About Us

TCI Drone Services is a DBA of TCI Corp., an Oregon corporation established in 1992. Our Mapping Services business (TCI Mapping Services) has been active for over 25 years and we have completed over 500 mapping projects for Cities, Counties, Public Utilities and private business clients. TCI Software is also a DBA of TCI Corp focusing on the development, marketing and support of automated mapping software for use with AutoCAD.

We have been in the Drone Service Business since 2015.  Our Equipment is registered with the FAA: FA34KCLRX7

Our principle Tom Inloes hold a Remote Pilot Certificate with a small UAS rating, by the FAA under the Small UAS Rule (Part 107) – Certificate Number: 3906034.

We are Insured by Berkley Aviation with Liability, Bodily Injury & Property Damage coverage of $1 Million per occurrence (details upon request).

Our service area is Eastern Oregon and SW Idaho (other areas upon request).

TCI DRONE SERVICES EQUIPMENT

Drones: We fly a DJI Phantom 3 Pro and two Phantom 4’s.

Drone Cameras: All three DJI drones are equiped with a 12MP visible light camera (4000 x 3000). These camera are used to capture all of our drone photography, videography and for 360° Panoramic Photos.

Specialty Cameras:

NDVI – We fly a MAPIR brand Near Infrared comera. It has a 16MP camera (4608 x 3456) and sees both Near Infrared 850nm and Red 660nm light. We use this camera mounted to the bottom of one of our Phantom 4 drones to collect both Visible Light (the Drone Camera) and NDVI photography (the MAPIR camera) during the same flight.

360° Panoramic Video – We fly a Samsumg Gear 360 camera system which has two 15MP cameras. The front and rear lenses capture 180° horizontally and vertically, creating a seamless and complete 360° field of view. Videos and photos are high reslution – 3840×1920 video and 25.9MP photos. This camera is flown on a custom mount beneath our Phantom 3 Pro so conventional photography can be captured at the same time as the 360° video.

Ground Control

We own and use a Trimble Pathfinder Pro XRS system (sub-meter) to collect GPS coordinates for ground control targets when flying projects that don’t require ultra-high precision. For Land Development projects we engage Professional Surveyors to get “Centimeter grade” ground control coordinates.

We employ traditional survey components (hubs, tacks, Mag nails & flags) for repeated flight applications – mostly Ag Scouting, so GPS control need only be captured once per flight area.