DRONES FOR A BIRDS EYE VIEW

Recently I had my eye on exploring a very deep and narrow   canyon which descends from a popular mountain town, the only problem was scouting the terrain beforehand. Access to the rim was for the most part extremely limited, the canyon itself is perpendicular and narrow in the extreme for some kilometers, and has a depth of up to 300 meters. I wanted to know what kind of problems I might encounter traversing this feature. Google earth could not give me any answers as it was impossible to see down into the thing, so it was all a bit of a mystery until that is I got hold of a drone.

Within only three hours I had the answers, it took that long only because I accessed the rim in two places and the upper section took a little longer, as it was not easy to get to. Granted I could not fly too down into the chasm, except when I had line of site with the aircraft, as the drone would quickly loose its signal from the GPS, but the resolution of the camera was so good it did not really matter and it was possible to see all of the river features without difficulty.

This took a great weight off my mind and the trip is good to go as soon as the weather permits, I was immediately struck with the possibilities of the technology for exploration work, quick surveys can be cheaply done of difficult to reach features, they answer the question of whether it is worth pursuing a ground expedition or not, not to mention the search and rescue angle of these incredible flying cameras, they also great you fantastic video and still photos.

The drone market has also exploded though these days it is largely dominated by DJI and for good reason, but there are many other makers with good products out there as well. Sadly Go Pro discontinued the Karma which used its own companies cameras, though they still sell the stabilisation gimbal which is a great step forward with the ability to create hand held stable, smooth video,  something that was very difficult before.  DJI  have been in the market  for a long time and have had time to hammer out the bugs and also include more advanced features in their drones like the Mavic pro which folds down for ease of portability.

MAVIC PRO DRONE

The Mavic Pro folds down into a small powerful unit full of many advanced features, a joystick hand controller is included with the package and allows you to control the drone at a whopping 7 km range,  and at an altitude of up to 5000 meters above sea level, making this machine a  real contender for the mountains.

 

THE DJI 3 STANDARD DRONE AND THE MORE ADVANCED PRO VERSION

With 2.7k video and 12MPXL stills this drone is a solid contender, very reasonably priced and easy to fly.                                                                         With its rugged landing gear which makes hand launch and recovery easy and DJIs long experience making these drones means a solid aircraft.                                                                                                                                       There is the DJI backpack available for portability which is also hard shelled also there are aftermarket packs for the phantom series.

THE PROFESSIONAL VERSION

The main upgrade for the Pro version of the phantom is the 4K camera which brings the craft to the cutting edge of the drone world. I can attest that the camera on this Aircraft is fantastic, I preferred it to the Mavic Pro, which whilst giving good results they do not seem to match that of the 4K camera on the Phantom Pro.

DRONE CASES AND BACKPACKS

If you want to take delicate camera equipment or worse perhaps a camera drone into a difficult to reach zone you will have to put a lot of thought into the endeavour.  After all what good is it to get that incredible quadcopter finally to your destination after hours of toil only to have it malfunction because you fell on it!