Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems are described that determine when to automatically transfer telemetry data from a UAV to a ground-based computing device by monitoring one or more context states of the UAV. In some examples, a UAV system includes a UAV; a ground-based computing device; and processing circuitry configured to acquire data from one or more sensors on the UAV; store the data at a local storage device on the UAV; maintain a state machine configured to monitor one or more context states of the UAV system; determine, based on the one or more context states, that a current situation of the UAV system meets minimum criteria for transferring the data from the UAV to the ground-based computing device; and automatically transfer, based on the determination, the data from the UAV to the ground-based computing device.