DJI - Phantom 4 RTK

Alaska DOT has a fantastic drone program, I highly recommend contacting them. The P4RTK is on the older side but it still holds its own. Especially when the person using it understands site control. Speaking of, i would grab an emlid RS3 for your GCP collection. Drone2Map is fine, my personal preference is Reality Capture. It's free and honestly the photogrammetry outputs are superior to the likes of dronedeploy. Really it comes down to how you share your deliverables.

It does with sdk remote

They are 1/4 the price of a m3e and my surveyors and other contractors that work for them all say that the phantom creates better images still. I almost bought the m3e but I have 18 phantom 4 batteries and heaps of chargers so made sense to get the phantom.

Freefly Astro with A7RIV for mapping and construction monitoring. We also just acquired a Resepi XT32 lidar payload which has been very useful. Ground topo under trees has been extremely helpful with the lidar. Orthophotos for all our design work has also been great to have. Contours are also used for preliminary design but we need accuracies better than 1/16th of an inch for final design so that usually gets subbed out. We still have a Phantom 4 RTK but haven't used it much since switching over to the Astro.

A used phantom 4 RTK doesn't give up anything to the 3e in accuracy, just time and more batteries. If I was budget sensitive that's definitely a good idea.

I mostly fly the DJI M300, but every so often I have to take the P4RTK out, and it feels like taking the DeLorean to the stone age. The data is great, but the UI/UX is painful compared to newer stuff. I finally upgraded to the Matrice 4E, first flight layer today!

A phantom 4 rtk is still top of the line for survey grade mapping. Next step up would be a Mavic 3E but, like you said, its a bit confusing with DJI right now. I still occasionally use a phantom 4 pro at my survey firm alongside pix4d for processing data.

For all intents and purposes, the Phantom 4 was replaced by the Mavic 3E. It's no longer supported but you can still buy batteries and replacement propellers so that you can use the drone for as long as you'd like. I fly frequently within one of the most obnoxious areas in the country, the Washington DC FRZ. Nothing within the inner limits, but I have had dozens of FAA waivers to fly within the 15 mile radius. I've also flown adjacent to a number of military bases, all fairly recently with a Phantom 4 Pro v2. You should have no issues with a phantom 4 RTK outside of the government going nuclear and bricking all DJI drones, which I doubt they would do to currently compliant drones. Your drone is a workhorse and could easily provide you with years of good data and would last you well until after we know what is going to happen long-term with DJI. If they manage to get past this current madness, I'd keep your eye out for a Mavic 4 announcement eventually (I'd love a 3E but they're hard as hell to get these days for obvious reasons). Just make sure that any drone you get for mapping has a mechanical shutter. This goes for pretty much any company. As for US made drones... sadly there really aren't too many good options right now. They're expensive as hell and untested with plenty of quirks and no pedigre. What kind of work do you do in Alaska? Is it fairly wide open swaths of land? Or more urban? I've been eyeing the WingtraOne recently as its made in Switzerland, has a vertical take off, and has the stupid fast speed of a fixed wing drone. But it's also significantly more expensive than a DJI.

You need to give more information like what kind of precision you are looking for and if you plan on using PPK, RTK or GCP’s. I wouldn’t recommend the matrice 210 as the RTK they have is very poor. Have you considered a phantom 4 RTK? It’s decently cheaper than the M3E with capabilities that you are looking for. If you shop around you can find them for around 2K usd.

Unfortunately I know it has RTK in its name but that is only for in flight accuracy. Older drones like that used to just fly away or get lost, that’s why they added the RTK system. The onboard RTK doesn’t write geolocation information to the images. You would again need to look into adding a third party controller to try to achieve PPK/RTK with that drone. Achieving an accurate model can be expensive due to the need of a gps system. I still feel your best option is the phantom 4 RTK v2. It is still used by many professionals and is the next step down from a M3E. Otherwise I would consider removing the accuracy requirement and only trying to achieve precision. You could also consider a Mavic 2 enterprise but those can be hard to find. Correction: the Matrice 210 RTK v2 does write the geolocation to the images, the original did not. So it should work if you can get one for a decent price.

I used to do all my photogrammetry work with first a DJI phantom 4 pro, then I modified it with an onboard emlid gnss for on the fly rtk positioning. Then, I bought the DJI phantom 4 rtk. Then I had to buy American drones. The phantom 4 pro still remains the best inexpensive drone for that. The camera has a mechanical shutter as well. It worked well for me. I still have one P4P v2 unopened that is RID compliant and used as a possible backup. Now it is collecting dust.

The P4 is a good drone and we used one for years. However, for the money, an M3E is a huge upgrade. Better camera, faster camera, longer flight times, etc. Plus the controller software is so nice. If you get to the point where you are doing a lot of flights, and you will, the M3E is an absolute workhorse that yields great results.

you can't reflash the newer ones? I've bought a few used ones years ago and just flashed the firmware. a mavic pro and a could phantom 4s. well one phantom, I only have the one controller so I've yet to put the second one back together. I have all the parts, just haven't needed it since the first one is still going strong.

DJI minis are about the best you'll get. i don't have a mini but I'm still running my mavic pro platinum and a phantom 4. pretty sure the mini outperforms both of those 

Yea, no i was being sarcastic, it is a good point to make. My problem is, I use my mav2p for personal flights while im traveling for work... the small travel bag is kinda a big selling point for me. A lot of time my work truck is loaded down, front to back, bottom to top and I get very little room for personal items. I tried taking a p4 in a hard case with me one time and yea... it was a nightmare.

I fly a Potensic Atom, it's alright, no major complaints. It's far less sophisticated than my phantom 4.

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.