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VTOL survey payload planning guide

This guide helps you line up sensors and power for single-rotor VTOL survey jobs in the same class as Flying-Cam SARAH and DISCOVERY operations. It stays practical: what to freeze in the plan before you buy hardware or lock flight dates.

Small unmanned aircraft flying a survey line over open land
Stable lines and clear power headroom matter more than peak sensor resolution when the day is short.

Mass bands and mount choice

Electric SARAH-class ships sit in a lower takeoff weight band, so every gram in the gimbal stack competes with battery minutes. DISCOVERY-class turbine ships lift heavier magnetics or dual-head gimbals, but they still reward a tight bill of materials. Write two columns on your sheet: dry sensor mass and installed mass with dampers, adapters, and cables. If installed mass creeps past your budget, drop resolution before you drop overlap, because overlap drives ortho quality more than a wider sensor in gusty air.

Seven checks before you freeze the payload

  1. Vibration path: map how the main rotor sends energy into the tray. Soft mounts help, but a bad IMU placement can still blur frames at shutter speeds you thought were safe.
  2. Power budget: add inrush for LiDAR spin-up and thermal shutter cycles. Round up, then add ten percent for cold mornings.
  3. Data pipe: confirm write speed for burst stills and video sidelog. A full card during a turn wastes a line.
  4. Overlap rule: fix forward overlap first for mapping, then adjust side overlap for point density on LiDAR mixes.
  5. EM noise: keep magnetometer tails away from high current runs. If you fly combined RGB and mag, plan separate hovers for noise quieting.
  6. Weather floor: set a hard wind limit tied to rotor headroom, not only to airframe rating.
  7. Recovery: note which sensor needs a safe power-down order so ground crew does not brown out the logger.

When to split into two flight types

Mixing high-rate LiDAR with long thermal stacks on one sortie often forces a low line speed that hurts RGB sharpness. Splitting into a fast RGB pass and a slower dedicated thermal or mag pass usually returns cleaner products than one compromise line speed. Say this plainly in the flight brief so the field team tags cards per pass.

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