About the Author
Eric
AeroCartwright is where I document the drone mapping and GIS workflows I use professionally — written for people who want to understand the full pipeline, not just the flight.
My name is Eric. I'm a Pacific Northwest-based GIS scientist with an M.S. in Geography (GIS specialization) from St. Cloud State University, an FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate, and over 10 years of professional geospatial experience — 5 of those years doing drone mapping for real clients on real projects.
In my public-sector day job I handle the special-projects work — testing new drone platforms for the organization, piloting emerging processing workflows, and figuring out the techniques that don't have a manual yet. A lot of what ends up on AeroCartwright starts there.
Background & Experience
M.S. in Geography, GIS Specialization
Graduate degree from St. Cloud State University — spatial analysis, remote sensing, geodesy, and geospatial data management. A research program in geography with a GIS concentration, not a certificate.
FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate
Commercially certified to operate UAS for hire in the United States. I fly for work, not just to make content.
10+ Years Professional Geospatial Experience
A decade of producing geospatial deliverables for engineering firms, government agencies, and environmental consultants — topographic surveys, corridor mapping, land use analysis, environmental monitoring.
5 Years Drone Mapping + Active Enterprise Operator
Real projects: construction site monitoring, volumetric stockpile calculations, LiDAR corridor surveys, multispectral agricultural mapping, orthomosaic production for survey-grade submissions. Ongoing hands-on operation of the American-made Blue UAS fleet — Skydio X10, Freefly Astro, Freefly AltaX, Parrot ANAFI USA, Teal 2 — in a public-sector role that requires NDAA-compliant platforms.
Real Projects. Not Demo Data.
The content at AeroCartwright comes from field experience, not textbooks. Here's the kind of work I've done professionally:
- Topographic surveys for civil engineering firms requiring 5cm vertical accuracy or better
- LiDAR corridor mapping for utility and pipeline right-of-way assessment
- Construction site progress monitoring with volumetric cut/fill reporting
- Multispectral crop health surveys for precision agriculture applications
- Orthomosaic production for stormwater and drainage GIS datasets
- Emergency management aerial assessment mapping
- Municipal asset inventory surveys delivered into ArcGIS Online
The Gap I Kept Seeing
Most drone content covers only the flight. A few go into basic photogrammetry. Almost none cover what comes after — how to produce a deliverable that a licensed surveyor, a city engineer, or an environmental consultant can actually use.
And most GIS content assumes your data already exists. There's very little on the acquisition side — why your coordinate system matters at the sensor level, how GCP placement affects vertical accuracy, what your processing report is actually telling you.
I sat in both worlds professionally for years, watching drone pilots produce unusable deliverables and GIS analysts misinterpret drone data they didn't understand. So I built the resource I wished existed.
AeroCartwright documents the complete workflow — from flight planning through final deliverable — written by someone who has done it professionally and can explain the "why" behind every decision.
Who This Is For
- Drone pilots who want to produce professional-grade mapping deliverables.
- GIS professionals who receive drone data and want to understand it.
- Surveyors and engineers building in-house drone mapping capability.
- Municipal GIS departments integrating drone workflows into existing systems.
- Environmental consultants adding aerial remote sensing to their toolkit.
If you need a resource that speaks both drone and GIS fluently, you're in the right place.
Aircraft I Fly Professionally
My day-to-day work involves operating the American-made enterprise fleet approved for NDAA-compliant workflows — commonly called the "Blue UAS" list, maintained by the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit. This is ongoing operation, not legacy experience.
Software I Work With
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