Firmly against any restrictions that can potentially harm our initially fine drones!and set bad precedents for both civil liberties and the distribution of compelling technologies - furthermore as long as guns are allowed in this country with minimal oversight, drones should be no different. Sure, some NFZones make sense, but it should be up to the pilot to avoid them since it is the pilot that will bear responsibility regardless. (Spoiler I'm FOR both drones and guns as civil liberties, although I am only a UAV owner at this point). Remember, in a truly free society, the people need to have the choice and ability of adhering to or breaking any given law.
Poll: Restricted flight in Firmware .800
- Thread starter mpa
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If DJI want to be useful, they should publish the latest NFZs as optional overlays and give you notifications that you are entering them, maybe with a modal "abort mission" dialog.
Michael Ainsworth
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Unfortunately there is no true free society, never has been.
Any attempt at a free society devolves into anarchy where the strong dominant the weak.
Utopia never has and never will exist.
Any attempt at a free society devolves into anarchy where the strong dominant the weak.
Utopia never has and never will exist.
And what exactly do two joysticks and a toy have to do with being a Pilot? I am not one of those people that you hear equating the flying of a drone as being a pilot. His real world example is crap! Can you give me an example of a drone bringing down a plane and killing anybody? Can you tell me of an incident were a drone hit into somebody and killed them? If you cannot find a single incident then how are you going to extrapolate that same scenario into 10 people being killed?
I have been flying RC in both regular and FPV modes for decades. I have an amateur radio license which allows me to use much more powerful RC transmitters than the regular person. I have flown FPV way past the distances that the Mavic can fly and much higher. So have thousands of other RC pilots. No incidents of downed craft to report because most of us do it wisely and responsibly.
And BTW I don't think I know more than everyone else but I do think I know more about my location and where I can FLY than some pinhead at DJI in China who is looking at a Map from 1945.
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After updating to 800 I can no longer fly at my home location in California. Previously I was in a yellow "unlockable" zone, which I had no problem unlocking. The controller read "near NFZ", but I was able to fly. After the update it says "In NFZ" and "Cannot Take-off". I can only conclude that they expanded the NFZ area in the update. Also, I doubt that reversing to an earlier firmware would reverse this, since the NFZ Update was a separate update within the firmware upgrade process.
The problem here is that you're talking about the FAA, but the subject is DJI. DJI is certainly not the FAA, and we can already see plenty of cases where their NFZ info is either off-point or flat-out wrong., and in several cases, expanded in size without any basis or justification Hell, they're even sinking folks' drones into bodies of water mid-flight by suddenly triggering NFZ forced landings after allowing the drone into the area.
They have no business managing the NFZs if they can't get them right. Period.
At some point, personal responsibility has to prevail, but it's becoming clear that they don't care and will go ahead and mis-manage things for you, regardless of whether you asked.
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2nckayakers
Well-Known Member
I haven't seen any new restrictions. Everything seems the same as before the update with the exception that I don't get the NFZ restriction everytime I turn on the RC before it connects to all the satellites.
Johnmcl7
Well-Known Member
It seems flying illegally with drones is actively encouraged while flying legally is seen as boring and pointless, bearing in mind drones are still mostly within in the enthusiast community and that's the stance, I fully expect we're going to see much more aggressive software restrictions to enforce the rules as clearly a lot of owners can't be trusted to follow the rules voluntarily and as the technology becomes cheaper and widespread, that problem is going to get a lot bigger.
That bothers me even as someone who does make the effort to fly legally because what always ultimately starts happening when they try to restrict illegal use is that they harm the legal users as well with ham fisted attempts that have unintended side effects or cause additional difficulties. I do find it odd that people will complain against possible restrictions then in another thread give an apt demonstration of why those restrictions are likely to be brought in.
That bothers me even as someone who does make the effort to fly legally because what always ultimately starts happening when they try to restrict illegal use is that they harm the legal users as well with ham fisted attempts that have unintended side effects or cause additional difficulties. I do find it odd that people will complain against possible restrictions then in another thread give an apt demonstration of why those restrictions are likely to be brought in.
rstekeur
Well-Known Member
Your assuming that everyone that fly's a drone is as responsible as the vast majority of people on this forum. What about the yahoo's that on the way home from the local bar decides to stop off at best buy and buy them self a spanking new Phantom without a clue of what they are doing and fly's the thing across the approach at JFK. Those are the one's we all need to worry about.
namja
Well-Known Member
If you know what you're doing, and you're a law abiding pilot, then there are no restrictions.
If you don't know what you're doing or you like to fly illegally, then the new firmware protects the rest of us from you.
At least this is what the new firmware is supposed to do. I see how there are too many glitches still. I hope the NFZ-related bugs will all get squashed in the .900 release, whenever that might be.
