina Young: 13:54 but it’s like just what they expect. I don’t know.

Zara McGregor: 13:56 Yeah,

Zara McGregor: 13:56 like an unsolicited turning up these two girls what they’re doing or they’ve got a van it must be full of cleaning products and bleach. No, it’s full of USB-C cables.

Nina Young: 14:03 No and I’d any

Nina Young: 14:06 old drone, it’s like the mark this is not just any old drone, this is.

Zara McGregor: 14:09 know exactly

Zara McGregor: 14:10 like that’s more fun. It’s not just the little hobby sponsors. I that’s sweet. Look at them trying like no, We’ve got the massive industrial commercial drone that’s gonna go all the way up buzz around make a big noise and give you what you need.

Nina Young: 14:22 of

Nina Young: 14:22 interesting stories or experiences with with drones? What you say?

Zara McGregor: 14:26 I mean…

Zara McGregor: 14:27 The sight variation for me is the best. Like I’ve done everything from like farmer’s fields, no one there to like a couple of, I think I did a town once that was called, it might be called Bolsham. Perhaps I think I did that with a fixed wing, wing tra drone, which is this big orange one, which flies. That’s actually, I do miss using that drone. It was very sweet. It spoke to you. was like forwards transition and stuff like that. And it just carried like a little bird, flew around.

Nina Young: 14:41 Right.

Zara McGregor: 14:56 So that was fun and then a lot of the ones in London are quite good because it’s high intensity, high pressure and you get a lot of multi-path errors from the drones GPS so it’s thinking because it’s bouncing off like the signals bounce with the glass from all the tall buildings if you’re on a narrow corridor.

Nina Young: 15:06 Hmm.

Nina Young: 15:15 yeah.

Zara McGregor: 15:16 and you’re flying, all of a sudden it might think, oh, I’m actually three meters over here, like the winds pushed me or something. So it will then go, whoo, like really close. So you’re constantly like bricking it. Okay, I have to keep, like looking down, looking up. You’ve your spotter with you as well. That’s always very fun. It’s nice when you’ve completed the job and you think that’s one issue out of the way.

Nina Young: 15:28 Yeah, I bet.

Nina Young: 15:38 What’s a spotter? Tell me what a spotter

Nina Young: 15:40 is. What’s that?

Zara McGregor: 15:41 Also we have spotters with us who are most likely another drone pilot but failing that if everyone’s busy it would be another surveyor and they’re just looking at the drone as well. If you’re just looking at the screen, like looking at the settings, they can be checking and they can say hey we’ve got a bird, we’ve got loads of pigeons coming towards a drone or just wait one sec before you land there’s people around so they help aid you in your drone operations. So it’s not just you yourself.

Nina Young: 16:07 Do you have problems? Do you have lot of problems with birds? Is this something I shouldn’t have said?

Zara McGregor: 16:11 It’s all subject so I don’t need this year. No,

Zara McGregor: 16:17 no it’s absolutely fine. I think was tail end of last year we actually experienced the first ever bird strike. I’ve never and neither has my director, like everyone who’s a pilot that I know of has never had a bird strike and we had a pigeon just go into the drone.

Zara McGregor: 16:33 There’s a flop that just rose and there’s nothing you could do. But luckily we’re on a roof so and we put it in the position of safety because we’d seen those pigeons hovered it quite low and then pigeons went into the drone. It fell to the ground. We did have to get replacement. It’s amazing what one pigeon can do. that happened. then.

Zara McGregor: 16:51 other interesting accidents I’ve had which I would make everybody aware of is never trust your spotter never trust anyone also at the same time that’s my number one rule make sure that you cross your t’s and dotted your i’s because when I was I think at the ripe old age of 20 which obviously was only a years ago for me I got so I was so confident in what I was doing I was like I know how to fly a drone super easy I’d set up a million times and this was the fifth flight of the day

Nina Young: 16:56 Hmm.

Nina Young: 17:10 Hehehehehe

Zara McGregor: 17:21 with a spotter who I had who wasn’t trained in drone ops but he was able to like look at the birds coming and whatnot.

