ISLE OF WIGHT · SOUTH COAST · NATIONAL BY ARRANGEMENT
Lane Aerial Media Ltd
Stop paying for guesswork.
Earthworks and stockpile volumes, progress against programme, roof and building condition, coastline and estate change, existing conditions to design from — measured from the air, and handed over as the number, the drawing, or a digital twin your team keeps measuring from long after we have left site.
Survey data for the people who have to defend a number, and aerial media for the people who have to sell something. Most clients need both, and one flight produces them.
Twelve months’ hosting, in the price. No seat to buy, no account to create — send a report to a client, an insurer or a planning officer and it opens.
Twenty minutes, in person or on a call — we open one of our own surveys and you decide whether it is worth paying for.
Live point cloud — 2,400,000150,000 points from our own survey, graded for screen
Who we work with
The same four services answer very different briefs depending on who is asking. Start from the one that sounds like your week — each goes straight to what it is usually costing you now.
1 — The problem
Earth, stock, progress, condition, movement, liability, the coast, and the drawing you design from. If the figure came off a drawing, a pace-out or an experienced eye, it is costing somebody. The rates below are current UK market figures, not ours — check them against your own last job.
Excavated clay bulks by around a quarter as it leaves the ground, so haulage ordered off a drawing is short before the first lorry arrives — at £310–£360 a grab load. And exporting 10,000 m³ of surplus runs £150,000 to £250,000 before you buy a load of replacement fill, most of which designs out against ground that has actually been measured.
Cliff retreat along parts of the Island’s south coast runs at over a metre a year, with century-scale records above two. Quay walls, revetments, groynes, slipways and pontoons are still inspected on foot, at low water, in whatever weather the tide gives you. Flown twice on the same control, retreat is a measured distance and storm damage is a dated record — and dredged arisings, once landed, are a volume somebody is invoicing you for. What is under water needs sonar, not a camera, and we will tell you so.
Title plans and Ordnance Survey extracts used in place of a measured survey are among the most common reasons an application fails validation — and an invalid application does not start the statutory clock, so the programme slips before it begins. Being sent back for a topographic survey after submission costs the redesign as well as the delay. Surveyed once, properly, you design off measured ground and the drawing goes in with the application.
Roofs, elevations, structures and hard standing across an estate, recorded without a tower, a MEWP or a closed access route. Planned maintenance stops being a rolling guess about which building is worst and becomes a list with evidence behind each line.
Manual stockpile measurement carries 5–10% error and in practice often 10–20%. Aerial survey with RTK correction measures to 1–3%, from the same baseline every month — which is what makes the trend defensible to an auditor rather than an opinion.
That is the share of UK construction firms over fifty staff already flying their sites. A monthly survey shows what is actually built against what was claimed, and against the design model — so a discrepancy is a conversation rather than rework.
Cliff retreat, slope movement, landfill void, standing water and failing drainage. Describing it is not a figure anyone can plan against. Flown twice on the same basis, the difference is a measured volume and a measured distance — which is what a trustee, an insurer or a regulator asks for.
That is the usual value band for a UK construction adjudication. Quantities are routinely re-measured, so every valuation is a chance to disagree. One dated surface with the control recorded, that both sides can open, settles a question before it becomes a claim.
2 — The evidence
Not a case study written after the fact. These are the figures the processing report produced, from our own flight.
Those are the actual numbers from our own survey of 23 September 2026 — the flight behind this section and turning at the top of the page. Five ground control targets were laid and surveyed with an Emlid Reach RS4, with a sixth point held back as an independent check.
For comparison, traditional topographic survey runs £350–£1,200 a day on site plus £350–£650 a day processing, with weather routinely adding three to five days. The site stayed open and working while we flew it.
Anybody can fly a drone over a field. These five decide whether the number you get back will survive being challenged — and they are where the real difference in price sits. We put them in writing before you ask.
Targets laid and surveyed with an Emlid Reach RS4, plus an independent check point, on every survey. Measured that way, our own test flight came back better than 60 mm horizontally — and the working is published, not just the number. Accuracy comes from the method, not the aircraft — so ask what control was used.
Your data stays live for a year, extended by arrangement. Reports open for whoever you send them to — a client, an insurer, a planning officer — with no account to create.
Survey data is commonly handed over on a platform the client then subscribes to, at roughly £3,000 a year per seat. On a five-person team that costs more than the survey. You are never asked for it.
Traditional topographic survey means a team on site for days, then processing, with weather adding three to five more — and survey firms that publish a turnaround at all quote three to seven working days. Our last survey was four minutes twenty seconds in the air over 6.5 hectares, flown without closing the site, with the deliverables back the next working day. Larger or multi‑site jobs are agreed up front rather than promised blind. Ask anyone else how many site days they are quoting you for.
