I took a walk today to a park just inside the Class E Airspace for Bartlesville Municipal Airport taking Phoebe the drone, my phone, and a camera with a dead battery to make a video of my first attempt to get authorization to fly in Class E Airspace as a Hobbiest.
With the video camera out of commission for a few hours, I took screen shots of the process and set out to make a video including shots from Phoebe, the screen shots and my own narration. After fussing for a couple hours with HitFilm Express trying to get these portrait screen shots into the video in some reasonable manner, I said, "CHUCK IT!" (Fill in your own colorful metaphore) Being Autistic, I stopped before my OCD kicked in or I melted down. People THINK I don't have patience and quit too early, but I hate melting down. Still came close when GIMP would NOT overwrite C.jpg with the one where my phone number was blurred out.


Airmap shows I'm just inside Class E Airspace.


So I made a "Flight Plan" saying I would stay within 500ft of the home point and less than 100ft altitude. Um, for you metric guys, 152 meters diameter and 30 meters high. These are distances where I have a little trouble seeing Phoebe anyhow, so I didn't figure on going that far.


Then I had to provide some information.


It gave me a weather briefing and STRONGY warned me that it would apply for authorization if I hit "Submit."


You have to scroll down to find the big res SUBMIT button.


Then it sternly warned me that my flight had been submitted for authorization. Whew! It says to the FAA, not the KGB. All these dire warnings had me worried for a moment.

Just as I was wondering "what next," a text came:


So I flew a battery amongst the trees and shot a video of it following me down a path and generally goofed off.

So, there you go. The process was quite easy and painless. No meltdowns, swat teams or men in reflective sunglasses were involved. Yet.

Nicely done - thanks again for sharing!

Fun narrative - thanks!

Thanks for sharing

great info. thanks for sharing