Paid $200 for a drone to scout abandoned spots and it paid off instantly

Honestly, I was sick of hiking blind into old farmsteads only to find they were completely trashed or fenced off. So I grabbed a cheap DJI Mini 2 off Facebook Marketplace for $200 last month. First trip out to a forgotten schoolhouse near Wichita, the drone showed me a collapsed roof I would have walked right under. Total lifesaver for safety and time. Anyone else use drones for scouting, or do you just rely on maps and word of mouth?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_val17d ago

lol that "collapsed roof you would have walked right under" part got me. I actually wondered about something nobody brings up - thermal cameras on drones for abandoned spots. A buddy of mine rigged a cheap thermal attachment to his Mavic and found a hidden underground root cellar that was totally invisible from above. The ground temp was slightly different over the hollow spot. Saved him from stepping on rotted wood that would've dropped him 10 feet. Maps won't tell you about things under your feet, just stuff above ground.

dylan_patel17d ago

A friend of mine tried this on an old farmstead up in New Hampshire. He flew his drone with a thermal cam over what looked like just a flat grassy field. The camera picked up this perfect rectangle of cooler ground that turned out to be an old stone-lined well that had been capped over and forgotten for decades. Someone had just thrown a few rotting boards over it and let the grass grow back. If he had walked across that spot, he would have gone straight down into 30 feet of dark water. Those thermal drones are no joke for finding hazards.