Drone flight log template

What this is about

Aerial work sits inside a regulated frame: the operator is registered, the remote pilot holds a competence proof for the category being flown, and the flight happens in airspace that either permits it or required a clearance. None of that is visible after the fact unless someone wrote it down per flight. Beyond compliance, the log is also maintenance history — battery cycles, firmware state, the hard landing in the field that nobody mentioned. Productions usually discover which of the two purposes matters more only once a client asks for documentation or a pack starts swelling.

A template is the starting point, not the goal: once it has been filled in by hand twice, it is worth asking whether the document should come out of the plan instead.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• One line per flight with date, location, take-off and landing time, duration and the battery set used — not one line per shooting day
• Remote pilot by name with the competence proof for the category flown, plus the operator registration number the aircraft is marked with
• Aircraft identity: model, serial number and the firmware state at the time, because a mid-shoot update changes behaviour
• The permission basis for that flight: category, any clearance obtained, and the reference number or contact who granted it
• Conditions and incidents: wind, visibility, obstacles, loss of link, near misses and hard landings, logged even when nothing broke

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Before the shooting day, enter the planned flights with location, purpose and the airspace check you ran, including who you contacted.
2. Attach the permission documents to the log entry rather than to an email, so pilot and production office look at the same evidence.
3. Log take-off and landing times as they happen; a stopwatch entry after the fact is a guess dressed as a record.
4. Note conditions at the time of flight — wind, gusts, visibility, satellite reception, people and obstacles in the area.
5. Record every irregularity immediately, however minor, and mark whether the aircraft was inspected before the next flight.
6. Track battery cycles per pack in the same document and retire packs on their own history, not on how they feel that morning.
7. Keep the log with the aircraft on location and archive a copy with the project files at wrap.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Filling the whole week in on Friday, which produces round numbers, missing incidents and an internally inconsistent record
• Documenting the permission but not the airspace check, so nobody can show what the situation looked like before take-off
• No battery history, which means a pack with the most cycles keeps getting picked because it happens to be on top of the case

With TillyGen

TillyGen marks the shots that need aerial work during breakdown, so the flight log opens per shooting day with the planned flights, location and purpose already attached to the right scenes.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.