DJI - Phantom 3 Advanced

I farm and have an older DJI drone (Phantom 3 Advanced) that I use for crop scouting. I primarily just use it to get a "Birds Eye view" of my fields and snap a few photos; however I do occasionally use the Map Pilot app to fly a grid over fields (and then Maps Made Easy to stitch them together). While I don't do this often (maybe once every year or two), it has been handy to be able to do this (ex:measuring acres for crop insurance claims, mapping yard sites to plan infrastructure upgrades, etc). I would like to upgrade to a newer drone, however from what I'm reading it looks like DJI has taken away the ability to do this with consumer grade drones? Cost-wise something like the Mavic Air (or maybe the Mavic 3/4 Pro) would be what I would like to buy. Is there any way I can do mapping with these models? It looks like the Mavic 4E is for mapping, but I can't justify the cost of stepping up to something like that (I only use the drone a handful of times per year). Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!

Thanks for the input. I’m located in Alberta, Canada, so our rules would be different. Our fields would be anywhere from 160 acres to 640 acres. With the Phantom 3, I would map these at the highest altitude the Map Pilot app would allow (I think around 100 m?) to prevent it from being too big of a job since I didn’t need very high resolution. For things like yard sites (more like 10 acres) I would use lower altitude and higher overlap settings for better accuracy. I’ll read up a bit on the Mini series

Seriously?  There's a phantom 4 and a few phantom 3s and a x star premium right now. The inventory changes a lot. I got my pa3 with hard case from goodwill.

I’ve been trying to get my phantom 3 going and can’t seem to. Doesn’t seem to recognize my phone at all. I’d say buy something that you can get support from

No sh*t. I have a phantom 3 that the case it's in is worth more but I can't part with it because antique

I built a budget Phantom 3 drone ages ago, I bought a cheap 100 dollar drone, 80 dollar diy gimbal and a Yi Action camera. It worked great, besides there being no GPS stabilization, tweaking it to hold a stable position was a huge PITA and it ended up costing basically the same price as I later paid for a Refurbished Phantom 3 a few months later.

I agree, but xag says it is the world leader in the segment, it is on its website. I've been using DJI since Phantom 3, I have nothing to complain about, I love their products, they meet my needs, I work with DJI T40 daily, solid system, but I'm curious to try some technologies that XAG has that DJI doesn't yet have... Competitors are arriving in silence but unfortunately for professional use, their focus... I would like there to be competition for consumer use so things improve for everyone in terms of technology and innovation.

It’s just the opposite for me. I had a phantom 3 first, then the Inspire 1. Even since then, all of the drone have been much smaller. I do miss the Inspire. It did really good in wind and had better payload capacity.

I used to fly the DJI Phantom 2 and 3 in like 2014-2016ish time frame before the FAA introduced a bunch of regulations and licensing and weight requirements. I’d like to fly another drone of similar functionality again just for fun. What are the best models you guys would recommend that have the least regulation surrounding them? Looking into other DJI drones but I’m open to anything Also are there any rules since then that apply to any pilot regardless of the drone? I know broad safety things like minding no-fly zones and avoiding flying over people and roads, but I’m not sure if there’s anything else

If there’s no interference between your controller and the drone and you’re on top of a mountain that’s very doable. About ten years ago I was out by the Superstition Mountains in AZ and flew my phantom 3 out to around 40k feet and made it back. No wind at all which is obviously a huge factor for distance.

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.

It absolutely will help. Your friend can probably find pretty good deals on used phantoms or inspires from DJI that will have transateable control characteristics.