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Photography Techniques and EquipmentThis forum is for the discussion of technical details of how to take good pictures as well as discuss the equipment used in that pursuit.
The height allowed now is kind of "set" by the FAA to 400 ft. Not sure how much they can enforce such a thing, however. But supposedly all drones over 1/2 lb have to now be registered with the FAA. I'm not sure this would ever pass a constitutional test if it went to court, however, because as long as I am not engaging in some sort of problematical interstate commerce with a drone, I can't see where the federal government was ever granted this sort of authority by the US Constitution. But of course, proving you are right about such things, by riding such a lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court, is a whole lot more expensive to do than most people would ever be willing to take on voluntarily.
The only restriction on horizontal range appears to be the recommendation that the drone stay within line of sight. But not sure where it says anything about the drone actually remaining IN sight along that line. These things are pretty small, and become very difficult to see pretty quickly. Some of them claim a distance of a couple of miles, but realistically that would have to be a one way ticket for such maximums. Battery power is a major consideration when you want a return trip for your drone. Here is a video of a guy running his out to about a mile and a half and then returning it with just a small bit of battery power still remaining.
Had the wind been blowing the wrong direction because of a sudden change during the flight, there was a real good chance that his drone would have dropped down into the trees long before getting back home. There are quite a few videos on YouTube of just this sort of thing happening to people.
This can also be problematical because once many of these drones reach a particular low value on remaining battery life, they will automatically land the drone, no matter where it is and what is underneath them. Seems kind of short sighted to me, since apparently this is being done to keep the drone from just falling out of the sky when the battery becomes completely depleted. Personally I would like to have it that I could still use that remaining 5 or 10 percent or so of battery charge to try to pick a better spot to bring it in, rather than the drone itself just deciding, "I am landing HERE, right NOW." And to top that off, with the new smarter batteries, they show zero percent charge remaining even though there is still a substantial charge left in the battery. But to try to keep the battery from terminally discharging, they show zero percent with actually a good margin to spare. Again, personally, I would like to be able to make that decision myself. If I have to choose between losing the drone in a lake, or having the battery depleted to the point where it becomes permanently dead, I would choose to lose the battery rather than lose the drone itself. So I do wish these manufacturers would put some sort of overrides in the system so the operator had some say in the matter when things get a bit out of hand.
Maybe in some later generations that will take place. The drones do seem to be getting more and more "intelligence" programmed into them with things like obstacle avoidance and the like, so maybe some sort of rudimentary artificial intelligence to make rational decisions in an emergency will show up in these things eventually. Of course, even then, I would STILL like to have a say in the matter concerning MY property, not what some programmer in China thinks is best for me.