What do you do in case someone complains about flyover?

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Hi,

I'm a very new user. I only have my P3P for about 2 weeks now.

I was in the mountains during the weekend. Brought my P3P to the altitude of around 5500 feet and then I was flying in a mountain valley 15 to 150 feet high. P3P was flying like it wouldn't be so high.

The purpose of the trip was to film a nice mountain lake surrounded with trees in autumn colors.

The problem was that there were also some people around. It seemed they didn't have any problem with my P3P. Some were even waving with their hands when I was flying over.

But then a female (who else) came to me and started complaining how it bothers her.

May I ask you how do you handle such a situation?
For my opinion flying with a drone is no different than walking a dog in the mountains. I could also complain about her dog running around and barking.

I'd like to mention that we have no law that would prohibit any flying with a drone.

Thank you very much for your opinion.
 
Apologize, continue with your day.

I've only had one guy complain to me, but when I explained we were the listing agents for his neighbor's house, he calmed down and seemed fine with it. I think complainers just want to know what you are doing most of the time, but if they are threatening your property, call the police.
 
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Apologize, continue with your day.

I've only had one guy complain to me, but when I explained we were the listing agents for his neighbor's house, he calmed down and seemed fine with it. I think complainers just want to know what you are doing most of the time, but if they are threatening your property, call the police.

Thank you very much for your reply.

I actually had a great experience the previous day on a different location. People were just coming and wanted to see how it's flying.

Maybe trying to explain the complainers what I am doing is the best solution for a start. Calling a police wouldn't be a quick option since the closest road was more than 3 hours of walk away.
 
It's best to be diplomatic in those situations even if you are in the right! for some reason it seems the same folks who want to complain will try to escalate ..... best thing is a brief explanation or apology and move, if its warranted or not.

in my own case , i was flying in a park, someone from one of the houses on the edge of the park started shouting it was too loud and asked me to move... to be fair i was at about 200ft in the air and the phantom could barely be heard, i moved to a different part of the park and kept going. you know they were just paranoid, cars on the road are easily louder than the phantom at 200ft ........

i see people nearly every time i fly, and was the only negative comment i've encountered
 
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It's best to be diplomatic in those situations even if you are in the right! for some reason it seems the same folks who want to complain will try to escalate ..... best thing is a brief explanation or apology and move, if its warranted or not.

in my own case , i was flying in a park, someone from one of the houses on the edge of the park started shouting it was too loud and asked me to move... to be fair i was at about 200ft in the air and the phantom could barely be heard, i moved to a different part of the park and kept going. you know they were just paranoid, cars on the road are easily louder than the phantom at 200ft ........

i see people nearly every time i fly, and was the only negative comment i've encountered

Thank you very much. I was really looking for such responses so that I get an idea how the other people deal with it.
 
I was just going to start a new thread about my experience last week:
I was at a lake at the base of Mount Rainier in Washington State. The lake (Lake Alder) had been drained to about half of its usual depth, exposing lots of submerged old tree trunks from an old growth forest before the lake's size was artificially increased.
This is a very rural area with only a few houses along the side of the shore we were on. I had the P3P out over the lake and south of where we were flying from. I was just a dot in the sky when I heard a shotgun blast. I hit RTH since I wasn't sure if I was the target or not, and waited for another shot, but there wasn't one. My friend was with me flying an RC biplane out over the lake in just in front of us. He kept flying but I was afraid to launch again. So I stood there watching him fly the plane.
Moments later a truck pulled up along the road, the guy said "you landing those things on the road here?" It was just a narrow country road, and I replied that we were if there wasn't any cars coming (he was the only car we'd seen). He didn't see the drone, just the plane. He was with his son and was pretty interested in the RC plane, thought it looked fun, and the lake bed was great to fly over. Talked about the lake level for a bit and he left. So then I took my Solo out, thought the black might be less intrusive looking (or not). Made another flight but didn't go south as far. Soon another truck pulled up so I decided to land. I made a perfect landing between some driftwood and voice said "Nice landing!" I looked and there was a young guy, his wife and their two kids all standing behind me watching. They both thought the drones were really cool and had a lot of questions about them They asked if they would be in the way if they walked out into the lake, they wanted to show the kids the huge tree trunks up close. We were about to pack up and told them we were finished flying.
I'm going to start carrying 4 gig or so micro SD cards just for such times. It would have been very cool to film that family and give them the SD card. It would have been a great memory for the kids.

