Capture guide · RGB, blade by blade

Wind turbine inspection

The report locates every defect by blade, side and distance from root. That is only possible if the capture is structured the same way — so this guide is mostly about order and consistency, not settings.

Before you fly

Turbine stopped and locked out by the site operator, and confirmed to the pilot in writing.
Rotor parked in a known, recorded position — commonly Y or inverted-Y — and not moved for the duration.
Flight coordinated and permitted with the site operator.
Wind at or below 12–19 km/h for safe flight near the structure. Check this against the site operator’s own limit, which may be lower.
Even light. Bright overcast is ideal; hard sun puts glare on the gelcoat and hides surface defects.

The flight

Four faces on every blade — leading edge, trailing edge, pressure side, suction side. Three blades, four faces: 12 passes per turbine.
Hold a constant standoff with the camera square to the surface. Distance that drifts makes defects impossible to size consistently.
Fly at 3–5 m standoff from the blade surface where the site operator permits it. If their minimum approach distance is greater, fly to theirs and tell us what you used.
Overlap of 30–40% along the blade.
Root to tip in one continuous pass per face. Do not restart mid-blade — position along the blade is how the finding gets located.
Capture nacelle and tower from the same flight.
Keep the frames in blade order and identify which blade is which. If blade 1 cannot be told from blade 3, your client cannot be told where to send the rope team.

What you must tell us

Send these with your imagery. We do not need you to fly to one fixed number — we need to know the numbers you actually flew to, so findings can be sized and assessed correctly. Anything you cannot measure, say so rather than estimating.

Drone and sensor used — make and model of both aircraft and thermal / multispectral payload
Flight height above the surface, and whether it was held constant
Date and time of flight, to the nearest 30 minutes
Ambient air temperature
Wind speed
Relative humidity
Reflected apparent temperature
Measured delta T, if you took one

What makes a set unusable

Blades that cannot be told apart. A defect nobody can locate is a defect nobody can repair.
Rotor moved between passes. The sides stop matching up and the same damage gets counted twice.
Standoff that wanders. Defect sizes become guesses, and a guess is not published as a measurement.
Sun glare across the blade. A washed-out surface hides exactly the cracking the survey was bought to find.

See the wind turbine inspection service → All capture guides

Issued 23 August 2026. Conditions, timing, wind limit and the 12 cm aerial resolution requirement follow ASTM C1153, the published standard for infrared roof moisture surveys. If your site operator imposes stricter limits than anything below, follow theirs and tell us what you used.