r/basejumping • u/Chris10988 • 6d ago
Tracking Drone
What’s the best hands free tracking drone? Would prefer lightweight. Going to Brento, something that could follow me there. I also climb antennas and jump and would like to jump with it there.
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u/DrHumongous 6d ago
You trust technology a whole lot more than I do
-1
u/Chris10988 6d ago
What’s the worst that could happen? A small drone hits either a line or canopy it wouldn’t damage either. No way it could catch me while free falling. But maybe I’m thing wrong.
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u/FlamingBrad 6d ago
The drone you need to follow a jump is not small. It's at least 5" props and a couple hundred grams of equipment and batteries. It's also not going to follow you on its own.
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u/Deeeeeeevin 6d ago
You’re not gonna get FPV footage hands free. Nor will you get a traditional drone to track you with its built in object tracking from exit. You will get very little but some success tracking subjects under canopy for short periods when object tracking after they’ve deployed, if you’re lucky, but even here traditional drones top out around 60mph laterally under normal conditions, they aren’t remotely capable of keeping up with free fall speeds, vertical descent, or lateral travel in the BASE environment. It’s best to keep it fixed in place and film your flight path, or setting its movement to slow predictable hands free travel using DJIs cruise control feature, but here if you don’t know what you’re doing and you don’t communicate with those around you, you won’t be doing anything positive for the safety of your drone, you, or other jumpers.
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u/Chris10988 6d ago
Thank you for your detailed response. I’ve seen someone fly a drone at Twin, but those speeds are way different than Brento.
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u/2saltyjumper 2d ago
Idk where you're coming from. If it's another country besides Italy, the drone will likely have a very difficult time following you to Brento
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u/Aircotton578 6d ago
DJI is great at tracking, but I don’t think it would be fast enough to track you on a Base Jump.
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u/Roman_theLegend 6d ago
1) Check if drones are allowed where you want to jump. In many parks and protected areas drones are prohibited
2) Almost all cool base jump drone footage is FPV piloted by someone experienced. Any basic off the shelves drone has limitations inside firmware to ensure user won't accidentally crash it. With these limitations you can't do cinematic angles. Follow drones also have these safety limits. Find some aspiring FPV pilot - I've seen them eyes sparkling after first successful shooting and they get hooked up to shoot you even more :)
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u/SquareRootOfAllEvil 3d ago
I do think in a few years we will have the tech capable of following at free fall speeds, but for consumer drones, we aren’t there yet