Who turns up
One pilot, two aircraft, and a plain answer on what was covered
Why this is flown the way it is
The background is a construction business, Hembury Contracting, run across Devon for years before this. That is not an obvious route into search flying, but it means judging ground, weather and access is not new territory: knowing when conditions actually rule something out rather than just make it awkward, and when a job on a hillside or a coast path needs a plan rather than a guess.
Search flying itself is a narrower discipline than most drone work. It is not about the best photograph or the smoothest shot, it is about covering ground properly and reporting plainly, including saying when something could not be assessed rather than quietly leaving it out.
This business assists searches, it does not run them. Where the police, HM Coastguard or a search coordinator are already on scene, the aircraft flies to their plan. Where a family or a group is searching without official coordination yet, ground gets covered and reported straight back, and 999 is never treated as optional or as something this service replaces.
Everything is flown from Exeter, which puts most of Devon inside an hour and the wider South West inside two. That range covers Dartmoor, Exmoor, the coast and the farmland between them, which is the ground this service actually gets called out to.
On the record
Registrations, kit and cover
CAA registered
Operator ID and Flyer ID held, plus the A2 Certificate of Competency. Paperwork is available on the phone before a flight, including to the police or a search coordinator if it is needed.
Radiometric thermal
A DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced carrying a 640 by 512 thermal camera, strongest at dawn, dusk and after dark, which is when a ground search slows down the most.
100 megapixel visual camera
A DJI Mavic 4 Pro with a Hasselblad camera and 6K video, used for daylight coverage and for legible imagery of anything found, close enough to act on.
Insured with Coverdrone
Full commercial cover for the operation. Certificates go to a search coordinator, a landowner or an event organiser as a matter of course, without anyone having to chase for them.
DJI Mavic 4 Pro
100 megapixel Hasselblad camera and 6K video. Used for the visual pass over the search area and for close, legible imagery of anything found, in daylight and in good low light.
DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced
640 by 512 radiometric thermal camera alongside the visual one. A warm body against cool ground or grass reads clearly at dawn, dusk and after dark, which is when a ground search is hardest and slowest.
How we work
Three things this business will not do
Stand in for 999, the police or the coastguard
A missing person is a 999 matter first. This is a private drone operator assisting alongside the emergency services when it is useful to, never a replacement for them, and never presented as one.
Oversell what thermal can see
Thermal is strong at dawn, dusk and after dark, and weak through tree canopy, deep cover, water and on a hot day once the ground has warmed. Every one of those limits is said plainly before a flight, not discovered afterwards.
Fly a search that will not work
Wrong wind, wrong airspace, a live operation already under way that a new aircraft would complicate: the answer is a straight no or a short delay, not a flight flown for the sake of it.
See how a search is flown
Call now, same day with Drone Search and Rescue
Call with the location and what has happened. Sam Hembury will come back with a fixed price and get airborne as soon as it is safe to.