The Customer:

Sky Ladder Drones is one of the nation’s leading commercial drone service providers that specializes in precision drone flying in order to create exact mapping, 3D modeling, areal inspections, and progress photos for the construction and design industries. In many cases, the company uses multiple pilots to navigate the drones in tight spaces and without the luxury of visual or audio communications. That’s where Discount Two-Way Radio stepped into the picture, introducing the drone flying firm to RCA’s line of handheld two-way radios.

The Challenge:

When Sky Ladder Drones landed a large contract from the City of Los Angeles’ Metro Rail Authority to accurately map out and develop a 3D modeling for a long stretch of new train tracks near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), the company knew they needed a fail-proof communications system to successfully complete the task. According to Steven Katz, President & Chief Pilot for Sky Ladder Drones, the area his team would be flying around was incredibly dense, filled with urban obstacles like buildings, high tension wires, and even jumbo jets! Also, each pilot would be separated by more than a mile, eliminating the ability to communicate through loud vocal commands, and creating a situation that was potentially dangerous for the expensive drones, pedestrians, and nearby aircraft. Instant and reliable communication was imperative to accomplish the task. In addition, because the company focuses on taking aerial photos, their pilots and observers are rarely working in line-of-sight scenarios. On top of that, there were multiple teams of people involved, including ten pilots and engineers from the Sky Ladder team, more than 15 people from Los Angeles Metro Rail, and even two Los Angeles police officers who were on-hand to control traffic. Therefore, the company needed a reliable way to communicate with pilots and visual observers along the rail line.

“It was impossible to have any issues with delayed communication, and every aspect of the radio systems needed to function flawlessly,” said Katz.

The solution:

As the nation’s only authorized distributor of RCA radios, Discount Two-Way Radio recommended the RDR2500 and the RDR2550 radios from RDR2000 two-way radio series as the perfect tool for the job. These rugged RDR2000 portables deliver fast, reliable communication, which makes a better, safer, more productive work environment for drone piloting. In addition, these portable radios are equipped with X-Sound+ HDTM for exceptional voice quality while at the same time eliminating background noise and static from the voice transmissions.

“With the RCA radios, the communications worked perfectly. There was never a problem, and we were incredibly happy to have the professional assistance from the folks at Discount Two-Way Radio. We had so many questions, and they had all the answers,” said Katz.