Drones - Cameras - and Guns

What do these have in common? Why is there a Drone on the Pew group? Well, I was recently asked by @galenkp and some others if the drone could be used to send pictures or video of long range targets like some of the range cameras.

The answer is a resounding Yes. Here is a pic of my drone used. A Mavic 2 Pro.
I chose this drone because of it's range (5 miles), it's "intelligent flight" modes, it's sensors to help avoid trees, buildings, rocks and such and of course because of it's high resolution camera which can take 40Mb RAW images, 10Mb jpgs, and do 4K video. One of it's special flight modes is "Tripod" mode, which allows it to hover automatically (hands free) even in a decent 10-15mph gusty wind and stay quite steady. It has many other features that others may like, but those were key to me.

One of the other key features for me was that the drone be fairly light and portable so I can take it on hikes, when traveling, etc. Here is a shot of it folded up for storage/travel.

I've also added a few accessories to mine. One of the first was fold up extension legs. These give the drone more height when taking off or landing from tall grass, sand, snow, etc. yet easily fold up for storage or if not using. I think less than $20 and well worth it to help keep spray stuff off the camera lens.

One of the other things I added was a "Smart Controller". The normal controller has a place to connect your cellphone with a cable and some arms that fold out to hold it. I'm really happy with this controller which includes it's own screen, and is a little brighter than most cellphones. It gives me much longer battery life, and then also doesn't leave my phone drained when I'm out and about. The little antennae fold down and the joysticks unscrew and store in the back for travel.

Benefits:
Some of the benefits of using a drone for target visuals include:

1. The range, this is dependent on the drone, but this drone can easily reach 2-5 miles video/picture transmission. Much farther than I can shoot accurately!
2. Ease of setup, instead of having to carry one camera down to the target and then setup a nearby receiver, I just fly the drone down to the target (and back).
   3, Ability to take still pics and record video. The other range cameras I've seen don't have this, but could likely be recorded with some screen capture apps?
3. If shooting with others, ability to easily move the video/picture to multiple targets.
4. If shooting different ranges, no need to run down range and move range cam, just take off the drone and fly to next target.

Drawbacks:

1. The only potential drawback I can think of is if you are a poor shot and shoot your expensive drone. It's going to be a costly repair or replacement.
   No big deal if the drone battery runs out, just walk/drive down and pick it up.

First off, this was my first time testing and I learned several things, (mistakes) lol. This was only 50 yards, and I'm glad I practiced before taking it out to the real range. I will probably do another one of better quality at some point. To that point, I must have hit the wrong button or forgot to hit the right button twice when I started. I (thought) had recorded a nice slow fly-in and thought I was recording the first 5 shots while hovering, but apparently not. Oops. You can get an idea of what it looked like at the beginning of the video where the drone is hovering in the same place, then landing to video from the ground. The return flight is a little fast and choppy, I originally didn't plan to keep that, but decided to since I messed up the fly-in video.

Here's the video link.

Even though the recording while hovering worked just fine and would be great if you just wanted to fly down to the 500 or 1K yard targets and get a post-shooting view of one or multiple targets, the way I will likely use the most is by flying down to the target, landing, and then turning off the rotors while I just video from the ground.

This has the added benefit of a nice, stable picture, but even more important, should extend the battery life (30 minutes) by at least 2-4 times.
This is more in line with my shooting times. This also allows you or partner to actually watch the holes in paper or marks on steel as they occur.

I didn't think of it until after this video (lesson learned from the test), but you can also record / listen to the sound. I normally have the sound turned off because you hear a lot of rotor noise when the props are going. But by landing and turning off the props, you can also now record what your pistol/rifle sounds like from downrange and record the sound of it hitting paper/steel and the delay time. Very cool. Definitely will do that for the next video.

Enjoy!
@ksteem