If you don't know what you're doing or you like to fly illegally, then the new firmware protects the rest of us from you.
At least this is what the new firmware is supposed to do. I see how there are too many glitches still. I hope the NFZ-related bugs will all get squashed in the .900 release, whenever that might be.
If you go to a new geographic area, you will be prompted for a nfz zone update, if you ignore, you can only fly with limited distance/height, similar to beginners mode.... It's very unfortunate if you don't have a web connection on phone, if your in a remote area or if you use a tablet
rstekeur
Well-Known Member
DJI can only go so far in their restrictions and then they will get slammed by some other company who is interested in just making cool Drones and not running the Drone police dept. When that happens one of two things will occur. Either DJI dumps most of the NFZ stuff so that they can compete or the government will setup new rules and regulations. DJI is betting on the latter and thats why they want all of their drones to be running software that can give them real time tracking and the ability to disable the drone remotely if its needed.
Rob
That's a particularly shallow, juvenile assessment of much of the serious, thoughtful opinions people have offered on this subject.
First, the best reading of the current laws and regulations is, well, unclear. So it's no slam-dunk that the activity being discussed here -- exceeding 400' -- is prohibited. I used to think so, and took a pretty harsh position on it (similar to my personal troll here who follows me around to shake his finger at me over the Above the Clouds video), but have since changed my mind after looking much more deeply into the issue.
Also, my initial knee-jerk view that it was absolutely, totally, completely unsafe and a grave risk to manned aircraft has changed as well, after really examining the issue in depth.
So it's not a matter of "encouraging" anyone to break the law, nor propagandizing that anything under 400' is boring. Stop with childish nonsense. All of us that do flights above 400' now and then fly the vast majority of the time under 400' anyway, because it most certainly is NOT boring and pointless.
It's just that there are some very interesting, beautiful shots that can only be taken by exceeding 400' -- my scurrilous Above the Clouds video being one such example.
EDIT: What I am encouraging people to do w.r.t. high altitude drone flights is to study and understand the issues before exceeding 400', what to do to be as safe as possible. For example, checking Flightradar24 at the time of flight to see what planes are around, at what altitudes, and where they're heading.
Not foolproof, of course, but a helluva lot better than having no idea what's in the sky over or headed toward you.
AND, there's much more to being safe than just Flightradar24... just one of the tools/steps one should use.
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namja
Well-Known Member
If you know what you're doing, then you can avoid situations like that 99% of the time. I routinely fly in the desert/mountains with no Internet connection, and I have yet to run into problems as I plan ahead.
I consider this a minor issue for most people. Even so, I am hoping that this gets "fixed" by allowing one to prefetch NFZ zone updates so that you can download all the areas you intend on flying while you're at home.
Yeah, the dilemma is pre-fetch can't do anything about TFRs that hit the DB after your pre-fetch.
Imagine you do everything right, pre-plan and get everything (maps, NFZs, etc.) preloaded. Then you go off to fly and turns out the POTUS has decided on a whim to go visit the winery you were planning to shoot.
Your system does not get updated with the TFR that was unanticipated, you go up and fly, and then spend 2 years in prison (probably not, but you get the point).
I'm not arguing in favor of DJIs system, just pointing out that if you ARE going to implement a system like this, there are all sorts of holes in it that force all other kinds of annoying, restrictive hoops to jump through just to take off, like having to have an internet connection.
Imagine you do everything right, pre-plan and get everything (maps, NFZs, etc.) preloaded. Then you go off to fly and turns out the POTUS has decided on a whim to go visit the winery you were planning to shoot.
Your system does not get updated with the TFR that was unanticipated, you go up and fly, and then spend 2 years in prison (probably not, but you get the point).
I'm not arguing in favor of DJIs system, just pointing out that if you ARE going to implement a system like this, there are all sorts of holes in it that force all other kinds of annoying, restrictive hoops to jump through just to take off, like having to have an internet connection.
namja
Well-Known Member
If you think you will be flying in a new area, then you can be proactive. For example, before you lose Internet connection, stop and update the NFZ. Even if you're on a Wi-Fi only iPad, you can find ways to tether. It's about finding creative solutions, not about bypassing the prompt.
Overall, I think it's a good update. DJI is trying to sell the drones to the masses (hey, they're in Costco now, right?). I want the average Joe to have more restrictions. More educated pilots (like you and me and most people on MavicPilots) will find ways to have fewer restrictions, whether it's not upgrading FW, or downgrading FW, or some other means to get the desired effect. But I believe that the masses need an update like this so that they do less stupid things. Idiot pilots ruin things for everybody.
Mavic, fvk around wherever you go.
Shouldn't have to be creative, shouldn't have to be a pain in the butt. What a joke
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