Turbo1ed
 lvl.3
Flight distance : 1322582 ft
Canada
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Hi everybody
I live in a city (Montreal) which happens to have some areas interlocked between 2 airports and a mountain (Mount Royal) in the middle.
I own a DJI Mini 2, which is generally allowed to fly anywhere by Transport Canada's rules. However, there is a 150m altitude limit from DJI, which prevents me from flying from my takeoff point to the top of the mountain, since the altitude limit is computed from the takeoff point and doesn't take terrain height into account.
With that in mind, I managed to request a DJI special zone unlock through the DJI FlySafe website. However, I got in great trouble yesterday once I reached the special unlocked zone. I wasn't able to get out of that circle zone! No matter what I tried to do, the drone would be "stuck" like if there was a fence around that circle, which meant I couldn't return home, even if I tried to lower my altitude to below 150m. RTH was also not able to get out of that circle. With 33% battery left, I had no choide than landing on a random safe location and recovering the drone. I had lost the signal while landing, so I didn't know if the drone would want to go back up and try to return home unsucessfully.
Why was I stuck in the special zone, even after lowering my altitude? What were my options? Should I have tried to turn off the geo zone unlock while flying?
I think this is a bug that needs to be addressed by DJI. Also, I think these altitude limitations should be either relaxed or modified somehow to take the terrain into account, because hilly cities are a reality. The altitude limits can become a safety hazard where drones have to fly dangerously low in mountain areas.
UPDATE:
DJI support confirms that when requesting a zone unlock, it's only possible to fly into that zone. However I was able to take off from outside that zone and enter the zone while flying, which lead me to being stuck. I didn't think about turning off the unlock and attempting to return home. It took a while to realize what was happening, and the battery was too low to attempt a full return.
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Captain
