Farmers who want to check livestock, get an aerial view of their crop or just have some fun freaking out their neighbours may be interested in the Draganflyer IV remote-controlled helicopter.
The Draganflyer wasn’t necessarily developed with farmers in mind, but Zenon Dragan, founder of Draganfly Innovations in Saskatoon, said it could be applied to agricultural work.
“A farmer can launch this from the palm of their hand to get a bird’s eye view of their crop to tell if there are damaged spots on the crop,” he said.
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“They can get a quick assessment from the air, instead of renting an airplane. This is a low-cost aerial video platform.”
Pilots can be expensive and hard to find in the busy season. Dragan said the Draganflyer is an investment that will make farmers more independent. It costs about $900 US, but owners could recover some of the cost by selling their services to fellow producers.
The helicopter is made of ultra-lightweight carbon fibre and weighs 482 grams. The four-rotor electric flyer is powered by a rechargable lithium battery, and the company said its “gyros” make it virtually crash proof.
The helicopter’s wireless colour micro-video camera sends digital video to a portable base station on the ground where the images can be watched and recorded. The flyer has a range of 800 metres, but Dragan recommended farmers fly it only as far as they can see it.
Although based in Saskatoon, he said only one percent of sales are in Canada. Eighty percent are in the United States.
“Our main customer is the average person who wants something really cool to fly that they can use to video, but we still sell quite a few to police forces for surveillance,” he said. “But a small percentage of our customers are farmers.”
Draganfly Innovations can be reached at 800-979-9794 or 306-955-9907. Its website is www.draganfly.com.
