Av8Chuck

They aren’t looking for Aerial cinematography services. Even if they were, how would contracting with professionals meet the needs of emergency responders? They should stop buying toys and start training officers how to safely deploy UAVs that can provide persistent survailance and more standoff.

I think it’s great that they recieved funding, an FAA waiver and they have a great story but the video and the article conflate a lot of issues that actually have little to do with UAV’s effectiveness to solve the problem of reforestation. The reason the plants are germinated off-site and then transported and hand planted is because it’s what’s require to assure the tree takes root. Hydro-seeding has been around for a long time, it’s well understood, not that expensive, and would be easy to scale on the ground. If it worked for this application it would probably be deployed on a large scale. My skepticism is not with their ability to deploy but in the effectiveness of the methodology of planting trees. None of the messaging addressed this issue so maybe they have the answer. Measuring their success related to monies raised is a bit disingenuous, does anyone remember AirWare? Aside from my skepticism I wish them all the luck. It’s certainly an exciting oportunity.

Where are you located?

Welcome to the community. I sure wish you were in California, we’re trying to setup our company on MS365 to manage our business...

Your likely to get a lot of advice to purchase a DJI by people who know way too much about drones because their continually having to update the firmware, figure out how to log online to get permission to fly etc.. these same people will have a lot of great explanations for why it’s this way. No matter what the explanation keep in mind that DJI is not a camera company and if your a professional photographer you’ll find that their cameras fall way short. Their on par with a 16MP PowerShot. Also if your going to fly your camera’s do you really trust a drone manufactured by a consumer electronics company using $10 Chinese motors? There are great industrial drones available, however, if you don’t have any experience with using UAV’s for industrial inspection or carrying larger, heavier camera equipment then DJI will likely be your only choice. We do industrial inspection for utilities and you can see how large our drones have to be to carry a Sony A7RIII https://aerialalchemy.com We use Y6 becuase of the hardware redundancy, a little less efficient but way safer than a hexacopter. Welcome to the forum. Where are you located?

I have two concerns with this: who is the target audience and what problem is this campaign is trying to solve what organization(s) should be producing and disseminating this information. Obviously this has nothing to do with the commercial application of drones and I think your assesmmet of the campaign regarding consumers is spot on. That leads to #2 (which this campaign is full of...). There are other “community based organizations” that are much better positioned to produce this sort of media for their memberships. The FAA probably could have offered a grant to produce this and remained focused on the job at hand. Maybe if the FAA would spend the additional time and resources it took to produce and distribute this commercial operators would be provided better services.

Curious what your paying and how many people sign up.

Sorry, Ed, certainly nothing in my response was to suggest that you’re wrong. My point is there is no right or wrong answer and @Gio just needs to decide what to do. My question regarding ever going to Kenya was badly aimed at @Gio. Not like that’s a prerequisite but if so @Gio would know that there’s no officials to enforce any regulations in most of the country. It’s a bit like flying drones in Northern California, not illigal but lots of pot plantations, you probably won’t get ramp checked but you might get shot down...

I couldn’t care less whether you take a drone on your vacation or not. I have expressed my opinion that you shouldn’t. However, this topic comes up often and the issue becomes somewhat polorizing because everyone seems to “take a side” when there is no side to take. Like everything with a drone you are responsible for what you do with it and have to decide for yourself what level of risk your willing to take and therefore mitigate. We’re talking about a toy drone, if you can’t afford to loose it at customers don’t take it. If you think that you might be arrested for flying it, don’t take it. I can tell you from first hand experience that neither of these are likely to happen. When I was confronted with this decision I took the drone with 10 batteries, extra motors and props in two large cases. I had no problems, doesn’t make it right or wrong but no one cared! By taking a drone on vacation you are not importing or exporting a drone. These rules are in place to make sure that if you bring a drone in, you take it out when you leave, even if it’s in pieces. They are there to prevent you from importing, not from bringing something in or using it. Anyone who works in production knows that this also applies to many of the higher end cameras and cinema gear but tourist bring camera equipment into Kenya all the time that aren’t even aware thier equipment violates these rules. Occasionally officials will ask the purpose for using this equipment and if you answer because you love photography they generally send you on your way. If they suspect a commercial reason, it will probably cost you money, and if they suspect that your bringing the equipment in for sale, it will cost you money, they will catalog the equipment and if you don’t bring everything in that catalog out with you when you return through customs they it will cost you more money and/or jail time. If your a foreigner researching whether you can bring a drone on vacation and where you could use it in the US you’ll find similar convoluted explanaitions, yet we all know that people bring drones into the US everyday and fly them with impunity. If after entering you fly your drone at an NFL event or fly it in Times Square your going to be in a world of trouble and will probably be nominated for a Darwin Award. But a little common sense on where and when you fly makes all the difference. Apparently that logic is not good enough for some people that feel the need to be indemnified by the rules. If you can figure this crap out then your a better attorney than me. Actually I’m not an attorney at all but my brother in law is an he gave up trying to figure this out as well... Even if you think you’ve found the answer, you haven’t. In third world countries the rules, or an individual officials understanding of the rules often change daily. It doesn’t matter if you have a link, a declaration from the President or a copy of the Constitution, bring cash in small denominations and be prepared to pay. Have you ever been to Kenya?

