The following is not a rant against you, @tchambers Tony, as you made a valid point and I thank you for that.
The above screen grab was taken from the DJI LK24-BT Ground Station APP for iOS. The blue pin is the location of our local model helicopter flying club.
The screen grab below is from the DJIGO4 APP. The Blue Zone is technically the NFZ but can be unlocked if a valid reason and the relevant permissions have been granted. The Orange Zone is an advisory. It is Class D Airspace. The Blue Pin, location of the model flying helicopter club, is the same Class D airspace. A few fields North of the pin is my model flying club. Again it is in Class D airspace but we have been granted an exemption for a max ceiling of 1,000feet for fixed wing models.
My gripe is not with the official administration of the airspace but with the cack handed way DJI rolled their updates out. When DJI started to receive complaints they revised their NFZ’s for the Phantom range so that they were more inline with the official restrictions, this was in the Summer of 2014. However rather than update the iOS and PC software for the LK24-BT Datalink, as they did with the Phantoms and various flight controllers, they decided to drop all support for it even though it had only been on the market for about 12 months.
This is one of the reasons I will not buy “Fly from the box” products from DJI anymore. More and more these days you don’t actually own a DJI product but rather lease it until such a time as DJI see fit and all support is dropped. Not too dissimilar to the way certain mobile phone manufacturers and providers function.
Regards
Nidge.