Every supplier coming from the mainland crosses the Solent to reach you — a booked crossing, a travel day, and a weather window committed to days in advance. We are in East Cowes. We watch the forecast and fly the gap in it, with no crossing to pay for and nothing on the invoice for getting here. It is also what makes a repeat visit affordable: on a monthly stockpile or a progress record, the twelfth flight costs what the first one did.
See it before you buy it
Not a slide deck and not a video. We share our screen, or come to you, and open one of our own completed surveys — real ground, real control, real measurements. You see what a survey actually produces: a section across the site, levels, distances, areas and volumes, one month set against another. Ask us anything as we go. Then you can decide whether any of it is worth paying for.
3 — How we solve it
One flight, four kinds of answer. Which you need depends on the question — a volume, a level, a condition or a picture. We set the flight plan to the deliverable, not the other way round.
High-overlap capture processed into point clouds, meshes and digital twins — including volumetric measurement for stockpiles, cut/fill and earthworks quantities.
POINT CLOUDS · VOLUMETRICS · MESH/OBJ · DIGITAL TWINS
View photogrammetry & 3D →
Topographic survey, orthomosaic mapping and site-progress capture for construction, land and coastal monitoring projects.
ORTHOMOSAIC · VOLUMETRICS · OSGB36 / BNG
View surveying & mapping →
Every roof plane captured close-range from the air, plus a measurable 3D model of the roof — no scaffolding, no ladders, and nothing for your roofer to install to open it.
RGB STILLS · MEASURABLE 3D MODEL · NO ACCESS EQUIPMENT
View roof inspection →
Corporate events, festivals, property launches and marketing shot from the air — graded stills and edited video, delivered ready to publish. Recent work includes Strings Festival at The Woodland Venue, Robin Hill.
4K/10-BIT · RAW STILLS · SUNRISE/GOLDEN HOUR
View event coverage →Not sure which of these answers your question? See the eight briefs we are usually asked for, and what each one is paying for now →
4 — What it costs
Starting points for the five ways clients buy. What you are paying for is what you end up holding — every job quoted fixed once we know the site and what the output has to do.
From£1,950 / project+ VAT
A site you can measure, argue from and build decisions on. For scale: our own survey covered 6.5 hectares in a single flight, with ground control laid and an independent check point held back.
A MEASURABLE DATASET, NOT JUST IMAGERY
From£750 / asset+ VAT
A measurable replica of a building or asset, kept live so your team can go back to it.
A RECORD THAT STAYS LIVE
From£295 / property+ VAT
Evidence to price a repair from, without scaffold or a ladder.
From£295+ VAT
Finished media you can publish, not rushes you have to fix.
From£450 / day+ VAT
The one thing we do sell by the day — because here you are buying flight capability, and the outcome is yours to produce.
ADD PROCESSING & GROUND CONTROL ON REQUEST
Prices exclude VAT, which is how survey work is normally quoted — so you can set ours against anyone else’s like for like. If you are VAT registered you reclaim it, and the real cost to you is the figure shown.
Processing and twelve months’ hosting sit inside that figure, not billed afterwards. And what you get back is not a folder of files waiting for software to open it — it is the survey itself, live. Take a section anywhere across the site, check a level, measure a distance, an area or a volume, set this month against last month. Then send it to a client, an insurer or a planning officer, who opens it in a browser with nothing to install, no GIS or CAD licence, and no seat to buy. That is the part most quotes leave until after you have signed.
Site size and complexity, the deliverables you need, how much ground control the accuracy requires, and whether the work needs repeating over time for progress monitoring. Island work carries no travel charge at all — we are already here. Mainland and South Coast projects carry a £750 minimum to cover the Solent crossing. The line between a digital twin and a full site survey is what the output has to do: a twin is a record of an asset you measure from and return to, while a site survey adds volumetrics, contours, DEM/DTM and CAD exports across the whole site. Several structures on one site are quoted together rather than separately, because the control network and the visit are established once and the second building costs far less than the first. What does not move it is how long we happen to be standing in the field — a survey that takes twenty minutes to fly is worth what the figures are worth, not what twenty minutes is worth. Tell us the site and what the output has to do, and you'll get a fixed quote rather than a range.
Get in touch
Tell us about the site and what the output has to do. You get a fixed price rather than a range, usually within one to two working days — no obligation, and no pressure to book a flight. Or just ask for a demonstration — twenty minutes, and we open a real survey for you before anybody talks about money.
Site location, roughly what you need surveying or shooting, and when. We'll come back with availability and a fixed price, usually within one to two working days.
Prefer not to fill in a form at all? Call, WhatsApp or email us — details on the right.
