Contacting Airport?

[9V7W3]

Hey everyone,

Just a question about how important it is to contact the airports near you.. I know there's a lot of threads on this but not this specific question that I could find..

I'm literally RIGHT at the edge of the 5 mile radius of a local airport according to b4ufly and Airmap. As far as I can find from their website and all the available apps I only found one phone number. I've been calling the number between business hours for 3 days now and couldn't reach anyone. I instead wrote them an email earlier and gave them all my information. I also set up a scheduled flight on Airmap so everyone else (other hobbyists) can see I'm flying.

My question is being a holiday weekend and that I'm home today I wanted to take advantage and get 3 batteries worth of flying in. Would you go flying anyway or halt your plans since you weren't able to reach anyone at that airport?


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[Reed L]

I would fly, being it's a holiday, I will be driving to a nice place to fly

 

[captainmilehigh]

Fly. I fly at the 4.5 mile point from a class C airport in Fl. all the time without issues. Do the preflight checks and go for it. [emoji41]


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[Quadcopterpilot]

If you are flying VLOS go for it.
If you are going to fly autonomous I would not.

 

[9V7W3]

Not familiar with the first term you used there ^^ but I flew and had a great time no issues. Went the farthest I have so far as its my second drone flight ever.. Slowly getting confident flying out of sight range and getting used to the orientation at long distances. I flew to my house and back from a local park but I set my height limit in the app to 200ft just to be on the safe side. One thing I did notice was that when flying in the opposite direction of my house I was only able to fly about 1,600 feet away before the video signal started dropping out and radio signal went down to 2-3 bars. I got scared so turned around and sped back but flying the opposite direction I was able to go 2,000+ feet with full signal and no video problems. I guess interference from something over there. The other thing I noticed was the other day which was my first time flying I was only able to hit 32mph max speed and today at the same height I hit 39mph.. Same location, same wind speeds. Only difference is I balanced my props yesterday and my first flight was just out of the box props. Could this increase speed that much?

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[captainmilehigh]

Visual line of sight. Or, being chicken like I am to let it wander out of sight.


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[9V7W3]

Oh well I definitely didn't do that haha.. I was flying by map/camera only most of the day.. Just hanging out in an open field is boring lol


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[captainmilehigh]

Yes, signal loss freaks me out too just a bit, that's why I've got my RTH altitude set high. Don't want to bump into anything on the way back. As for the flight speed, it may have been just upper level winds were more favorable in a different direction. I think balanced props help a great deal in all aspects of flight. Keeps the jello away in pics and videos, plus I think it helps keep the motors happy.


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[9V7W3]

Yes I agree, that's why I was around 200ft for my second time out.. Nothing higher than that between the drone and me where I was flying. There were a few towers I noticed farther away once up in the air but I haven't braved that distance yet.

On the other hand turns out while I was flying the president of that local airport I was talking about trying to reach responded and thanked me for reaching out. He said "the airport folks don't usually answer the phone" haha.. He seemed very nice though. He even sent me this website to check out..
www.nextgenuav.com


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[captainmilehigh]

That looked good. There are many on this forum that fly drones for business. I'm sure some would be interested in a support system like that.


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