[jacquesm]

$150 will build you a 7" with a reasonably long flying time, a bit more and you can do some pretty impressive things. You still need a controller but those can be had for cheap as well. The main issue would be hiding it for pickup until after the event.

[05]

You’re talking about bargain bin analog FPV drones? Most people can’t operate them and even for an experienced operator it’s far from the best tool for the job of filming armed thugs..I mean ICE..

You’d need a digital system with a gimbal, and the DJI O4 Pro alone will run you $200+. For dual lenses with different zoom levels and feed switching it’s getting pretty expensive very fast.

[jacquesm]

Most people can't operate drones, period.

FPV is a skill you can learn though and for filming armed thugs I actually can't think of a better tool because it allows you to fly the drone out of LOS so you can do it from a relatively safe position while still getting footage that matters.

For extra protection you could even abandon the drone and record the video directly on your headset.

[DennisP]

> Most people can't operate drones, period.

Technically true I guess, but learning to fly a recent DJI drone takes about ten minutes. You're not so much flying it, as telling it what you want and letting it fly itself. And the controller has a built-in tutorial with a simulator.

[jacquesm]

True, but DJI drones are comparably well behaved (and boring) compared to a homebrew FPV. Even there you have various stabilization modes, including alt-hold, pos-hold and so on. In full acro mode they're a handful, that's for sure, but you don't have to fly like that, just fly in stabilized until you get the hang of that and want to live more dangerously.

[sweetjuly]

You don't have to fly in acro mode lol. The common hobbyist drone firmwares have full support for even things like autonomous GPS missions. You also don't need expensive gimbal stabilized cameras; you're not making a cinematic film, so you can just hot glue a 360 camera to the bottom and deal with the slight oscillations.

[quietsegfault]

It’s super easy to stabilize video after the fact, too!