Greetings from NYC

Joined
Jul 16, 2016
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Age
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Location
NYC
Hey there everyone! i'm very excited to actually need to join this page. I am a Geospatial Analyst (GIS) for the Parks Department in NYC and i just bought a Phantom 4. Its a kinda deep investment for my first drone, and playing with the flight simulator is making me realize how tricky these things can be to maneuver. I've had experience with toys (helicopters) but this is certainly a different level.

I bought it to pair with my GIS skills and hopefully use it for environmental monitoring. A Hudson River watershed group has already expressed interest in using me for this and I am hoping to eventually turn it into a business model.

My initial area of concern is knowing where to fly it. I ive in Upper Manhattan, outside the 5 mile zone of LaGuardia and Teterboro, I've heard that the 5 mile exclusion zone is actually where altitude is regulated and the no-fly zone is only 1.5 miles. Also, I heard that there are lots of legal areas to fly as long as you are not flying over people (or traffic, I'd imagine). So...a sparsely populated park away from airports should be good, right? What about heliports? Do those count as airports? I don't see them on any of the maps that DJI or other sources provide...not even the FAA. But they are all over the city, aren't they? I also don't see the sea-plane landing area on these maps. So...I REALLY need something complete....but I'm also a GIS guy so maybe I'll just create one myself!
 
I use two apps for fly zone discovery. Hover and UAV forecast.
Pretty nice tools.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app
 
Hey there everyone! i'm very excited to actually need to join this page. I am a Geospatial Analyst (GIS) for the Parks Department in NYC and i just bought a Phantom 4. Its a kinda deep investment for my first drone, and playing with the flight simulator is making me realize how tricky these things can be to maneuver. I've had experience with toys (helicopters) but this is certainly a different level.

I bought it to pair with my GIS skills and hopefully use it for environmental monitoring. A Hudson River watershed group has already expressed interest in using me for this and I am hoping to eventually turn it into a business model.

My initial area of concern is knowing where to fly it. I ive in Upper Manhattan, outside the 5 mile zone of LaGuardia and Teterboro, I've heard that the 5 mile exclusion zone is actually where altitude is regulated and the no-fly zone is only 1.5 miles. Also, I heard that there are lots of legal areas to fly as long as you are not flying over people (or traffic, I'd imagine). So...a sparsely populated park away from airports should be good, right? What about heliports? Do those count as airports? I don't see them on any of the maps that DJI or other sources provide...not even the FAA. But they are all over the city, aren't they? I also don't see the sea-plane landing area on these maps. So...I REALLY need something complete....but I'm also a GIS guy so maybe I'll just create one myself!
plenty of places in Manhattan. Van Cortland park for starters. a lot of open field
 

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