Whilst attempting an early evening flight in France recently, I was without my mobile phone due to not having a roaming package for Europe. When I powered up the controller and launched my drone, I immediately got an on-screen warning message stating that I was limited to 30mtrs height and 50mtrs radius as I had no network access available to check the flight zone (or similar words to that effect). This was the first time I had ever encountered this happening, despite having flown in Greece (2023) without having my mobile with me at the same time also.
I had no choice but to limit my intended flight plan to a very short time aloft which was disappointing as by then I had lost the sunset glow et al. So, my question is, has something been changed recently within the firmware/rules when flying a DJI drone that unless you’ve got immediate access to a working data network, your flight is crimped as mentioned above?
Do I therefore always need to connect my controller to a network before attempting a launch?
You’re not mentioning which model drone or which apps you were using so I’ll make some assumptions here based on your public profile
No.
It sounds like you had simply been logged out of the DJI Fly app.
If you don’t use the Fly app for 30 days (I think it was 30 days anyway), then DJI will log you out of the app. Next time you’re planning on flying somewhere simply open the Fly app the day before and make sure you’re still logged in.
As @PingSpike says, sounds like you were logged out of DjI Fly.
Page 2 of the Mini 3 pro manual:
“For increased safety, flight is restricted to a height of 98.4 ft (30 m) and range of 164 ft (50 m) when not connected or logged into the app during flight. This applies to DJI Fly and all apps compatible with DJI aircraft.”
Doh, as simple as that … thank-you for your clear concise answer, that makes perfect sense to me now, and yes, you were correct on all counts regarding equipment and having not picked the controller up for over a month. Lesson learnt and I shall endeavour to make sure I have kept myself logged in moving forward. EDIT: This is meaning logged in to the DJI Fly app on the controller (RM330) and not the actual DJI Fly app on my iPhone?