Excuse me if I ramble...
Need help deciding whether to buy a new drone (or a used drone), or repair mine or ???
I use my drone for real estate photography. I would also like to start using it for stock footage or other video-oriented business uses.
So I crashed my P3A a few months back and it has been losing connection intermittently. Sometimes it flies perfectly. Sometimes (about 20% of the time) I can't launch because I can't get the RC to connect to the AC in the first place. Sometimes it flies anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes and THEN disconnects.
Today was a close call. Lost connection about 7 minutes in to a flight. It initiated RTH. it landed about 20 feet away from exactly where I took off and almost clipped a Eucalyptus tree on the way down.
I can't have my drone disconnecting in front of clients like that...
So what should I do for replacing my P3A???
1) Buy a used P3A off ebay / craigslist. Cheapest solution, but I am weary of buying someone else problems. Plus the P3A image and video quality is "just ok" but not what I would call good. Also it seems like newer drones have more flight modes that can be dialed in.
2) Try to repair it: Least appealing because it might take a while to get it back and the repair costs might be so high that it isn't really worth it.
3) Buy a newer / other drone? The P4 Pro lines appeal to me primarily for the bigger sensor and the fact you can stop down the aperture. But I have heard the 4K footage isn't as good as that of the Mavic air due to the low bit rate.
What would you do?
I guess my priorities would be along the lines of image quality first, then robustness of connectivity, then capability, durability.
BUDGET: My budget would depend primarily on "life expectancy" of the drone. That doesn't mean just how many hours I can put on it before it explodes, but also means how long before it becomes "obsolete" or superseded by a new drone release.
Thanks in advance.
Need help deciding whether to buy a new drone (or a used drone), or repair mine or ???
I use my drone for real estate photography. I would also like to start using it for stock footage or other video-oriented business uses.
So I crashed my P3A a few months back and it has been losing connection intermittently. Sometimes it flies perfectly. Sometimes (about 20% of the time) I can't launch because I can't get the RC to connect to the AC in the first place. Sometimes it flies anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes and THEN disconnects.
Today was a close call. Lost connection about 7 minutes in to a flight. It initiated RTH. it landed about 20 feet away from exactly where I took off and almost clipped a Eucalyptus tree on the way down.
I can't have my drone disconnecting in front of clients like that...
So what should I do for replacing my P3A???
1) Buy a used P3A off ebay / craigslist. Cheapest solution, but I am weary of buying someone else problems. Plus the P3A image and video quality is "just ok" but not what I would call good. Also it seems like newer drones have more flight modes that can be dialed in.
2) Try to repair it: Least appealing because it might take a while to get it back and the repair costs might be so high that it isn't really worth it.
3) Buy a newer / other drone? The P4 Pro lines appeal to me primarily for the bigger sensor and the fact you can stop down the aperture. But I have heard the 4K footage isn't as good as that of the Mavic air due to the low bit rate.
What would you do?
I guess my priorities would be along the lines of image quality first, then robustness of connectivity, then capability, durability.
BUDGET: My budget would depend primarily on "life expectancy" of the drone. That doesn't mean just how many hours I can put on it before it explodes, but also means how long before it becomes "obsolete" or superseded by a new drone release.
Thanks in advance.