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Comment by cjensen | Hacker News Reader

At the Hayward shoreline a few weeks back, a guy was using a drone. I ignored him until he buzzed the area where Snowy Plovers (an Endangered Species) hang out. Then I went over to talk to him.

He was very contrite. Apparently his model has a special light that is supposed to light up in a "no fly zone." I don't know what that means, but he was in a Wildlife Refuge, directly under the flightpath for Oakland International (exactly 5 miles from the landing strip) and less than 2 miles from Hayward airport [1].

Maybe the FAA needs to publish maps for drone guys to show them where it is legal. Or maybe someone should start a Wiki showing legal and interesting place to use drones as a way of diverting drone users away from silly places while raising awareness of where not to go.

[1] 37.645292 -122.155191

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I only fly in Canada (planes mostly, sometimes drones) but the easiest way to know the rules is to use a VNC (1) (VFR map in the US (2)) to determine the airspace above / around you, lookup NOTAMS to find any exceptions and combine that with some common sense / curtesy.

So really, the map already exists, but most people who are just getting into drones likely do not know it exists.

(1) http://www.navcanada.ca/EN/products-and-services/Pages/aeron...

(2) http://vfrmap.com/

They don't advertise it as complete, but the source data for this map is managed on github:

https://www.mapbox.com/drone/no-fly/

Cool. That map treats airports as points rather than areas, so the location in question is marked as clear on that map, but is no-fly in real life.

Strangely, it only marks major airports. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the no-fly rules are for all airports.

Looking closer at the github repository, it isn't very active. It's missing the regional airport near here which should have restrictions.

If you zoom in, the airports do get a 5 mile radius which, inferring from linked map in the sibling to my above comment, is not really very accurate (but does capture much of the zone).

Going off of my previous comment, the person you spoke to was probably flying a DJI Phantom[1].

DJI, to their credit, have been trying to integrate some form of safety into their products.

One of these such features are the 'FlySafe', which does exactly what you describe; it lights up a GPS light and/or will prevent the multicopter from even taking off if it's in a dangerous area.

[1] http://www.dji.com/fly-safe/category-mc

Intersting that the page you linked is just plain wrong in the first graphic. It shows a 1.5 mile restriction around the airport instead of the correct 5 miles [1].

[1] http://knowbeforeyoufly.org/for-recreational-users/ "Contact the airport or control tower before flying within five miles of an airport."

Not saying that I endorse it, I'm just throwing it out there as what DJI, the manufacturer, considers and uses for their hardware.

Yep. It's a good idea in principle. The FAA really should manage the db and have an API.

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