I've scouted and found places with a plane before which is handy. A drone would be handy for all those, aeronautically challenged fuckers out there in radio land.

Posted by 2Xplorations I live way out in the country, but even here we got drones, not sure what the radio signal range is but I always planned to use a Browning 12ga full choke loaded with #2 steel shot to knock one down if it gets within 30-40yds of my place.

Shooting at a drone is a felony. And as most drones also transmitting the video to the remote, you probably would be on camera while interference with the national air space.

Posted by Leopard18 I know many of the higher end systems (like the DJI phantom series) have GPS tracking, so it is possible to set a point to return to. That being said, they tend not to have obstacle avoidance, so monitoring battery life is key. Some also allow the user to program the maximum range it will fly, so it won't come close to the signal range.

All drones above the $600 mark have a GPS build in.
When they lose the signal or the battery goes down they are going into a homing mode. This means they are going to a certain altitude and return home. So even if you flew near ground, they will fly high and go home.
As said, this also happens when the battery goes down.

Now this is in automatic mode, if you fly full manual, this of course doesn't work.

Most of them allow you to program a minimum altitude for auto homing and a maxium for normal flight.

The range is by law on sight but most can do about 2000 ft. And you will have a hard time to see them after that distance anyways.

Just throwing a word of caution out there, be sure to check out a website like Skyvector or ask some local pilots about the airspace around where you are flying your drone. Generally, stay about 5-7 miles away from an airport.
The laws are getting really, really strict against drone pilots and I've seen the safety reports coming out more frequently about close encounters with drones.

As a pilot myself, I've almost hit one of the bloody things when some guy thought it would be neat to fly his at a small airport.

I think they're friggen awesome, but some people really don't think before they fly them. Unfortunately, they're easy enough for dumb people to fly.