Flying over highways

[Stanza_guy]

Hello all,

I'm new to this forum, but I've been lurking for some time while narrowing down my choice for Phantom 2 V vs. Phantom 2 with gopro, ect. I still haven't ordered it yet but soon.... very soon.

My question is to the experienced pilots about flying rules/obligations/ etiquette. Would you comfortably fly over a highway? By that I mean some roadway that is practically always going to have traffic flowing? Or would you follow strict practice and never, ever fly across (or even very near) a busy road?

Many thanks to those involved in standing up this site. Many thanks to thoughtful responders to the other forum posts I've been following.

 

[Mofroggy]

When I first started flying the Phantom and saw how easy it was to fly I was really confident that I could control it enough to fly it anywhere. THEN I had a prop failure (or something!) and watched it crash to the ground from 40' up. The Phantom was OK and I am still flying it. My flying was OK, it was an equipment malfunction. Since then I never fly over anything that might be harmed. This especially includes people and it most certainly includes automobiles. If you are really lucky you will never have a failure but having read enough of this forum to see the there are failures (including mine) I have become really guns shy about where I fly. If I harmed someone it would be hard to live with. In today's litigious society there is a REALLY good chance that you will be sued no matter how minor or major the damage was to whatever you hit. If I were you I would be ULTRA cautious and stay that way.
Fly, be safe and have a good time!

 

[Darwood8u]

I too had a prop failure. Everything was going great on the first 4 flights. I would always check the drone for anything loose. On one flight, while the drone was 50' off of the ground, in a field behind my house, one of the props just flew off and the drone came crashing down. I would feel terrible if it would have fallen on anybody, or anything. Your best bet is to expect a failure and fly accordingly. Be safe and enjoy!

 

[mcmax20]

Something else that should be kept in mind is people like to watch things as they're driving. If there's a quad flying overhead causing someone to take their eye off the road and cause an accident you'd feel pretty dumb! Especially on a busy road where bad accidents can happen fast I'd say its not worth it. Although it wouldn't surprise me to see a new thread about a low altitude aerial video of an "awesome" 20 car pile-up put on-line as the First Ever on YouTube!!!

 

[brad90631]

I too had a prop failure. Everything was going great on the first 4 flights. I would always check the drone for anything loose. On one flight, while the drone was 50' off of the ground, in a field behind my house, one of the props just flew off and the drone came crashing down. I would feel terrible if it would have fallen on anybody, or anything. Your best bet is to expect a failure and fly accordingly. Be safe and enjoy!

Before that flight that the prop flew off, had you checked the prop nuts? do you check them before every flight?

 

[TechJunkieRC]

I would try to avoid any busy or populated area be it highway or other. Once, I was flying fixed wing in a new area and a highway was parallel to the private road/runway. I intended to stay off the highway, however, on viewing my video I was almost over the middle of the south bound lane a couple of times. I was surprised how different my actual location was over the ground from where I thought my plane was. I was pretty high but still it bothered me that I was not as accurate as I thought I was and I was flying LOS not FPV. At least with my plane I had a better chance of gliding it down vs my Phantom. Any serious malfunction such as props and the Phantom basically becomes a rock! Even a plane can become uncontrollable depending on the failure. I definitely could not comfortably fly over a busy highway intentionally. It just seems to be tempting fate and the risks just aren't worth it IMHO.

 

[kydan]

I would not fly over or near highly populated roads.

It is a distraction and people will look and potentially hit something or worse someone.

 

[GMANNZ]

People are brainless at the best of times, ... seemingly especially when driving ..... years ago when living in Australia ..... a big 6 lane intersection had a MASSIVE billboard of Elle McPherson lying down sexily in skimpy lingerie (was wicked looking shot) ..... after about 10 big crashes at the intersection they had to remove the billboard as was to distracting .... !!!! :shock: .... wowWEE nice tits .... ##screech## crash ..... (see what I mean) !!!

So yep roads really not good to have amazing looking distractions next to or in your case over them