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Morning
As a family we’re going on holiday to Beijing and Xi’an next April and I’d love to take the mini to get shots over the Great Wall and around the cities but I’ve heard that flying in Beijing isn’t going to happen
Has anyone got any experience of flying around China?
I was also thinking of just buying a drone there instead of travelling with mine and dealing with getting it through the airports and onto the plane
Thanks for that, I think I’d been overwhelmed with information from different sources and that guide summarises it really well
I’ve already got a Chinese sim so I should be fine registering the drone in the hotel
I’m very willing to share some experience with you as a chinese
First it’s known to all that you cannot fly at anywhere in main areas of Beijing, but you can fly around the great wall, that’s fine.
How ever you can fly anywhere in Xi’an but do be careful about these marked area, where exists GPS and controller signal jammer. You may see someone flying drones there but do not take any risk, they have cellular dongle (actuallly you won’t have any limitations using this in China, no need for extra permission, certifications or special sim cards, just install and fly. You can walk in any DJI store and buy one for around ￥700, and let some one form the shop to active it for you, I recommend using the esim rather than external sim)
If you want to buy a drone in china, that’s a good choice since you won’t need to pay higher VAT, and you will not get detained by the customs but warranty doesn’t work in UK and you have send it back to China or pay for reparations here in UK.
Here is marked area, it’s called 大雁塔 in chinese and Giant Wild Goose Pagoda in English. In China always use map.baidu.com rather than map.google.com
Another interesting thing is please check your sim card and see if it have a +86 number, as far as I know, it’s unlikely to have a sim card with +86 phone numbers, I can regist your drone for you if you need, if you want a sim card with phone number, you can purchase it in the airport, but please active the sim card in the airport, you will need to take a selfie with your passport, pronounce numbers in mandarin balabala, thats annoying.
but warranty doesn’t work in UK and you have send it back to China or pay for reparations here in UK.