Zara McGregor: 17:28 order to secure the arms on this big DJI M300, you have to take the arm locks, push them in and twist them. Obviously there’s four arms. It’s a quadcopter. And on this fifth flight, I twisted mine and I’d walked away to get something else. And I’d assumed that my observer had twisted his ones. So I was like, cool. I know that that’s done. I hadn’t checked. And I started up. It got to four meters high.

Nina Young: 17:52 Hmm?

Zara McGregor: 17:55 for them one of its arms because it’s shaking all the time basically like that the vibration made the arm like pop backwards and it swung into itself and then this 10,000 pound drone just went BOP BOP BOM on the floor and bounced the camera that’s 5,000 pounds popped off and I was like I was like no like that’s what insurance is for but it never feels nice and I was like good god what happened because I was like as far as I was concerned all arms were tightened and I thought this is like

Nina Young: 18:13 no.

Zara McGregor: 18:24 a technical problem and I never want to fly a drone again because we were within our operating limits but I was also quite close to the A1 and I thought if that had happened like over there like I know I’d only just taken off it didn’t take long for it to go kaput but it really freaked me out anyway that guy since left quite abruptly unsure as to the reason why I don’t know why I wonder if anyone can guess then the report came back and it was like the arm wasn’t secured and I was like right

Nina Young: 18:33 Right.

Zara McGregor: 18:53 Okay? So that’s been a lesson for me to always… No you don’t. And I was assessing, was like measuring on Google Earth that my takeoff point was within the 30 meters away from things. It was secluded and segregated and everything was controlled. I’d done my checks. I’d said I’d done my checks. it was a massive learning lesson. Ever since then, any job that I planned, I’ve been 100 % like, right.

Nina Young: 18:55 Okay.

Nina Young: 18:58 I think that’s the thing isn’t it, with something like that that happens you never forget it then.

Zara McGregor: 19:20 Worst case scenario, what happens? And obviously if it’s out and about and you’ve done everything, then something does happen. That’s not your fault. Unless you’ve been negligent or complacent, then it does fall to you. So it’s tightened me up quite aggressively really from that horrific event. Yeah.

Nina Young: 19:38 Does that mean you have a routine? Do you have a sort of…

Zara McGregor: 19:41 got a personal one, we have loads of checks that we have to do. We’ve got tablets with us that we whip out and we’ve got this software that we use called Centric which is great. It’s very aviation based but it works super well for being really thorough in the drone world. We’ve got pre-deployment checks, pre-flight, post-flight, take off and landing checks, daily checks, weather checks, everything. So you’ve always got something recorded as evidence.

Nina Young: 19:48 All right.

Nina Young: 20:06 weather yeah tell me about heavy

Nina Young: 20:08 drones 9 kilos I mean because obviously we were talking about before I started recording I had a little Mavic Mini and obviously a little bit of wind and it was gone. With the 9 kilo ones the big ones like what is sort of the limit do you have a set limit of you you shouldn’t take up in this in this wind speed or

Zara McGregor: 20:16 Mm-hmm.

Zara McGregor: 20:19 I can’t see you.

Zara McGregor: 20:30 Yeah, we do. So there’s wind and there’s gust speed as well that you’ve got to look out for. A lot of people forget about that one. If they’re operating on the tolerance of the wind, chances are the gusts will be a bit more as well, which will push you over and then that’ll make you non-compliant. Every single drone comes with its tech specs, its manufacturer’s guidance. A lot of the DJI ones, which I’m assuming most people use anyway, it’s like the go-to. They have a lot of stuff online where you can look at, but that particular M350 that we’ve got, it’s, they say on

Nina Young: 20:34 yeah.

Nina Young: 20:52 Mm.

Zara McGregor: 20:58 manufacturers guide up to 12 meters a second wind however a couple years ago it used to be 15 but a lot of people were like pushing it a bit beyond so they’ve reduced it a bit in the hopes that people if they do push it will only push it up to the 15 and not beyond that I 12 meters per second let me search it it’s hard to think in meters per second if you never have

Zara McGregor: 21:23 my gosh, 26.8 miles an hour. Look at me. I’m such a good converter. not my first rodeo, is it?

Nina Young: 21:25 Wow,

Nina Young: 21:29 what

Nina Young: 21:29 you discuss when you’re down at the pub, isn’t it? Well, did you know? one of the things I think we had mentioned, touched upon was the crashing. Is that the story, the crashing of the drone, or is that something else?

