Drone Recommendation?

After loosing my Blade Chroma

Blade

in a dam last week, I am in the market for a new drone.

Anyone willing to share their experiences with drones?

Please tell me what brand you use, what you use it for, how long you had it…

Edit: I made a few Vids, took it around the dam a couple of times, changed the battery, flew some more and decided to make a straight line flight over the dam about 7 or 8 meters high. All of a sudden the drone lost height, touched the water, started gaining height again and doped back into the water… gone under with in a second and disappeared.

Myself and another bystander instantly got rid of enough clothing to ensure safe swimming and raced off into the dam. We could hear the beacon signal under the water and could swim to right above the drone, but is was more than 10 meters deep. There was no way of reaching that dept without flippers or some weights. We gave up after about 40 min of trying. Personally my “buoyancy” only allowed me to maybe reach 5 meters deep (rough estimation), the other guy said he could get down to about 7, but at that time he was already in pitch black water with absolutely no visibility. What a pity, she was an awesome drone…

My brother has the mavic mini 2, which he swears by.

Edit: some footage from it https://youtu.be/SJ7QbJ5nIJM

I have DJI Mavic Air (first gen) and besides the noise - it is absolutely phenomenal…also, flies rock solid on wind…
Supports Litchi app (pre program flight routes that are executed without the need to manuver the aircraft manually) and has a 4k camera which makes absolutely amazing superb quality videos and photos :slight_smile:
Max range I went to is 3,2KM and height 500M (not in residential area)
Flight time is up to 20min.

With Air 2 and Air 2s released, it can be an affordable buy on various ads…

1 Like

not what you asking but I have a fairly (meaning very) energetic Rottweiler and I had a tiny light bulb moment “hey, maybe he will like chasing a drone around”… yes, you can see where this going,

bought a little dji tello** and have now learned:

  1. those tiny props spinning at a bizillion rpm are noisy.
  2. not as easy to fly a drone like the kids in the adverts make it look.
  3. my Rottweiler is not only energetic but also VERY determined and probably better at math than me…

while still working on my pilot skills but wanting to keep the tello out of reach from the Rottweiler I had him sit while I launch the tello from a patio table with the intention to get to a safe height from where to then manoeuvre … said Rottweiler’s desire to catch said drone overcame his patience so he did basic calculations and launched himself onto the table to use as as further launch pad to get to the tello now somewhere over 2 meters above the ground. He caught the drone, made a not overly graceful landing but got up looking very pleased with himself…

The tello is now gathering dust in a cupboard and Rottweiler play time once again involves throwing a ball around.

**obviously amazon will not use these to deliver packages but it is technically a drone…

2 Likes

I decided on and received my replacement drone on Thursday.

I decided on buying the SwellPro Splash Drone 3+, seems like I wont need to worry about a drone not being able to land on water.

In THIS VIDEO!! they take off out of the water after a wave rolled the drone a bit…

In the manual they recommend that if you are on a boat, that you should rather throw the drone over board and take off from and land in the water rather than trying to do an unsafe takeoff from or landing on the boat…

4 Likes

that looks so cool

Sorry to hear that Jaco - I drowned mine in a lake last year too.

Very cool!

Give us an update about your new drone. Looking to maybe buy one for the municipality. Looking at possibly a dji phantom 4 pro or an inspire…

hi Willem

So far its great. Its a very powerful drone, capable of a 1.2kg payload. I have used this drone to drop a 1kg Bonita bait 600m from the coast. The pros take their baits in over 1km, but I get nervous when I cant see the drone. At 600 meter the image feedback quality deteriorates quickly. I have bought a longer range antenna for the image feedback but haven’t tested it yet. Image and Video quality is pretty good with the 4k camera and the drone has some interesting flight functions. Controls are smooth and the drone very responsive.

Flight time is around 22 min on a 6000ma battery and a little longer on the 8000 high voltage battery. The battery charger is great and can be used for multiple battery’s from 2s to 4s with different amp hour ratings and even different technology’s. As we all know Lithiums should be stored at 50% charge. This system offers a small pc board that plugs into the batteries that will discharge the battery to 50% for storage purposes. I have one for each of my batterys.

This drone does not use the same software as DJI that will prevent you from taking off in restricted areas so you have to make sure you follow all the rules and regulations. not doing so can land you in a bit of problems.

The Splash Drone 4 was released last month. It has a few more functions like pre programmable way-points ext.

Mavic Pro 2 and then you can use Scanifly.