Bringing a Bird’s-Eye View to You

“Because realtors couldn’t have open houses during that time in the pandemic, people were starting to use drones to create house tours,” said Spitser. “A friend learned how to fly drones, and we got all the proper certifications and tested out the idea in our houses. From there, we blasted samples to a bunch of realtors, and saw pretty quickly that this idea was sticking.”

What started as residential real estate home tours has grown to a business projected to do more than $1 million in revenue this year, including– as their name implies– epic first person footage of luxury hotel resorts like the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines and the W Hotel in Los Angeles, as well as office buildings, manufacturing facilities and large commercial real estate sites including NuVasive and Tysons Corner Center mall. Spitser and Reuter are also hoping that this contract with the Padres is just their first foray into the world of live sports streaming.

“This year, we’re looking to expand our business into more live streaming of sports, and bigger projects like car commercials, and more hotel and resort videography,” said Reuter.

To capture these stunning scenes, the Epic Drone Tour team uses the latest GoPro cameras hooked up to a first person view drone– much smaller than the typical drone you might see someone flying at the beach. 

“We buy the drone frame, but everything from there is custom built,” said Spitser. “We use a special stripped down motor and camera to make the whole device extra lightweight so we can maximize battery life–it’s a very customized kit.”

“Essentially we have the air units, the motors, and then the propellers and everything else is chosen by the pilots for a best-case-fit for the job,” added Reuter. “They have spent a lot of time figuring out the best pitch for the props, and stripping down the camera. Normally the GoPro is pretty large, and they go and strip it down so it’s just a camera, and add a little fan for cooling. We’ve also found a way to power the camera with the same batteries powering the drone. For some of the bigger projects we’re getting into, we’re experimenting with drones with 10-inch propellers and attaching a Gimbal below the drone.”

Capturing the Padres game with their unique perspective was an even bigger challenge. Aside from the FAA and MLB regulations they had to adhere to, the team had to find a way to broadcast an hours-long game using a drone with a 15 to 20-minute battery life. 

“Ten times or so throughout the game, we were landing and then swapping batteries and then getting back up in the air,” said Reuter. “So there's a lot of communication between the ground crew and the pilot, and then the pilot with the broadcast crew, just making sure that when we're getting into the lower side of the battery we can swap it out at a time when they're not gonna be needing our footage.”

The footage was aired on the jumbotron at Petco Park, as well as on the Padres Network on the MLB. 

From UC San Diego to the big screen 

Reuter said the skills he learned as a mechanical engineering student at the Jacobs School of Engineering, coupled with leadership skills developed as an athlete on the swim team, come into play every day as COO of Epic Drone Tours. In particular, the mechanical engineering senior design class was a unique opportunity to get hands-on experience working with a team toward a technical goal. 

“The senior design project I worked on was developing pull up bars that could measure the force being applied by each arm,” he said. “We had a group of five of us students working on that, and we were each good at different things. We were able to come together to develop a working prototype by utilizing the skills each of us had.”

Spitser added that the relationships built at UC San Diego, particularly through the swim team, and the ability to have creative outlets while earning a degree, prepared him to start and manage a business. 

“I credit the foundational learning, and my ability to foster my creativity, to my time at UC San Diego,” Spitser said. 

While their days are full running a rapidly growing company, the duo still finds time to swim at Canyonview Pool, back where it all began.