Drone Floats
With not many things to do related with sailing here down South, I invested on a first drone looking forward to the next season. Didn’t targeted one before as I think its a specialty that requires time to get proper footage out of it. But latest developments have improved the skills & time needed to handle them.
With that in mind I did a research on flight & image quality vs costs, and reached the point where the Mavic Mini was the best alternative to start with. Additionally I got first hand recommendations from two good friends owning them. The filming quality is also outstanding, and the 2k resolution seems better than a compressed 4k.
Again, not pretending to compete with Nick Bowers … the Nr 1 specialist on the matter, who we helped here to promote (SA didn’t published him on some personal issues at the time). Our goal is to generate more of our own content as I used to publish in the past.
Now the main concern on filming over water is to lose the asset for good, even the Pros have lest many at sea bottom and Nick also attached an inflatable flotation device to his DJI back in 2015, at Punta Ala Worlds. (See photos above)
The idea of adding floats is NOT to water launch or land, but only to provide the required flotation to keep the drone at hand. Also for the Mini it serves as functional landing gear and hand grab device.
The Mavic Mini has a proven extended flight time of actual 30mins , while the other more expensive Mavics reach 20-22mins. The con is a bit less power to handle stronger winds, but as I’m not targeting to become a drone filming pro, I will start to fly/film in those perfect midrange wind days.
Adding floats will reduce flight time of the Mini to its more expensive Mavic relatives. Thus its a good compromise when filming over water. The compromise on design, aero, flotation & functionality combo its a tricky one, in the end recovering your device, and specially the footage, worths the hassle.
Will work on additional design alternatives, later will print and test.
We are still here under total lock down and in our case you will see in the future the extra long term strict quarantine (without actual scheduled ending in sight) remedy in our case will provoke devastating economic losses as never seen (and the cases are now going up) , and as you know we are used to total breakdowns & crisis…
The lack of criteria, common sense and the willing to control everything are the norm under our recently elected populist gov. Don’t get caught in the stay home or die discussion or in the total lack of concern as an opposite, there is always an in between more logic path to follow, as done by our neighbours Uruguay, not a coincidence they threw out their own populist gov in their recent gral elections.
