One of the most time-consuming parts of managing a large commercial UAS project isn’t the flying — it’s the daily overhead of keeping your site list current. Geocoding new addresses. Pulling weather for 80 remaining sites. Generating a map your crew can actually use in the field. Doing it all again the next morning because conditions changed overnight.
FlightDeck’s 3-Phase Update collapses that workflow into a single click. Here’s exactly what it does and why it matters for professional UAS operations.
What the 3-Phase Update Is
The 3-Phase Update is the core processing engine of FlightDeck. It runs against your master project data file — the central record containing every site in your current project — and executes three sequential operations automatically.
You click run. FlightDeck does the rest.
Phase 1: Geocode
Every site in your project needs accurate GPS coordinates to function in any downstream workflow: airspace checking, weather retrieval, map generation, KML export. When you import sites from a client spreadsheet, many will have only a street address — or sometimes just a Site ID and a tower type. Geocoding converts those addresses into precise coordinates.
FlightDeck reads every site that lacks confirmed GPS coordinates and sends the address field to the OpenCage Geocoding API. The resulting latitude/longitude is written directly back to your master record. New sites added from a project import are geocoded and ready to fly within seconds of the update completing.
The system is smart about what it processes: existing complete records are skipped. Only new or incomplete entries are touched, so running the update multiple times per day doesn’t duplicate work or overwrite good data.
Phase 2: Weather
For every site scheduled but not yet flown, FlightDeck queries OpenWeatherMap and retrieves current conditions plus a 5-day forecast. Seven data points per site, per day:
- Temperature
- Wind speed and gusts
- Wind direction
- Cloud cover and sky conditions
- Visibility
- Precipitation probability
All of this is written to your master record automatically. Your entire project’s weather picture updates in one pass.
The color-coded forecast display gives you the field-ready view immediately: green dot means clear and favorable, red means rain, blue means snow or ice, gray means overcast. At a glance, across every remaining site, you see which days and which locations are flyable — before you brief your crew, before you load the trucks, before anyone drives anywhere.
Phase 3: Google Maps Report
The final phase generates a shareable Google Maps pin layer showing every site in your project, color-coded by flight status:
- Scheduled but not flown
- Flown and awaiting upload
- Uploaded and complete
- Flagged or problematic
The output is a formatted file you import as a layer into Google My Maps. Share the link with your crew chief, your project manager, or your client. Anyone with the link can see exactly where every site stands — no calls asking for status updates, no manual spreadsheet reports.
Update the layer daily by replacing it with a fresh export. Your crew is always looking at current status without any manual formatting or data entry.
What This Replaces
Before FlightDeck, running this workflow manually meant: opening a geocoding tool or Google Maps for each new site, pulling up a weather app for each location, manually updating a spreadsheet, generating a map in some external tool, and sending it out. For 20 sites that’s an hour. For 150 sites, it’s most of a morning.
FlightDeck does all of it in the time it takes you to pour a second cup of coffee.
Download the free 30-day trial and run your first 3-Phase Update. Load your site list, click run, and see what an hour of daily admin work looks like when it takes 20 seconds or less.