How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller

How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller? This is an all too common of a question that most drone pilot’s will ask at some point or another throughout their drone piloting adventures. Here at Droneflytech.com, we specialize in drone technology and can definitely shed some light on this question. Let’s begin. How does one go about answering this question? Well, I will go ahead and give you both a short answer and a long one. The short answer on drone range is, well “it depends”. What exactly does it depend on? It depends on a variety of factors. Factors such as; the price of the drone, the particular drone use that you will be utilizing this drone for, the size of the drone, drone battery type and more.

Now for the long answer. If you are currently on the market and are looking to purchase a good long ranged drone, then you will need to answer the above questions that I just mentioned. By answering these questions, it will help me determine what type of a drone range will work best for you. There really isn’t an easy answer that can be given to answer this “How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller” question. When it comes to drone range, there are hundreds of different drone machines out there, and they are all different in maximum flight range. The flight range on these drone can go all the way from 20 meters in range on the smaller cheap drones, all the way up to multiple miles in range for the more expensive ones. If you would like to learn more about the different drone ranges, I will go ahead and break it down by the different questions that I mentioned above.

The first thing that I will go ahead and provide here are a few drone suggestions as far as which drones have the longest range in a different pricing range. Below, you will find the TOP 5 best long ranged drones that are in their own particular price range. The price ranges that we will cover are;

Best Long Range Drones Under $50
Long Range Best Quadcopter Under 100
Long Range Best Drones Under 200
Long Range Best $500 Drone
Long Range Best $1000 Drone

Please have a look below. These drones are a part of the how far can a drone fly from controller page and will help to give you an idea of what type of drone range you can expect within a particular price range.

How To Determine Drone Range – The Long Answer

As I mentioned above. In order to correctly answer the “how far can a drone fly from controller” question; we must first ask ourselves a number of different questions. The questions again are (just to recap); what is your drone’s price range? what use will you be needing out of your drone? are you looking for a small, medium or large drone? would you be willing to upgrade the battery on your drone to get a longer flight time? Once we are able to answer some of these questions, you will start getting closer to the real answer to the how far can a drone fly from controller question.

Drone Price Range – How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller

If you had a chance to take a look at the drone pricing table above, you would have noticed that drone range can be heavily affected by the price range of the drone. For instance, most drones under $100 will have a drone range of 100 meters or less. Same thing with drones under $300. The one drone that we have showcased above for the $180 price has a drone range of about 150 meters. When you start getting into drones that are over $500 dollars, then you start seeing higher ranges of 1+ miles. The DJI Spark for instance has a top drone range of about 1.2 miles. The DJI Phantom 3 Pro drone has a top drone range of over 3 miles. As you can see, there really is a huge difference in drone range according to the different price that you are prepared to pay for the machine. The general rule is that you won’t be able to get into higher drone ranges unless you are willing to spend over $300.

Conclusion: The conclusion here is that if you are looking to buy a cheaper beginner drone, do not expect crazy long range flight distances. If on the other hand you are looking for a drone that can fly for a good mile or more, you e looking at spending between $500 to $1,000.

Different Drone Uses – How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller

When it comes to drone range, another good way of figuring out how far can a drone fly from controller, is to categorize the different drones based on their uses. For instance, most indoor and beginner drones will have poor range (100 meters or less typically). Professional photography and videography drones on the other hand will have much better drone range as these drones are typically used in the by real estate agents, by the film industry, by news agencies and more. Racing drones on the other hand have smaller maximum ranges due to the fact that they are typically always controller by an FPV (First Person View) interface. Most FPV drones utilize WIFI for their connectivity and are constrained by the WIFI’s range. The emergency, police, fire & rescue drones for instance will have really good drone range due to the type of work that they have been designed for. If you look at dust cropping and agricultural drones, they will typically have really good range as well since they have to cover large areas and fields. So, for the most part; professional drones will have much larger drone range and distances that they can cover due to the type of use that they have been designed for.

Conclusion: Most professional drones out there will provide great range for some high tech fun. DJI products included, quite a few of them can be outfitted with aftermarket attachments for industrial, real estate jobs and more. If you are wanting to just fly a drone around your neighborhood, then you typically will not need a longer ranged machine. If however you are looking to use the drone professionally, then I do recommend going with a DJI product as they have some of the best long ranged drones out there.

Physical Drone Size – How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller

The physical size of the drone can also make a big difference in how far a drone is able to fly from it’s controller. For instance, if you take a very small drone; there is only so much room there to utilize on placing high end components that would allow the drone to fly further. Let’s take for an example a small mini drone. This mini drone is only able to carry a smaller batter due to it’s physical size. Now, if you think about this logically, most drones with small batteries will typically not be able to fly for long periods of time. Due to this, most of the smaller drones will typically also not be equipped for long ranged flights. Just think this way; if your drone is unable to fly for long periods of time, why would you need for it to fly long distances? Now, looking at other spectrum, bigger drones. When it comes to bigger drones, they allow you more physical space for the battery and high end antenna placement. You can even place multiple batteries on a bigger drone to give it a longer maximum flight time. With a bigger drone, there is also more room for aftermarket improvement; such as a better antenna, better transmitter and better anti-interference devices. Larger more expensive drones will typically have better range than their cheaper smaller counterparts (unless we are talking about the DJI Spark, the Spark has an awesome long range for a mini quadcopter).

