WiseSkys – Aerial Photography and Services

Building a UAS Operations Manual: Why Every Part 107 Pilot Needs One

The FAA doesn’t require most Part 107 operators to maintain a formal operations manual. That’s the wrong reason not to have one. A UAS operations manual is three things simultaneously: your operational bible (the definitive …

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June 5, 2026 — Jeremy Yates

FlightDeck pre-flight panel showing nearest airport and hospital distances for drone site risk assessment

Nearest Airport, Nearest Hospital: The Situational Awareness Data Every Pre-Flight Needs

Most Part 107 pilots know their airspace classification before wheels up. Fewer know the distance and bearing to the nearest airport — or the nearest trauma center. FlightDeck calculates both automatically for every site in your project.

June 4, 2026 — Jeremy Yates

How FlightDeck’s 3-Phase Update Turns Raw Site Data Into a Mission-Ready Project

One of the most time-consuming parts of managing a large commercial UAS project isn’t the flying — it’s the daily overhead of keeping your site list current. Geocoding new addresses. Pulling weather for 80 remaining …

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June 2, 2026 — Jeremy Yates

UAS Incident Reporting: What to Do When Something Goes Wrong

No commercial UAS pilot plans for an incident. But the ones who’ve thought through exactly what to do before one happens are the ones who handle them professionally when they occur — protecting themselves legally, …

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May 29, 2026 — Jeremy Yates

FlightDeck automated photo QC dashboard flagging low-overlap and underexposed drone images before client delivery

How Automated Photo QC Catches Problems Before Your Client Does

Every commercial UAS pilot has been there — you deliver a dataset, and the client comes back asking why half the photos are soft or why the coverage has gaps. FlightDeck's QC Uploader runs automated quality checks on every image before it leaves your hard drive, so you know about problems before your client does.

May 27, 2026 — Jeremy Yates

LAANC Authorization: A Complete Guide for Part 107 Commercial Pilots

LAANC — the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability — transformed airspace authorization for commercial UAS pilots when it launched. What used to require weeks of manual coordination with FAA facilities now happens in seconds …

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May 26, 2026 — Jeremy Yates

Reading Weather for Commercial Drone Operations: Beyond the Forecast

Weather cancels more commercial UAS missions than any other factor. It also causes more incidents than pilots acknowledge — because many of those incidents start with a pilot who looked at a “mostly favorable” forecast …

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May 22, 2026 — Jeremy Yates

The UAS Pilot’s Go/No-Go Decision: A Systematic Pre-Flight Risk Framework

The most dangerous moment in any commercial UAS operation isn’t in the air. It’s on the ground, when conditions are marginal, a client is waiting, you drove two hours to get here, and the temptation …

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May 19, 2026 — Jeremy Yates

Crew Resource Management for UAS Pilots: Lessons from Manned Aviation

Crew Resource Management — CRM — is one of the most important concepts in manned aviation safety. It emerged from accident investigations that revealed most crashes weren’t caused by mechanical failure or bad weather. They …

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May 15, 2026 — Jeremy Yates

Part 107 Renewal Is Coming — Is Your Operational History Ready?

Part 107 recurrent training and knowledge testing requirements mean that staying current as a commercial drone pilot is an ongoing obligation — not a one-time event. And while the FAA doesn’t currently require you to …

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May 2, 2026 — Jeremy Yates