Drone News & Reviews have published the specifications for the upcoming DJI Mavic Air 2, which is a very compact drone.
The specs look pretty impressive and I may pick one up.
DJI Mavic Air 2 Specifications
- DJI Fly app will be used for Mavic Air 2
- 1080p image transmission to a smartphone
- OcuSync 2.0
- 8km range
- ActiveTrack 3.0
- Point of Interest 3.0
- QuickShots
- Advanced Pilot Assistance 2.0 (APAS)
- Top speed 68.4 km/h
- Maximum flight time 34 minutes
- 4K video (although framerate has yet to be confirmed)
- 1/2″ CMOS sensor with 12MP camera capable of stitched 48MP stills
The DJI Mavic Air 2 will be announced on April 27, 2020.
Some of our articles may include affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.
though i've been waiting for a mavic 3 announcement for a while.
I guess I need to get educated.
If you're drone doesn't comply to those new more draconian ones that basically insist your drone is at all times connected to the internet to report in to FAA central, you are in non-compliance.
If that passes as proposed, pretty much all drones made till that date are not legal to fly.....it's been a few months since I last read up on that, but wow....
C
What is onerous about having to know where you are flying with any restrictive safety rules that location requires (airports, prisons, DoD, etc) and having that flying object actually traceable to an individual? Many drones won't be upgradable (Canon FD anyone?) but many will have software/firmware or even hardware fixes that make them compliant and all new drones will be compliant. If people are flying over me or my family I don't care, but if they hurt me or my family I want them to be able to be held liable and if the new rules ensure adequate insurance as well I am all for it.
Here's a pretty balance analysis of what the FAA is proposing.
You might want to skip to about 2:30-2:40 into it to get to the meat of the presentation.
The proposed rules go way beyond the current registration and marking of the units by putting the reg. # on them externally.
And the drones I've flown, already have electronic "fencing" on them by default the that keep them from flying in restricted airspace....
What's being proposed is having to have new hardware on each drone that allows it to be tracked with a Remote ID in real time, not only the drone but you the controller too.
One problem with this is, that anyone...John Q public that may just plan not like drones, or law enforcement with nothing better to do that day....can harass you even while you are doing something legal.
There is also the extra costs for this since you will likely have to subscribe to a commercial service that your drone will have to connect to in order to ship all info on you to the FAA....even paying when you are not flying likely.
If you have an old drone without this new specialized equipment, well, it will be about 99% useless....you can fly only in an approved small field...think the open bare fields that model airplanes fly.....that's no good for a drone which is more of a flying camera than a flying hobby unit, you know?
The parts about taking away the privacy of the operator who is operating legally is troublesome to me.....I mean, someone that is a terrorist or up to no good in general, isn't going to comply with this and hack and disable all this....so, in general it only targets the good guys and makes life tough for them.
This seems, IMHO, to be largely targeted at the hobbiest.....and in favor of the commercial operators like Amazon that are wanting to clear the airspace for themselves.
As far as I know...the rules in place now and the ones in the future do not in any way address requiring insurance....
Being allowed to safely operate anything that can hurt other people should come with traceability and costs to it.
It isn’t aimed at killing drone hobbyists, it is aimed at creating a standard for all UAS’s to operate in, Amazon and the like will have all kinds of additional hurdles to jump through with their needs to work out of line of sight, to be autonomous and semi autonomous, to have one ‘pilot’ in control of multiple vehicles etc etc. It is aimed at having knowledge of all UAS’s in a given airspace at a given time so they can all be aware of each other, there aren’t many vehicles in the zero to five hundred foot air space at the moment so mid air collisions are rare, but as commercial usage grows in the coming years it will become much more crowded.
The FAA are not going to reclassify the current airspace, they just want users to obey the rules already in place for that airspace. I am a drone pilot, I don’t feel sorry for me even if my drone ends up becoming unusable in a couple of years, I do feel sorry for RC enthusiasts who are getting caught up in the same regulations when their use is entirely different. RC users are normally at designated RC fields or extensive properties and the point for them is the line of sight flight, them seeing their aircraft fly is the reason they do it, drone use is mostly about what you can see through the eyes of that drone and the fun is in flying over areas RC users aren’t interested in.
To me it is much more like the 254lb rule, sure you can make your ultralight and fly it without a license if you want but you still have to obey the airspace rules.
Besides, for the true hobbies there are plenty of workarounds, sub .55lb still gives great performance and the loophole for ‘home built’ is crying out for DJI to sell part built ‘kits’ that skirt around that rule for heavier drones.
I just don’t see the reason for the hyperbole.
The other concern is that as far as national security and aircraft safety, there is no reason to believe that the drones will comply. There are a huge number out there and they cost a bundle, so they are not going away, its likely that they will increase in value as buyers rush to get them.
So, terrorists are not going to worry about the law, and neither are idiots who purposely intrude on others privacy, or want to photograph things like fires where drones are prohibited. I really would expect little additional safety at a big cost.
If they could overcome the issues with lack of internet connection for many of us, it might at least be practical. Right now, one of them would refuse to take off at my house.
Presumably you're worried its going to crowd all the current canon news off the page?
I really welcome this industry news here. I’ve been waiting for Mavic Air 2 for a long time and this seems to be great.
I use a drone to help me scouting places. To find the best spot at a huge lavender field without needing to be walking through it for days.
Or taking pics from unusual angles, of course.