Conclusion: When it comes to long range drone flight, bigger typically means better. The reasoning behind this is that with a bigger drone, you can just do so much more with it in terms of space. First of all, with a bigger drone, you don’t need to get a super expensive specialized component that will cost you an arm and a leg. You can just go ahead and get many typical after market components that should all be able to fit on your drone as you will have the necessary space. This is true even with completely factory built drones. The bigger the drone, the easier it is to cram it with a variety of features like GPS, FPV, VR, long flight, long range and more.

Drone Battery Type – How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller

As mentioned on the “physical drone size section”, having a battery that can support longer flight is also important when you are thinking about drone range. If your drone has a short flight time capacity (let’s say 10 minutes or less), you typically will not want this drone to be able to fly miles away from your controller (even if you have FPV capability). So, the conclusion is; that having a bigger and longer lasting battery is super important on long ranged drones so that you can safely fly them back home to you even if you are flying at long distances. Now, what are the different types of batteries out there that one could expect to find on the drones? Most of the cheaper $100 dollar or less drones will have a 3.7 Volt Li-Po (Around 500 mAh’s) battery that allows for flight times in the 8-10 minute range. Drones priced between $200 to $500 dollars will typically have Li-Po batteries with multiple cores between 7.4 and 11.4 Volts (Around 2,000 mAh’s), these drones can typically fly between 15-25 minutes in flight time. And lastly, drones between the $500 and $1,000 dollar range will typically have a 15.2V Li Po (Around 4,000 mAh’s) battery with multiple cores.

Conclusion: As you can see, drone batteries play a big part in what your drone is typically capable of doing. If you think this way; let’s say, you want to upgrade your antenna and your transmitter on your drone. If your drone utilizes a super small capacity battery, then you will not be able to amplify your signal correctly. Bigger battery typically means better drone features and drone functionality (longer flight time, longer range etc).

As you can see, there are a variety of different factors that affect a drone’s range. The different sections that we just covered (price of drone, battery type, drone use and physical drone size) are just some of the more important factors. Some other things to think about are the quality of the drone’s antenna, quality of the transmitter on the drone as well as the quality of the receiver on the controller. I won’t go into too much detail individually on what the antenna, transmitter and receiver are, but I will go ahead and provide a few tips on what you can do to increase the maximum range on your drone.

Let’s get started.

How To Increase Your Drone’s Range

There are a number of things that you could do in order to increase the range on your drone. Unfortunately, you will have to be just a tiny bit tech savvy. For instance, we can replace the transmitter on the drone, we can replace the receiver inside of the controller’s unit, and we can replace the antenna’s on both the controller and the drone itself. I will go ahead and provide a few tips on how to do some of this below. Please take a look.

Replacing the Antenna on a Drone and its Controller – How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller

I am going to assume here that you have purchased a drone and that you are really not too happy with your drone’s range. Well, luckily; there are a few things that you can do to improve your drone’s maximum range. You can go ahead and install a new aftermarket antenna on both your drone’s controller and the drone itself. Quite often you can just go ahead and replace the antenna on the drone or controller with an old router WIFI antenna. These antenna’s tend to work pretty well as quite a few of them are 3db – 5db 2.4 Ghz WIFI Antenna’s. You can go ahead and look around the web a bit to get some ideas on how to do this simple hack on your drone and controller (there are a ton of videos out there that show people taking their drone’s apart and step by step instructions on how to upgrade your antenna).

Replacing the Receiver on the Drone – How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller

When looking to increase your drone’s range; quite often you will come across articles and videos telling you that you could go ahead and replace the receiver in your drone. This is definitely something that you could and should try, but chances are that some soldering will be needed as more often than not, the aftermarket receiver’s out there are not going to come with a simple plug and play application. If you are looking at upgrading your receiver, be ready to do lots of reading and learning on what to do before actually jumping into the receiver replacement project. Just as with drone Antenna’s, a simple Google search will usually bring up some good results on how to replace the receiver inside of your drone.

Important Tip: One important thing to remember, is that you should never utilize two different brands for your receiver and the transmitter. Both the receiver and the transmitter have to come from the same manufacturer in order for them to work well together. More on transmitter replacement below.

Replacing the Drone’s Transmitter – How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller

As we just mentioned with the replacement of a receiver within the drone, it is also possible to replace the actual transmitter (your drone’s controller). When looking to replace your drone’s transmitter, it is very important to go ahead and choose one that has multiple channels for a variety of different applications. The more channels that you have, the more features and controls you can utilize on your drone. There are 4 channel, 6 channel, 8 and 9 channel drone transmitters out there. When it comes to upgrading your drone’s transmitter, the more channels you have, the better the transmitter is. There is a pretty good resource here that you can take a look to learn more about the replacement of your drone’s receiver and transmitter: https://oscarliang.com/choose-rc-transmitter-quadcopter/

How Far Can a Drone Fly From Controller – Conclusion

I really hope that I was able to shine some light for you in terms of how to figure out the distance a drone can fly in a single setting. As you got to see first hand, there really is no easy answer to this question. However, if you were able to answer some of the earlier questions in regards to the price of drone, drone use, battery type etc.. Then you should now have a better idea of what is required to achieve higher range and flight time on a drone. If you have any questions or concerns, please take a look at the upper right hand corner and click on the Contact Us link to send us a quick email with your question. We typically reply within 24-48 hours.

Lastly, if you are interested in purchasing a drone; we have a couple of TOP 5 Best drone pages that are currently operation which offer some very good information on the top 5 best machines in a particular price range. Some of the drone features and capabilities that we dive into are; FPV, GPS, drone range, follow me options, maximum flight time, HD camera information and more. Please take a look at the two links.

Best Drone For Under 50 Dollars

Best Drone for Under 500 Dollars

As always, Happy Flying; fellow Drone Enthusiast!

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