Boost Ore Detector Range?

The hand drill has a native ore detection range of 20m. The base-installed ore detector has an altogether unimpressive 150m range.

From glancing at wikis, the small-craft seems to be 50m.

50m is well below a safe flying altitude, especially in mountainous terrain, is 50m really the furthest you can scan for ore in a small craft? It seems basically impossible to conduct any kind of wide-area search for ore deposits with such a paltry scanning range.

Solution 1:

Currently it is impossible to create a small grid ore detector with a higher range than 50m without a mod.

It is possible with a hacky workaround, to drop a large grid rotor part where the small grid one should be, they are the same size and can fit inside either size rotor. This large rotor head can accept large grid blocks such as ore detectors to be built on top.

Simply remove the rotor part a small grid rotor comes with, get a large grid rotor part and with careful precision place it in mid air above the rotor. If it sits inside, go to rotor controls and press 'attach' (Not 'add rotor part') then be sure to lock it in place. You should be able to build the large grid ore detector on top, be wary of the additional mass.

Other than this, there is no other vanilla way to increase ore detection. Ore spots are identifiable with distinct discoloured patterns in the biome they are in which allows for your ore 'detection range' to be as far as the eye can see.

Alternatively, to cover more ground with a small detection range, you can rapidly fly very close to the surface with your hand drill equipped, as the hand drill works as a short range ore detector. Higher tier hand drills have higher detection.

Finally there is always the possibility of mods. There are definitely mods to increase ore detector ranges far beyond their vanilla specification.

Regardless of how you wish to proceed, there are a handful of options for finding ore. I recommend learning how to spot ore patterns on the surface, as this is the most efficient - requiring no resources other than hydrogen bottles for suit flight, as well as no hard limited range beyond draw distance.