Drones

Apologies if this belongs somewhere else but had a search and couldn’t find anywhere relevant.

Anyone here into drones? Thinking of buying one - mainly for outdoor adventure type stuff… Hiking, kayaking, gold panning, maybe golf … that type of thing.

Googled a bit but prefer to hear some opinions…

I’m presuming most decent ones these days would have safe return and those kind of features - so for something reasonably decent is there anything under $500 you’d recommend? $500 - $1000? Possibly a little more of there’s something amazing about it for what I want…

Thanks in advance :slightly_smiling_face:

My Service Manager is really into them and has shows us some amazing videos he has taken in the Wombat Forest across to Melbourne. I am amazed how stable they are, and the picture clarity is exceptional.

I will find out what he purchased and how much it cost.

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The government/police :wink:

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For that price you’d be into the DJI Mavic Minis.

Everything else in the DJI range would be out of your budget.

I have this one.

If you want to see my boring videos.

Much much older model but the updates are still coming for it.

But yeah they are easy to fly but you really want to practice before throwing yourself out there with one. Not so much cause it’s hard but more so if something goes wrong and you need to take manual control. They do pretty much all have come home to user style things as well but they only work if you set them up properly. Send them off without reading the instructions about you may miss the setup for this to work or you’ve skipped a step so your return to home is where you set it up last possibly 100s of km away. Same thing for drifting and auto stablization and stuff like that. Skip those steps and your safeguards fail.

CASA also have an app now called ‘Can I Fly There’ or something along those lines that shows you where you can and can’t fly and updated for special events (like an airshow in the area or flying water tankers for example) so check that out too.

With regards to size of the drones, the bigger they are the more stable they are and also they will perform in stronger winds. Keep this in mind to where you may use the drone as well.

If you want to give it all a try before dropping big bucks try one of the cheaper $20 - $50 drones. Learning to fly with them is great fun and if you can handle those you can handle the bigger ones.

Lastly if you want to buy mine i’m happy to sell it! Not cause I don’t like it but with the last CASA update most of my area is now a no fly zone. Grrrr.

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Fly it over my joint and you’ll be getting it back in several pieces.

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Well no one should fly it over private property anyway.

Thank you for the info. I did come across the DJI mini 2 and thought it seemed pretty ideal due to how compact it is, guess I’ll focus my search on that kinda thing - easy to stick in the backpack etc. Just wasn’t sure how stable they would be as I live in Tassie so there can be a bit of wind around.

Budget wise isn’t so much about cost, moreso what I’m prepared to spend on something for occasional use and that I may end up flying into a waterfall :joy:.

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That’s right.