WOODVILLE – Woodville Lions guest speaker Clark Taylor regaled the club with a snappy PowerPoint on his and his father’s company, SkyCrop, on Thursday evening, Apr. 10.
Taylor brought two drones, including the monster before him in the photo, a model XAG P100 Pro. His smaller drone was powered up, lights on, during his presentation, a model DJI Mavic 3M Multispectral. He did not fly it inside the building, though asked, for safety and obeying the law which forbids flying over people.
SkyCrop is licensed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture for their services.
Though small, the DJI Mavic is a high-end drone that can record in several color spectrums for precise mapping in “centimeter-level RTK positioning with microsecond-level time synchronization,” says one vendor. It can fly for about an hour and cover about 200 hectares per flight. As it is flying and photographing at up to 1/2000s shutter speed, it takes high-res photos that are pasted together for a clear and detailed map in the spectrum desired. Its “omnidirectional wide-FOV sensors allow for centimeter-level accuracy, even for terrain following on steep-slope landscapes.”
With that detailed map, Taylor can program the big XAG P100 for precise delivery of cargo with a capacity up to 110 pounds. SkyCrop can load it with liquid or granulated fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide and more. It has a 4D radar to avoid obstacles and can cover about 70 acres per hour with a spray width up to 30 feet. Like the DJI Mavic, the XAG has centimeter level accuracy.
When in flight, XAG 100’s tips of its four blades extend almost 10 feet.
Taylor loves flat treeless crops, for then the XAG P100 can zoom along at 25-30 mph in a GPS path precisely tailored to the customer’s needs. Taylor said SkyCrop’s services are less expensive to the customer in the competitive market with helicopter- and plane-delivery systems.
Taylor explained how the XAG can fly at a low altitude, a few feet off the ground, allowing its blades’ propulsion to aid in forcing the spray downward, impossible for plane-delivery. The XAG can also spray precisely with little waist and little overshooting based upon precise mapping.
Their whole rig includes trailers of chemicals, water, drones, a 50-kilowatt generator, and a trailer for outfitting and recharging the batteries.
These highly sophisticated drones can be programed to avoid trees and sweep complex areas.
They can even drop site prep chemicals that can clean the land of vegetation after a clear-cutting while at the same time saving specific trees within the target zone.
Best of all, SkyCrop was established in 2022 right here in Tyler County with its HQ just east of Woodville on FM 1746, with axillary offices in Illinois (Sky-Crop.com).
Woodville Lions meet every Thursday at noon and at 6:30 pm on the second Thursdays at the Lions Den just east of Woodville on Hwy 190 (PreciousHeart.net/lions).