Zara McGregor: 21:31 Yeah,

Zara McGregor: 21:40 Yeah, my story of the crashing of the dome where I take full accountability is the one where the arms weren’t tightened. But elsewhere, I’ve only ever known about maybe two or three. A lot of people tend to crash the really light ones, but they’re not major because they’re so light.

Zara McGregor: 21:58 said that when he was just starting up a business by himself he’d do a lot of stuff in cities in Manchester and he was bringing his down and again the mortar path there just flung it into the side of this office building and it like was then flying straight down on the glass and he was like I managed to recover it and I just took it away and I was like okay so he didn’t report it he didn’t do the protocols no I just went okay obviously from my stance my role I have to be to the nth degree make sure that we go through the correct reporting process

Zara McGregor: 22:27 submit all the safety stuff that goes with it and just archive it and what went well, what could we have done to constantly improve or avoid in future. But I know that a lot of the drone people out here are really good.

Nina Young: 22:37 Okay.

Zara McGregor: 22:42 It’s just you get those people online and I don’t want to say in case they’re listening but they make me laugh. The guys who go to like National Trust and have like a body cam and go, I’m allowed to film here and people go, could you please not though? And he’s like, no, no, no, I’m allowed, I’m allowed. And I’m like, I know you are but you just painted us out now to be really annoying. Like could you not?

Nina Young: 22:43 to you.

Nina Young: 23:02 do you know what? This is ringing some bells. I don’t know why. I’ve heard something about this before.

Zara McGregor: 23:05 there must be someone on YouTube who

Zara McGregor: 23:07 does it. I get random clips here and there. And it does make me giggle because from certain rules, they’re actually fine. I think it’s a guy. don’t think I’ve seen any women do it so far, but there’s always time, guys. Maybe it’ll be me.

Nina Young: 23:21 I going to ask

Nina Young: 23:23 how you deal and what your experiences are with the public with drones because I think, has it got better? Because I know I’ve heard stories few years back where people get really upset, especially for example, property surveyors were in built-up areas and people are like, are you filming in my bedroom type scenario? And people get really upset. Has this improved?

Zara McGregor: 23:28 Talk 50-50.

Zara McGregor: 23:43 Mm.

Nina Young: 23:49 kind of scenario, what kind of things have you had to deal with.

Zara McGregor: 23:51 I don’t think

Zara McGregor: 23:52 it’s changed. If anything, it may have got slightly worse from when I started, but you get a 50 50 when you’re doing something in a public setting with a drone, you either get a lovely person comes up and goes, Oh, what are doing? And you’re thinking, Oh, how’s this conversation going to go? And you’re like, Oh, I’m doing a roof inspection with this blah, blah. And they go, wow, technology is amazing. If you show the person as well, you can see that obviously it’s not confidential. It’s a roof. So you’re like, this is what you can see. We’re down here. And then like, wow, amazing.

Zara McGregor: 24:19 cool cool then you get other people who come up to you going excuse me can you stop flying I’m gonna ring the police blah blah blah you don’t have permission to do this I actually own this building and you have to say well I appreciate your concerns you actually don’t own the airspace a lot of people think when you buy like a property you own everything above like you don’t there will be a good reason why we’re all dressed up in high vis with our brand on the back of us not trying to do it on the slime

Nina Young: 24:44 I’m going to say you’re branded and yeah,

Zara McGregor: 24:47 with our hard hats on and everything. So you just have to calmly explain and go look if you have a problem you can take it up with you go you go to the accountable manager who is in charge of all our permissions which would be my director and he can you can escalate it to him if you want usually they back away and go okay like you’ve explained enough I kind of get it and you can say look if there’s a time where you want us to come back and do it you can sort click

Zara McGregor: 25:14 but you don’t really want to people who don’t hold any power over your drone operation, like, I don’t know, the ability to change them.

Nina Young: 25:21 It’s a balance isn’t it between information

Nina Young: 25:24 once a lot of people understand what’s happening they usually tend to chill out a little bit but then some people can get very upset can’t they?

Zara McGregor: 25:29 Yeah, exactly.

