SFCG Stepped-Frequency GPR

Drone Ground Penetrating Radar.

Drone-mounted GPR for archaeology, underground utilities on soft ground, and forensic investigation — at survey coverage rates that wheeled systems cannot match.

“Every drone pilot on this network is personally vetted by me — insurance, qualifications, flight history.”

Peter Leslie · Founder & GVC Drone Pilot

Trusted by site managers & agencies across the UK

Need a subsurface survey?

Post your details to compare quotes from drone-GPR specialists.

Trial trenches are slow, destructive, and often miss.

Field archaeologists, utility surveyors, and forensic teams need non-invasive subsurface data where wheeled GPR cannot reach or trenching is out of the question.

Trial-Trenching Is Expensive

Evaluation trenching for a standard commercial site can burn weeks and five-figure fees, and still sample only a small percentage of the footprint. Drone GPR covers the whole site non-invasively, so trenches can be targeted where features actually exist.

Wheeled GPR Can't Reach

Saturated peatland, dense scrub, steep scree, or hazardous brownfield surfaces are all no-go for a push-cart GPR. An airborne platform maintains consistent antenna-to-ground standoff across terrain wheels cannot cross.

PAS 128 Gaps in Soft Ground

PAS 128 utility surveys falter on soft ground, verges, and undeveloped corridors where EML becomes noisy. Airborne GPR returns a continuous dielectric profile across the whole alignment, ideal for pre-construction utility risk.

Drone GPR needs a specialist interpreter, not a generalist mapper.

By Peter Leslie, Founder & GVC Drone Pilot

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Current drone-mounted GPR platforms (SPH Engineering Radar Payload, COBRA SE-70 and similar) use stepped-frequency continuous-wave radar across 400 MHz–1.6 GHz, trading depth for resolution. Selecting the right frequency band is the first specialist decision.

Penetration is soil-conductivity dependent — wet clay attenuates fast, dry sand is almost perfect. Without a conductivity sense-check, the quoted depth range is meaningless. And raw B-scans are not self-explanatory: interpretation needs a trained geophysicist, not a drone operator who has watched a webinar.

Every GPR survey on this network is flown by drone operators running validated payloads and partnered with a qualified interpreter, so the slice-maps and depth logs you receive are genuinely defensible.

Geophysics-Backed Teams

SFCG GPR & Qualified Interpretation

Subsurface outputs you can hand to a specifier.

Our network operators deliver interpreted GPR products ready for archaeologists, utility designers, and police search advisors.

Subsurface Slice-Maps

Time-slice horizontal images at user-selected depths, showing dielectric contrasts indicative of foundations, ditches, pits, or utilities. Delivered as geo-referenced GeoTIFFs alongside interpreted vector features.

Feature Depth Logs

Per-anomaly depth estimates with estimated confidence, derived from validated soil-velocity assumptions and verification points. Essential for archaeological mitigation design and safe-dig utility clearance.

CAD Overlays

Interpreted subsurface features supplied as DWG/DXF layers referenced to site coordinate systems, ready to drop under architects' and engineers' plans for design-stage de-risking.

Book your drone GPR survey in 3 steps.

We route your brief to drone-GPR drone operators partnered with qualified interpreters.

Describe the Site

Tell us the site, target features, expected depth range, soil type, and the decision you need to support (archaeological mitigation, utility clearance, forensic search).

Compare GPR Teams

We route your brief to drone operators running appropriate frequency bands with geophysics interpretation in-house or partnered. Receive competitive quotes with deliverable and methodology detail.

Fly & Interpret

Your drone operator handles airspace, ground-truth validation, and processing, then delivers interpreted slice-maps, depth logs, and CAD overlays via secure cloud link.

Start Your Project Brief

Trusted across archaeology, utilities, and forensic search.

See how field archaeologists, utility surveyors, and police search advisors use drone GPR through our network.

"On a 4 ha prehistoric landscape the drone GPR slice-maps flagged pit alignments and a possible enclosure ditch we would never have caught with geophysics alone. The mitigation strategy was far better targeted as a result."

Dr Alistair Whitmore

Field Archaeologist, Wessex Archaeology, Salisbury

"We needed utility clearance across a soft-ground verge alignment where our EML kit was struggling. The drone GPR team picked up a previously unrecorded 450mm main and saved our contractor a strike that would have run into six figures."

Bethan Lloyd

Utility Survey Engineer, Cardiff

"Drone-deployed GPR gave us rapid coverage across a large wooded search area that would have taken us days to push-cart. The interpreter flagged three priority anomalies that were then investigated manually. Exactly how remote sensing should support a ground search."

DI Sarah Vickery

Forensic Search Advisor, West Midlands Police (retired)

Drone GPR FAQ

Technical answers on method selection, depth, and PAS 128 compliance.

GPR vs magnetometry — which picks up what?

Magnetometry detects ferrous and fired-clay features through magnetic susceptibility contrast — good for hearths, kilns, and large ferrous utilities. GPR detects dielectric contrast — good for walls, voids, pits, non-ferrous utilities, and stratigraphic layering. The two methods complement each other and are often flown in combination on the same site.

How deep does drone GPR penetrate?

Typical penetration is 0.5–4 m, strongly dependent on soil conductivity. Dry sand and chalk return the best depths; wet clay and saline soils attenuate rapidly. The drone operator will calibrate a velocity estimate on site before committing to a depth budget, and the final report declares the achieved penetration per area rather than promising a blanket number.

Can you combine GPR with multispectral/thermal for archaeology?

Yes — hybrid prospection is standard best practice. Multispectral imagery flags crop and soil marks on the surface, thermal captures moisture anomalies over subsurface features at dawn or dusk, and GPR adds the subsurface depth dimension. Together they triage the site for targeted evaluation trenching far more reliably than any single method alone.

Do you deliver PAS 128-compliant utility outputs?

Yes. Network operators running drone GPR alongside ground-based EML and GPR can deliver PAS 128 Quality Level B (type B-2 or B-1 depending on verification), with the drone component extending coverage across soft ground that push-cart systems cannot access. Outputs are supplied in the PAS 128 format with associated utility-record attributes.