They can’t deny authorization either.

Ok @Pete beckett, I don’t take it personally but keep in mind this is an online forum and most of my replies are Typed on my iPhone while driving intoxicated chasing down the out of control UAV that I’m flying.

Have you ever seen on used in person?

If this article is to be believed, this is problem. https://www.dronepilotgroundschool.com/ramp-checks/?utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=68160594&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-810fazSI4UMhEnCtSvq_GUpyIjbPeLotaQypbUSBtW7eEMB25bY_xDgtNbwJtexwDDI-NWhGhxx4-kRyt43JxQIk4HLw&_hsmi=68160594 I’ve been a pilot for more than 30 Years and have never been, nor do I know anyone personally that has been ramp checked. If I were ramp checked as a result of getting a LAANC clearance I would NEVER request a clearance again! The FAA puts out crap like “Buzzy the Drone” and then penalizes professionals who apply for their LAANC by tracking them down and ramp checking them!?

Hi @Carebear1968 and welcome to the forum. Where are you located? All multirotors pretty much fly the same. They name similar features differently, DJI calls a flight mode “ATTI” while others call it “stabilize,” they all have more or less the same features. You need to learn where and what all the knobs and switches do, you can get that information from the owners manual, you’ll find that most of that has to do with camera and gimbal control, but regarding primary flight control they are all the same, so any flight training video would be applicable. The learning can be broken down into three main categories: Primary flight - Controls related to flight Telemetry - Status information Accessories - Controls related to camera and gimbal etc. If you don’t do number one right it’s going to cost you money, if you don’t understand number two it can be unsafe, hopefully the worst thing that happens if your not good at number three is you get bad shots, however, it’s easy to get distracted by number three and you forget number one and it costs you money... Number one is general to all drones so there will be a lot of videos that you can watch that will be applicable to your drone. Most drones provide number two and it’s just a case of learning where on the display each parameter is. Number three is drone specific, this is t a really popular drone so finding videos with this specific detail might be difficult.

The trouble is in the definition of “permit.” When they were enforcing the regulations to fly drones was that commercially, recreationally, or both? It also comes down to what you as the operator think your rights are? In the US, absent any law against something does not make it illigal. In third World countries it’s not clear to foreigners what an individuals rights might be so there’s certianly merit in the question. Like I said earlier, common sense goes a long way in determining whether someone should or shouldn’t take a drone into a situation like this. @MikeV has it right. I have flown in Kenya several times, in National Parks, the Rift Valley, cities and small towns without any problems. Was it legal, probably not. Did I fly too close to animals, some people would report that because they think any drone in the air is too close - fortunately it isn’t up to them. There is a lot of political tension in and around Kenya, a lot of militia people with guns. DON’T POINT A CAMERA AT THEM AND DONT FLY A DRONE AROUND THEM and you should be fine. Ask who? There’s no one to ask. And if you find people to ask you’ll get a different answer from each of them. @Gio seems to be looking for a definitive yes or no answer, there isn’t one. If what @MikeV and I have shared with you doesn’t answer your concerns then I’d recommend that you don’t take a drone. Both of us have first hand experience of flying there and have shared with you our experiences, if you are not satisfied with the explanations I think that even if you took a drone in all likelyhood you wouldn’t enjoy flying it anyway.