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Comment by dewey | Hacker News Reader

It seems like a pretty reasonable default to prevent people from flying in no-fly zones or impose height limits next to airports I think. As that’s security related and not some artificial limitation so they can up sell something else I don’t see anything wrong with that.

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The way the altitude limit is imposed is idiotic. It doesn't factor terrain height, so flying around mountains is impossible.

I've been flying various multicopters for a decade and the mavic pro was the last DJI product I'll ever purchase. Every software update for DJI products restricts their functionality to a subset of what they shipped with. This has been going on for years. People buy dedicated phones/tablets for their DJI product and keep them in airplane mode to prevent this. That's nuts.

> It doesn't factor terrain height, so flying around mountains is impossible.

What do you mean by that? I've been flying around the Austrian alps without any problems but when I'm at home I can't go higher than xxx meters above my town because it's within the flight path of a local airport. Which seems to be a reasonable approach?

The software limits height by allowing 400ft of elevation above the takeoff height. So it's tricky to take off at the base of a mountain and fly up the side because you'll be restricted at 400ft from the start point, despite it actually being totally legal provided you remain less than 400ft from the mountain at the point directly below the drone.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

If I buy a tool, the only person preventing me from breaking the law with that tool should be me.

Otherwise it’s not my tool, it’s in service to the manufacturer, the government, or some shade in between. Those aren’t good tools, because they can only be used for certain purposes, in certain circumstances.

I prefer tools that do exactly what I wish them to do, for better or worse.

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