Not just for the military anymore, now just about any business, including your aggregates operation, can own its own drone. Lehmann Aviation offers the LA300, a new automatic drone for aerial photos and video, and it’s targeted to the mining and construction industries.
The company says the fully automatic drone requires no piloting skills or training. Just program the flight path on any Windows 8 tablet by drawing the area of interest on the touchscreen, transmit the data to the drone via Wi-Fi and launch it by hand. After a flight of up to 30 minutes, the aerial robot will automatically land in a chosen location.
Having messed around with model rockets as a kid, the LA300 intrigues me. And it’s a far cry from the tiny propeller airplane engines of our youth that we tried to crank start without losing a finger.
Lehmann Aviation says the LA300 flies at a range of up to nine miles, at speeds of 12 to 50 mph. It can be flown in temperature extremes of -13°F to 140°F, and in winds of about 20 mph.
But owning a drone doesn’t come cheap. The LA300 costs more than $6,000, and does not include the high-resolution Nokia 1020 camera phone required for photography or the tablet computer required for programming. So the $6,000 basically buys you a 3-ft.-wide flying wing with propeller.
But maybe it’s worth the price if you’re eager to spy on your competitors. Er … just kidding.
