Can I remotely identify a drone and its operator?

Questions & Answers
1

It’s been a while, but I am assuming its still not possible to track sub 250g drones like the Mini4 etc.

I ask because we had an incident earlier this morning with a Mini 4 (it looked like that) flying and loitering around a couple of our residential houses. It was low enough to hear it and low enough for me to make out roughly which DJI model it was. It was clearly doing things that were outside of the Drone Code and CAA guidance rules.

As someone who worked to get their certification and is very keen on not ruining the hobby for others, I take exception to this sort of thing, because it smears all of us with the same brush (my neighbour was out at the same time cursing all drones until I mentioned that I was a certified drone pilot.

I assume we do not yet have a remote ID system for these smaller drones?

2

Remotely identify you mean? And get the location of the operator?

If it was a DJI drone you can use an AeroScope (if you’re financially well off).

Or, if you’re not minted you can use a laptop with an appropriate wifi chipset running kismet. This will only identify older DJI drones though (eg. Mini 3 era and before) as DJI applied encryption on the latest models (eg. Avata 2, Air 3), If you want to identify newer DJI drones you will need an AeroScope and the upgrade dongle for it too.

If it wasn’t a DJI drone then you’ll never remotely identify it.

What were those things?

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3

What sort of things that were outside the scope of the drone code and CAA regs ? A mini 4 too, so sub 250gm drone.

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4

Thank god :+1:

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