SN–2023/005 Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems Geo-Awareness

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)

1 Like

Because the DJI GEO maps built in to all the DJI apps are utterly useless and bear no resemblance to the actual UK airspace regulations :pensive:

The SkyWise notification reads:

1 Like

And what do you find if you click on the airspace alerting apps webpage link?

Three named apps - Altitude Angel, Airmap and Drone Scene :sunglasses:

4 Likes

Yes indeed :blush:

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.

9 Likes

Moved it here Steve as its already been mentioned

Hows the retirement going you jammy get😀

Thanks Wayne
Sorry, I didn’t realise it had been covered.

Retirement ? :+1::+1::+1:

1 Like

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.

Lol tell us about it :rofl:

You have more faith in them than I do, Adrian :confused:

Azure still needs someone to actually write the communication :pensive:

1 Like

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.

Shame the email won’t hit the biggest risk of them
all, unregistered flyers

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.

Crikey, I’d have thought the only cost for sending emails would be the cost of the internet service :open_mouth::open_mouth::open_mouth:

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.

2 Likes