Phantom 3 Standard Thousand Mile Club

[Billie Nelson]

Greetings and hallucinations fellow Phantom3S cosmonauts. I am delighted to confirm that my trusty Phantom3 Standard just this minute completed its 220th fully autonomous Litchi mission, which brings the total mileage to a hair over one thousand miles cumulatively, all flown without one single worn part, mishap, raptor encounter, or crash to report.

While I sadly may never qualify for induction into the Mile High Club, I have finally made the grade to join the hallowed ranks of the Thousand Mile Club, alongside drone pilots whose craft have covered in excess of 1,000 miles, and counting. While I am fully aware that far more seasoned drone pilots than I have quietly covered several thousand miles with no fanfare, I still feel that a marching band ought to strike up a tune now that I have accomplished this remarkable feat, considering that I started out as a rank novice who had only ever flown toy LOS drones before acquiring this Phantom 3 Standard.

Bearing in mind that the Phantom 3 Standard is the bargain-basement, budget-priced, mangy, flea-bitten underdog of the DJI brand name, I frankly did not know whether the motors of this lowly drone were up to the task of flying a thousand miles without a single defect emerging. Well, now I do know for sure that the Phantom3 Standard is a rampaging beast that is built like a tank, and designed for the VERY long haul. All three non-OEM batteries, similarly passed this test of time and distance, with flying colors.

Since Air Data only records the portions of flights that fall within signal range, the piddling 288 miles cumulative distance shown on my Airdata summary page is misleading and represents only about a third of the true distance covered, which is of course derived by multiplying the standard Litchi cruise speed of 17.9 mph, by the total of 56 HOURS accurately recorded by Airdata during all my 220 fully autonomous missions. ( 17.9mph x 56 hours aloft =1,002.4 total miles flown)

Drinks are on me today folks, and if DJI ever gets around to bestowing knighthoods on Phantom 3 Standard pilots who have gone above and beyond the call of duty, my elaborate ceremonial regalia is freshly dry cleaned and ready to be donned for the august occasion, should it ever arise.

So there you have it. A Phantom 3 Standard drone can indeed cover a thousand miles and still fly like a dream. Over and out until my next thousand miles have been covered.

 

[Earls Court]

Congratulations on a milestone achievement. As P3S owner and a Lichi fan that fly Maps Made Easy MapPilot for mapping mission, I am keeping my P3 as a workhorse while looking at Mavic Air 2 as a follow up, not a replacemen.

 

[Billie Nelson]

The Phantomn3S has certainly passed the durability test and exceeded even my most optimistic projections about how long the motors could hold out. The fact that the craft only ever gets flown at a comfortable cruise speed under Litchi autopilot control might have something to do with the superb longevity of all its systems thus far, but then again, maybe DJI simply designed the Phantom3S to fly thousands of miles, right out of the box.

Either way, this Phantom 3S is a keeper, and I will now get to see if I can rack up another few thousand miles in the coming months. Over in the Mavic Pro forum, there is a pilot whose Mavic Pro has covered 7 thousand miles, so it could be that DJI does not believe in the concept of built-in obsolescence, and thus over-engineers ALL their drones with the same dedication that Mercedes applied to the design process for its cars during the late 1980s.

 

[Billie Nelson]

Just clocked a second thousand miles with mostly with my replacement Phantom3 drone carrying on the missions after the first one crashed at the 1,270 mile mark, and to a much lesser extent by my Mavic Pro, meaning of course that the 2,000-mile mark was attained collectively by my small drone squadron.

Since Air Data only records miles flown within signal range, and given that most of the hours my drones have been aloft elapsed well beyond signal range, the cumulative distance flown is once again computed by multiplying the total of 112 hours flown, by the nominal cruise speed of 17.9mph, for a total of 2,004 miles covered with my long-range fully autonomous Litchi flights out here in the sticks of the Third World.

 

[AeroMechAZ]

I'm not even remotely (no pun intended) close to that yet.