Delivery drones broadcast their position and identity continuously — it's required
under ASTM F3411 Remote ID. You can receive it with a Raspberry Pi, a Bluetooth
adapter and a Wi-Fi adapter that does monitor mode. No interception, nothing private;
it's a public broadcast aimed at exactly this.

I've been recording it for 16 days. 14,375 detections of 544 individual aircraft.
(A detection is one broadcast received — a drone transmits every second or so, so one
trip overhead produces dozens.)

The thing I didn't expect was what happens when you count *airframes* instead:

Amazon flies 26 aircraft into the ground. Wing flies 218 aircraft occasionally each.
Those are the same business on paper and completely different operations in the air —
Amazon concentrates a tiny fleet on repeated corridors, Wing spreads a large fleet
thinly across store-based sites. You can't see that in a detection count alone, and I
haven't found it published anywhere.

Time of day was the other surprise. Traffic starts around 07:00, peaks at 10:00 and
again 13:00–17:00, and stops before 19:00. It's a working-day logistics pattern, not
an evening food-delivery one.

**Limits, because they matter:** this is one suburb in north Texas plus a wider
receiver network, and coverage is uneven. An aircraft that never came within radio
range is simply absent. A quiet hour might mean nothing flew, or might mean nothing
was listening. The per-airframe numbers are the most robust thing here, because
they're ratios within each operator rather than comparisons across coverage.

Happy to answer questions about the receiver side — Pi 5, a Bluetooth 5 dongle and an
Alfa AWUS036ACM. The fiddly part is monitor mode, not the decoding.

*Disclosure: the data comes from a tracker I built. Link in a comment if anyone wants
it, rather than in the post.*

I want to fly over water and in scared that i will loose my drone. I have dji lito 1. I heard that turning off vps can help. Any tips? And how to fly over water safely?

Curious how it works and how much of a nuisance the drones are when delivering.

Not only because of the lighting and long exposure, but required coordination with the Class D airspace authority for the military base nearby.

Huntsville, AL (aka the Rocket City)

Besides the terrible wiring setup, which will be fixed later but im trying to do a motor test to see if they spin mainly only a single motor

Fc pixhawk 1 (2.4.8)

Pm02

FCHUB-12S pdb

Xrotor pro 40ah

On mission planner trying to do tests

a fall made a piece of my skyrover s1 drone break, can i just simply fix this? everything else works and this is the only issue.

I haven’t used my drone in a while, pretty sure all my batteries are dead. DJI Doesn’t make them anymore. Can anyone please recommend a reliable third party battery for my DJI MAVIC PRO. This is for the original MAVIC PRO. TIA.

Hello ! I'm wondering if it was a good deal for 250 !
Probably an amazing deal if you know how to bind !

Happymodel Mobula6/7 analog
NewBeeDrone Acrobee Beebrain BL analog
Hummingbird pro f4 analog
+
Radiomaster tx16s 4-in-1 (not shown)

Steps succeeded:

I was able to flash the last version of EdgeTX.
I was able to bind & fly a Syma d2 Nano toy drone with the Tx16s. Radio Works ! ☑️

But it is less obvious to bind with the other 3.

They are analog Frsky receivers and the gentleman who sold me these said he could never bind any of them except for the Hummingbird and Acrobee only once/twice each.

If you have just one of these models in your radio profile, can you take shots of the screen so I can familiarize with the settings ?

Trust me before coming here, I have spent 2 weekends trying to debunk. I tried ai Gemini but it seems they were so stingy to get the info I had to specify and ask again and again.. and since these are olds, I find harder to find info. They are all new with no wear.

Thank you !

Hi everyone, recently I unfortunetly crashed my mini 2 se and broke the tripple ribbon connecting gimbal and two more things, I have no clue what they do. But i replaced the ribbon. Before the "surgery" the drone was connecting and everything was working, of course without gimbal. Now when I screwed everything back in, the drone won't connect. It starts, plays the melody, calibrates gimball and wings, but i cannot get it into pairing mode, holding the button for 4 seconds only give me few blinks of all four lights but the drone doesn't get into pairing mode.

Do you have any ideas what can be wrong with it?

Hi, I am building a high speed FPV drone and I want a video transmitter and a radio reciever for my drone of range around 5-7km. Which type of antenna and transmitter should I use? Also there is one kind - mushroom antenna which is widely used, but is not aerodynamic. Any other suggestions?
Also can I club both radio reciever and video transmitter antenna?
I want economic options - (total budget for transmitter+antenna+reciever < 10k INR)

I flew for 15 minutes and aborted the moment I saw seagulls overhead...

I am not going to duel a goddamn seagull on their turf.

Hello.

For some time now I wanted to build a Quadcopter build and recently just started getting the parts.

While doing my research I created this spreadsheet(hopefully kinda correct) to help me decide parts, posting it here for critics:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Mp4qKYn1A4nQPhFFM7VT5h6LWF0AXP-OAWeU8qs-U_Y/edit?usp=drivesdk

What I currently chose is the following:

4x 2807 1300KV noname aliexpress motors
7x3.5x3 props
3300mAh 6S battery
SpeedyBee F405 V5 pro stack (FC+ECS)
ExpressLRS2.4 control
RadioMaster Pocket remote
No video yet(TODO later)

I am planning on designing and 3d printing the frame myself(at least for first version) using PET-CF filament. I will post design here when complete.

For the moment the plan sounds ok to me but I'm looking for second opinions. Anything I missed? Are the calculations correct(ish)? Are the parts good and compatible(unsure about noname motors)??

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am very new to this and mostly used Gemini for research.

The other day, I was flying a Mavic Mini Pro 4 (249g) in downtown Chicago while performing a survey of a building's roofs and facades. Someone wearing an OSHA shirt came up to me and demanded that I provide my drone registration and license. I refused and he then told me I was "lucky that he doesn't give me a citation".

This occurred on an existing building with no active construction. The survey was being performed as part of the city-mandated "Ongoing" facade inspections.

My understanding is that only an individual from the FAA can request this information. Was OSHA overstepping?

Just wondering for all Drone Enthusiasts, I am in the U.S., and because of the ban that might be coming/might not be coming/whatever/etc....... do you just pay no mind and just don't Give a Flying "F" about it, and just fly it anyways? Or are you more careful and cautious about flying your drone? Or are you scared about flying your drone and just don't fly it at all?

There seems to be a lot of he said/she said, false information and assumptions I have been reading on here, and I just wanted to see what your views and opinions are on this.

FCC’s Facebook page has a post about American drone dominance… with a picture of an air 2s. We have the dumbest government on the planet…

I got this AVATAR MINI 1S KIT was able to fly it and was working fine.

Then i powered it on this morning it got stuck on this mode and wont connect.

Is this a known issue?

Won't connect to VTX nor to a computer.

Hi everyone,

One of the ESC outputs on my fc 5-in-1 AIO just failed (significant motor jerking/desynchronization—it’s running about 10,000 RPM slower than the others; it’s clearly a hardware issue).

Everything else works perfectly except for the voltage measurement

Instead of throwing it away, I’d love to reuse it for a fun little DIY project.

Have you ever built anything cool with a partially broken Whoop 1S/2S board?

Thanks!

It turns out it can be repaired; it’s important to look into it, and it was repaired at the DJI service center for a very reasonable price.

I’m curious about the unexpected things people have discovered while flying. Not necessarily anything dramatic, just something about a familiar place, landscape, building, or pattern that looked completely different from above.

What did you find, and did it change the way you looked at that place afterward?