Drone photography taking flight in Goshen County

TORRINGTON — What has started out as a hobby has grown tremendously in popularity. Over the last few years, the number of drone operators has grown and the demand for drone services has steadily increased.

“An unmanned aircraft system (UAS) is an unmanned aircraft (known as a drone) and the equipment necessary for the safe and efficient operation of that aircraft,” according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) website.

Kevin Parish has taken an interest in operating drones, and he recently decided to take his hobby one step further by opening a business, Valley Sky Drone Photography.

“I work for the sheriff’s office, and they needed drone pilots,” Parish explained. “They had a company come in and train several of us.”

The steps needed to become a commercial drone pilot is quite extensive, but the certification isn’t needed for everyone who flies a drone.

“The process to become a drone pilot, you have to get a pilot's license to be able to do any photography,” Parish said. “If you buy a drone and just go fly it by yourself, that’s totally fine, but as soon as you either want financial compensation or if you’re flying under a business name, even doing it for search and rescue, that all entails getting a pilot’s license.”

Shortly after Parish received his drone pilots training, he saw a need for private operations too.

“They brought a company in to train us. It was a four-day course, and I went to take the pilot test for the drones and passed that test,” Parish said. “Immediately after that, I bought my own drone and had the idea of ‘Okay, so I do this for the county, what if I did this on the side for myself?’”

The process required dedication, according to Parish, and a small chunk of change.

“Beginning to end is, I’m going to say, there’s approximately a month’s worth of studying, test prep and then taking the test,” Parish explained. “The instruction course, that was probably several hundred dollars, taking the test because they are two separate things, I think it was like $150 for that, and you have to go to the Scottsbluff Testing Center. it’s a professional test, so they monitor you.”

The test for small unmanned aircraft requires drone operators to know regulations for flight operation and airspace classification as well as the effects of weather on small unmanned aircrafts. The test also includes radio communication procedures, airport operations and aeronautical decision-making, including the effects of drugs and alcohol on the pilot.

“It’s a rather difficult test. Having that four-day course made it doable. Studying additional is probably what saved me,” Parish explained. “I did well. I mean I got like an 88%. You have to have a 70% to pass. It went really well, but it was difficult.”

Existing certificate holders are required to test on eight of the original testing topics.

“They give you a book, and the book is pretty thick,” Parish said. “You open it up and you’re like ‘Oh shoot, I don’t recognize any of this stuff.’ Well, the book covers everything from a private pilot’s license to a sport’s pilot license to a hot air balloon license, which I didn’t even know was a thing,” Parish added. “If you go to the back of the book, at the very bottom it says, ‘and drone pilots.’ They give you the testing material and it’s for everybody.”

During Parish’s training, he had the opportunity to learn a fair amount about the weather since the weather plays such a large part in drone capabilities.

“I learned more about weather than I ever have before at that class,” Parish explained. “You have to learn and be able to fluently read aeronautical charts, maps. I mean, all these different things. I can understand the weather readouts from the airport, where it is all just computer code; it makes sense now because of that class.”

Parish went on to explain the weather portion of his training was required to pass the test in general.

“You have to know that kind of stuff or otherwise you’re just going to fail,” he said.  “Half of the test consists of airspace mapping.”

Drone operators aren’t nearly as popular here in Goshen County, but Parish is still set on branching out.

“Fortunately, because we live in Torrington, most other states and most other places, the drone market is really saturated,” Parish explained. “If you go to a real estate (agency), they probably have two or three drone pilots on speed dial, whereas here, we really don’t. I’ve had a couple of people come to me and say ‘Hey, it would be really cool to get a flyover of my goose blind, what does it look like from up there?’” he said.

There is room to accommodate different budgets when it comes to picking up drone operations as a new hobby, according to Parish.

“We had the benefit of having the county paying for the classes, which was nice,” he said. “The test itself was $150 and the rest is up to what you want to pay. The drone equipment can go, cheap end $300, expensive end $16,000. That’s the middle range. A $300 drone you won’t be able to do very much, while a $16,000 drone is probably going to be too big to do any of the stuff I do anyway. It varies a lot. The set up that I have, at the end of the day, is probably a little above two grand, for everything: the drone, the kit, everything that goes into it.”

Wyoming weather most definitely can pose a risk to drone operators like Parish, but as technology advances, many new drones are becoming more wind friendly.

“The nice thing is that the new drones, they have the technology in them to where it can handle up to 24-26 mph winds, where it will just sit there even with the wind blowing and it will just counteract it, but even with that, it will gust way stronger than that here,” he explained. “It’s something that all those weather reports come into play to where I am paying attention to those and saying today’s a good day but tomorrow’s not going to be.”

Although drone operation can just be a hobby, the FAA still oversees commercially licensed operators.

“The FAA, they have a whole lot of rules mandating the drones and their usage,” Parish said. “A couple of examples: I can’t fly higher than 400 feet unless I am over, we will take a silo into example, if you have a 100-foot silo, I can fly 400 feet above that silo. So, my total altitude would be 500 feet.

“There are other restrictions, like I have to be a certain height below the top cloud level,” he added. “So if it’s an overcast day, I have to know how high the clouds are so that I can fly under them.”

There is a certain stipulation about how far below them you can fly,” Parish said.

Since all drones are considered aircraft, operators must abide by all rules and laws, according to Parish.

“You have to know your stuff,” he said.

The FAA regulates all rules and laws for drone operators and according to Parish, if an accident involving a drone were to occur, the FAA would investigate the situation.

“Most of the drones now record what you’re doing, so they can take your drone and say, ‘here’s proof of what you’re doing,’” Parish said.

Like a vehicle, drones also require identification.

“Any drone that you fly commercially has to be registered. So, it’s like a car, you have to get a license plate on the drone, you have to get a registration,” Parish said. “You have to register with the FAA every two years, and there’s a fee for that. They know about your drone and what you’re doing with it, so you have to be smart with it.”

There is also a place for drones in the agriculture industry.

“There is a huge business for ag,” Parish explained. “To where they can get up into the $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 where the drones will fly themselves. They’ll spray the fields and do mapping. They’ve got a multispectral drone that can tell the growth levels and the water levels of the fields, and all these different things and I’ve looked into that drone, but until there’s a big enough market to use it for, I just haven’t bought it.”

Of course, the more expensive the drone, the more capabilities.

“The more expensive, like the bigger drones, the drones that can spray fields as an example, I haven’t totally figured that part out, but it sounds like you have to do additional registering and licensing and such, aside from the fertilizer aspect, just based on the size of the drone,” Parish explained.

With his current licensing, Parish is permitted to fly a drone weighing 55 pounds or less, which is measured as “take-off weight.”

“Any payload that you have, well, if you’re flying a drone with fertilizer, with spray, that can get up into 60, 70 almost 100 pounds worth, so that goes beyond what I am licensed to fly, so I’ve looked into that to see what I needed to fly,” Parish said.

The drone he operates could also be used for search and rescue missions, Parish noted.

He plans on using his drone license in his current employment at the sheriff’s office too.

“The drones can be sent up in so many different applications,” Parish said. “If we get into a pursuit on the job and then the suspect bails out of their car and runs into a corn field, we can send out our thermos cameras, and we will find them rather quickly.

“The highway patrol, I believe they use it for traffic crash recreation so they can send a drone up and see where the vehicles came from. They can see the tire marks, and it’s so much nicer than standing on the ground. You can get a total picture of what happened, whereas on the ground you have to piece it together.”

This story was published on March 14, 2024.