Drone News Roundup: Drone Holiday Gift Guide, Drone Footage of Volcano Erupting in Iceland, and More!

This week we’re covering our Drone Holiday Gift Guide, which we made to help you find the perfect present for the drone lover in your life this holiday season.

We’re also covering up-close drone footage of a recent volcanic eruption in Iceland, a drone tour of Angola by Ellis van Jason, a study showing that Everdrone’s drone-delivered AEDs are effective at saving lives, and wind energy company Ørsted’s use of super-powerful heavy lift drones for deliveries in its offshore operations.

Now let’s get to those links!

Need Help Finding Presents? Check Out Our Drone Holiday Gift Guide

Whether you have a small or a massive budget, our Drone Holiday Gift Guide has you covered. With presents starting at just $13, the guide has a range of options for you to peruse to find just the right thing for the drone lover in your life—or yourself. When it comes to drone models, the guide has drones starting as low as $150 and going up into the high-quality / professional price range.

Here are the categories of gifts the guide covers:

• Top drone models listed by price
• Drone flying lessons
• Drone Skill Builder course (new offering from UAV Coach)
• Drone certification course
• Drone travel accessories
• Flight operations accessories
• Photo & video gear

See all the gift ideas in our holiday guide—

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Watch This Volcano Erupt from the Air

Iceland is an incredible place to fly a drone, even when there isn’t a volcano erupting. When drone pilot David Sojka heard about the eruption happening at Litli-Hrútur this year, he hopped on the next flight so he could capture aerial footage of the event. Flying over lava flows and over the crater of the erupting volcano itself, Sokja came away with some incredible shots. Along the way, he also captured beautiful drone footage of the surreal landscape, waterfalls, and glaciers found in Iceland. To shoot this footage Sojka used a Mavic 3 Pro, along with an unnamed FPV drone equipped with a GoPro HERO11 and a Sony A7SIII.

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Angola Unseen

When Ellis van Jason puts out a video, you know it’s going to be epic. This drone tour of Angola is his latest project, taking us on a tour of never-before-seen parts of the country in footage he shot over two weeks in travels that covered over 370 miles of rough terrain. In making the video, Jason teamed up with Travel Uncharted, a travel company that specializes in off-road 4×4 tours. About making the video, Jason said it was “. . . one of the toughest journeys to date” but that “. . . it also turned out to be one of the most rewarding adventures I have ever been on.” As for gear, he used a Mavic 3 Pro and a Startruss Cinelifter with Red Komodo to shoot this video, as well as a Laowa 9 & 14mm, a Canon R5 with 24-70mm, and an unspecified GoPro camera.

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Study Validates Use of Drones to Deliver AEDs for Cardiac Arrest

Credit: Everdrone

A new study published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet finds that drones can deliver Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) quicker than ambulances 67% of the time. AEDs are used to help people experiencing cardiac arrest by delivering an electric shock to restore a normal heart rhythm. The study was conducted over a period of 11 months in Region Västra Götaland, in a partnership between Everdrone’s innovation team and researchers from The Center for Resuscitation Science at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. In addition to demonstrating that drones can be faster than an ambulance, the study finds that using drones to deliver life-saving equipment produces “Clear-cut results and data that proves the system’s logistic viability.”

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Wind Energy Company Ørsted Uses Heavy Lift Drones for Offshore Deliveries

Wind company Ørsted has been testing drones for cargo deliveries in its offshore wind energy operations. The drones can carry up to 150 pounds—the equivalent weight of a “large baby giraffe” according to reporting from the company. The three big benefits of using drones for logistics in offshore wind operations are that they are less expensive than alternate methods, they have less of an environmental impact than alternate methods, and that they improve the safety of the operation. Right now, these heavy lift drones are being tested at Ørsted’s Hornsea 1 Offshore Wind Farm, which is located in the U.K. As more testing validates the approach, the use case will start being rolled out to Ørsted’s other offshore operations, which are located all around the world.

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