How many litres? Choose a drone from your real fields, not the price
A bigger tank is not always better value. This article helps you work out what tank size suits the size of your fields.
About 3 min read
In this article
The first question farmers ask when buying a drone is "how many litres?", and the answer heard most often is "bigger is better", which is not always true.
What a bigger tank costs you
- A bigger tank means more weight to lift, so the battery runs down faster per flight. The aircraft is heavier to lift onto a truck, and the price is higher for the drone, the batteries and the parts. Most importantly, a bigger tank does not make spraying faster in direct proportion, because the time spent landing to refill and change batteries stays the same for each round.
A way of thinking that works in practice
- Start with three questions
1. How big are the fields you usually work? If most are small fields spread across several places, a small tank that one person can lift on and off the truck may get more work done per day, because most of the time goes on moving between fields, not flying.
2. How many helpers do you have? A big tank usually needs someone to help lift it and refill. If you mostly work alone, weight is a real limit.
3. How far away is the water source? If you have to carry water into the field yourself, a big tank makes each refill take longer and can become the bottleneck.
What people often forget
- In many cases the number of batteries matters more than the tank size. A drone with enough batteries to rotate can fly continuously, while a big-tank drone with few batteries has to stop and wait for charging, which takes more time than you might think.
If you are buying for contract work, think in terms of "rai per day you can really do", not "litres per flight", and work backwards to the machine you need.
Advice for beginners
- If you are not sure, start with a model you can lift, that is easy to repair and has parts readily available, then move up once you know your real workload. A machine bigger than you need is money sitting idle and a burden every time you move it.
You can ask our team. We will ask you about your field size, crops and number of workers before recommending a model, rather than recommending the most expensive model to everyone.
Ready to look at real models?
