Rafael Suárez is a drone journalist and content creator with more than 20 years behind the lens. He began in film photography in 1998, moved to digital in 2005, and has been flying and filming with drones since 2016. As a commercial videographer he has produced work for premium brands including BMW, Porsche, and MINI, and his documentary work champions a #flysafe mentality across the industry. Based in Quito, Ecuador, he covers drone news, hardware, and the policy and business shaping the industry for DroneXL, and shares reviews and cinematic flight on his YouTube channel. A dad and a lifelong aviation nerd, he's happiest when something is in the air.
Two California cities moved to put police drones in the air the same week, and both ran straight into residents who don’t want them there. West Hollywood launches a sheriff-run drone program by the end of July. Berkeley opens bidding on a public safety package that bundles drones with license plate readers and cameras. DroneXL…
BayCare will build a drone delivery network with Zipline across Florida’s Tampa Bay region, with the first flights scheduled for late 2027. The partnership puts lab samples, medications, and critical supplies in the air between hospitals and straight to patients’ homes. Service starts in the St. Petersburg-Clearwater area, then expands. It runs on the same…
Spain’s aviation safety agency AESA issued the country’s first SAIL III authorization for drone cargo transport on June 30, clearing operator CATUAV to fly RigiTech’s Eiger 3 beyond visual line of sight over populated areas. The approval covers transport and delivery of non-hazardous goods, and it lands one week after DroneXL covered the same Eiger…
Wonder and Zipline announced a partnership this week that will put restaurant meals from Bobby Flay, Marcus Samuelsson, Tejas Barbecue, and Di Fara Pizza into the Texas sky. Drone deliveries start in January 2027 in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, the same corridor where DroneXL has tracked Zipline’s Walmart expansion city by city since 2025. Wonder…
DJI pushed version 2.10.10 of its Mimo app to Apple’s App Store on July 1, and the release notes read like a feature list for the Osmo Pocket 4P, the dual-lens pocket gimbal that still has no US launch date. The update adds four Master Filters, full D-Log 2 support in Color Presets, share codes…
On Monday, Nassau County Police announced a $1 million first-responder drone program that turns emergency response on its head. Instead of waiting for a drone to launch from a headquarters, Nassau is installing eight fully automated pods across the county that can get airborne in under 30 seconds. This is what happens when you stop…
Croatian FPV maker Orqa and Canadian defence firm Remote Robotic Systems signed a five-year, 150 million CAD partnership on June 25, 2026 in Toronto to build drones, artificial intelligence and counter-unmanned aircraft systems on Canadian soil. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic stood in the room while Orqa co-founder Ivan…
The University of Tokyo’s JSK Lab flew DRAGON v1.5, a drone that changes its own shape in the air, in a live demonstration on the Komaba Campus in Tokyo. The robot bends and curls to pass through gaps that would stop a fixed-frame drone, and it does it autonomously, using only its onboard sensors. Now…
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