Six weeks later, drone biz DJI deploys control app 'flight mode' Chinese drone-maker DJI has re-announced its "local data mode" for phone-home UAVs, around six weeks after first promising to introduce it following the US Army banning use of its products. Back in August the US Army imposed a blanket ban on the use of all DJI products across the entire service, following unspecified “cyber …
At the current paranoia setting in USA it does not matter what they do. They may walk on water, feed the hungry with a couple of loafs of bread or cure all world ills. That will not result in a change in the order, because anything else aside they got in the way of Pork. Though shall not cross the Pork no-fly zone.
Since Local Data Mode blocks all internet data, the DJI Pilot app will not be able to detect the location of the user, show the map and geofencing information such as No Fly Zones and temporary flight restrictions.
Surely the global, or at least continent-based (like with SatNavs), data can be downloaded and stored locally for this information? Why do you need to have internet data enabled to determine location, isn't that what GPS is for?
http://abc7ny.com/drone-hits-military-chopper-over-staten-island-/2443487/ (note: contains autoplay video of the story)
The picture of the broken off drone arm that struck the heli appears to be that from a DJI Phantom.
Not good news for us drone fliers when something like this happens.
Of course the military can do whatever they want but the chopper was at 500 feet over a residential neighbourhood on Staten Island which doesn't have an airfield. Though that damage to the rotor will be expensive, it does demonstrate who wins when a real aircraft and a plastic toy come together.
But drone pilot would have been aware of the military chopper as they are not quiet or discreet, and could easily have dropped his altitude until the heli passed over. Probably lacking brain.
"But drone pilot would have been aware of the military chopper as they are not quiet or discreet, and could easily have dropped his altitude until the heli passed over. Probably lacking brain."
Not so sure about that at all. We have a medical chopper flying over the city fairly often at fairly low altitude coming in for the landing at the hospital (to be honest, I never saw them fly anywhere at any sensible height, even further away, as if they are perpetually hypermiling or something - the sports aircraft that operate out of the nearby sports airfield are flying incomparably higher, even when nobody is jumping out of them).
My point being, the chopper passes literally in a few seconds at that altitude. If I were flying with FPV goggles as a fairly high-flying quad is likely to, by the time I look around and manage to locate the direction the chopper I just heard is coming from, I'm pretty sure it will have already hit me if we're on a collision course. As for dropping, they may have been doing just that - who knows what height that quad was at when the pilot heard the chopper...
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