Does anyone here know roughly how tall power lines are (the masts and the actual lines). My area is littered with the things and I am never sure how high they are. I’m talking about the big cross country lines not the telegraph pole sized ones, like this:
I am trying to plan a Litchi flight and these things go right through the middle of the area I’m after 
There’s no standard height, varies with terrain and no doubt a few other factors.
You need to survey the area to be sure of missing them.
HTH
Steve
Fly under them, as now know the minimum height?
Thanks Steve, that is very inconsiderate of the National Grid, you would have thought they would have at least standardised the things 
Difficult to survey the area as although the flight can be completed VLOS, the area that I’m after does not have any public access. Might have to rethink!
Wow, that’s good to have thanks, bit for me to inwardly digest there…
There are minimum heights in there
Yeah I got the type already 132 kV which is 6.7m, looking at the diagram the tower would be at least 4x higher than the line given how they sag. Not as bad as I thought then. 
I’ve recently contacted the national grid safety people over this, the problem is every pylon setup is slightly different, between the ground height they start from, the length of cable to the next pylon, which of course may be at a different ground height, and the amount of cable sag obviously depends on the air temperature and length. So they simply can’t give you an off-the-shelf answer. They didn’t send me the above work guide, thanks Milkmanchris for doing their job for them!
I think the best answer is take-off nearby, set the gimbal angle to zero degrees and nudge the altitude up until you’re looking horizontally at the lowest point in the wire, note that height and then do the same with the very top of the taller of the two pylons. Take 20%, say, off the first figure and add 20% to the second, and that’s the naughty zone. Compare that with what the guide above says and take the more restrictive of the two.
Thames Estuary down near dartford has some bloody tall ones, wouldn’t even get close to the bottom wire.
I can vouch for the different heights though after my recent experience 
Where I live I’m surrounded by the things ;o(
https://mei.org.uk/files/Industry/Resources/MEISurveyingPylonHeightStudentTrial.pdf
Same here, I suppose given it is quite an industrial area its not surprising. Doing the trigonometry is not really an option sadly due to the elevations involved. This is an image of the site from Google, from the take off point to the target area the height of the land falls away and due to access the only way to measure the distances would be Google Earth or similar:
All those times I questioned my teacher in school on when I would use trig in the real world.
Guess whose laughing now
I googled it and apparenty the average is about 37m for the main grid lines but they do vary.
I have loads around my area, I always set the drone to fly at 250ft AGL & have found it always clears them quite easily, although the footage on the drone makes them look scarily closer than they actually are, trying to fly under them would be a big mistake as iin worst case scenario, if RTH kicked in while directly beneath them, the drone could try to ascend to get to RTH height & then goodbye mavic.
So did I, your Kung Fu must be way better than mine 
but thanks.
What I do when there are on my flight plan is to send the drone near one to measure its height.
Then I work out 50 m higher as my minimum flight altitude and my RTH altitude too.
I also make sure my camera is at horizontal to assess the height of the pylone.
Why power lines aren’t all underground these days amazes me…You quite often hear people complaining when someone wants to erect a single wind turbine, somewhere in the country, but these pylons are far more of an eyesore to the countryside. I would be more than happy for our town to have a single large wind turbine, powering the entire area, that have hundreds of towers littering the countryside.
Just have to check the NATS app to realise just how many there are.
As for flying anywhere near them, if you can stick a florescent tube in the ground and watch it light up, I would imagine they would interfere with the signal, so I would avoid them like the plague.
Who knows one day, in the distant future, they will finally get al the power lines underground and life with a drone will be so much better and the only obstacles of any serious height, will be the odd wind turbine
I have a question though and not being rude but, these pylons have been scattered across the landscape for decades, drones on the other hand have not been around very long at all, especially in the hands of the general public at least, so if the pylons are such a nuisance, why would you buy a drone in the first place, unless you know you will have to travel some distance from where you live, to find any decent space to fly.
You pay the 10x £££ / mile for them, I’m sure they’d oblige.
Of course, that comes with a lower voltage transmission and a resulting greater loss of power and even more expensive electricity.
Either that would be a HUGE turbine, or not a very big area.
And, of course, a neighbourhood willing to be without any electricity on windless days.
Personally I quite like the look of them, but they are not discrete. I think we are just used to power lines and the metal towers don’t stand out as much as the white turbines. My problem with turbines is their impact on wildlife.
Is this true?
