https://www.uavmodel.com/products/makeflyeasy-hero-2180mm-ua...
This one has a maximum climb rate of 3 degrees. Which means you'd need to plan a route that's continously climbing, and tacking back and forth to avoid going steeply. So you would probably combine flight planning using Mission Planning: https://ardupilot.org/planner/ and custom json tweaking following MavLink protocol: https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/mavlink-routing-in-ardupilot....
The open source flight controllers and systems are https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-autopilots.html#ope... a good place to start. There's a few orgs building the full experience, but you'll of course pay for fully integrated, but still open source, hardware+software.
The scenario you describe is exactly what a VTOL or normal play is for; quad copters simply do not cover enough ground.
Also consider the camera. DJI typically ship with really low quality cameras, but https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1785754-REG/sony_ilx_... would get you a much higher pixel density so if you're more interested in the imaging, you can flight higher, near the licensed ceiling, completing more ground faster.
I've also found AI models know how to calculate pixel densities, so it's pretty easy to mock out a flight plan even if you dont have the actual drone available.
There really is a full open source hardware/software path, which is heartening.
I'd probably go for some Sony Experia 10III[¹] or upwards, for no more than 300$ at 170 g (unmodified), and strip the hell out of it. Does it need a display, all the parts of the case, and so on? Can can I use its GPS, and pipe it into the flight controller, instead of having to rely on something more powerful and heavy, power guzzling?
[¹] because https://xdaforums.com/f/sony-xperia-10-iii.12225/
I dont know much about the weights involved, but hardware surgery was not interesting to me.
Keepbin mind tge guys starting at DJI and youre proposing stripping dowm a camera
Never used one, but either this design or a tri-rotor v-22 style tilt motor are the two designs I've found intriguing. Worth checking out at perhaps?
For your needs, a slow-stick with a KFM wing would suffice - the smallest, lightest, simplest, most capable airframe one can build, and that is a slow-stick[0] with KFM wings[1].
VTOL is cool for those of us raised on a healthy sci-fi diet, but is entirely unnecessary for a slow-stick, which can be hand-launched directly into the air (vertically) and landed at a stall within a meter.
Plus, it is small, light, effective and extremely simple, which means its a lot easier to repair and maintain. Add some ardupilot magic and you've got a really capable platform for surveys and reconnaissance.
tl;dr Consider building a small fleet of slow-stick+KFM planes, attach your camera to it, and do your survey that way ..
[0] - https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?1395335-Begin...
[1] - https://www.flitetest.com/articles/kfm-wings-a-basic-explana...
Not sure I agree with you here. The very same functionality can be attained with far less plastic.
The 4 hours is an overestimate, it's probably genuinely closer to 3 hours flight time.
So there's at least a reason to get out each winter (snow load), spring (melt/brush growth/flowers), and summer/fall (stream health/identify trees once brush loses leaves).
I also like seeing if there's trees in stands dying at an unusual rate, which might indicate pine beetle infestations or sickness that I'd need to take care of.
Also, it's a fun hobby and a cool dataset to flip through.
Anything wrong with that?
Yes. Maintaining 15mph is tough because of elevation changes. The land has a 1,200 foot tall ridge in it, so the drone must gain (and lose) 1,200 feet across that 0.57mi span. Which is steeper than the drone can do while maintaining a forward speed of 15 mph.
Additionally, SFM algorithms struggle with repetitive environments like pine forests, where there are not clear points or lines they can align. GPS data helps somewhat, but if the pictures are too sparse then it can get confused and start stitching images together incorrectly. Additionally, too few images lowers the fidelity of the output and causes strange gaps and black spots in clearings (where the clearing is visible in one pass but obscured in another.)
Finally, radio transmissions require two flights due to that ridge. I need to fly once on either side or I lose signal. There is no accessible point on the property I can maintain visual line of sight across the entire span, and "mountain" is a pretty good radio signal attenuator.
I'd LOVE to have some automation help in developing a flight plan, as right now it's manual, and I'm creating little segments myself, individually placing points and grids. Several tools claim to support automatic elevation, but none of them do so well when you have a 1000+ foot cliff or a narrow stream bed that has cut 20 feet into the earth in your environment.
I have 4 batteries, which means I basically need to be refilling my batteries as quickly as I consume them in order to keep flying continuously (unfortunately, even with a quad-charger, I cannot fully sustain this.)
I would LOVE to have a fixed wing drone that could fly over the area and snap close-to-nadir photos as it did so, but the complexity of building and programming a hand built drone seems so much higher than deploying an off the shelf DJI drone. Additionally, the land is steep, with a 1,000+ foot elevation difference, and rugged, and the neighboring land is airspace I cannot fly within, so I couldn't use it to perform my turns.
Author, or others, any thoughts on whether it's worth pursuing a fixed wing aircraft to perform this mapping mission? Or is the best bang for my buck to just buy enough batteries to fly the mission continuously on an off the shelf quadcopter?