It is legal to fly to 400 feet AGL in the US.
That means you could legally fly to the top of a 6000 foot mountain from it's base so long as you stayed within 400 feet of the slope.

However, the height limit of DJI drones is capped at 500 meters (about 1500 feet).


Please DJI, remove this cap so we can climb mountains!

Hi, sorry for if your flight is currently limited at 500 meters height for safety purpose. We will forward your inquiry if we could possibly extend the limitation or possibly remove it. Thank you for the support.

ya i bitched about this awhile back. If i get a tower inspection and that tower is 2000' tall i cannot take the job. I hear if you call DJI they will give you a way to allow higher limit....or you can do it yourself with other methods depending on what DJI model you have....NDL

DJI Tony Posted at 2018-10-17 14:48
Hi, sorry for if your flight is currently limited at 500 meters height for safety purpose. We will forward your inquiry if we could possibly extend the limitation or possibly remove it. Thank you for the support.

Thanks for the reply - I would like to point out that DJI drones already come with a 120m limit set as default that users can unlock after accepting the risks and responsibilities that come with lifting that limit. With the fact that they are informed of those risks and responsibilities in mind there should be no issue with them entirely removing height limits.

Illuminations Posted at 2018-10-18 20:32
Thanks for the reply - I would like to point out that DJI drones already come with a 120m limit set as default that users can unlock after accepting the risks and responsibilities that come with lifting that limit. With the fact that they are informed of those risks and responsibilities in mind there should be no issue with them entirely removing height limits.

We perfectly understand your concern, however, there will be a limit for safety reason and avoid incident while flying the drone. Interference may occur when flying the drone at a long distance or high altitude as well. Please fly your drone in a recommended environment to prevent the incident. Thank you for understanding.

DJI Tony Posted at 2018-10-21 12:38
We perfectly understand your concern, however, there will be a limit for safety reason and avoid incident while flying the drone. Interference may occur when flying the drone at a long distance or high altitude as well. Please fly your drone in a recommended environment to prevent the incident. Thank you for understanding.

What safety concern are you referring to? It is legal and safe to fly up to 400 feet AGL, and it is safe to do so even if you fly from 3,000 feet to 400 feet above the top of a 7,000 foot mountain.

As to interference at long distance/high altitude - the Mavic 2 is designed to fly as far as 5 miles away. That's 26,400 feet. 4,000 feet to the top of a mountain should be nothing to this drone.

What do you mean by "Please fly your drone in a recommended environment"? That's what I want to do - line of sight, 400 feet AGL, clear skies - what's the problem here?

Yup the problem is that legislation has come in that purposefully limits drone flying to an ever tighter envelop of operation  - DJI have built technology that is capable beyond that envelope but has had it's hand directed towards hobbling the craft such that there is a minimum risk of litigation if ever there where a collision/disaster involving one of it's craft. The flight height limit of 500 meters is in theory at the lower limit of commercial aircraft flights (not including crop sprayers, sports racers etc etc etc).

The height restriction is given at the Takeoff point.

My guess goes that since DJI does not use any kind of topographical maps there is no way for the device to know that you are flying along the slope of a mountain to maintain the 500mts ceiling AGL, instead of just shooting straight up.

Before the drone takes off it records the barometric pressure at that point, during the first 10meters of height it uses the ultrasonic sensors on the bottom to keep the height (radar altimeter) after that it switches to the barometric sensor which is not so precise as the ultrasonic ones. In order for them to achieve what you are proposing it would require a mayor workaround in the flight protocol and it might be very difficult to achieve since most of open available topographical maps out there are not so precise. And DJI uses open source maps for their flights.

In the professional environment of devices you will find a solution, but I don't think there is an easy and SAFE fix in the recreational sector for it.

Cheers!

Lamplighter55 Posted at 2018-10-22 02:42
Yup the problem is that legislation has come in that purposefully limits drone flying to an ever tighter envelop of operation  - DJI have built technology that is capable beyond that envelope but has had it's hand directed towards hobbling the craft such that there is a minimum risk of litigation if ever there where a collision/disaster involving one of it's craft. The flight height limit of 500 meters is in theory at the lower limit of commercial aircraft flights (not including crop sprayers, sports racers etc etc etc).

Well, at least it's good to know the 500m limit isn't completely arbitrary! It's still ridiculous though to hobble a product in such a way that the legal operation of that product is prohibited. I'm skeptical that there would ever be any risk of litigation for DJI, as it is the end users responsibility to ensure that the product is used in a safe and legal manner. I think it's PR that they're worried about more than anything else, which is reasonable given the unreasonable stigma against UAVs.

However, I am opposed on principle to any company hobbling their products software. By all means impose default restrictions, but provide a method of unlocking those restrictions (that can be activated sans internet) accompanied by appropriate cautionary messages.

I wanted to be able to fly my Mavic Pro above 500m and did a lot of googling on this. Finally, I was able to do it by following directions in this video: https://youtu.be/rFrQ52m8bos

Here is the video I made and reason why I wanted to be able to fly over 500m. In this video, my Mavic Pro flies ove 1km high: https://youtu.be/i4t4RWKlzRY

How to do it:
I was able to downgrade the firmware on my Mavic Pro from V01.04.0500 to  V01.04.0300. In ordedr to do this, you need to run DJI_Super-PatcherV2.0.2 and select option 2. Follow the prompt and on DUMLdoreV3 select "Download Firmware" (you might need to run DUMLdoreV3 independent from DJI_Super-PatcherV2.0.2 if "Download Firmware" is grayed out ). It will open github (https://github.com/cs2000/DankDroneDownloader) - download DankDroneDownloader and run it. In DankDroneDownloader select Mavic Pro and select V01.04.0300 firmware. It will download the firmware. Close DankDroneDownloader. Go back to DUMLdoreV3 and select "Load Firmware". Select the firmware you just downloaded and click "Flash Firmware". Be patient, it will take about 10 minutes. Mine got stuck on around 64% and the drone restarted couple of times. It opened another DUMLdoreV3 instance where it showed the firmware was downgraded to V01.04.0300. Close that 2nd DUMLdoreV3 instance and the first should finish shortly after. When done, close DUMLdoreV3 and reboot your drone. Continue on DJI_Super-PatcherV2.0.2. It asked me if I want to Flash the firmware one more time and I selected YES. Repeated the whole process but much faster this time. I rebooted the drone one more time and continued with DJI_Super-PatcherV2.0.2. At this point,  go back to the main menu and select the option 1. Follow the prompt and flash MavicPro_SP_2.0_Stealth_03.02.44.21_dji_system.bin firmware. Verifiy the firmware in DJI GO 4 app.