Which telescope is best to observe yachting from land?

[exMaggieDrum]

Re: Drones - just what you want to send out a couple of miles (or more), so far that you lost sight of the drone within a quarter of that distance, flying over water which I am sure is good for a drone (better have a chase boat warmed up and ready with auto-deploy air bags on the drone plus a flare or digital strobe to find it), variable winds, and can't steer it well enough to really see or photograph what you want to see. IMHO drones are highly overrated. Of course I am the sailalasaurus of these days. I am amazed by the thread about the drone that keeps buzzing the guy out on his boat. I am sure he is not as far out as a race would be. Of course, drones are foolproof and failsafe so you are guaranteed to get them back. Just so long as they don't have a collision with the Amazon drones which will be buzzing all around on autopilot soon, carrying packages to all for Christmas.

But I jest (in case any trollasaurus takes exception to my wit).

But some excellent answers and advice here. Kudos to all, especially mstrebe.

[reed1v]

Ok, for 2k you can get self stabilizing cams, one hour hovering drone, and remote out to one mile. Been using that up here for land surveillance. Run the remote controls via cell towers and your range is almost unlimited. Of course, bigger budgets get you lots more. Geo stationary hovering abilities allows you to track boats in the water almost at hull level(assuming weather permitting). A bigger budget of 5k gets you payload capabilities(think delivering beer to the poor crews bashing away to windward). Prices are plunging. Performances are soaring(pun intended).

Kentron has been experimenting with micro jets to lock in positions almost regardless of weather conditions; but those are big drones(half ton payload capacities). The field is advancing so fast that sailors will soon have another technology within their reach for navigation and lookout capabilities. No more barrels tied to the mast, crew standing on spreaders, nor guessing what is over the horizon.

[jkindredpdx]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

...
What you really want is the gyro-stabilized camera ball that is under most of the news media helicopters, but for a thousand dollars you won't get a seat at that table.(G)
....

Yep, I worked for one of those companies... seem to remember the list price being somewhere between $200,000 and $2,000,000 depending on features and options. Batteries and helicopter not included

[reed1v]

Originally Posted by jkindredpdx

Yep, I worked for one of those companies... seem to remember the list price being somewhere between $200,000 and $2,000,000 depending on features and options. Batteries and helicopter not included

Reminds me when stabilized binoculars were running about $5k and gps systems about $25k. Figure the prices for the drone era will drop several orders of magnitude in the next several years. Maybe even more. Right now $200k gets your a multi ton haul drone with unlimited communication range and about 40 hours operational abilities. They are being used right now in you know where. For a more modest $2k you can skip the payloads and just go with 30 hours, unlimited range capabilities. Times do change.