Zara McGregor: 25:33 where

Zara McGregor: 25:33 me and my old colleague again, I’m talking a lot about my previous job but it’s just because we had so many projects we’d be out all the time and we did a power station in Gainsborough and there was a couple of dwellings around the outskirts that we were taking a picture of to create a massive orthomosaic, it’s like a really high detailed picture of the entire site and where they’re gonna expand and do stuff so I wasn’t there personally but my mates were there.

Zara McGregor: 26:00 and there was a woman I think who was trying to chase them saying that you you’re taking pictures of my kids in the garden and it went down that kind of route and they were like number one there’s no one in the garden

Zara McGregor: 26:11 two like they will be phased out like that’s not we’re not zooming in we’re just literally creating a broad picture which by the time you’ve like done one run and come back to the next one they won’t be in the same position so they’ll get like processed out it won’t be like a common feature your child’s top of his head it’s

Nina Young: 26:29 you

Zara McGregor: 26:29 Yeah, so there’s a lot of a lot of those kind of people that take it super to the next level. again, if you just explain nicely, and if in doubt, just refer it to whoever put you on the job, like your operations manager or project manager, then usually they’re happy with an explanation from someone who doesn’t look like a worker bee. you just crack on, they think, hi, Viz, you’re obviously like on this kind of a level, I need to speak to someone and you’re like…

Nina Young: 26:45 Okay.

Nina Young: 26:53 I see. I thought you meant it was actually what you look like, with the yellow I’m just a wasp. This is if you want to speak to the queen or the hive. How with the drones?

Zara McGregor: 26:54 to say the same thing.

Zara McGregor: 26:59 true

Zara McGregor: 27:03 Yeah, and that would

Nina Young: 27:05 How, this might be a difficult question, but how accurate are they? Does it vary on presumably on the type of drone you’re using or?

Zara McGregor: 27:13 Yeah, varies on the type of camera that’s attached.

Nina Young: 27:16 Right.

Zara McGregor: 27:17 GSD stands for ground sampling distance. So that will determine how accurate your drone survey can be. it’s based on when you take a picture with a drone at a certain height, the number of the GSD will represent one pixel of the picture. you can, older drones may have like, I don’t know, 20 centimeter plus. So for every pixel that is 20 centimeters. But what we work to is like millimeter.

Zara McGregor: 27:45 So that then ties in really well with the standards of land surveying.

Zara McGregor: 27:50 And I think people can correct me if I’m wrong in the comments, but I think the M300 at 80 meters, you’d get one centimeter GSD using a P135mm lens. So there’s loads of different things you can change, like the mill lens that you’re using, the height, the different drone specs, the, it goes on. But we tend to do…

Zara McGregor: 28:14 I don’t know, like a decent one would be like a five mil, so a half a centimeter GSD. And then you get in a pretty decent model. Anyone can make a really nice one and pretty, but it’s when you zoom in that will obviously get further apart. The pictures will be like, can’t see as well, but it’s depends the project, depends on what the client wants.

Nina Young: 28:26 Okay.

Nina Young: 28:30 a really good way of describing it actually. From

Nina Young: 28:33 a distance it looks fine, but when you zoom in it’s all pixelated and grainy. that’s it, like Google Earth. With regards to something you mentioned about going into your, was it going to a school or something? Have you done anything around careers and spreading awareness?

Zara McGregor: 28:47 I think I must have done about five different things that are to do with careers like online teams talk to year 10s. I think I’ve been to my school three times now. Tomorrow may be the fourth. And last year I went and I did a morning into early afternoon of showing year 12s, reception, I think like maybe if they were year twos or year sixes, like a live demonstration. was summertime, so it was great.

Zara McGregor: 29:16 I took the drone out onto the field. All the kids were like, my gosh, that’s so cool. And I thought, God, if that was me as a child, I’d have been like be lying going, I absolutely need to go on that career path because that just looks awesome. Like it always is if you see, if you’ve never seen like a big drone before takeoff and go above you, it’s such an awesome experience. So I was able to teach them about what I did and why you fly the drones and what data outputs you can get.

Nina Young: 29:31 Mmm.

Zara McGregor: 29:44 which was really, really lovely. It feels like you’re giving back something because I know that, like I said, if that was there for me, I would have absolutely loved it and wanted to go there with you.

Nina Young: 29:51 Yeah, I think that can be said

Nina Young: 29:53 about so many elements and especially within with drones and drones and surveying has become such a thing, like it’s become more and more of a standard thing, depending on the type of surveying. I’m interested in your thoughts on that. Is it something that you’ve seen that more and more drones are becoming like a requirement?

