A 23-year-old from East Lancashire has graduated and become one of the youngest female commercial drone pilots in the country.
Olivia Cambridge qualified after an 18-month training programme and on-the-job mentoring at Networx3 UAV and joins the commercial director, Caroline Earnshaw, also a commercial drone pilot, on the roster for client work – from inspecting oil pipelines to surveying wind farms.
Olivia joined the firm after completing her photography degree at Falmouth University in 2020.
She said: “It’s completely different to my work as a photographer but you can still be really creative when you fly a drone - it’s a whole new world.
“There’s a lot to it – you don’t just stick a drone up in the air and hope for the best because you need to know all about different airspaces, where you can and can’t fly and weather conditions etc.
"A lot of thought goes into flying a drone before you actually fly a drone.”
One of Olivia’s first jobs was capturing the magic of steam at award-winning Embsay and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway, which runs through the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.
She deployed the firm’s modern drone technology to capture video of the 134-year-old preserved railway line from the air using the DJI Matrice 30T – which includes broadcast quality video, thermal imaging and high-definition cameras which can pick up an image the size of a postage stamp from a kilometre away.
Olivia’s training to be awarded her pilot’s licence included exams covering drone legislation, risk assessments and health and safety coupled with flying logs and hours of observations of drone flights.
Olivia and Caroline are part of a small but growing cohort of women pilots using their flying skills in the business, media and humanitarian sectors.
The trailblazing duo are part of a six-strong team of commercial drone pilots at Networx3 UAV who use the company’s fleet of six professional quality drones to survey land, protect people by inspecting potentially hazardous terrain, provide ecology reports and complete security sweeps.
Caroline said: “I love being a commercial drone pilot but, as a female, I’m used to being something of a rarity in a male-dominated industry.
“That’s one of the reasons why It’s great to have Olivia on board as our latest fully qualified commercial pilot.
"We’re hoping to inspire more and more women to get involved in this growing and exciting sector.”
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