Drone suggestions needed

[jlynde]

Hi guys,

I work for a park and rec and my director has mentioned that I should teach an introductory class to drones. I do use a dji mini 2 and 3 pro, but I want to find some cheaper and more beginner type drones that I could allow people to pilot. I would also like to find one that I can fly indoors easily(we have a 3 court wide gym). Does anyone have suggestions for this?

 

[old man mavic]

@jlynde ,as far as a reasonably priced DJI drone is concerned a DJI RYZE Tello would really be a good starting point
but there are hundreds of very capable drones out there, from many different makers ,most of them copies of many of the DJI stable of drones ,as you are already a drone flyer ,then you know what your minimum requirements need to be for success, you would be better off with little indoor types that have altitude hold ,but without a camera ,and no GPS for flying indoors ,but for outdoor use GPS is really needed to give learners the time to get to grips with the controls,as they will hover in place if needed ,but then only in light winds

 

[DesertWindAero]

Hi guys,

I work for a park and rec and my director has mentioned that I should teach an introductory class to drones. I do use a dji mini 2 and 3 pro, but I want to find some cheaper and more beginner type drones that I could allow people to pilot. I would also like to find one that I can fly indoors easily(we have a 3 court wide gym). Does anyone have suggestions for this?

I used a DJI Spark to teach our SWAT guys how to fly indoors which included flying down hallways, through doors, up and down stairwells, and through windows. That platform worked great. Your Mini 2 would work fine, I'd guess since it has visual positioning.

The Mini 2 would work well for training...but, if you're concerned about crashing, then just about any cheapo quad would work. There's some side benefit to training future pilots on a non-positioning platform - sorta like learning to drive a stick shift car.

 

[moldorf]

Hi guys,

I work for a park and rec and my director has mentioned that I should teach an introductory class to drones. I do use a dji mini 2 and 3 pro, but I want to find some cheaper and more beginner type drones that I could allow people to pilot. I would also like to find one that I can fly indoors easily(we have a 3 court wide gym). Does anyone have suggestions for this?

as people have already said, there are plenty of cheaper options than a Mini 2. There is the Mini SE ($299), but it's not much of a downgrade in price from the Mini 2

for training, even in a big gym. I'd think you'd want drone with prop-protector options. Walls can come up fast, and all it would take is one crash and a drone is out of commission for a while

I'd also check on battery availability. Most of those cheaper drones have pretty short flight times before needing recharging. Seems like you'd want to have several batteries and a couple of re-chargers if you're teaching a class

 

[SethB]

Hi guys,

I work for a park and rec and my director has mentioned that I should teach an introductory class to drones. I do use a dji mini 2 and 3 pro, but I want to find some cheaper and more beginner type drones that I could allow people to pilot. I would also like to find one that I can fly indoors easily(we have a 3 court wide gym). Does anyone have suggestions for this?

Search is your friend! This has been discussed many times on this forum, including last week.

Try a search on the word: tello

Edit…….
Hmmm, search doesn’t seem to work as expected. Here’s last week’s discussion:

Drone "Camp" ideas

Hello Drone Community. I have been a remote pilot for almost 10 years now and I fly several times a week for my job (I work in real estate development) I have been asked to lead a drone camp for middle school kids this coming summer. The school hosting the camps asked me if it was possible for...

mavicpilots.com

 

[hiflyer201]

Look into a used Spark.

 

[shawgod]

I would highly suggest the Tello drone from Ryze and DJI. This is a great drone to learn on. Depending on what you are using it for, there are two versions. There is a regular version and a EDU version. The EDU version can be programmed by a computer using a programming language that changes with the age of the child. It also comes with mats that the drone uses for reference on the floor. If you are just looking for a drone the Tello regular is a great drone in general. It will set you back $149 for the fly more kit. That gives you more batteries and charging block. I would highly recommend getting this as you will go through batteries very quick with the Tello. You can control the Tello with your smartphone without a controller, but I found it a lot easier using a game controller to fly it. I guess I needed something to actually hold in order to fly. That set me back another $45 approx.