Zara McGregor: 30:03 Mm.

Nina Young: 30:13 I mean, certain areas of surveying it, obviously it’s a no brainer, you’ve got to have the drones. But is it something that you’ve seen an increase in or with companies or organisations you work with or it might not be relevant to what you do because it’s clearly something that you have to have the drones for. But I don’t know, I’m just wondered anything that you’ve sort of seen or heard.

Zara McGregor: 30:33 I

Zara McGregor: 30:34 I’ve seen a lot more companies like the big survey companies and also like medium sized ones now go like this is our fleet, we just bought this, just got this drone. So I’ve seen a lot more popularity in survey companies using them, but I don’t really tune into the demand for, ooh, you need to have this license or you need to…

Nina Young: 30:52 Yeah, sure.

Zara McGregor: 30:54 I know. think a drone one is, I feel like there’s no sort of like simple way of, I’ll just apply and I’ll just go that you have to like push for it. And also you can, anyone can be like a drone pilot, but to have the understanding and the survey background is a totally different thing to be able to troubleshoot everything. So like I said, when I did my geospatial technician degree, I’m still pulling like knowledge from that into, today’s sort of job. Like if you,

Nina Young: 31:11 Yes. Yes.

Zara McGregor: 31:23 you’re like all of a sudden you’ve never learned about satellites but you get into London and it may never cross your mind you’re like I’ve got like 14 satellites like why don’t I have my usual like 20 plus or 25 plus and it’s because of your built environment you’re thinking about where…

Zara McGregor: 31:38 best to take off from especially with drones these days they’ve got a lot of fail safes like the return to home so if it’s just out and about for some reason your controller disconnects it will come back to where it is so you need to make sure that you’re also choosing like a good place where it’s not going to be coming back and getting like errors and going I need to go over here you’ve got no control over it so

Zara McGregor: 32:00 I don’t really know. There’s definitely way more popularity on LinkedIn, which is good to see. But I think a lot of people were sold the dream of when you buy a drone, you’re to make thousands of pounds, thousands of pounds, and you’re going to profit really easily. But the way that all the rules are changing now, probably going to be more costly than they think before they start to return.

Nina Young: 32:04 Mm.

Nina Young: 32:23 Is it really? Is it making

Zara McGregor: 32:25 I think so. I think it’s it’s limiting in certain ways the different categories. So we operate in both the open and specific category, which is like for the heavier weight drones. A lot of people like yourself and me with my little one. That’s the open category. Very easy. can pretty much fly, pretty much fly wherever you want. Obviously airspace excluded from that.

Nina Young: 32:47 Mmm.

Zara McGregor: 32:49 But everyone’s going to be merging into the Sora.

Zara McGregor: 32:53 way of applying now for your permissions, which no one’s done before, which is quite nice. Well, I say no one’s done before. Like this year, people have had their applications accepted, which is great for them. But everyone’s been in the same boat. We’re trying to figure this out. It’s a different approach to what everyone’s been taught. And like I said, if you don’t keep up with the regulations and the changing stuff, you can be stuck in your mental thinking that I’m doing everything right when actually that was two iterations ago and you should be changing and adapting. So

Zara McGregor: 33:22 I’ve definitely learned that you need to just monitor the constant changes of the CIA a little bit more tightly.

Nina Young: 33:29 How, yeah,

Nina Young: 33:31 is it primarily the CAA then that you keep up to date with things like that? Is that the main place?

Zara McGregor: 33:35 Yeah, because they’ll be granting you your permission in order to fly.

Zara McGregor: 33:39 So your operational authorization, be it the specific category, the certified category, they give you the go ahead to operate under their regulations. you got to make sure you’re doing that right. Otherwise, there will be problems.

Nina Young: 33:55 There will be problems. It’s

Nina Young: 33:56 one of the things that a lot of, I know that a lot of surveyors who do it in their own firms, they do struggle to keep up to date with the changes. I don’t think there’s one particular place that helps sort of relay it to surveyors, drones and the regs and everything like that. And I think it’s one of those areas that we could do with more information about.

