Arthur C. Clark came up with the answer. He wrote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I think higher will give a better perspective on the image of trees, hills, valleys etc. With that in mind do the problem in reverse. Drones are allowed to go up to 400 feet which isn't really high enough. Manned aircraft are supposed to maintain at least 500 ft over open terrain. I would think the ideal would be to fly a plane at 1000 feet and use a focal length a bit less than ten times the width of the image sensor. (For example 300mm for a 35mm sensor) This would cover a little more than 100 feet wide so you can trim it to exact width if that is important. Also you need to insure that the camera is mounted so it points straight down to not distort the image perspective. The camera should also be isolated as much as possible from the engine vibration.

Most aircraft will be moving well over a hundred feet per second so you will have to fire a few frames per second for the length of the flight. When the camera buffer is full the pilot will need to circle back and start another pass where the last one ended.

I once knew a pilot who did this kind of photography for land surveying back in the film days. His cameras were mounted on a gyro stabilized platform that shot through a hole in the belly of the aircraft. He was shooting from a few thousand feet taking in a mile wide strip and I think using IR film to see through the foliage and see things like buried pipelines.

I know I'm opening myself up to a bunch of static from the manual camera settings fanatics but I have found for my 60D the automatic "sports" setting is ideal for birds in flight. I have had great success shooting everything from humming birds to Bald Eagles with this setting. This will also give you a fast motor drive setting so don't be surprised if you shoot two or three images every time you press the shutter. Don't worry, the film is free and you can delete the extras if you like.
Also a tripod or just resting the lens on the back of another chair can help with the weight of a long lens. I use a Sigma 18-300 with image stabilization most of the time. It is not as fast or as heavy as your 100-400 but it works well as my walk around lens.

The two I photographed are mini donyeys with their winter coats. One was born in October and the other waited till late January to make her appearance.

I was at a friend's farm shooting some fuzzy little friends. Charley born in October and Nellie Star born in January. I heard honking over head. Since I was in an automatic mode (aperture priority with auto ISO) I could swing the camera up and zoom out to maximum to shoot 14 frames of this pair in a couple seconds. I think people who insist on manual everything would be hard pressed to pull this off.

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Which is where the forever wars mentioned in "1984" forecasted our recent history so well.

Keeping out of WWI would have prevented WWII.

I would have had us not interfere in WWI in the first place! That set the stage for one of the greatest evils of the 20th century, Hitler. Without the U.S. entry into WWI, Germany and the Allies would have fought to exhaustion and negotiated a peace that would not have bankrupted Germany and led to the rise Hitler and the Nazis.

Well said but there are plenty of conservatives who think they can fix the world too. About thirty years ago I gave up on both of the corrupt old parties and went with the Libertarians. ( http://www.lp.org ) I have never regretted my vote since then.

Ever read 1984? Viet Nam and Afghanistan could fit in that book perfectly.

Day to day I shoot aperture priority but if I go for action or especially birds in flight I switch to the sports mode on my Canon 60d. The full automatic sports mode gives high shutter speed and reasonably wide aperture while juggling the ISO to get the exposure reasonably correct.

Where does worserest fit in here?

My worserest habits include:

1) Not holding my camera level
2) Not taking time
3) Not looking at what the camera is focusing on
4) Not resetting the exposure and reshooting
5) Not getting the cropping right in the camera

Others too numerous to mention

As my photo shows at least 90% of it was on the floor when she was done.

Yes, but Belle is a pound rescue mutt as were Pearl and Rosie before her. Both of my dogs have a lot of black lab in them plus whatever their traveling salesman fathers contributed. Pearl, my avatar image, is about about eight years old and finally calmed down. Last year when Rosie died, we had to get a puppy, Belle the chewing machine.

The camera is safe. I just brushed one of those little flash memories off the edge of the table after I downloaded it. My little girl, Belle, was more attentive than me.