Karma no fly zone scheme

[Topher]

I agree with you, I do hope that GoPro come up with a method that is not too onerous, to allow us to fly once we have relevant permissions.

 

[FAA Pilot]

So GoPro has the following rules to prevent flights near airports:

1. Restricted (Red) NFZ from 0 - 1.5 miles
2. Buffer Zone (Orange) NFZ from 1.5 - 5 miles

The difference between what GoPro and DJI do is that DJI allows you to request a manual unlock of Red zones (via email and signed documents), and automatically unlock (using a website) yellow (similar to gopro's orange) zones. GoPro does not allow Red unlocks, and while they don't require unlocking Orange, it is limited to a fraction of the maximum speed while in that zone.

I've yet to discover what the fraction of maximum speed actually is. I'm hoping it's more like 80-90% of maximum speed and not something less. It seems really short sighted and potentially dangerous to limit speed at all in the orange zone. If you need to take evasive actions because you see a plane or helicopter approaching your drone, you need to move as fast as possible. If they were trying to prevent people from flying out of control in that zone, it should be automatically stopped from crossing into a Red zone by the software, so I don't see the point.

https://gopro.com/help/articles/Question_Answer/What-is-a-No-Fly-Zone

So today 27 July 2018 I was at my local airport that I fly out of as a pilot. I took the karma with me because I wanted to check the no-fly zones that everyone has talked about this is the first drone I have ever owned and I like the fact that I can fly to 400 feet AGL and it's zeros the altimeter no matter what elevation you were at. So I powered on the karma and I figured that I would get a red zone warning but I receive the prompt that I had permission to fly which I confirmed start at the propellers and flew around a safe area at the airport and I took it up to 165 ft with no restrictions so either they remove this or somehow when they sell the karma they know whether you're a licensed pilot or not I don't think that they do but I'm still trying to figure out where the Red Zone restrictions would fall into place as even as a pilot it scares me to think that a drone could fly inside an airport