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- Joined
- 25 Oct 2004
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You'll never get a long range new drone in the UK, under EU law and likely to be UK law at the end of the year, radio and video transmission is limited, 100mw/25mw respectively, that's why your mavic mini can only managed 1000m, not the advertised range of 4000m. They are pretty crafty with how they display the transmission power on the spec sheet, using db rather than mw.
Even though db is the correct power representation, few people understand what it means, the EU mavic mini has a rated power of <14db (5.8ghz which is the video signal) and <19db for radio, basically you'll lose video way before radio. For each additional 6db you gain, you effectively double the range, not just linear but also penetration, the US version is <30db for video and radio.
These same requirements will also apply to all future drones with EU certification, so even a £5000 super drone will still be limited in this way.
Modern drones basically fly themselves, the only "difficult" ones are the fpv racing which have limited stabilisation and require some serious air time to master, but once mastered are incredibly agile and fast.
I'd go as far as say modern planes and helicopters are probably way easier to fly now then previously, thanks in part to the improved technology and software, most modern flight controllers contain pretty powerful cpus. I believe the flight controller on a modern fpv drone which uses an F7 cpu is basically on par performance wise with a desktop computer from early 2000, and its on a PCB that's maybe 1" squared.
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