Our Story

The foundation for California Drone LiDAR was poured in early 2020 by father-son team Tim and Tom Massey, when the pandemic slowed Tim's construction and cabinet making business and shuttered Tom's extraordinary helicopter experience companies in Maine and Southern California.

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Pivoting and using their industry expertise, they cofounded, Active Intelligence Drove Services, now by leaps and bounds, the most cutting edge, accurate and innovative drone service provider in the Northeast.

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Nearly 6 years and two drone tool inventions later they have been contracted by Universities, Municipalities, Walmart, Nationwide Construction Firms, Environmental Agencies, River Restoration Experts, Land Trusts, Private Home Owners, PistenBully, Paper Mills and dozens of Surveying and Engineering firms working in 10 different states.

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Besides for Tom's love affair with California, the catalyst for opening a fourth branch and the first in SoCal was the excellence with which they LiDAR mapped Sunday River Ski Resort in Maine and Loon Ski Resort in New Hampshire for integrating high-accuracy terrain data into PistenBully's snowcat ski hill grooming machine's for real-time snow depth awareness and precision snow management.

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When complete PistenBully said, "Oh my God, this is the best data, how fast can you get to Lake Tahoe before snow falls?"

 

Tom hopped in the kitted out van, Starlink internet, solar-power, engine charging power with drone equipment galore and drove straight across the country.

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Ski Resorts Mount Rose in Nevada and Sugar Bowl in California are nestled above 8000'ft overlooking majestic Lake Tahoe making them extremely difficult to capture not only because the the rugged terrain and steep elevation changes, but thin air and wild weather patterns.

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Over the course of a week, jetting back and forth back and forth between the two ski mountains to lay ground control targets, set up base stations and fly from different mountain facades to keep telemetric connection in between ever-challenging weather windows, taking hundreds of gps checkpoints across the hills, and picking up all the targets, many snowed on by the end was a feat only California Drone LiDAR has the expertise and endurance to complete.

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How can we take your project to the next level?

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Let’s get to work,

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 - Tom, Tim, & The Team

 

(760) 237-0230  |  tom@californialidar.com