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DRONE ON explores how drones are reshaping the world. Hosted by Bryce Bladon, the podcast documents the tech, economics and people piloting the world's largest standardized drone imagery network.
DO002 - From Hobby to Paid Pilot_ A Pilots FLY-TO-EARN Journey_2025-10-28 17_57_52
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Bryce Bladon: [00:00:00] Welcome to Drone On. I'm your host, Bryce Bladon, and today I am joined by Daniel Whitfield. Daniel, thank you so much for joining me today.
Daniel Whitfield: My pleasure, Bryce. Thank you for having me.
Bryce Bladon: Today I wanted to talk to one of the pilots on the world's largest drone imagery network for context. Uh, Daniel is one of the pilots who has now mapped over.
6 million acres with over 6,000 pilots on the network and over 160,000 successful missions flown. Daniel, I'm curious, how many of those are yours? Why don't you tell me about yourself and how you got into drones?
Daniel Whitfield: Okay. Certainly, so about 990 of those missions are mine. I got into drones back around 2014, so about 11 years ago. Started off, uh, building drones on those old DIY kits. Um, ever since I loved it. I took a bit of a hiatus around, I'd say what I say. Around 2017 I kind of got out [00:01:00] and then when I learned about Spexi, it lit the fire in me.
And, um. I just went with it. Spexi motivated me to get my Part 107, which eventually elevated me to this job where I get to be on top of the world.
Bryce Bladon: That's fantastic. So, so what do you do now?
Daniel Whitfield: Now I am a DFR drone first responder. So, um, let me basically switch the screen around so you can see. I have permission to do this, by the way, for anyone see clear.
I'm on the helipad. I basically, hell yeah. Yeah. I send a drone up, I respond. A person locate somebody that it's maybe. Step somewhere, protect the police, get there to get eyes on the ground. So in case police are bad situation, generally first responders still just making sure everyone's safe, the community's safe, and getting a drone out there.
Bryce Bladon: Hell yeah, man. How long have you been doing that now?
Daniel Whitfield: I've been doing this now for about two months, three months up to this point.
Bryce Bladon: What would you say has been like the most memorable flight or project or even job you've had doing this sort of work?
Daniel Whitfield: Well, I would say, um, it's two. Okay. The first time I went up to [00:02:00] San Francisco for Spexi.
I just enjoyed seeing the new sites. It was just fun. I just got a overall sense of just this, this sense of, um, wonder, excitement, this sense of just new accomplishments, just new going new places, and that really lit the spark. And then I guess the second most exciting work was when, um, they launched in the Bay Area in.
I just found it so fun racing against pilots. That's what made me so good is that competitive aspect, but beat, trying to beat everybody around you. That's what made me so good at this job and I love that. Just that competitive fight and that spirit, that Spexi you instills in you.
Bryce Bladon: That's excellent, man.
I'm, I'm. I'm really interested in how you went from like that first drone to, I mean, literally sitting on top of a roof with your, your little robot on standby, ready to act if needed. Like you, you hit on the uh slightly competitive nature. What would be your advice for somebody who, who sees your journey and is like, oh, that's, that's where I want to be.
I want [00:03:00] to be wearing sunglasses on top of a roof.
Daniel Whitfield: My advice would be, um. You gotta have ambition, but you gotta have kind of a, a spirit of wonder. You wanna just like push for what hasn't been done before. You wanna be that person that is not afraid to go beyond the boundaries to accomplish what hasn't been accomplished.
So that's what motivates me is just. Pushing to go where others haven't. That's what I think. It's, that's, that's the type of spirit I have.
Bryce Bladon: What makes this sort of work different? Like why, why is that necessary? How is drone services different from other work?
Daniel Whitfield: I would have to say from what I've seen with newer people, what makes it different is your ability to stay calm under pressure.
Your ability to control, like your response to things. 'cause sometimes things are gonna go wrong and you gotta be able to react quick. So basically quick reaction to a situation. That's what makes it different, I think. Um, well, being able to deal with things that go wrong is always a good, um, trick that, because you can always.
Be able to have a quick response to something. [00:04:00] Um, why you need that. I think there's, there's a lot of pilots, so it's just a competitive nature just with anything, like to be able to try to beat the next person, you wanna have that, that competitive spirit where you're like, I'm gonna be first, I'm gonna outdo you.
