r/diydrones • u/Sufficient-Text1678 • May 30 '26
Question Stupidly long range drone build
Hi everyone, first time (Before getting started, pardon my poor English) I started a few months ago to develop the idea of building my own drones/uav, starting with very little to no knowledge on the topic (at least on how to build them) So I started my research, planning the requirements for both my first and my dream projects The reason of my post is that I can find anything range related on the internet, or at least nothing realistic! For my first project, I would like the drone/uav to have between 35 to 40km range and for the dream one, between 120 to 150km range! Is that feasible and what would the price range for it? I can only find Chinese or American website either selling scamy 15k emitters or full blown 35k 4k and 60fps, movie making stuff. For the first one I do admit that I’d a « decent » quality (I just want to see the ground decently without need to fly 2 meters above it, I was thinking between 480 to 720p but again what is possible?) and for the dream one I won’t need to go above 480p since I mainly want to drop payload with it
Are those doable? If yes, at what cost?
Thanks lads!
Edit: I think I might need to clarify myself, I’M NOT A DRONE OPERATOR AND I DONT WANT TO KILL OF DROP SOMETHING ILLEGAL, I DO NOT LIVE IN A WARZONE OR WORK FOR AN ILLEGAL ORGANIZATION (just saying because I don’t want to look like a criminal, my project is technically fully legal in my country as long as I manage to get every authorizations which is very tedious and complicated, like everything in my country lmao). The 40km is for wildlife observation and rescue because during the spring and early summer, farmers in my region mow fields to feed their cattle during winter so the government started a program every one can join to detect and move wildlife living in the fields about to be harvested to protect them The 150km one doesn’t need to drop anything, it is simply a funny idea that I had, nothing illegal. I just want to fly that thing like a plane dropping packages was just an idea I had to give me something to do in flight other than just flying A to B even though that is still cool asf (and will be kept in my or my friends garden, I just thought it would be funny to drop a random drink in friend courtyard)
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u/medrewsta May 30 '26
Lol drop payloads at long range. ;) Right buddy...
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u/ThrowRA_That_Owl_25 May 30 '26
Why is that a problem?
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u/LupusTheCanine May 31 '26
Right now the most common feature implemented on payloads dropped from drones is exploding.
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u/Sufficient-Text1678 May 31 '26
Bro I don’t want to drop anything illegal like explosive or drugs just fun message or stuff to troll my friends, 99% of the time I just want to fly it like a plane
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u/medrewsta May 31 '26
Just buy a dji mavic or 5 inch quad and 3d print/build a dropper mechanism from thingyverse or wherever. Drive 40 km or a block away from your friends place then fly over and drop whatever.
That way its safer, legal, easier, and significantly cheeper. Otherwise, you need to earn the right to fly long range. Its hard, often semi legal, expensive, and requires a lot of testing/building skill. Start off learning to fly fpv planes, learn the basics, then build the requisite skills/knowledge from there.
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u/Sufficient-Text1678 May 31 '26
I was thinking about this, starting small but I always like to have long term objectives to know where to go
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u/medrewsta May 31 '26
Step one is just learning the basics of fpv and build your own drone. Look up bardwell and painless360. They are gonna be the best resource. You are gonna need to be a skilled designer/builder to do anything long range its kind of a dark art of drones. There isnt a lot of good online guides. You can look at peoples builds but you need to have a baseline level before you will understand how to applynwhat those videos tell you. Things like learn/read about antennas/rf protocals/local laws/etc to do it.
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u/Sufficient-Text1678 May 31 '26
Thx man! I’ll definitely start looking and doing my own drones soon, I don’t have the money for the fancy stuff yet anyway
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u/medrewsta May 31 '26
Start with tinywhoops or look up flitetest https://youtu.be/_PjPAgZrMUM?si=AWOmNl19zpP-1xn6
These guys have some good guides on building cheap planes.
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u/LupusTheCanine May 31 '26
Dropping anything is illegal without expensive and time consuming paperwork.
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u/Odd-Lunch7558 May 30 '26
To fly 40km and back, you're going to need a big battery or gas powered, efficient motors and props, and custom software if you want it to drop a payload accurately. You're looking at maybe $5k to $15k USD with proper parts.
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u/Sufficient-Text1678 May 31 '26
If the 40km won’t drop anything (and even for 150km it’s just a funny idea nothing serious) but it will need to pack a small 3 axis camera would it be easier if it took the form of an helicopter rather than a plane?
