Pull_Up said:
But the only way to ensure that education is mandatory flight training and licencing for all pilots of UAVs above a certain class, or above a certain range capability... Careful what you wish for.
I'd wish for neither.
Somehow we've all managed to "survive" for decades with radio controlled helicopters and airplanes flying above without having geofence restrictions enforced by manufacturers. Just because DJI
can do this doesn't mean they
should.
I'm all for responsible flying, and acting like an adult when behind the controls is not optional. I even like the feature to some extent for new pilots and the 90%+ of people who won't be affected by it at all. Phantoms should ship with this feature enabled "out of the box" as it will keep people from getting themselves into trouble.
That being said, my objection comes when DJI doesn't give advanced users (and people with a legitimate need) to turn these features off (even temporarily, for a single flight) when needed. Some of those folks are people like me... I'm using the Phantom to help some folks get aerial photos for real estate listings. Some of those listings are within the randomly determined and unilaterally enforced 5 mile radius of Dulles Airport. Now, we all know that you don't necessarily need to fly really high to get good photos for real estate... What I'd be doing wouldn't create issues for aircraft at all. So why not allow for the restriction to be turned off?
As much as I like my P2V (and I really do), this is leading me to question whether or not I should keep it. Now that the firmware has been upgraded, its applicability for my needs has been significantly reduced, and the P2V represents far less in terms of value than it did just last week.
Is there a way of easily downgrading the firmware? If so, then that may be the solution to my needs. I could run the v3.0 firmware for regular day-to-day operations, and only downgrade it when I need to fly within the "no fly zone" to get photos. Though this work-around would be frustrating and inconvenient (it could require bringing my laptop into the field with me a lot of the time), it would be one way of solving my needs. (Of course, the best way of doing this would be to allow users who choose the use NAZA mode to fully disable the geofence restrictions.)
Arbitrary and capricious actions like this from DJI have me rethinking my longer term strategy of using their products. And as long as these restrictions exist and cannot be overridden, I honestly cannot recommend DJI's products to friends and colleagues. After all, who wants to fly a CrippleQuad?