It's just, it's, it's a healthy competition, so long as it doesn't. To a negative realm, but it is, it's a good type of mindset to have. 'cause it makes you go further or wanna go further and by proxy you kind of push each other to elevate and get better. It's like going to the gym, like if you're lifting more weights than the next guy, next guy wants to push himself.
You know, he knows he can't lift that weight. So that's what I'd say kind of gets you.
Bryce Bladon: Interesting. So you're hitting on something interesting there for a guy who, when I think about it, you're part of a community too. Like, uh, the reason I was able to connect with you is we're both in the same Discord community.
Um, so what, what's the interplay between that competitive nature you're, you're hinting at, and what I've actually run into, which is a very sweet man, help, help me, uh, run those two things together. Like what does a decentralized community, I guess work and how [00:05:00] you collaborate and, and, and how you compete too
Daniel Whitfield: Well.
To hit on one aspect, the decentralized community, um, that's unique 'cause I am heavily involved in DePIN. I'm in quite a few different projects, but I would think, um, you connect and you are a part at the same time. You, you're building something together with each individual person has their own part to play.
So I think that competitive nature, as long as it's healthy, I feel it helps you to grow personally.
Bryce Bladon: Let me take us down to, uh, to brass tacks. What is, what is your average work week look like as a drone pilot? What do you do? And walk us through it.
Daniel Whitfield: Well, my average work week here is, um, well, it's too, mainly sometimes I'll do Spexi, but when it's, when there's missions in my area, so those are fun.
But for this particular job is, um, basically tele operating with another pilot. So you know, the officer will operate the drone. I'll make sure to scan for airspace to make sure there's no, um, low level manned aircraft around that could [00:06:00] potentially collide with the drone. So, of course I'm always checking my, uh, written radars, things like that.
Uh, but basically getting a call, any emergency call you, um, make sure everything's clear. You send the drone up, you make sure the officer's good. Officer will Teleoperate sometimes if they need to get to a scene quicker, I'll need to fly the drone that happened last week because they have a speed limit.
But I can sit, I can operate it faster. I get up to about 45 miles per hour, so sometimes they give control of me. Sometimes I'll need to control the camera. So just basically every day I work for about 10 hours per day. Um, I just make sure to operate with the officer. We communicate back and forth and then basically send the drone out.
For any, um, emergency response that comes in, make sure everything's okay. Make sure the police are safe, make sure any missing person is located. Just any other, like a car accident. Try to get eyes on, um, you know, to the perimeter where it's set up. And basically just bring the drone back. Once it's safe, swap the batteries.
If we have a longer mission for say a hour and 30 minutes, bring it back, [00:07:00] swap the batteries, send it back out, uh, do it again. And that's basically my week.
Bryce Bladon: Quite a week. Walk me through the LayerDrone experience though, or the Spexi app experience. 'cause that's obviously, uh, an entirely different thing.
You know, not every Monday you're waking up and, and necessarily taking on a Spexi mission, but a lot of folks listening to this probably haven't even seen the app, let alone necessarily flown a drone with it. Um, so let's talk about that real quick. What does that experience actually look like?
Daniel Whitfield: Spexi has been quite an enjoyable experience. Basically, you set the drone up and your particular spec, uh, Spexigon. You try to get the best location you can so you can make sure to have the optimal connection with the drone. You send the drone up, it catches, uh, it does this, uh, either multi-pano or your mapping missions. It goes from each wave point, it captures the mission or the, uh, photos, and then it goes around and sometimes I personally I like to move with the drone safely. Of course, I move with it to the next spec, to the next Spexigon 'cause I don't like to bring it down 'cause I get the most [00:08:00] flights with each battery that way. So I'll try to move to the next,Spexigon capture that, um, spec and move to the next. Third, I sometimes I like to be in the middle, towards the middle so I can move to the next one quickly and then move to the next one.
I'll capture three. Bring it, bring the drone down safely, swap the battery, go to the next one, send the drone back up. You know, of course send it, launch it back up goes, captures Spexigon again. Move to the next one. Then move to the next one. And that's how I, um, optimize my strategy to capture as many Spexigons as possible.
