Drone News: Drone Stops NFL Game, FAA Safety Login Changes, DJI Agras T60, Skyebrowse 2D Mapping

Welcome to your weekly news update, we have 4 stories for you this week, Ravens vs Bengals game halted due to drone, FAA Safety Login changes, rumors of a new DJI Agras T60, Skyebrowse releases 2D mapping, and our Black Friday sale is in full swing! I am certainly thankful for all of you who come here every week and watch this segment and engage in the comments. What started as a way to help our students stay informed with the industry changes has grown to a video that many of you tell me about when we meet at in-person events. I love the discussion that ensues in the comments and while many of you say it’s your favorite part of Friday mornings, my favorite part is to read the comments and interact with you all.
First up this week is another drone over a major sporting event… A major league football game was halted due to a drone flying over the stadium this week, busting the stadium TFR. And while I would commonly say don’t be that guy (I’ll still say it), there are deeper issues that need to be brought up here... First, there isn’t enough notification for these TFRs… If you watched our live event you’ve heard my opinion on this: There is a single NOTAM issued for ALL stadium TFRs. This means that the stadium TFR doesn’t show on any of your favorite apps such as B4UFLY or Aloft Air Control. And no, that’s not a problem from the LAANC providers. In all reality, this is my and my team’s full time job but I personally don’t follow major sporting events. I don’t know when the games are and the TFRs aren’t charted, so we could potentially bust one of these TFRs because I don’t follow these major sporting events. Over the years I have been questioning the intent of this stadium TFR, especially when it only covers certain events. A concert from a popular artist would fill up as many if not more seats than a qualifying sporting event, and yet would not qualify for a TFR... why be selective? I’ll say it out loud: is the TFR protecting broadcasting rights of the NFL, MLB, and Nascar or is it actually designed for safety purposes? The second issue at play here is that we need better education for drone pilots at the point of sale. The FAA requires that manufacturers include a brochure with each drone sold in the US. Problem is, the rule is not enforced. Could this person who flew over the game have been better informed? Probably. Next up this week is an update to the FAA Safety Login process for non-governmental employees. The FAA is going away from using a username and password and is transitioning to a multi factor authentication service. The process is pretty easy and takes about 5 minutes to change info over. After setting up the new log in system, you’ll still need to use your old credentials to get in until Nov. 30th, 2023. FAA Safety doesn’t appear to have changed at all, but we’ll have to see once the changes are rolled out later this month! Your third story this week is a new and larger Agras! A shared image by DJI leaker Igor Bogdanov shows a new Agras to be released on Thursday - yesterday as you’re watching this! The rumored Agras T60 will have a 60-liter liquid spray capacity. Other specs are sparse, but the T40 had a 50kg dry payload, so it’s reasonable to expect the T60 will increase this. The T60 is also likely to have onboard RTK, Camera, and light similar to the T40! Your final story this week is Skyebrowse, who released free 2D mapping. As with other Skyebrowse products, their mapping and modeling software uses video instead of pictures to create models. You may already be familiar with Skyebrowse’s 3D mapping, which includes an app to fly the drone, 2D and 3D model processing in about 5 minutes, and model sharing. https://www.faa.gov/uas/programs_partnerships/manufacturers_toolkit https://dronexl.co/2023/11/20/dji-agras-t60-agriculture-drone/ https://www.faasafety.gov/login/