I have recently been wanting to fly my Spark in the city (middle of San Antonio) and have been a little aprehensive due to the transmition system.
I wasn't sure if such a high ammout of random signals (bluetooth, wifi, radio, ect.) would mess with it to the point of loosing the drone. Of course I wouldn't fly over people and cars and such but I still don't want loose my drone so I was looking to see if anyone has flown in a large city and what your experince was.

Hello! I regularly fly in different patrt of my city (Odessa, Ukraine) that is quite large and overpeopled. I fly in the business, industrial, histirical, recreational districts and suburb, and can say that only places with narrow free spaces, such as lane with tall building on the both sides of the road, or small close squares, could cause you  troubles, the main of which is lack of amount satellitrs. In this case you should find open space near here, take off and increase altitude higher than surroundings. Have to notice, that I fly in FCC and always keep the drone in VLOS. Also I hardly ever fly in Sport in the city. Before you fly should estimate the height of the tallest building in the location and set it in RTH settings. Always keep in mind that height when you do backward and side movement, you can simply don't spot an obstacle when your mind busy with filming. It can be very helpful to have a partner with you.
If you lose VLOS, use the map in the left down corner.

Actually, flying in a big city is very challenging and my main advice is be careful.

I have flown in semi-urban areas with no interference at all. There is also a mobile tower right next to my apartment and I see no noticeable issue when flying near it. But at the same time, I have also found in one case that my video feed was quite choppy when I was near an isolated house in the middle of nowhere. Now I don't know what was cooking inside that house but I am just trying to say that interference is not something which you can predict in advance. The key is to fly within VLOS and keep an eye on the signal strength at the same time.

GPS can be weak near skyscrapers so becareful
and better fly high

Does Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Shanghai qualify as big cities?
Out of my experience, bluetooth ist not a threat in case a cable is in use from device to RC
All the other stuff is reducing the usable distance, but as long as GPS has a solid 2 digit number, I do not expect real trouble.
Just wait for the sats before you start and accept the limited distance.
PLAN closer flights, VLOS 100%, better even a bit closer.
Should be ok.

I'd generally advise against flying in cities. Tall buildings create reflections on the GPS reception path, so GPS will be less precise and position can be jumpy, even if you have enough sats in sight.
Also, if you need to land asap (or the drone decides to do so) and goes down on a street with vehicles moving, you'll create havoc. A drone, no matter how sophisticated it is, is always prone to fall out of the sky.
Mobile towers are always a threat, even if they are no visible (they can be embedded in building fronts), so it is difficult to stay clear of those.
Last but not least people may be offended by a drone flying in public, which adds to our already bad thinking of the public too.

Just my 2 cents,
Wolferl

Thanks for all of y'alls feedback. Should really help next time I go flying. I try to keep it VLOS anyways but in that case I will probably have somebody spot for me. I think Wolferl is right if it needs to land and that happens to be over a street that could cause chaos. What I wanted to do though was just go straight up and get some pics of the lights so if I just fly over my car or from a parking garage I think I should be safe.
Thanks again for all of the feedback.

Safe flying!

PatriotArcher Posted at 3-21 06:44
Thanks for all of y'alls feedback. Should really help next time I go flying. I try to keep it VLOS anyways but in that case I will probably have somebody spot for me. I think Wolferl is right if it needs to land and that happens to be over a street that could cause chaos. What I wanted to do though was just go straight up and get some pics of the lights so if I just fly over my car or from a parking garage I think I should be safe.
Thanks again for all of the feedback.

Nice to hear that you were able to get an answer with our valued and experienced members here. If you have any question or concern feel free to reach back here. Cheers!

I find that both interference and VLOS are variable and hard to predict.
A park that I fly in has interference that has let me get out to 500m on one occasion, but more often limits me to 250m. I find that flying with at least 2 bars of signal makes my Spark less prone to interference and more reliable.
With VLOS, it very much depends on the background - against a white cloud I can see it out to 300m, but with trees behind I have "lost" it at 100m. I chose a yellow body for visibility, but mostly I only see the grey underbody. Mostly I try to fly so my Spark is high enough to have the sky as a background.
I live in Sydney and this poses many limitations on flying my Spark (interference, VLOS, people, airports, etc). So much better to fly out in the country where there are few limitations.

PatriotArcher Posted at 3-21 06:44
Thanks for all of y'alls feedback. Should really help next time I go flying. I try to keep it VLOS anyways but in that case I will probably have somebody spot for me. I think Wolferl is right if it needs to land and that happens to be over a street that could cause chaos. What I wanted to do though was just go straight up and get some pics of the lights so if I just fly over my car or from a parking garage I think I should be safe.
Thanks again for all of the feedback.

I compiled a shot video from recent flights in the center of the city. You can take a look which locations are compared with flying Spark.

Lysak2003 Posted at 3-22 06:29
I compiled a shot video from recent flights in the center of the city. You can take a look which locations are compared with flying Spark.
https://youtu.be/_rGQfIIEFII

Thanks! That really helps!