N017RW
Premium Pilot
is it legal for someone to have a drone jammer.
- Thread starter Rich B
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Thats almost exactly the way I think I'll go, Just found out he had the jammer this morning. I just don't like the random guy flies his drone over the wetlands and all of a sudden it drops. The Jammer extends easily 300' past his lot line. We will work it out. I got plenty of area to fly, it's just a real nice wide open area. I also don't want my friend to get in trouble.
Meta4
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Why would a jammer cause a drone to drop.
If he swamps the RC signal, your Phantom doesn't fall, it just sits there.
And if it sits for 3 seconds without signal, it comes home.
Have you thought about giving your jammer friend a demo flight.
You can let him see what the camera sees rather than what he imagines it sees.
A little bit of reality might go a long way to reducing his paranoia.
I only read online today that your drone would drop, and I agree that a phantom or drone like it with a rth feature would hopefully rth. Like I said I found out this morning that he had this jammer. i'm just trying to get others opinions on this matter. I have only had my phantom 4 for a few weeks. I had a p3advanced before this one.
N017RW
Premium Pilot
The only problem with a device like this is that in theory he would be disrupting his own, in house wireless networks as long as he was operating this device. If he's hard wired well then of course he wouldn't have much concern but I bet they have smartphones and such so therefor he can not run this device constantly. Now let's say that he has it outside with an omnidirectional antenna then we would have to wonder what is its effective range? I would think that your video link and control signal would just start to get weaker once you went into the antennas radiation pattern and then you could just back off or increase altitude. It would be interesting to test one of these devices and see how well it can work.
Not to mention is this device dual banded? If so I'd think it would be spendy, but if not Just switch to 5?
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Sounds like you need to buy one too. When the kid launches his Mavic turn it on. Wait for the knock on the door.
He is a friend, he lives 1/2 a mile away. In his mind he is not hampering me. He is also very wealthy so i wouldn't be suprised if he dropped major coin on the jammer. I need to find out whats going on.
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My response was mostly tongue in cheek, but yea a sit down is definitely in order. Or if you don't want to do that, do as suggested above and call the local FCC field office and make an anonymous complaint.
Doubt it would do much good. When you file a report you will get a form email back stating that they no longer investigate every complaint but that they appreciate your submission. I was told that they might watch for trends from many complaints but individual ones will go unnoticed it seems.
Ask him to go fly with you and then talk about it.
If he's in a subdivision there are going to be other complaints. Drones use the Wi-Fi band. If he's jamming your drone he's jamming his other neighbors' Wi-Fi.
This isn't even a question. The FAA rules for hobbyists are guidelines, not laws. A Wi-Fi jammer is flat out illegal, and the FCC takes it seriously.
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I suspect they fall into that weird category of stuff that is legal to own but illegal to use.
At 150' with a P4Pro I can read car number plates, count the boards in my neighbour's patio, even the Koi carp in his pond. Without too much difficulty I can work out what brand of beer he's drinking so 'spying' is a real concern for some people - especially those that really value their privacy.
If I'm flying with a camera near to property, I try and stick to the 150m rule we have for congested/populated areas here in the UK even though we are allowed to go in as close as 50m. I find this keeps people happy that have properties overlooking the beaches around here - by their properties location they have a reasonable expectation of privacy so I'll only fly at low tide and well away from their land - none of them have complained about my flying, other drone operators that think they can fly as close as thye want to these people's homes have been moved along by the police.
It's a hobby that needs compromise and sadly, as the ones wanting to use the airspace, it's us that needs to do the compromising.
I love how many ppl look at drones and think it's a bomb dropping spying machines. And then take it upon them selves to buy expensive jammers with absurd range and power.... now it's a bomb when it's tumbling down on top of someone
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