Recent content by DefiantChild

Which is not mandatory (wink ;) and a nod, nod and a wink ;). Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Mums :rolleyes: the word! ) Disclaimer: emoticons may not appear as intended. Your mileage may vary.)

Probably not. But I have a fairly adequate grasp of the tech and became an enthusiast back when dinosaurs roamed the planet. I'm not sure what the count was in 2007 or how many were actually operational. If I'm not mistaken, 8 IIR-M sats were launched between 2005-2009 and roughly 11 or 12 IIF...

Not at all. I've completely disregarded it. You're entitled to your personal opinions. I've trained in and flown Cessnas, Pipers, and King Airs. You're comparing apples to oranges. The missions for fixed wing piloted craft have nothing to do with multi-rotor remotely piloted UAVs. The rules...

Sorry, but I disagree. What Garmin has to say about their own products does not reflect what the rest of the world is doing, especially in the world of GIS. If what they said had any real merit, companies like Trimble would have been laughed out of the survey business long ago. Wrong. There...

You are correct that Doppler effect is used to measure velocity, but it is also used in the determination and refinement of satellite to receiver ranging. Calculating GPS satellite distance is far more complex than R=CΔt. If GPS sats were geosynchronous, we might not be having this discussion...

It's designed to cap your flight altitude to under 400ft above the ground or ground based "structures" (buildings, trees, tall angry giants, etc.) The relevant Part 107 Regulation reads: "The altitude of the small unmanned aircraft cannot be higher than 400 feet above ground level, unless the...

I misspoke and should have said typical GPS units internally use Doppler effect to not only compute geoposition relative to the earth's surface but also compute altitude normal to its geoposition. Actually, position is computed 3-dimensionally relative to the earth's core and requires signals...

DJI (as do other manufacturers) compute MSL altitude by computing the Doppler shifts received from the numerous satellites it's GPS systems uses to fix geographic location. You may not know where or how high your bird is, but it is a sure bet that the onboard electronics knows. If or when GPS...

I want to circle back to the OP. (TL;DR) There is no disputing or misinterpreting that the ceiling altitude proscribed under Part 107 uses the term AGL (above ground level) that references a fixed maximum altitude relative to changing ground elevations. Launch elevation is not a metric used in...

Game over is more relative to altitude, rates of decent, and other factors including implementing proactive mitigation vs reactive. I believe the technology that the developers have in mind is proactive. In other words looking at and learning the behavior of sensors, other inputs, metrics, and...

I suspect they'll apply AI learning techniques to "anticipate" and act on impending motor & battery failures using a secondary autonomous monitoring system that does not rely on the primary AC control or power systems. It occurs to me, in the rare occurance of a drone dying mid-flight, a...

I ran into this Technology Review article this morning I thought I would share. In short, a husband/wife team have developed a solution to landing UAVs safely when battery life or other in flight impairments arise. This software promises to teach drones how to crash safely in an emergency

Respectfully, your assumption is somewhat naive. Were DJI to code firmware in such a manner that "cause accidents that end up in dead or major disaster..." and the egregiousness of that code could not be proven because it was (a) encrypted, and/or (b) otherwise obfuscated; then you'd be...

Reminds me of Niantic and their Pokémon smartphone app vs reverse engineering hackers. No matter what Niantic did or how much money they threw at the problem they were unable to outmaneuver the hackers. Moral of the story? DJI should focus on building the best quality app that they can and not...

Apparently airspace was closed to all except fire operations aircraft. The violating airspace charge will likely stick. Whether or not the felony charges of endangerment and interference will stick remain to be seen since air-ops were winding down for the evening. Here's an earlier article...