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| Wanted to see some opinions out there for drones that match needs of different operations and uses. What are the best (does job well at most affordable price) options for NDVI imagery and stitching at the following farm sizes?
500 Acres
1500 Acres
5000 Acres
10000 Acres+
I am running a DJI and using Drone Deploy trial right now. Just not sure how many acres I can really do with it. |
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Central IL | This is just from my opinion with my experience with drone deploy
500 Acres Phantom will work here, probably take a few hours
1500 Acres Phantom also will work here, probably take about a full day
5000 Acres Here you might want to look into a matrice 100, it has about a 40 minute battery time, this also depends a lot on field size, as you can map in the same time as a phantom if there is a lot of smaller fields. By yourself you can maybe map this amount in a week. thats working long days though. Fixed wing aircraft wouldn't be a bad idea here either.
10000 Acres+ At this point you're going to be wanting a fixed wing aircraft, and will probably be hiring multiple guys to be dedicated to just this.
In all honesty, it also depends a lot on your field sizes, whether or not they are large plots really make a difference in your decision. It might be a good idea to get a fixed wing aircraft if you only farm say 640 acres, but say that you own one whole section, it would make it a lot more worth it to just fly the full square mile with a larger (& more expensive) drone. |
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Eastern Shore of MD | All I can say is that I have 4 batteries for my phantom and am hard pressed to get 250 - 300 acres using DD. Our average field size is about 35 acres. If I had a case of batteries ready to go, prob 1000-1250. For larger acreages, I'd think it'd have to be fixed wing. I believe that I am correct in saying too that you can't wake up at sunrise and start flying and expect to get quality NDVI images, either. Same goes for working into the late afternoon and evening. When the sun is at its highest is when the least shadows will be cast by trees and the crop itself. I guess my point is that to get big acreage, you need to be able to get it and get it fast and a multi rotor is probably not ideal.
Edited by BacNBlak 4/21/2016 20:14
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Northern Indiana | 4 batteries for 250 acres? What model and how high are you flying?
I'm flying 380ft or so, 60 percent overlap on both approx and getting 100+ acres easy per battery on Inspire 1 with X3 camera |
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Eastern Shore of MD | P3P. I had set altitude at 360 but it flew at 246. Overlap was set at 70/70, not sure if it defaulted back to standard settings on that too. Brand new batt with an 80 acre field, nice long runs and it came up 10-15 acres short on that. |
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Central IL | If you're constantly recharging your batteries as you receive them you can pump out some acres. On average I can map about 100 acres an hour (thats with travel time included in there) from constantly recharging batteries. I have yet to map continuously all day though as crops are not up and there's only so much that mapping dirt fields can do for you. |
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Kansas | wow you guys are geting great performance per battery. we are getting @35 acrs/bat at 300 ft agl, subject to windage.. DJI bats need to cool down before you recharge them. We have been getting 8 flights a day on 4 batterys. the wing technology is improving fast.. Was introduced to a new wing Monday.. 1-2 hr flight time.. hand launch.. large selection on cameras can be used and swaped out with ease, under 10K complete with moded cameras choices . good Quads with camera mods are under 3k US..
Our wing can pull 5 flights (2bats/flght) a day with @ 320 acr flight in 45 minutes or a hair less at 400 ft agl (70/60 OL) Thats a long day standing out in 10-30mph winds. If you have 5000 acrs.. fly each crop 3 times.. how many hours of fly time do you have.. Cloud processing can get costly but its realitvly quick results can be worth it. |
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Minnesota | Doc. What fixed wing are you flying? I would like to chat with you sometime via email or phone, would that be possible?
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Kansas | I fly an Ageagle, carbon pro with a PIXHAWK FC- Mission Planner GCS. full atonomus flight . Sure Ill reply to any questions. ask away here.. |
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Right Drone for the Job
