A drone startup with ties to Richmond has been cleared for takeoff by Uncle Sam.

DividedSky Aerial Solutions last month received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, for commercial use.

The 1-year-old company offers a fleet of 10 UAVs to take photos and videos for customers looking for an eye-catching way to promote their businesses.

“Real estate agents love it,” said Todd Boward, who owns the company with fellow drone enthusiasts Mikey Thompson, Rob Love, Gavin Thompson and Chris Morris. “It’s even better than a helicopter because you can get closer.”

DividedSky is one of 846 entities nationwide that can legally fly UAVs for money-making purposes in the national airspace.

The eight-person company has done 17 jobs since becoming FAA-certified. Thompson, Thompson and Love are based in Richmond and have landed local clients including Prologue Systems, Berg Construction, and Reynolds Construction and Commercial Roofing. Other clients have been Hampton, Johns Hopkins and Christopher Newport universities.

They use GoPro cameras or high-end DSLR cameras attached to the vehicles to capture the aerial footage. In addition to grabbing high-definition shots, DividedSky can make three-dimensional models of sites, measure the health of a farmer’s crops using special lenses and do risk assessment for disaster-relief efforts.

Rates for DividedSky’s services can be as low as $500 an hour, which produces about 50 high-resolution images, to as much as $5,000 if editing services are included.

The five owners, who each have full-time jobs apart from DividedSky, spent just over $100,000 to launch the company. The bulk of the money went toward the UAVs and software. The vehicles range in price from $1,000 to $5,000 and were either custom built in Virginia or purchased on Amazon. They are insured and can fly for only 15 minutes before they need to have their batteries recharged.

Startup costs and FAA certification weren’t the only challenges for the company. There’s also Mother Nature to contend with.

“You only have so many hours you can fly in a year based on weather,” Boward said.

That means the best way to grow the business is to have as many UAVs in the air as possible during nice weather. Boward said he wants to steadily hire more UAV operators before investing in more vehicles.

Boward said it’s easy for anyone to buy a UAV and start making money off of it without proper training. He supports more regulations for the vehicles because of what he sees as a lot of reckless usage going on.

To get federally certified, the group had to submit a proposal to the FAA explaining how it would use the airspace and how it would do so safely. The FAA requires that DividedSky go through pre- and post-flight checklists every time it takes a vehicle in the air.

He said DividedSky sends three people to each of its jobs: one to operate the UAV, one to assist the main operator and a third to keep an eye out for any safety hazards.

“The other big barrier to this whole thing is the public’s concept of using these things,” Boward said. “People think these things are toys.”