01
Aerial mapping & photogrammetry
RTK-referenced capture at 80–90% overlap, orthomosaics, digital elevation models and textured meshes for sites, streets and estates.
Pix4D · RealityCapture · Meshroom · QGIS
01 · What we Fly for
Small UAV operations planned around a deliverable: an orthomosaic, a splat you can walk through in a browser, a facade condition report, a show file for a thousand drones. Every mission is flown under a written plan, in class-compliant airspace, with insurance in place.
02
3D Gaussian-splat scans
Drone-to-splat pipelines for city blocks, venues, vehicles and interiors. Web-ready scenes that look like the real place, not a mesh.
3DGS · Luma · Polycam · Blender
03
Facade & infrastructure inspection
Visual and thermal capture with RTK positioning, a written mission plan, overlap rules for facade, roof and orbit passes, and a 3D model for the maintenance team.
DJI Mavic 3T · RTK · thermal
04
Drone-show design
A browser-based show planner for 1,000-drone formations, plus Blender node pipelines and Skybrush exports for the show file.
Show planner · Blender · Skybrush
05
Aerial video & FPV
Cinematic and FPV footage for media, architecture and tourism: fly-throughs, reveals, follow shots. Flying stabilised UAVs since 2019, FPV since 2020.
DJI · FPV goggles · BetaFPV
06
Airspace, compliance & research
London airspace mapping, GVC operations in the Specific category, NHS delivery-corridor and vertiport studies, counter-UAS reference work.
CAA · QGIS · MapLibre · GIS
02 · London 3D scans
Gaussian splats from drone captures, 2024–25. Parks, terraces, the South Bank and the tennis grounds at Wimbledon, each flown as a photogrammetry set and trained into a splat you can orbit in a browser. Older work wraps Bing/Vexcel city photogrammetry with fresh drone passes of London SW1.
03 · Riyadh & Saudi Arabia
2022–23, based in Riyadh. Drone missions for video and photogrammetry, surveys for the Saudi Green Initiative, night aerials of the city, the Edge of the World escarpment, KAFD towers and museum pieces trained into splats. Alongside the flying: Diriyah Season AR filters for Snapchat and Instagram, a 3D visualisation of the NEOM region in Tabuk, the Saudi Media Forum, and a top-10 place out of 250 teams at the Saudi ChatGPT hackathon.
04 · Cebu & the Philippines
Budots Media's home base is Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu. Drone cinematography for tourism, architecture and news since 2015, multi-pilot shoots, and splats of the island's landmarks: the Cebu–Cordova Link Expressway and the Basilica del Santo Niño.
CCLEX bridge, Cebu · Gaussian-splat flyover
05 · Facade Inspection
Mission plan, 15 Austin Friars, London EC2. A written plan for a full-facade condition survey in the City: what flies, how close, how much overlap, and what the client gets back. The same template scales to roofs, estates and plant.
Capture rules
DJI Mavic 3T with RTK module and GNSS base station · visual 8000 × 6000 px plus thermal · 2-second interval shooting.
| Pass | Distance | Overlap |
|---|---|---|
| Facade | 3 m (2 m in recesses) | 90% |
| Roof | 3 m from surface, gimbal tilted for slopes | 90% |
| Orbit | 20–30 m, partial orbits, no overflight of streets | 90% |
| Handheld | 3 m for lower and obstructed facades | 90% |
- DeliverablesCondition and structural-integrity assessment, maintenance list, and a detailed 3D model of the structure.
- Research shelfTower-crane UAV inspection (MDPI Buildings 2024), ultrasonic-thickness NDT drones, Terra Drone's class-approved FPSO hull survey, Mitsui's DroneSnap crane inspection.
06 · Drone-show Planner
A browser app for designing light shows with up to 1,000 drones. Timeline, formations, colour and environment in one screen, then out to Blender node pipelines and Skybrush for the show file. Built through 2025–26 with AI pair-programming, tested against the fails and the classics: Shanghai, Hefei, Ras Al Khaimah, Burj Khalifa on New Year's Eve.
Show planner · formations, colour, timeline
Blender pipeline · scripted formations, 2026
07 · Aircraft, Kit & renders
Mavic 4 Pro and Mavic 3T for survey and inspection, FPV quads for the fast stuff. Renders and 3D models of the fleet come out of Blender: the DJI Dock 3 with the Matrice 4TD, its optics and laser rangefinder, and image-to-3D tests of the Matrice 30. Drag the Mavic below.
