Drone services in Okehampton

Dartmoor forces Atlantic air upwards immediately south of the town, and the result is high rainfall, frequent driving rain and roofs that stay wet for long periods. Okehampton is the hardest weather environment in this coverage area and it is not close.

That decides both the survey findings and the flying. Growth on slate is heavy, mortar softens, and granite-bedded ridges on the older stock take a battering. On the flying side, workable windows are fewer and shorter than anywhere else on the list, so slots here stay provisional until the forecast firms up.

None of that means work does not happen. It means the plan allows for movement, and a job booked on a fixed date regardless of weather would produce photographs nobody could use.

Snow and hail come into it as well at this altitude, and both find the weaknesses that rain alone would leave alone for another year. A ridge that is merely loose in September can be off by March.

The surrounding parishes carry scattered moorland farms and longhouses, with corrugated metal on the working buildings and slate on the houses. Farm roofs are large, low value per square metre and rarely inspected, which is why the first sign of a problem is usually water over machinery.

A single flight covering a whole yard, every shed roof, the gutters between them and the state of the tracks, is a proportionate answer to a job that would otherwise involve somebody walking a roof they should not be on.

Solar arrays on farm buildings are increasingly part of the picture too. Panels make a roof harder to inspect from the ground and easier to inspect from above, and the fixings and flashings around an array are exactly where water tends to find a way in.

Dartmoor carries military danger areas and a good deal of restricted ground, and their status changes according to what is happening on the ranges. Anything to the south of the town gets checked properly before a price is agreed, because the answer varies from one day to the next.

Open ground work here is real work rather than a novelty: land parcels, access tracks, drainage on rough grazing, and the state of walls and boundaries across ground that takes a long time to walk.

The centre itself is granite and slate with Victorian terraces around it, and a large stock of post-war housing beyond, which produces the ordinary run of ridge, verge and gutter findings a wet climate accelerates.

The castle, Meldon and the moor edge also bring occasional landscape and heritage picture work, where the useful thing is the relationship between a structure and the ground it stands on rather than a detail of the building.

Because the weather is the binding constraint, it pays to be flexible about the day rather than the week. Owners here understand that better than most, which makes scheduling easier than the forecast would suggest.