Drone Survey Flight Planner
Flight lines, line spacing, photo interval and total flight time for a mapping block — from GSD, overlaps, area and speed.
Survey planning is four numbers — footprint, side-lap spacing, front-lap interval, lines to fill the block — and they decide whether the mission fits your batteries.
Standard photogrammetry geometry. Check the photo interval against your camera's minimum shutter cycle — intervals under ~2 s drop frames on many platforms.
With your numbers: At 2.5 cm/px with 75%/65% overlaps, a 400×600 m block needs 9 lines spaced 46.2 m, shooting every 3.09 s — about 12.02 minutes at 8 m/s.
⚠️ Not for operational decisions. This is a record-keeping and planning aid only — not certified avionics, not a source of regulatory truth. Always verify against official sources (FAA) and your operator's approved documents before flying.
Free drone survey flight planner: GSD, overlaps, block size and speed in — flight lines, spacing, photo interval and mission time out. The pre-quote math that decides batteries, time on site and price.
About Drone Survey Flight Planner
Every mapping mission is geometry before it's flying: the target GSD fixes your image footprint, side overlap converts that to line spacing, front overlap to photo interval, and the block dimensions to a line count and total time. Those outputs ARE the quote — batteries needed, hours on site, whether the job fits one visit. This planner runs the standard photogrammetry arithmetic live, so you can trade parameters honestly: dropping side-lap from 70% to 60% cuts lines (and time) but risks gaps over low-texture ground; flying faster shortens the mission but tightens the photo interval toward your camera's limit. Run it at quote time and again at the site with real wind, and the mission stops being a guess.
How to use Drone Survey Flight Planner
- 1Set target GSD and your camera's pixel dimensions.
- 2Choose overlaps (75/65 is a sound mapping default; more for vegetation).
- 3Enter the block size and speed; read lines, interval and total time.
Why use Drone Survey Flight Planner?
- ✓Complete mission geometry from six inputs
- ✓Photo interval flagged against camera shutter-cycle reality
- ✓Flight time estimate drives battery count and site-visit pricing
- ✓Trade-off exploration: overlap vs time vs risk, quantified
- ✓Instant, free, browser-only
Frequently asked questions
What overlap percentages should mapping missions use?+
Defaults that survive processing: 75% front / 65% side for general mapping; push to 80/70 (or higher) over vegetation, water edges and uniform surfaces where the structure-from-motion matcher starves for features; corridor work and well-textured hard surfaces can run leaner. Insufficient overlap is the classic unfixable error — you discover it in processing, after the site visit ended.
Why does my photo interval matter so much?+
Because cameras have a minimum shutter-to-shutter cycle (typically ~2 s for many mapping drones writing large files): if the geometry demands a 1.4 s interval at your speed, frames drop and front-lap collapses silently. The fix is flying slower or higher — both recomputable here in seconds. Checking interval-vs-camera is the single highest-value preflight arithmetic in mapping.
How do I convert flight time into batteries needed?+
Divide mission minutes by your honest usable minutes per battery — flight time at survey speed with a 25-30% reserve, not the brochure hover figure — and round up, then add one battery for the inevitable re-fly strip. The battery-endurance calculator on this site computes usable minutes from your pack's real parameters; together the two tools turn 'will it fit today?' into arithmetic.
Why doesn't this tool sync to the cloud?+
By design: operational records are sensitive, and the simplest privacy guarantee is never transmitting them. Local-only storage means zero servers, zero breach surface and zero subscription. If you work from several devices, keep one as the master record and move snapshots with the CSV export.
How do I back up or print these records?+
Use the Export CSV button below the table: it downloads your full flight plan as a spreadsheet-ready file. From there you can print a clean copy, archive it with your records folder, or import it into any other system. Exporting monthly is a good habit since the working data lives only in your browser.
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