Bryce Bladon: It seems like a good strategy. And how often do you get paid?
Daniel Whitfield: Uh, every two weeks on Thursday.
Bryce Bladon: Oh, wow. So that part of it is like a pretty normal job. Okay. Uh, well Daniel, this has been a great conversation. I have two more questions for you. Question the first, how can people follow you or follow up with what you do or how would you like them to, if at all?
Daniel Whitfield: Oh, if you wanna follow me, um, you could just follow my, uh, my nickname, which is Cloudy Connex, it stands for the Cloud and Connecting People. That's what the nickname is for. I know [00:09:00] some people get it confused with something else, but yeah, you can just look up CloudyConnex and you can find me, um, or my YouTube channel anyway, is Aerial Cinema, so you could go there and find me as well.
Bryce Bladon: Excellent. And we will be sure to include the links to those in the show notes of this episode. Before I let you go, I actually now have two questions. First question, what would be your last piece of advice or, or thing you'd wanna make sure people know about either working as a drone pilot or, or what you get out of it?
Daniel Whitfield: So my first piece of advice is don't give up. You're gonna have situations where it's gonna seem quite difficult with, uh, drone problems. A second piece of advice. Uh, you said what inspires me, right?
Bryce Bladon: Mm-hmm.
Daniel Whitfield: I think it's the sense of wonder. The sense of going new places you can't normally go. I think that's what inspires me, like seeing things you couldn't normally see.
I always wanna go where others haven't been before.
Bryce Bladon: Very cool. Alright, final question, optional. We have a few segments on this show, one of which is called The Bryce is Wrong. Now, admittedly. You don't know me, but what I do is I tell you three things [00:10:00] about my professional experience and you try to guess which one is a lie.
Do you wanna play the Bryce is Wrong.
Daniel Whitfield: Let's go.
Bryce Bladon: All right.
Statement one. Bryce got in a fight with a goose and lost.
Statement two: Bryce is a licensed helicopter pilot.
Statement three: Bryce's last full-time job ended up with his project getting murdered on the Simpsons.
Daniel Whitfield: Um, I'm gonna go with number three,
Bryce Bladon: you would think, but actually I cannot legally fly a helicopter, if you are curious about that.
Uh, so the last, uh, maybe the tree house of horror prior to the last one. Uh, yeah, I think it was 2023. I made something called Crypto Kitties in 2027. Uh, it was parody on, uh, the tree house of horror. I think it's 24, no, 34. There's so many of these things now. Called Cuddle Kittens. March Simpson basically just goes through, uh, a train car murdering all the cats I made about a decade ago,
Marge Simpson: Sorry! Nothing personal!
Bryce Bladon: I really [00:11:00] wanted to be in the Simpsons when I was a kid and a monkey paw curled and made that happen for me.
Daniel Whitfield: Nice.
Bryce Bladon: Thanks, man. It's, uh, it's, I guess, uh, I was gonna say this is an opportunity to humble brag, but I'm not sure I should have led with losing a fight to a goose, which is a real thing that happened when I was a child.
Daniel Whitfield: I can't believe you lost a fight to a beast.
Bryce Bladon: I was small and a Canadian goose, they're not small. I was three. I I walked too close to a goose's nest. The mother Goose, I assume, uh, got very upset at me, started chasing me. And then, uh, I know it's hard to tell right now, but I actually had curly platinum blonde hair as a kid and a lot of it.
And, uh, in attacking me, the goose's feet got tangled up from my hair. So I kind of looked like two kids trying to sneak into a movie theater. But like Cthululu style. So yeah, it was probably the biggest shape of my life that I just shared with you, Daniel. So, uh, with that, thank you so much for your time on this call and uh, I really appreciate you sharing all your experiences with us.
Daniel Whitfield: Thank you for having me. It was my pleasure. It was fun talking with you. You have a good one.
Bryce Bladon: It was an absolute pleasure Daniel. [00:12:00] Thanks for listening to Drone On. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Get a new episode every week and leave us a five star review on your podcast app of choice. You can learn more about our sponsors at SPEXI.com.
That's SPEXI.com and LayerDrone.org. Find out how you can contribute to the world's largest drone imagery network too. Thanks again for listening.