I wonder why they issued the notice about this publication?
The purpose of this Safety Notice is to highlight inaccuracies with RPAS manufacturers’ inbuilt Geo-Fencing/Awareness and to reinforce the RPAS Operators responsibilities according to UK Reg (EU) 2019/947 UAS.OPEN.050(5)
This stems from the mammoth amount of work we did on Drone Scene back in 2021 to enable it to meet the CAA safety requirements of having live and real-time map layer updates, rather than the more common static layers that lesser platforms use:
And the main reason for us also building DJI GEO map layer data in to Drone Scene was to highlight the significant differences between actual airspace regulations and, well, the utter nonsense that DJI use in their apps - as now formally recognised here by CAA.
I recently chatted to the CAA about this issue amongst others at Dronex, it’s possible that may have had a little to do with it, also, they were paying for each bulk email to be sent out - surprisingly costly given how many of us there, but were in the process of moving to a Microsoft, fixed cost, platform. I expect it will result in much better, more frequent communication.
I’m as frustrated as you are, though I do think there’s an honest desire to get it right, and being able to email us without eating into their limited drone user’s comms budget can only help. This most recent email is a good sign, it does help adress, IMHO, one of the the biggest safety risk of all; users who rely on the DJI map alone. Time will tell.
I agree " milkmanchris We need a requirement that a leaflet ships with every drone sold in the UK, which I expect would need primary legislation. That said a voluntary code of conduct for drone retailers would help a lot.
They were using MailChimp, which charges by the number of emails. There are over half a million of us registered with the CAA, sending that many emails requires more a than a desktop email program and an internet connection. Not only would you need to run your own email (SMTP) server, you also have to go to great lengths not to have your server blacklisted in error for sending spam, bulk email is surprisingly complicated.