The Best Gift for a Veteran: Why the DJI Avata 2 FPV Drone Wins

If you’re looking for the best gift for a veteran in your life, our answer at Drone U is simple: the DJI Avata 2. It’s an immersive FPV (first-person view) drone. You put on the goggles and you’re flying, not looking at a screen. It’s fun, and it can be a calming, focused hobby. It can also lead to real paid work.

Why the DJI Avata 2 Is the Best Gift for a Veteran

Most gifts get used once and put in a drawer. The Avata 2 keeps giving. It has a clear learning curve and it calls for real concentration. It pulls you outdoors, and the skills you build can turn into income. Many veterans are used to mission focus, technical gear and teamwork, so FPV flying can feel familiar in a good way.

You can buy the DJI Avata 2 on Amazon. We recommend the DJI Avata 2 Fly More Combo, which bundles the goggles and motion controller with extra batteries, so the flying lasts longer than a single short session.

The Psychology of Flow State

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent decades studying what he called flow. In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), he describes flow as a state of complete absorption in an activity. Time seems to disappear, self-consciousness fades and the activity becomes rewarding in itself.

His research points to a few conditions that make flow more likely:

• Clear goals: you know exactly what you’re trying to do, like making it through the gap or holding a smooth line.
• Immediate feedback: you see right away whether the move worked.
• A balance of challenge and skill: the task is hard enough to hold your attention but not so hard you give up.

FPV flying checks all three boxes. Every flight has a goal, the goggles give instant feedback and the challenge grows as your skills grow.

Why Immersive FPV Flying Can Be Therapeutic

We want to be careful here: a drone isn’t medical treatment, and it doesn’t replace care from a professional or the VA. But research on veterans and focused, engaging recreation is encouraging.

• A pilot study of 74 veterans with PTSD who took part in a 2-day, 3-night group fly-fishing trip (Vella, Milligan and Bennett, Military Medicine, 2013; PubMed) found better attentiveness and positive mood, and lower anxiety, depression and stress. Six weeks later, participants reported better sleep and fewer PTSD symptoms. The authors call the results preliminary because the sample was small and self-selected, with no control group.
• A study of U.S. active duty service members in a six-week surf therapy program at Naval Medical Center San Diego (Walter and colleagues, Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 2019) reported lower depression and anxiety symptoms and improved mood after the program.

These studies looked at fishing and surfing, not drones, but FPV flying shares many of the same ingredients: being outside, total focus on the present moment and a group of people who love doing the same thing. That’s why we say flying the Avata 2 can be therapeutic. When you’re threading a line through trees in the goggles, there’s not much room left in your head for anything else.

It doesn’t have to be a solo hobby, either. With DJI Goggles 3, the pilot can turn on Broadcasting mode and friends wearing their own Goggles 3 can watch the live feed in Audience mode. DJI says there’s no upper limit on how many Goggles 3 can tune in, though older Goggles 2 and Integra can’t watch a Goggles 3 broadcast. It’s an easy way to share the flight and make it a group activity. For more on why this drone is such a blast, read The Most Fun Drone: Why the DJI Avata 2 Wins.

Same Goggles, Same Aircraft, One Shared Experience

One pilot flies the Avata 2 while friends tune into the same live feed in their own Goggles 3. That turns a single flight into a shared, immersive experience. It’s a great way to bring veteran groups and family together around something fun.

Real-World Jobs You Can Do With an Avata 2

This is where the Avata 2 stands apart from most gifts. The skills it builds are skills people pay for:

• Social media videos: brands, gyms, restaurants and venues want dynamic, eye-catching FPV clips for Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
• Residential real estate fly-through tours: one continuous flight from the front yard, through the house and out the back helps a listing stand out.
• Commercial real estate: offices, warehouses, hotels and retail spaces use fly-throughs to show off layout and scale.
• Events: weddings, concerts, sports and corporate events are all looking for footage that feels different.

Want to learn how to do it? Our Fly Through Drone Tours course walks you through planning, flying and delivering professional indoor fly-through tours.

One important note: if you’re flying for pay, you need an FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate. Flying for fun falls under the recreational rules, but any commercial work, including real estate tours and paid social media videos, requires Part 107. Drone U’s Part 107 course will get you ready to pass the FAA test.

A Gift That Builds a Valuable Skill Set

These challenging jobs give veterans a way to hone their focus and earn good money. At Drone U, we see fly-through and FPV work pay anywhere from $100 to $300 an hour, depending on the market, the client and the pilot’s experience.

Along the way, you build three skill sets that stack on each other:

• Flying FPV: smooth, precise, cinematic flight.
• Video editing: turning raw footage into content clients want.
• Fly-through tours: work you can offer to real estate agents, venues and creative agencies.

Put those together and you become very valuable. That’s why we think the DJI Avata 2 is the best gift for a veteran: it’s fun on day one, it can be a healthy way to focus, and it can grow into a career.

As an Amazon Associate, Drone U earns from qualifying purchases.

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