Phantom 2 Vision

eBay, craigslist, Swappa, etc. If you have an Inspire 1 or a Phantom 2, you're in for a bad time. Air 2S? You're going to come out ahead.

A lot of the restrictions have to do with genuine safety concerns that could easily be regarded as nuisance rules but let's not forget one thing: it's because of a massive surplus of dumbasses in the general public that these common sense rules are needed at all. I didn't quite understand what all the fuss was about until I started to follow drone courses and trainings and then I understood. Problem is that people think drones are cool toys, and maybe they are when used withing the proper guidelines, but in the wrong hands they can (depending on the size/weight) take out the power service to a community, or a jet or an ambulance heli from the sky. Toys or not, they are considered aircraft and fall under the same laws and regulations as recreational and commercial aircraft. Once that is made clear, then it's easier to decide if buying/and flying a drone really is something you want to do with your free time, especially if you're living in an area with limited opportunity for drone flight. I can tell you from personal experience that after the initial kick from seeing what my Phantom could do, I got a bit bored and the thing just collected dust in my office. That was back before COVID and at that time the laws were evolving so I got nervous just thinking about taking it out. Plus, I didn't dare fly too far with it because of the stories of unreliable reception with the controller. That's all changed now seeing how far the tech has come in the last 6 years. Now the main motivation of taking the drone out is all about the camera on board. For me, it's just a flying camera to get a perspective you can't get from the ground.

Not true, at least with earlier Phantom series drones. I had a "fly off" while trout fishing in rural Missouri several years ago. It started to rain shortly after I lost it and I had to head out. One week later, I'm back. I use the "find my drone" option and it gives me its "last known position". I follow it for about a 1/2 mile and there she is... directly in the middle of the Niangua river under 4' of water. I don't know how it works on the Avata, but the Phantoms have "last known location", not just "current location".

I use the mini 4 pro. It should be easy to get a used one without a problem at this point. The thing with drones is a lot of people buy them, never use it and sell em. Before I got the mini I used various generations of the phantom starting on gen 1. I even used the first professional inspire model that was a freaking huge monster you could barely fit the case in a normal car. It’s absolute insane how a 250g foldable Mini 4 performs compared to back then. I don’t even start about how easy it is to fly them with all the fail save and automatic functions. 10 years ago you needed actual skill to fly great shots. Today it does it for you. I would recommend the controller with build in screen. It’s easier, it’s faster, it’s a lager screen, it doesn’t bug out and so on. The amount you can save here is not worth it in my opinion.