PUBLIC INTEREST AND HOW THE PUBLIC WILL BENEFIT

This exemption request will permit Shay Moody to operate UASs commercially for the purpose 

of aerial inspection, videography, photography, aerial mapping, and agriculture assessment. I 

will provide a service that is beneficial to industries, organizations, and farmers that are seeking 

to use UASs for these purposes with a legal and safe option. This will benefit the public with the 

controlled operation of UASs and increase integration into the NAS.

The integration of UASs into the NAS will not only replace traditionally more expensive options, 

it will enable work to be done and decisions to be made in ways that were simply impossible to 

do previously. The commercial deployment of small unmanned aircraft systems offers the 

public a new, highly efficient and relatively inexpensive platform for collecting, analyzing, and 

utilizing data and photographic/video imagery.

The UASs utilized will all be battery-powered and serves as a safe, efficient, and economical 

alternative to the manned aircraft traditionally utilized to obtain aerial imagery. A grant of 

exemption would allow Shay Moody to contribute to the reduction of manned aircraft needed 

to perform the aerial acquisition of data, video, and photographic content and subsequently 

reduce the volume of manned aircraft in the NAS.

Conducting aerial acquisitions with UASs, instead of manned aircraft, will greatly benefit the 

public by drastically reducing the levels of air and noise pollution generated during traditional 

aerial video and still photography flight operations. By using battery power and electric motors, 

UASs produce no air pollution, and is the most viable environmentally conscious alternative to 

the cabin class, six cylinder internal combustion engine aircraft that are typically utilized for 

aerial video and photography, while burning approximately 20-30 gallons per hour of leaded 

aviation gasoline. The UASs, while reducing the carbon footprint of aerial acquisitions also 

sharply reduces noise pollution, as they are propelled by battery powered electric motors 

rather than an internal combustion engine.

By using UASs to perform aerial acquisitions, the substantial risk to life and property in the air 

and on the ground, which is usually associated with traditional manned aircraft flight 

operations, will be substantially reduced or completely eliminated. The UASs all weigh less than 

10 pounds and have less physical potential for collateral damage to life and property on the 

ground and in the air compared to the manned aircraft that typically conduct similar operations 

(weighing approximately 6,000 pounds with a wingspan of approximately 42 feet, a length of 34 

feet, and a fuel capacity of 180 gallons.

Previously, such services as high-resolution digital aerial acquisitions were limited and 

affordable to a relatively small group of agencies, companies, and organizations with significant 

operating capital. The granting of this exemption will enable Shay Moody to change this by 

deploying his UASs in ways that make aerial photography and other UAS services accessible and 

affordable to a significantly larger portion of individuals, organizations, and businesses. The 
many new forms of aerial content would have immediate and direct benefits to service 

providers, business owners, consumers, and farmers.

The use of UASs will allow Shay Moody to plan and implement an aerial agricultural program 

using precision agricultural mapping services and high resolution aerial imagery in order to 

assist farmers in management decision-making to increase production and crop-scouting 

efficiency.

Often times, diseases or insects begin deteriorating plant health within one part of a field and 

spread over time. If an agronomist is only able to see a few areas of a field, the chances of 

overlooking a major problem are incredibly high, but if the entire field can be depicted from an 

UAS, plant health issues can be fixed before they expand, reducing yield loss.

Every stressful situation that a plant encounters reduces crop yield. By using a UAS, Shay 

Moody will be able to assist agronomists to eliminate and reduce plant stress by implementing 

crop protection programs to make their customers more profitable. By using real-time aerial 

imagery to see the onset and occurrence of plant stresses, Shay Moody can better help farmers 

maintain a high yield (more production), and in turn, high profitability, in a safe and efficient 

manner. The end goal would be to provide the maps produced from aerial imagery to qualified 

personnel to create variable-rate prescriptions using an agronomic mapping program. The 

prescriptions can then be loaded into one of the cooperative’s fertilizer spreaders so that 

fertilizer is applied to the correct areas at the proper rate.

Overall, UAV technology offers a substantial economic benefit to the agricultural industry. With 

the use of UASs, Shay Moody would be able to save farmers and agronomists a great deal of 

time scouting fields. Furthermore, due to the fact that aerial images are geo-referenced, 

agronomists can pinpoint a problem area on a map and then walk or drive directly to that area 

to see what issues are happening and potentially correct them.

Along with efficiency, UAS technology offers the potential for maintaining high yields. This is 

not only important from a financial standpoint for growers, but from a production standpoint. 

With the world population continuously increasing, it is essential that farmers be able to 

maintain higher yields in order to continue to feed a hungry planet and to keep up with the 

world demand for high quality food and fuel products.