I launch off of the truck hood. The mavic mini you can launch and land on your hand. There is a return too home button. Battery life is something you will have to figure out due to the temperature your flying in. You can charge the battery in the truck but takes a while. Extra batteries will help.My grandson fly's setting in the cab of the truck!

Yes it is. All DJI controllers have a home button on the remote. You can long press that button and the drone will come back to home. Home may be a designated GPS coordinate that you set prior to takeoff, or wherever the controller is located at the time.

I would recommended you stick with a DJI product. They are the most consumer friendly and have more features than you will use/need. I am currently flying a mavic pro and really like it. I had the earlier Phantom version but it was laid to rest about 150 miles offshore during a 3 day fishing trip. No fault other than my own and some fella named James Beam.

I have flown my sets before and it is a time saver under the right circumstances. Using a tablet rather than a cell phone will give you better clarity. Depending on outside temperature and wind, you can normally get around 20 to 25 minutes of flight time. My low battery indicator is set to go off at 30%. At that point it will send you a warning that it is returning home. You can always override it if you want.

As far as taking off and landing, I will sometimes sit in my truck, hold my arm out the window, and launch it from my hand. I wouldn't recommend this until after you've had some flight time.

I have purchased some low decibel wings for mine and they help with noise. Wings are cheap. Around $10 for two sets.

I've crashed mine 3 or 4 times. They are pretty sturdy. Good luck. They are fun!

Ol'dad

You can fly while looking at the camera on your screen and you see what the drone sees or you can open a map and fly watching your drone icon move across the map. The map option is nice if you are heading to a specific spot and switch to camera mode once you get there. If you want to fly using the map, you need cell service to load the map, although you can load the maps ahead of time at home and then fly where there is no service.

I have flown without cell service several times.

It is a Chroma

Y’all have me very close to buying one. How do they fair in the wind though?

Depending on the drone. The smaller ones like the Mini Mavic I have flown in 5 or 6 mph and its surprisingly stable. My son has the DJI Phantom and it will give him a wind warning.
There are sales coming up for DJI and Autel. What might help you decide is to watch some YouTube videos. We have DJI, Autel and Parrot Anafi, it will fly in the rain and has an Infrared camera.

Good Luck

Mine has all the features asked about. I carry three extra batteries so I can fly for nearly two hours. Just hit return to home when the battery gets low and it flies back and lands within inches of where it took off. The internal GPS is amazing.

You basically fly it in any wind, within reason, it just runs the batteries down faster holding in place. As far as cell service goes. Almost all of the video I posted above is many many miles from the nearest cell service.

Thanks for the great info guys. I checked out some videos on youtube and they really do hold up well in the wind. Id be flying mostly in 25-50 degree waether. Do yall have experience with them in the cold?

I’d like to get one but every time i watch any videos on them i get overwhelmed with technology. I’m just not sure how i would do with it, seems like there’s so many different settings and functions it would be really confusing.

The technology in a drone is intimidating. I had no idea how complicated they really are, how many sensors they have, and how much work went into making them almost fool proof to fly...almost.

But it's really built to do a lot of the complicated thinking for you. Like I mentioned before, it's got lots of video and photo modes that I haven't been interested enough to try to figure out. But there are several "automatic" modes that handle all of that for you and that's what I use and I am pleased with the quality without having to know much.

Here is a great example of a very talented drone pilot!

What this pilot does around and under this train is nothing short of amazing!!!

Dang, that’s incredible!!!

I have had a Mavic mini for almost a year now and it is a good little drone. The only downside to it is wind. I have flown in 20+ mph winds and it affect battery life for sure. I use an app call UAV forecast and it will give you 24 hr wind speed forecast which is handy. If the wind forecast is bad you can plan extra time for checks. I bought the fly more combo which has the extra batteries and the charger to charge multiple batteries at once.Batteries got in short supply last spring. I would definitely find a safe place in the truck to keep it at ready and it would be a breeze to get flying quickly. DJI offers an extended warranty for like$37 shock covers crash damage and replacement