Farmland, Acreage and Aerial Drone Video in Southern Illinois

You cannot photograph 120 acres from the ground. A buyer looking at farmland needs to see the shape of it: where the boundaries run, how much is tillable against timber or waterway, where the road frontage is, how the ground drains, and what cover there is if it is hunting ground. None of that reads from a photograph taken standing in a field.

From the air it is obvious in seconds. That is the whole argument for flying land, and it is the one job we do that happens entirely outdoors.

High aerials and low ground flying

A tour starts high enough that the shape of the whole parcel reads at once: boundaries, field edges, access points, outbuildings, ponds, timber lines. A buyer sees how the parts of the property relate to each other instead of inferring it from a plat map.

We then get low and traverse the ground. Low ground flying is the part a high pass cannot substitute for: down at that height the lay of the land reads properly, how it rises and falls and how the cover actually sits. Between the two, a buyer gets the whole parcel and a close inspection of it in the same tour.

Where conditions allow we will fly below the tree canopy, which a lot of operators shy away from. 843 Hewitt Rd in Lovington is an example. On timber and hunting ground that is often where the useful detail is, and it is not something a high pass or a photograph can show at all.

For hunting ground, cover and water are the selling points, and both are far easier to judge this way than from a photograph. 2069 E CO RD 1290N in Mattoon was filmed for exactly that reason.

Land we have filmed

Auctions and land brokers

A land auction runs to a fixed date, which makes turnaround the binding constraint. Filming to finished video is two days, so a tour can be commissioned late and still make the marketing window.

Aerial footage also travels further than photographs do. A buyer two counties away can evaluate a parcel properly before deciding whether to drive out to it, which widens the pool of people who end up bidding.

Working farms, construction and events

Not every flight is for a sale. We have filmed a flaming process on organic farmland, drainage work for Derksen Tiling and Excavating, a new build for Junction General Baptist Church, a controlled burn for the Orchardville Fire Protection District, and the Wayne City Bean Days Parade.

Construction progress, community events and one-off operations all film well from the air, and the footage keeps its value long after the day itself.

Practical details

FAA Part 107 certified and insured to $5M, based in Johnsonville and covering southern Illinois. Larger parcels take longer to fly and may need more than one battery, so mention the acreage when you get in touch.

If the property has buildings you also want covered inside, that is an indoor drone tour and can be filmed on the same visit.