What to Put in a Quote Request So We Can Answer in One Email

Most quote requests we receive say some version of "how much to fly my property?" and nothing else. The honest answer to that is a list of questions, which means a second email and often a third.

Five things decide the price of almost every job we do. If the first message contains all five, the reply is a number and a date. Here they are, with the reasoning behind each, and a template at the end to paste into the contact form.

1. Where

An address, or for land a parcel number or a pin. This decides the travel charge and whether the airspace needs a permission.

We are based in the Sulphur Springs Valley and price travel by zone rather than by the mile:

Zone 2 and Zone 3 travel is waived on any job over $600. The valley is free because we live here; a Tucson operator driving to Willcox is covering 160 miles round trip and has to put that somewhere.

2. What

Which of the six things we do: a listing shoot, a land or ranch listing, a roof or claim inspection, a construction progress visit, a vineyard or field scan, a map or 3D model. Each has its own table on the pricing page and the tables do not cross over — a 40-acre parcel is $375 as a listing shoot and $750 as a mapping job with an orthomosaic and surface model, because those are different flights producing different files.

If you are not sure which you need, say what you are trying to do. "I want to show a buyer where the well and the access road are" is more useful than guessing a service name.

3. How big

For a house, square feet and storeys. For a commercial roof, the footprint. For land, acreage — and one thing that matters more than acreage.

Part 107 requires the pilot to keep the aircraft in unaided visual line of sight for the entire flight, well enough to know where it is, which way it is pointing, and that it is not endangering anyone. That is 14 CFR 107.31. Practically, it means a flat square section with a road through the middle can be covered from one or two places a pilot can stand, while an 80-acre parcel with a ridge across it may take three. We call those launch legs, and land is priced on them, not on acres.

So for land, give the acreage and then describe the ground: flat, rolling, a wash through it, a hill, a canyon. "You can see the whole thing from the gate" is a one-launch job. "There is no way to see the back forty from anywhere" is honest and saves everyone a surprise.

4. When

Three parts to this.

The deadline. When do the files have to be in someone's hands? Standard delivery on listing work is 24 to 48 hours after the flight. If you need them the next morning, that is a rush and it costs 30% more, because it means editing that night instead of the next day.

Twilight. Real twilight and golden-hour frames are +$150, or +$200 if they need a separate trip from the daytime shoot. They are real exposures at the real hour, not a daytime frame with the sky painted. Say so up front, because it changes which day and which hour we book.

Flexibility. Wind cancels flights here, and spring afternoons are the worst of it. A job with a two- or three-day window gets flown in the best light of the best day. A job that must happen Thursday at 2 p.m. gets flown then if it is safe, in whatever light and wind Thursday offers.

5. What the deliverable is for

This is the one almost nobody includes and it changes the format of what you receive.

• MLS. Edited JPEGs in horizontal and vertical crops, sized for the listing and for social.
• A lender or appraiser. Usually wants context frames showing the parcel against its surroundings, and a boundary overlay from county GIS is worth the +$95.
• An insurance adjuster. Timestamped, geotagged, unedited, in the carrier's expected format. Not colour-graded. That is a different product from a listing shoot and it is priced as one.
• A county application or a planning submission. Often needs a scaled orthomosaic rather than perspective photographs, and if any dimension on it will be relied upon, ground control.
• An architect or engineer. Point cloud or mesh in a named format, with a stated accuracy, which again means ground control.

Tell us who the end user is and we will deliver in the format they can actually open.

Why the prices are public at all

Most drone operators do not publish a rate card. The usual argument is that every job is different and a number on a web page leaves money on the table.

We publish ours for two reasons. The first is self-qualification: if $375 for a 40-acre listing is not in the budget, it is better for both of us that you learn that from a web page than from a phone call. The second is that we do not want to haggle. The number on the page is the number. There is no discount for asking and no premium for not asking.

What still needs a phone call

Two kinds of job cannot be quoted from an email, and we would rather say so than guess.

Multi-section ranches. Above 640 acres the price is the number of launch legs, and that depends on terrain, roads, gates and where a pilot can legally and safely stand. We will usually want to look at the parcel on a map with you, and sometimes drive it, before committing to a figure.

Anything in controlled airspace. Most of Cochise County is Class G and we can fly it without asking anyone. Sierra Vista and the area around Fort Huachuca sit under Class D, and Tucson under Class C. Under 14 CFR 107.41 no one may operate a small unmanned aircraft in Class B, C or D airspace without prior authorisation from air traffic control. The FAA's LAANC system issues that authorisation in near real time for requests at or below the altitude ceiling of the grid square you are in, and those ceilings vary from 400 feet down to zero. A request above the grid ceiling, or in a zero grid, goes to "further coordination," which a human reviews and which the FAA requires at least 72 hours before the flight. An airport that is not on LAANC at all means a manual request through FAA DroneZone, which the FAA says has historically taken up to eight weeks. Whether your address is in a 400-foot grid, a zero grid, or off the system entirely decides whether the job is Tuesday or next month, and we need to look it up before we can tell you.

With those six lines we can almost always reply with a price, a proposed day and a delivery date in one message. Where we cannot — a ranch, a Class D address — the reply will say exactly why and what we need next. Check the rate card first, then send the template through the contact form.