400′ AGL
I know that FAA says 400′ AGL. Most UAV’s don’t know what the surface is doing and the controller display shows height above “home” position where you launched from. If home isn’t the lowest point during your flight, then the UAV will technically be more than 400′ AGL assuming you went to the limit allowed. Of course some UAV’s can do terrain following based on a loaded surface model, but not all. It would be cool if UAV’s actually measured height AGL at all times.
Wondering about this, I emailed the FAA to get clarification, and here is direct quote; “The 400 ft AGL operating limitation is based on the altitude beneath the drone at any time”.
To keep under the 400′ AGL either fly way lower (to have a buffer) or launch from lowest point on the job (which is not usually what we want to do). Here in PNW where it isn’t flatland usually the 400′ AGL could be busted quite inadvertently when you have even a small valley, especially if you were on a hill so you can have VLOS.
Probably not going to get the FAA police chasing you, but something to keep in mind during planning.
PS, FAA was super responsive on answering e-mail, about seven hours, and that included some overnight hours as I emailed around 8pm PDT and received a response at 3am PDT. If you have a question it seems very good response times FYI.
SHG
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