Drone flies 77 miles nonstop in Texas, live-streaming video

Infrastructure inspections are a routine task for businesses like Valmont Industries. But a recent mission from Valmont is making headlines because it saw the company flying a gas-electric hybrid drone nonstop for 77 miles! The drone flew for almost three hours, from Childress to Aspermont in Texas, inspecting vital infrastructure like power lines, railroads, bridges, and more.

As DroneDJ reported recently, Valmont has received a Part 107 Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly its drones across the United States. The company leveraged a Harris Aerial H6E drone equipped with a Sony A7RM5 camera for the landmark mission.

According to Valmont, using a conventional inspection method such as helicopters would have taken thrice as long. Not only was the drone inspection significantly faster, but it was also more fuel efficient. The mission was completed using less than two gallons of fuel. And even…