I don't necessarily need to go out 2 or 3 miles. What I do is hunt for old airplane crash sites from World War II. I have a book out on the subject. And I search the desert for old camp sites along the 1890s 20 Mule Team trail. Sometimes I just need to see what is over that next little hill. It helps to send the drone up there first to have a look. I just want to know that I will still have a good signal when I go out maybe 1,000 to 1,500 feet. My P3S wasn't doing that. I doubt I will ever need more than that. I'll turn on the video at lift-off, and then fly straight lines out and back in a search pattern while filming the whole area. Then I'll use my laptop in Google Earth to mark any positions that look interesting. This area is open desert, so there are no houses, trees, or poles.
Seven years ago, before I got the Phantom, I was able to find a World War II B-24 crash site in open desert that had been long forgotten. It took a dozen trips on my Quad over a years time to finally locate it. Then while searching the impact crater, I began to find human bones. JPAC from the military came out the next months and excavated the site. They eventually removed 12 gallon size bags full of human bones. They are now buried in Arlington National Cemetery. I could have done this search a lot quicker with the phantom if they would have been available at the time.