Edit: Anyway, not sure if the shotgun blast was related to the drone or not, but I wasn't going to fly down to that part of the lake again. There was a house or two in that area. With pot legal here, never know what I could have been flying near.
 
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That was a real nice experience you had. Thank you very much for sharing.

I had a similar one on Friday. I was at another lake which was visited by many tourists. People just came close when they saw me flying. They were very friendly and one even asked me if he can watch the P3P flying. So I decided to invite him to watch it flying from my iPad via video feed. I was thinking it would be a good idea to have a few "fans" around just to avoid a "bad" situation. Another female even came close from a few hundred yards away just to see it. Since she was local she gave me some instructions when the best times of the year are.
 
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Goodwill is something we can use! There's a walking path behind my house that gets some traffic on occasion. I feel like i should be a DJI salesman after all the demonstrations and photos i take for those walking by with their kids or dogs :)
 
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It's best to be diplomatic in those situations even if you are in the right! for some reason it seems the same folks who want to complain will try to escalate ..... best thing is a brief explanation or apology and move, if its warranted or not.

in my own case , i was flying in a park, someone from one of the houses on the edge of the park started shouting it was too loud and asked me to move... to be fair i was at about 200ft in the air and the phantom could barely be heard, i moved to a different part of the park and kept going. you know they were just paranoid, cars on the road are easily louder than the phantom at 200ft ........

i see people nearly every time i fly, and was the only negative comment i've encountered
Very similar one for me but the guy came up behind me and started shouting and swearing and gave me a fright but the idiot failed to see my Akita lying on the ground in front of me and lucky for him the dogs leash was clipped to my waistbelt because as the argument ensued my dog was going mental and i needed to land the phantom .He got frightened and walked away telling me i was getting reported to the police .Never heard anymore about the incident .
 
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Very similar one for me but the guy came up behind me and started shouting and swearing and gave me a fright but the idiot failed to see my Akita lying on the ground in front of me and lucky for him the dogs leash was clipped to my waistbelt because as the argument ensued my dog was going mental and i needed to land the phantom .He got frightened and walked away telling me i was getting reported to the police .Never heard anymore about the incident .
That is interesting. In my few cases when I was flying and the dogs were around they always became crazy about the drone. They started barking wildly and I was under an impression they wanted to shut down the drone somehow ;)
 
I had a really interesting conversation that has to be a classic. We were attending an Easter Egg hunt for dogs at a local park. I didn't even have my quad with me because I thought it might be too distracting for dogs. A nice lady photographer took a fancy to our grand daughter and took some photos which she said would be posted on the website of the event sponsors. I mentioned that I was sorry I didn't bring my quad to get some aerial video and pictures. She changed course immediately and said that she felt that in no way should anyone be allowed to take random video or photos from a drone. This was coming from a woman with two cameras hanging around her neck taking pictures in a public park. I really didn't know what to say other than ask her what the difference was with her cameras and the camera in a quad. Wasn't she doing the same as I wanted to do? Moment of silence ( I knew I had her then) and she meekly agreed with me that the only difference really would be the height of the tripod I would have used.
 
great idea, goodnnuff, about having some small memory cards on hand. I filmed 2 kids and their grandparents the other day, but posting the vids is such a pain.
 
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HA!
I'm guessing most complainers are women was what he was thinking.
Hey BBC, A/S/L? [emoji182]
 

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