Recent content by RNCotton

There are a *LOT* of folks here who know a lot more than I do .... and they'll be fast to blast me if I'm wrong. :D First, welcome to the joys of commercial vs recreation. Commercial has to have authorization, where recreation only has to notify. It doesn't seem fair, does it? Looking at...

Memphis Fire ... we are buying Matrice 210 dual gimbal, with 30x optical camera on one gimbal, and XT2 thermal on the other. Our quote for the complete turnkey system w/ dual controllers, dual Crystal Sky, extra batteries, lighting, etc ... the full kit ... came in about $28K

I was looking at published drone operating areas and saw this huge circle in the state of New York. It's a 60 nm radius, surrounding Syracuse, surface to 10,000 feet AGL, and in effect from noon until 2 AM, daily, indefinitely. Ummm, that NOTAM covers 11,310 square miles. Anyone know...

Like others have said, check TFR's. Almost always, a wildfire will have a TFR for the area.

Yeah, LAANC was supposed to go live today. I was testing the process in Skyward and received this lovely message: ATC has temporarily disabled LAANC requests for this area. Please try again later.

You'll be using visual observer(s), right? How will they communicate with the pilot about non-participating aircraft? How will you ensure people on the ground are not in your operational area? How will you know of the ground based structures you need to avoid? Will you be doing a daylight...

We haven't flown the mission yet, but we're going to be fine without having to request airspace.

Thanks, Stephen. The Class B airspace and the ball park are at opposite extreme edges of the grid, so no danger of wandering into B airspace. I already have the night waiver, so no worries there. Largest shells are 3". With 75' per inch for safety requirements, they have to launch a...

That's what I expected ... the grid is a guide, but it's still a square peg in a round hole. Thank you, sir.

So, I'm totally expecting to be blasted by a Professional Pilot for asking this question .... I've been asked to video some fireworks after a baseball game in August. They know that the approval may not come in since it's "short notice" according to the FAA and their "we'll tell you, maybe in...

I've got a beast of an editing system, but Windows Media Player refuses to play 4K videos from the Phantom. If I shoot standard HD, they play fine. the 4K stuff plays in Premiere. So it's Windows Media Player that is my issue. VLC is a great player, and pretty much if VLC won't play it...

Yeah, my comment was tongue-in-cheek. I'm the same way. I have 107, I know better, and I'm not going to ever just skirt the rules behind a hobby/rec designation.

These are pretty big ... 5 to 8 inch diameter, 4 - 8 feet length. We know the course trajectory, short of a CATO or other malfunction, so positioning the camera to film the launch / flight won't be an issue.

Thanks for all the open and candid discussion. With firmware limitations, VLOS restrictions, and all other things considered, I think our best option will be to look at 1,500 feet as our target. It will still allow us some decent views of the launches, especially if we go with a low-thrust...

Unnecessary snarkiness aside, thank you for your information and contribution to the discussion on feasibility of a flight.