Mavic 4 Pro · GLB · 7 MB
Interactive 3D model, loads on request.
Matrice 4TD optics · Blender render, Sept 2026
Laser-scan visualisation · Dock 3 study
Matrice 30 · image-to-3D test
- AircraftDJI Mavic 4 Pro, Mavic 3T (thermal, RTK), FPV quads with DJI goggles and BetaFPV frames.
- ReconstructionRealityCapture, Pix4D, Meshroom, Polycam and Luma for splats, Blender for everything after.
- GIS & airspaceQGIS (certified 2022), MapLibre and Mapbox, CAA AIP and NATS data, KML/GeoPackage workflows.
- Handheld scanners evaluatedFJD Trion S2 / P1, XGRIDS Lixel L2 Pro, Geosun GS-200 (Livox Mid-360 SLAM).
08 · Airspace & research
The desk work behind the flying. Airspace models of London, medical-delivery corridor studies for the NHS, vertiport and eVTOL references, and a counter-UAS library kept up to date from the field.
London airspace digital twin
A MapLibre / 3D-tiles flight planner around Waterloo and the South West Main Line corridor, with CAA restricted areas, heli routes and the Matrice 4D as the planning aircraft.
Medical drone corridors
A 2022 tech-challenge submission on routing NHS deliveries, and a 2025 QGIS study (UK AIP, BVLOS airspace, heliports and vertiports) of the best UK locations for a medical drone-delivery network.
Vertiport & eVTOL studies
Splat of the Skyports vertiport at Canary Wharf, Joby S4 and Archer Midnight models, New York BVLOS route concepts, and a reference set on Dubai, China and UK operators.
C-UAS field notes
Sensor masts, RF direction-finding and EO/IR configurations observed in Riyadh in 2023, plus a catalogue of RF-detection and electronic-warfare equipment for reference.
09 · Licences & credentials
UK CAA General VLOS Certificate, Specific category, multi-rotor. Trained and examined with Commercial Drone Training in April 2025. Operational Authorisations for other categories arranged per project.
- UK CAAGVC, General Visual Line of Sight Certificate · Specific category, multi-rotor · valid to April 2030
- UK CAAOperator ID for commercial use and Flyer ID · Operator ID valid to December 2026
- InsuranceCoverdrone commercial UAV cover, 2025
- EUEASA A2 Certificate of Competence · Poland, 2026 · Polish ULC operator registration
- SitesCSCS card for construction-site access · valid to January 2028
- Other jurisdictionsFAA Part 107, Saudi and UAE GACA and Philippine CAAP permissions arranged per project · Thailand CAAT and NBTC radio licence held to 2025
- GISLearning QGIS certificate, June 2022
- DegreeBSc Computer Games Development, University of the Arts London, LCC, 2005–08
- Manned aviationFAI glider pilot licence (2002) and Polish ALC tourist pilot licence (2005), both lapsed
UK CAA GVC · live
0days of validity left
Apr 2025 · issued28 Apr 2030 · renewal
- 2002FAI glider pilot licence
- 2005ALC tourist pilot licence
- 2008BSc Games Dev, UAL LCC
- 2015Budots Media drone work, PH
- 2019Stabilised UAVs
- 2020FPV
- 2022Learning QGIS certificate
- 2025UK CAA GVC · Coverdrone
- 2026EASA A2 CoC, Poland
- Dec 2026Operator ID renewal
- Jan 2028CSCS card renewal
- Apr 2030GVC renewal
10 · The pilot Bart Sakwerda
Founder of Budots Media, based in London, flying for clients across the UK, the Gulf and Southeast Asia. In the UK the drone work trades as Aerial Data Ops.
Aerial Data Ops · London
Drone pilot and media technologist. Ten years of aerial imaging, 3D scanning and experimental flight projects, with a technical background in games development, systems integration and, lately, AI-assisted post-processing. Flying stabilised UAVs since 2019 and FPV since 2020; Budots Media has been producing drone footage for media, architecture and tourism in the Philippines since 2015.
Locations flown include London, Riyadh and the Saudi desert, Cebu and Palawan, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Thailand. Comfortable with the whole chain: airspace and permissions, mission planning, the flight, then photogrammetry, splats, GIS and the web page the client actually opens.