Drones & Trailers & Ratchet Straps, Oh My!

Drinking from a fire hose. Let's get into it!

From the field:

It's official - I've taken possession of both the trailer and the drones. And the amount of learning that's taken place in the last week is enormous.

Let's start with Thursday evening. I brought the family with me back to the Eastern part of the state, and we had a full pickup load in the back. That required me to learn how to use ratchet straps. I watched a Youtube video, had some trial and error, some cursing, but eventually got it figured out. I can confirm that the entire truck load made it to its destination safely.

Friday morning. Trailer day. I took my son with me to coach me on some things. You may think I'm saying that in jest, but the little guy knows a surprising amount about how things work. In fact, he saved me from disaster by reminding me that I didn't have a ball hitch on the pickup, and if I wanted to transport the trailer, I better find one. Crisis averted, and we had a very uneventful trip to and from the trailer place. Which was a very welcome result, as I was stressing about having a 22 foot trailer behind my truck on the interstate.

Friday afternoon. I spent about 90 minutes learning how to back up the truck with the trailer attached. Not as difficult as I thought, but at the same time, not as easy to learn as I thought. I got "passable" with it right away, but I could see it taking a lot more reps to get "good" at it.

Monday morning. I woke up at 5:00 and was on the road at 6:00 to go retrieve the drones. These things are amazing. I got a flying tutorial while I was there, and the amount of manual intervention required is quite minimal. I sprayed water on 4 acres and then brought it back in with no issue. Then I learned a bit about mapping fields, so I'm all excited about that and this will be my next task as we get closer to spraying season.

I wasn't able to fit all of my items in the back of my pickup, so the generators are going to be delivered to me at some point. Those things are so heavy, I would've never been able to unload them anyway.

From the office:

When I first started on Upwork, I took a project that was agriculture based, but was going to pay what most high schoolers would make at their first job. However, I was in it for the agriculture experience as well as a (hopefully) good review that would propel me to more work. The job was done rather quickly, and I thought that was that. But the creator of the project wasn't closing it. And then the additional requests started coming in. I wanted the good review, but this was no longer worth my time. This was two months ago, and I've been getting random requests from this guy ever since. So finally I asked him to up my rate 2.5x and create a new project/close the other one out. And he did it!

Another example of ask not, get not. I should've asked for this way earlier, but it was a good lesson learned.

What I'm reading:

I have mixed feelings about social media. On the one hand, it allows absolutely everyone to have a voice, for free. This can be dangerous. But on the other hand, it can be a really good thing as well. I've been doing a lot of reading in a couple different Facebook groups this past week as my drone purchases became imminent. There is a wealth of posts on a wide range of topics relating to the specific drones I'll be flying, along with commentary from people all over the country. This is going to be hugely beneficial for me as I start running into specific questions about how to optimize my operation this summer.

Thanks for hanging in - until next week!