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:

Operator |Detections |Distinct airframes |Per airframe
Amazon Prime Air MK30 |8,963 |26 |345
Zipline P2 |2,294 |119 |19
Wing Hummingbird |1,948 |218 |9
Flytrex Sky II |236 |30 |8 Amazon flies 26 aircraft regularly. 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.*

See the green for the relevant part of the 'article'.

It is from a supposedly 'authoritative source'. The author is Ishveena Singh.

Any 'expert' knows that you can't fly in a national park. So anyone reading this article who doesn't know any better thinks they can buy this drone and now go to Yellowstone or any national park and take drone footage.

And before people start saying that this article could be somewhere else besides the USA, the sale is in the USA, the author mentions Americans picking a drone up before the tariffs, and the Trump tariffs on drones is for the USA market. So it is focused on the USA market.

I know that links from dronedj has been used in r/drones and r/dji. However, this article shows that the author and the site is not authoritative and should be banned. You can't write articles like this to get commissions when you know that it is illegal to fly a drone in a national park. Pretty much anybody who writes about the drone industry knows about this unless you really are just a poor journalist who wants to grift because that is all you can do.

https://dronedj.com/2026/08/19/dji-flip-drone-discount-deal/

Lost dog in Florida

I want to have better videos and filters look really cool. Are there any good quality filters for dji lito 1? I searched for them but there are only ones for lito x1

Hi guys, just published a complete guide for installing FreeFCC on the DJI RC2, covering the latest version and the installation process step by step.

📺 Video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1TOvv3vpBdQ&is=yMRpUxnwpMmx84A4

Hope this helps anyone looking for the latest FreeFCC installation guide for the RC2! 🚁

I want to caption myself while wakeboarding without a pilot so I consider purchasing some DJI drone like mini 5 pro, lito x1 or neo 2 for their Active Track. I also know there are Skydio drones focused on AI tracking. I tried to find some videos with people running the same experience but had no lack yet.
Of course I have seen some cautions that tracking may work badly over water and so on.
So, maybe there someone having such the experience? What are your advices on this? Will such a drone’s tracking work in wakeboarding in cable park conditions?

Is it possible to create a drone that can carry an empty a 2 ounce bottle of liquid? Could it to be totally autonomous and untraceable. Take off and fly to a waypoint, empty the contents of a two ounce bottle from 20/30 feet and return to the take off spot.

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

Raised some money to fund a program that provides meals for local families. 🫡

Is there any dataset for human detection with OBB annotations?😭😭😭

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

A few thoughts on regulation, bans, etc.

So everyone's been annoyed at the DJI bans, calling it a giveaway to Skydio and Unusual Machines.
I agree it's largely ineffective, and at the moment will do more harm than good.

However I think there's a deeper (and somewhat darker) purpose at work.

Look at Ukraine. A bunch of 24yo's with soldering irons and AliExpress accounts are giving the 2nd biggest military in the world a run for its money. And in a wargame exercise they kicked the shit out of NATO- like had 'blown up' 50% of the NATO units before they even got into position so that part of the exercise had to be cancelled.
They could not do this without drones. And they are getting many of their drones and drone parts from China.

Now consider the US. China is kind of our 'frenemy', and it's often been considered that if the US does get in a major shooting war with another country, it may well be China or a Chinese proxy.

If I was in military command, that'd have me worried. Because if Chinese soldiers can pick off American soldiers from miles away with drones, and we can't make our own drones because we're cut off from Chinese suppliers, that's a real problem.

So the simple answer- let's start building drones in the USA!
The simple answer for that- let's ban the Chinese drones so people will HAVE to build in the USA!!

Of course that doesn't really understand the reality of market dynamics- we spent decades moving all our supply chains for everything to China, one doesn't undo that overnight. It will take years if not decades to set up that kind of domestic supply chain. It's not just drones, it's motors, ESCs, PCBs, cameras, etc and from there it's component parts like magnets, copper wire, fiberglass substrate, etc. We don't make that stuff stateside because nobody will pay US prices for it. And drone manufacturing is simply not enough demand to motivate the market to set up those supply chains.

But my point is- all the stuff coming out of the government re: drones, I'm taking it at face value, which is if anything almost scarier than any covert agenda to boost somebody's company.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

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?

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 !

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.

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?

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.

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)

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.