High Altitude Drone

[BerndM]

I'm looking for a drone that will work pretty high up, like 15,000 ft. up in the mountains.

I bought the DJI Mavic, but am really disappointed with the camera quality compared to my gopro hero 3.

Anyone know if there is a better drone I might like that is easy to pack up to high altitudes? Is the Karma's altitude limit of like 10k feet a soft limit, or has it failed at that specific height?

Thanks!

If you truly think that the GoPro Hero 3 has better video quality than the Mavic Pro camera, I might suggest your Mavic Camera either has an issue or is not set up correctly.
I have 3 generations of GoPro Heros up to the Hero 3 Black and IMHO, my Mavic Pro camera / video quality blows them all away in its default settings.

 

[Turn11]

I'm looking for a drone that will work pretty high up, like 15,000 ft. up in the mountains

4,000 feet above the tree line?????

 

[sjnovakovich]

I gotta say that there's no way that the Mavic photo from this photoset is properly set up. It would be as sharp as the Phantom photo, albeit without the dynamic range. The Mavic shows little detail in shadows, but the top side of that bridge would look pin-sharp. It appears to me that the Mavic shot here is a single frame taken from a 4K video, whereas the Phantom is a still photo.

I completely agree with this assessment.

 

[CookieTheArch]

4,000 feet above the tree line?????

Yeah. Why not? That's where I want mine to function. I work high in the mountains; tough to access, very thin air. MP is perfect for the trek in (light and fits in my field gear bag), but anything I can do to make it happier in the thin air would in turn make me much happier

 

[BerndM]

I'm quite positive that an old DJI F450 Flamewheel Quad or F550 Flamewheel Hexacopter using the NAZA flight control unit has no height limitations so you can fly as high as is physically possible before they run out of lift or battery.
No NFZ's either

 

[CookieTheArch]

I'm going to write an entire post about this and more before the end of the night, but I will say this for the moment: climbed the MP up to just under 5260 masl (meters above sea level) yesterday. It was flying beautifully, except for the snow storm icing the arms and rotors. Works fine today, though! Would have flown longer, but I keep getting attacked by pigeons.....