Nina Young: 34:19 even some form of CPD and things like that and something I’m looking at how because I know so many surveyors that want to understand more about drones what they can use it for, when they can use it, how can they use it commercially and what are the limitations of it because it has changed quite a lot as to when you just get a little Mavic Mini up in the residential neighbourhood.

Zara McGregor: 34:38 Yeah.

Zara McGregor: 34:41 Yeah, exactly. Even in the five

Zara McGregor: 34:43 years or six years that I’ve been flying, it’s changed. I had first a PFCO license, then it was GVC license. Now this year I’ve got my RPC Level 1 license, which is another iteration.

Zara McGregor: 34:57 it’s just a constant change. I was gonna say something else that I just forgot. there’s plenty of training academies like copters and drone pilot academy. They’ve done stuff for me in the past and they really, really like help you help sort of break down what the CA instructs you to do. And there’s plenty of different courses on there for people or to just inquire and ask like, hey, I’m wanting to do this. What permissions do I need or what guidance do you have?

Nina Young: 35:00 Hmm.

Nina Young: 35:14 Okay.

Nina Young: 35:20 Okay.

Zara McGregor: 35:26 those websites they definitely have a lot of good resources.

Nina Young: 35:28 So that’s copteras, yeah I’ve heard of copteras,

Nina Young: 35:31 I think I’ve seen them at events as well. What was the other one? During pilot academy. So what I’ll do is with the, as I do with all the podcast episodes, we include like links in the show notes to things that people have mentioned. So I include links to those because that’s interesting. Because copteras is one of those that I have heard a lot about.

Zara McGregor: 35:33 Drone Pilot Academy.

Zara McGregor: 35:48 because yeah, I think there should be no shame in admitting like, do you know what, I probably need a refresh or I actually couldn’t tell

Zara McGregor: 35:56 you what I need. And I think the CA is so pushing on that just culture. And I think honesty as well, like it’s less of a dog eat dog drone world than it used to be when it was all coming out and people going, oh, I know this better than you and stuff. I just don’t see the point in that. It’s like, let’s all just make sure you’ve aligned yourselves on what you need.

Zara McGregor: 36:17 and just don’t feel stupid about reaching out to people and just inquiring or if you do feel stupid just say I’m asking on someone else’s behalf and then you’ll still get your answer either way.

Nina Young: 36:26 no, that’s so true. I think there needs to be. I think it’s admitting when you don’t know things. I think some people can struggle with that. asking the questions.

Zara McGregor: 36:32 can’t admit if they’ve done something wrong or take accountability like that’s my number one thing like hands up when you’ve done something wrong like I’ve just said out loud on this thing about my not tightening the arms I didn’t check it because that was a mistake that I made and I hope that if someone was listening to this that they’d be like what I will actually just double check and prevent it it’s all about just making sure that you’re safe and like I said these drones have like spinning blades on them and

Nina Young: 36:53 Yeah.

Zara McGregor: 36:55 weigh a lot so if they come out the sky they are gonna really badly injure slash maybe kill someone it’s not a it’s not a joke like you need to a lot of people just go willy-nilly be fine it’d be fine this drone’s not been serviced in like 10 years and you’re like hmm probably should look into that then

Nina Young: 37:12 Before we wrap up for today, is there anything else that you’d like to share? Anything else you’d like to say about what you do or whether you do you recommend it?

Zara McGregor: 37:24 I absolutely do recommend it. Like I said, I can’t even believe that, I still can’t believe it’s a job when I explain to people, what do you do? I’m a chief drone pilot. They’re like, and the only thing that people outside of the surveying world think of is just like, oh, like what in the army? Like, where are you dropping your drones? And I’m like, not quite, not there yet. Not sure I want to be, but.

Nina Young: 37:45 Not dropping bombs anywhere,

Zara McGregor: 37:46 I’m like, God, no, it’s just for photography purposes, personally, and for my surveying job, I think. that’s that always just makes me laugh, but it’s having to like go through and explain it and be like, no, it’s for this and talk about 3D models.

Zara McGregor: 38:00 I love it. I think it’s such a fun job and it’s things that I come home when I go back to Nottingham I tell my grandparents what I’m up to and they’re like wow can’t believe that and they’re then looking on like their BBC programs they’re like this was flown by drone and it just is very sweet it’s like my little version of the future I’m bringing in it feels very cool to be a part of.

