Whanganui teenager started Quinn's Aerial Services at age 14

Quinn Pedley started his business Quinn's Aerial Services when he was 14 years old. Photo / Supplied

When a Whanganui 14-year-old saw the limitless potential of drones, he decided to start his own business.

Quinn Pedley, now 16, has been a certified drone operator and business owner for two years.

His first professional filming event was in 2020 at the CRNZ Canoe Sprint Nationals in Karapiro, where his brother was competing.

"The footage came out excellent so they got me back for their sequel events, and so it went on from there."

That year, Pedley also used his drones to film the New Zealand Jetsprint Championship at the Shelterview Jet Sprint Track in Whanganui.

As a child, Pedley had a remote-controlled helicopter toy.

"And when drones came about, I got one and I was hooked," he said.

"I first mastered the toy drone, then got a high-scale professional drone around two years ago."

Pedley said when he first started using drones they were fully manual, which gave him an advantage.

"Today's drones have GPS and vision sensors, which are cameras that look at the ground, and their hovering is really stable."

In the last two years, Pedley had been the drone operator filming for multiple television productions, having worked for Sky TV and TVNZ, mostly filming water-based events, he said.

"At these productions, they usually have three ground cameras and a drone, so the drone footage turns into one of the things you'll see on TV."

He now owns two drones, with his newer drone equipped with ground sensors and multiple high-definition cameras.

Pedley also has experience in 2D and 3D mapping.

"Say you want a map of your house. The drone can fly over your house on a special route taking hundreds of top-down photos, then the images are stitched together into a 3D model.

"The mapping includes elevation measurements and volume measurements."

He said it was a recent addition to what he offered, but a rapidly expanding industry.

"The mapping can be used for progress reports and construction sites, real-estate mapping.

"The applications are endless."

Quinn Pedley and the two drones he uses for his business. Photo / Bevan Conley

Pedley said he started Quinn's Aerial Services because he saw the potential of what drones could offer.

"Industries like power pole specialists have to hire a bucket truck just to inspect one power pole, and that's a big cost.

"Whereas a drone can fly up and use a zoom camera. You can see everything so much safer, faster and more efficiently than a bucket truck."

He said using drones for those sorts of jobs was increasingly common.

"They can also be used for things like search and rescue.

"A helicopter takes around half an hour to get here after it gets called, but drones can fly straight away," Pedley said.

"Some of the drones have thermal imaging cameras, which can help save lives."

He said he had used his drones in a practice search and rescue operation for Surf Life Saving Whanganui.

"A few months ago we sent a person out in the ocean at Kai Iwi beach and I sent the drone out to see if I could spot them - all safely done, of course - and the drone was able to spot them very quickly."

He said there were many rules and regulations around flying drones that drone owners often didn't know about.

These included getting permission from land owners regarding where the drone would be flying, permission from any airport within 4 kilometres of where the drone would be flying, keeping the drone within eyeshot, and not flying more than 120 metres above the ground.

Pedley is a certified drone operator which, assuming he has permission, allows him to fly drones within 4km of an airport.

To get the certification, he had to do a course through a Civil Aviation Authority-approved vendor in Auckland, which included health and safety training, complex situation training, a theory test and a practical test.

"It makes sure you have the knowledge of operating drones safely, how to communicate with airports, etc."

He said he was homeschooled and is currently finishing Years 11 and 12.

"Homeschooling gives me more flexibility to do things like work on the drone business."

In September, Pedley was contacted to help save a cat stuck in a poisonous palm tree for more than two weeks.

"When I was contacted to help out with that, I didn't have to pull out of school, and I just came home afterwards and finished my school work."

Pedley's mum Suhair Pedley said she was proud of him.

"It [the business] is something he will always have," she said.

"And homeschooling gives him the opportunity to do research, look around and see what's available for him.

"We did encourage him because it's a good opportunity."

Once he finishes school, Pedley is thinking about pursuing airline piloting.

"But I'll have to see where the next few years take me."

He said it depended on how his business went and where drone technology went.

"I think lots of drone technology will be automated, like package deliveries, which is already happening in the UK."