About South Summit Drone Services

Andy Perry, owner and pilot

South Summit Drone Services is a veteran-owned company, owned and operated by Andy Perry, an FAA Part 107 certified remote pilot based in the Shoals, serving North Alabama and Southern Tennessee. The company is fully insured and works with landowners, farmers, hunting clubs, developers, contractors, land surveyors, engineers, and banks throughout the region.

A note from Andy

I live and work right here in the Shoals. Land and hunting have always been part of life around here, and I know what a piece of ground means to the family that owns it, whether it is a farm that has been passed down, a hunting tract you have waited years to buy, or a job site your whole business is riding on. That is the ground I want to help you understand.

My road to drones started on the flight line. I served as an Army aviation helicopter crew chief and as an aircraft structural technician in the U.S. Air Force, and I am an A&P (airframe and powerplant) mechanic. I went from turning wrenches on military aircraft to flying precision drone missions, and the habits came with me: preflight checklists, maintenance done by the book, respect for weather and airspace, and no shortcuts on safety. Your property gets the same care I learned working on aircraft that people’s lives depended on.

Before I started South Summit, I spent about 18 years in professional sales, building client relationships. What that taught me is simple: people remember whether you answered the phone, told them the truth, and showed up when you said you would. I run this company the same way. You get a clear proposal, a straight answer about what a flight can and cannot tell you, deliverables on the date I promise, and follow-through after the files are handed over.

I believe in doing work I would be proud to put my name on, and in treating every client the way I would want my own family treated. I am grateful for every landowner, builder, and business that trusts me with their property, and I do not take that lightly.

Built around your project

Each job starts with a conversation about what you need to know, then a flight plan built for your ground, and ends with clean, clearly labeled deliverables you can use right away. I handle every step personally, from planning to the final map. When you call, you talk with the person who plans and flies your job, and your results live in a private client portal you can come back to every season.

For surveyors, engineers, and GIS teams, that means mapping-grade data delivered in formats you can drop straight into your workflow: orthomosaics and DSM/DTM surfaces as GeoTIFF, classified LAS/LAZ point clouds, and CAD-ready contours. For lenders, it means dated site imagery for collateral documentation and construction draw verification, available through the same client portal. I am not a licensed surveyor, and drone mapping complements, but does not replace, the work of one. When your project needs a licensed surveyor, I am glad to work alongside yours.

See what I fly for: thermal deer and hog census, drone LiDAR topographic mapping, and earthwork and stockpile volumes.

Credentials

• U.S. military veteran: Army aviation helicopter crew chief and U.S. Air Force aircraft structural technician
• A&P (airframe and powerplant) mechanic
• FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate
• Commercially insured; certificate of insurance available on request
• Based in the Shoals, serving North Alabama and Southern Tennessee

Equipment

• DJI Matrice 400 (M400)Enterprise drone that carries our LiDAR sensor on mapping flights.
• DJI Zenmuse L3 LiDARLiDAR sensor for bare-earth DTM under tree cover, classified point clouds, and contours.
• DJI Matrice 4EMapping aircraft for orthomosaics, photogrammetry, 3D models, site progress, and as-built documentation.
• DJI Matrice 4TThermal aircraft for deer and hog census work and other thermal imaging.
• DJI D-RTK 3 GNSS base stationRTK positioning on every flight, for repeatable, centimeter-level data.