Nina Young: 38:07 Mm.

Nina Young: 38:20 Yeah, I bet.

Zara McGregor: 38:20 such like

Zara McGregor: 38:21 an early stage as well in my career it’s very fun and I think everyone should just give it a go.

Nina Young: 38:23 that’s great. Oh, it’s been…

Nina Young: 38:26 I loved it when I got my drone. It was like just fun. And it was for me, it was just fun. And I’m like, I see more and more on LinkedIn, surveyors now talking about drones and using drones. But they’re talking about it like it’s, must admit it, like it’s just happened. Like we’ve had drones quite a while. And I think sometimes…

Zara McGregor: 38:36 Mm.

Zara McGregor: 38:39 Yeah.

Zara McGregor: 38:44 Yeah, and you’re like…

Zara McGregor: 38:47 the drones guys has anyone been talking

Zara McGregor: 38:49 about this like yes we do know but it’s I love to see an enthusiastic passionate person on LinkedIn post because some of the stuff that people do like there’s there’s a couple people I follow that do all the FPVs which is really cool it’s something that I’ve flown but I’ve not done it for like a job purpose and I don’t really see it being used in a surveying world it’s more of like a marketing videoing kind of option but some of the people they go to like trips like Iceland and they do

Nina Young: 38:55 Yes.

Nina Young: 39:11 Mm.

Zara McGregor: 39:15 like a promo for the entire country and they’re going through lava, they’re going through geezers

Zara McGregor: 39:20 and I’m just like, whoa, that’s on my absolute to-do list at some point, but we’ll see when that happens. I’m sure I’ll be posting about it if I ever do.

Nina Young: 39:28 I’m sure you will, I’m sure

Nina Young: 39:30 I’ll see it. There’s a turn and it just gets melted.

Zara McGregor: 39:31 Fingers crossed, yeah!

Zara McGregor: 39:37 going through these molten pieces of lava and I’m like you’re really lucky that you’re able to make it through that because I’ve seen other people in the past it’s hit the drone it just goes straight in and you’re like well there goes a couple hundred pounds at least into the abyss but you know if you don’t risk you don’t get a reward so…

Nina Young: 39:41 Hey

Nina Young: 39:52 You won’t be that out. No, indeed. No, it’s

Nina Young: 39:58 I think you’re an inspiration, if I’m honest, Zara, because in different ways, you’re woman in this field, brilliant attitude as well. And just the fact that there’s nothing wrong with admitting when you don’t get something right because you learn from your mistakes and then, like you say, you’ll never do it again. I think also the fact that you share what you do.

Zara McGregor: 40:13 you.

Nina Young: 40:16 on social media, especially LinkedIn, and I think that’s so important because more people like you that do this, then you’re inspiring other people to say, look, this is what’s out there because it is incredible drones. It’s amazing. some of my conversations I’ve had with some surveyors and there’s one guy and he’s used it, to map out archaeological sites, this is like fascinating and

Zara McGregor: 40:36 Yes, but in the Amazon using LIDAR

Zara McGregor: 40:40 and finding all those hidden things that nobody on foot would be able to see from above because it’s like about the reflections and that’s really cool. I love that.

Nina Young: 40:45 Yeah.

Nina Young: 40:49 It it’s also there’s still huge opportunity for people to come into this space because there’s still so many things happening and so many applications have increased, to do with crops. I mean, you’ve seen them. I’ve seen more like TV programs when they’ve used them for crops and all sorts of different applications. But it’s been a pleasure having you on, Hazara. I think it’s you are an inspiration. And I’m sure a lot of people that be listening and be thinking about either.

Nina Young: 41:15 what they should and shouldn’t be doing with drones. You’ve shared some good, interesting tips with dealing with certain situations. But no, thank you very much today. I really appreciated it and chatting to you.

Zara McGregor: 41:26 Thank

Zara McGregor: 41:26 you so much for having me, it’s been so much fun. And if anyone does any questions, just reach out on LinkedIn, I’ll try my best to answer.

Nina Young: 41:34 I’ll it’s been a pleasure because I think it’s been one of those areas that I’ve always loved and I don’t think enough people talk about it across the vein. thank you.

Zara McGregor: 41:41 No, thank you, it’s been great!