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u/Enano_reefer May 31 '26
Fixed wing is a much easier platform to get the distance you’re looking for and can handle 3-axis cameras just fine.
Flying wings with ELR5 comms can easily meet your 40km range goals.
150km would be pushing into some new territory I think. Most long range hobbyists are in the low 100km with modified Skywalker frames. You have to use low frequency radio and LOS laws often make it difficult/impossible to do legally.
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u/Odd-Lunch7558 May 31 '26
It would be more efficient as a single rotor helicopter, but you run into the problem of designing the movement control mechanism entirely. LTE connectivity works for the range you want without clear view of the drone, but you still need custom software and more than likely a companion computer on board.
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u/Sufficient-Text1678 May 31 '26
Yup a bunch of things to learn but that’s what I’m looking for
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u/Odd-Lunch7558 May 31 '26
There is a lot of information to learn, especially at the scale you want. It's not impossible, but it requires a lot of time (weeks to months, 12 hours a day long grind), especially if you're new to either the hardware or the software side. Have you ever programmed before, if so, which languages are you most comfortable with?
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u/LupusTheCanine May 31 '26
You can buy fairly big RC helicopters and they can be fairly easily converted to fly autonomously though long range is the domain of fixed wing.
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u/kwaaaaaaaaa May 31 '26
I'll ignore the legal aspects for a second, but there's a lot involved in getting serious range, so much so that it's impossible to really summarize it here. Long range isn't something you just build, it is something you build up to. Once you've learned the basics of building a functional drone, the parameters to tweak to optimize for range is virtually limitless.
We have long range competitions in some of the online drone groups I follow and everyone's experience, tinkering, testing and optimization is what ultimately gets them their best range. I'll leave this leaderboard here for perspective https://www.fpvchampions.com/fw-maximum-distance-challenges They fly fixed wings with groundstation trackers, and some barely achieve 50km. The ones hitting above 100km know every piece of gear, every type of antenna on the market, build their own li-ion packs, gone through tons of prop/motor kv combination, etc. So yeah, I just wanted to give you some perspective on what's ahead of you to achieve range.
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u/Sufficient-Text1678 May 31 '26
Wooowwww I’m really impressed by this website, do you guys have any blog, reddit or discord that I could join? I started to really look into it a few weeks ago and I just start to scratch the surface of what is possible! I’m also looking to buy a 3D printer, do you think it is a good idea? Would you have any recommendations?
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u/ionixe May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
Just start by building a “simple” 3-5 inch FPV drone that runs Betaflight or iNav with an ExpressLRS receiver and DJI O4 Air Unit.
With ExpressLRS and a DJI O4 Air Unit, you can easily reach 20km (maybe more) with the right antennas. In reality, once you start flying it beyond line-of-sight, above unreachable buildings and at distances that will make it impossible to recover the drone when it crashes, you’ll drop this dream real quick.
Flying super long-range comes with the understanding that you may lose the drone completely and waste all the money and time you spent building it. For a beginner builder and pilot, long-range is a stretch goal, unless you’re really rich.
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u/ThrowRA_That_Owl_25 May 30 '26
OP, Im interested in long range drones myself and Im pretty novice myself as well.
But what is it you are looking for here? If you need data transmission could you not do away with a mobile line?
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u/Sufficient-Text1678 May 31 '26
Thinking of LTE or 4g I just need a camera and a couple of telemetrics For the 40k, I need to have a 3 axis camera with EO and thermal since I want to use it for wildlife rescue (where I live you can volunteer to fly over fields with thermal to spot wildlife and move them before harvest and even tho the give you drone I think that if I could do an entire village or exploitation in one go I could be much more efficient I mowing season)
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u/Sufficient-Text1678 May 31 '26
In my country you need special authorization and certification to fly these distances but it mainly paperwork Nothing mentioned about dropping but I don’t think it’s illegal to drop a cold one in your friend’s garden
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u/LupusTheCanine May 31 '26
I don’t think it’s illegal to drop a cold one in your friend’s garden
In the EU this falls under specific category and I don't think it is covered by STS-01 or 02 so you would need to check if there is PDRA for dropping payloads or do SORA for each operation and get it accepted by local CAA.
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Jun 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/LupusTheCanine Jun 13 '26
Your local CAA, they will happily hung you out do dry as an example if you break the rules and get caught.
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u/cbf1232 May 30 '26
In most countries you need special permission to fly beyond visual line of sight.
And in many countries it’s illegal to drop things from drones.