Discussions

Just a thought that sprang to mind as I regularly fly quite close to an airport, also some of the UAV competitions define areas that must be kept within or kept out of.

In the Mission Planner, you could achieve this by defining zones (an area you can or cannot go into).

The zones would ideally be one of

• Circular around a given point with a scalable radius (airports, hazards, populated areas etc)
• Freeform (click on points to define an enclosed space.
• Square

Red Zone - Do not fly into under any circumstances

Orange Zone - Ok to fly into but must be above and below the specific altitude for that zone.

Green Zone - Stay inside the green zone at all times.

The APM does not need to know about these zones, but you could use them when designing your flights to avoid areas or stay within predefined bounds. You could add in alerts to the flight data that set of warning messages as you got too close to a zone or if the aircraft strayed into or out of one of the defined zones.

For example in my country, I am not allowed to fly within 1 nautical mile of my airport if I am above 400 feet. I could define this area as a circular orange zone with a max ceiling of 400 feet and min ceiling of 0, clearly mark this on my flight planner screen and make sure I avoid it in my mission plans.

Similarly you could mark out populated areas etc.

It could also help those entering a competition to make sure they follow the rules and complete the task as efficiently as possible.