Telecom Towers Survey

Cellular phones have become an indispensable and unavoidable part of our modern lives. To accommodate the millions of cell phone users in South Africa thousands of telecommunications towers have been erected. Any single tower can carry the antennas of several cellular companies.

It is critical for the owners of the towers to determine how much space they have available for hardware upgrades. Furthermore, they also need to assess the condition of the tower structure and maintenance state of the communications gear. Any loss of functionality will leave thousands of people in the surrounding area without cellular service.

Up until very recently the only way to establish the condition of a tower was by using a climbing crew. This required detailed risk assessments, arresting gear, working at heights qualifications and time. One of the largest cellular companies in South Africa, looking to improve this process, asked us to inspect three of their towers. Darkwing Aerials was determined to make the inspection of these towers safer, but also more accurate. Using our DJI Mavic Pro 2 and DJI M300 Enterprise drone we inspected each tower with an unparalleled level of detail.

The aerial images we captured were used by our 3D draftsman to recreate digital twins of the three towers. The digital twin provides our client with an up-to-date 3D model of the tower and all the relevant data. Antenna height, antenna tilt, antenna azimuth and the available space can all be calculated on the 3D model. The aerial images also provided a detailed report of the tower’s physical condition. All of this was achieved in record time without endangering the life of a technician.

‍