This is bang on the money! It’s not just about being able to see your drone, it’s about being able to see where your drone is in space, and what else is there with it, or approaching it. You cannot achieve this whilst flying FPV, unless you use an observer, but even they will have to squint at distance, and that will take away their ability to concentrate on the bigger picture.
Someone mentioned about manned aircraft crews going “eyes in”; this is considered to be bad practice, and should be trained out of them. Indeed, whenever cockpits are designed or modified avoidance of this in one of the key considerations. It is, however, accepted it cannot be avoided totally, and so instruments are marked to enable correct interpretation via a quick glance, or a second crew member is required to do the looking, for example, on launch or recovery to a ship the Non-Handling Pilot will read of the gauge readings, whilst the Handling Pilot manoeuvres the A/C keeping a good external look out all round. The point here is yes, it is acceptable to glance at your screen, but your aircraft should be in a position where it can be quickly and easily located again afterwards.
VLOS is not just about managing your AV, it’s about managing your AV in airspace.
If manned pilots are “going in” effectively that is more related to instrument procedures. As a helicopter instructor for 30 years and +8000 hours I am capable of all the operational tasking both day and night and land and RN and other country ships.
My time in the UAS world has been longer than 10 years for the more complex aircraft. So getting the right methods, techniques and procedures set up is the best key for all pilots to keep them safe. Happy to help anyone.
When I’m flying and know I will need to look down at the screen for more than a brief glance, wherever possible I leave the drone on the edge of a visual feature that I can come back to. i.e. just above a specific tree; or at the edge of a cloud. It makes a huge difference to locating it again if it’s at any distance.
I had a similar exercise on my GVC test- I had to take the drone out a way, look away then show I could regain VLOS and re-orientate. The examiner was clear that he was maintaining VLOS (he basically became the “spotter” which is a legitimate way of maintaining VLOS) so no rules were broken.
It’s an interesting exercise, and I must admit it’s much easier maintaining VLOS with a big drone of a dark colour than a smaller one of a pale grey colour, I have a M300, M2E and Mini and the difference in range with VLOS maintained is significant (I have strobes on both the M2E and M300 but they are more help against a dark background such as trees).
Remember it’s 120m Above Ground Level. NOT necessarily Take off height.
I’ve been flying from a quarry floor & followed the shelves up exceeding the 120m above my take off point but never more than 40m above ground level.
Setting your perimeters job by job is good practice. Most important, I always check my RTH & keep it as low as is practical as we get the jets coming through at 250’ / 76m & you don’t hear them until there on top of you
I do that too, but have modified it to exclude clouds unless they are very slow moving! Got a nasty surprise a while back when my cloud “marker” went and changed shape and position😬
