DroneXL: The Independent Drone Authority — DJI, FAA, Reviews & Deals

Engineless RC Glider Hits 474 MPH, Then Plows Into A California Hill

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 18:40:00 GMT

Joe Manor’s Endgame 130, a radio-controlled glider with a 130-inch (3.3-meter) wingspan, hit 474 mph (763 km/h) on the speed readout over Parker Mountain near Acton, California, on October 16. At the end of that flight he flew it into the hillside. Manor posted the run and the wreckage the next day on his Manorcraft YouTube channel, where the video has passed 60,000 views.

The Endgame 130 was the first airframe out of a new set of molds, and it had no engine and no propeller. The fastest jet-powered RC model on record, Niels Herbrich’s turbine-powered Inferno, was clocked at 465 mph (749 km/h).

Dynamic Soaring Pulls Glider Speed Out Of A Ridge’s Wind Shear

A glider with no engine reaches 474 mph through dynamic soaring. Wind pouring over a ridge leaves slower air on the downwind side, and the pilot flies tight loops across the boundary between the two layers. Each crossing adds energy, so the glider accelerates far past the wind’s speed.

RC pilots found it by accident, at the same hill Manor crashed on. The Royal Aeronautical Society’s history of the discipline credits glider pilot Joe Wurts, whose foam model strayed into the lee of Parker Mountain in the 1990s, dived, and came back much faster than it should have. Albatrosses use the same physics over the ocean, and it is the trick a startup called Alteon raised $2.5 million to build a year-long drone around in September.

The loads explain why these airframes look the way they do. Between 1998 and 2003, model gliders reached 150 to 250 mph and often broke apart from wing bending and flutter. Spencer Lisenby measured 120 g on one of his gliders, the limit of the sensor he carried.

The Unpowered Record Has Climbed To 567 MPH Since 2021

Bruce Tebo holds the dynamic soaring record at 567 mph (912 km/h), flown at Bird Spring Pass, California, in April 2026. Spencer Lisenby set the two marks before it, 548 mph at Parker Mountain in January 2021 and 564 mph at Bird Spring Pass in February 2023.

Manor was at the same April session. The post announcing Tebo’s run, from DS pilot Steven Welsh and relayed to an Albuquerque soaring list, lists Manor’s Endgame at 534 mph (859 km/h) that day and pilot Jason Lilly at an even 500. Lilly posted video of the 567 mph run. So the 474 mph crash was a shakedown flight on a new airframe, not a record attempt.

Every one of these numbers is unofficial. They come from a handheld radar gun on the ridge, because GPS loses its satellite lock at around 4 g, and pilots usually take the reading on the slower upwind leg of the loop. The readout in Manor’s video shows bare numbers, and his earlier video titles give his speeds in mph. Lisenby told the RC Soaring Digest that measuring his 564 mph run on the down leg would have shown a ground speed over 600 mph, putting the peak near Mach 0.84.

Manor Flies Each New Glider Until It Shows Him A Weakness

Manor flies the first airframe from every new set of molds to check its balance point, wing bending, tail boom flex and flutter before building more. The crashed 130 needs extra spar cap so its wings bend less. The first Endgame 100, a 100-inch model, needs no changes.

Manor expects his next test to break a glider too. He built an ultralight Endgame 180 to see what a light layup could do, decided he no longer needs it, and added tip weight so he can fly it faster. “It’s probably going to fail somewhere in the mid 500s,” he says in the October 17 video. His channel says he is setting out to break the sound barrier with an unpowered RC glider.

That rules him out of Boom Supersonic’s Boom Prize, which offers $750,000 in cash and $50,000 in Boom stock for the first amateur supersonic RC airplane. The prize names his discipline in its official rules: gliders and soaring aircraft, “including dynamic-soaring designs, are not eligible.” The transonic acceleration must also be flown level or climbing, so a run that gains speed by descending is disqualified.

DroneXL’s Take

The fastest remotely piloted aircraft in the hobby have no motor, and the drone speed race should measure itself against them. Luke Bell’s Peregreen V4 holds the Guinness quadcopter record at 408.6 mph. The Mach Initiative students are building KingChaser to beat Herbrich’s 465 mph jet record. The glider numbers come off a radar gun rather than a certified course, but even read on the slow leg of the loop, Tebo’s 567 sits about 100 mph above that jet record. Boom wrote dynamic soaring out of its prize by name. I read that as a compliment, because a jet company writing a prize for propulsion had to shut the door on the people already flying near Mach 0.8 on nothing but wind.

Sources: Manorcraft, “High Speed Flight Testing Crash” (YouTube), RC Soaring Digest, Royal Aeronautical Society, Boom Prize rules, Jason Lilly (YouTube)

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

FCC Catches Huawei Surveillance Chips in Its First Parts Ban Case

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:55:00 GMT

The Federal Communications Commission has blocked a dashboard camera and a wireless video transmitter from the US market because each one carried a chip made by HiSilicon, the chip design subsidiary of Huawei. The Office of Engineering and Technology acted this week, and the Commission announced it on October 22 as the first enforcement of its new Covered List component rules.

Those rules took effect on October 13. They are the same ones that now stop a new US-built drone from getting an FCC authorization if a DJI or Autel logic-bearing part sits inside it, which DroneXL laid out in September.

The Commission named no manufacturer, model or chip part number. Under the rule as written, the applicant is the one who attests that a device contains no covered component.

HiSilicon Falls Under Huawei’s Covered List Entry

HiSilicon does not appear on the Covered List by name. Huawei does, since March 12, 2021, and a footnote on the list says every named producer should be read to include its subsidiaries and affiliates. The FCC’s announcement calls HiSilicon a Huawei subsidiary, which puts its chips inside the rule.

The Commission picked its evidence from HiSilicon’s own marketing. It quoted the company describing the chip as “designed for the surveillance market” with built-in face detection. Chairman Brendan Carr called video devices carrying such chips “an obvious and unacceptable risk to the nation and our people.”

Neither device had been authorized. Carr’s statement credits OET with stopping them before they obtained the approvals needed for sale. The rule runs forward only, so equipment authorized before October 13 keeps its authorization, and applications already pending that day are exempt unless the applicant later changes a logic-bearing component. Both blocked filings were therefore made, or amended, no earlier than October 13.

The FCC’s Release Does Not Say How OET Found the Chips

The FCC’s October 22 release describes the outcome and leaves out the method. Nothing in it says whether the applicants disclosed the HiSilicon parts or whether the chips showed up in the internal photographs that every certification filing has to include.

The method matters because the rule itself leans on paperwork. The Third Report and Order, adopted July 22, keeps the attestation model and the streamlined revocation for false attestations that the Commission adopted in 2022. Its Further Notice asks whether every application should carry a hardware and software bill of materials, which would put the chip list in the filing instead of leaving it to a photo of the board.

For drones, the FCC already treats foreign-produced data transmission devices as critical components on the Covered List. The release does not say whether the blocked video transmitter was built for drones.

DroneXL’s Take

Keeping a chip its own maker sells for face detection out of American dash cams is a result I’m glad to see. But read the legal basis. OET blocked these devices because HiSilicon belongs to Huawei, and the order says outright that the component ban rests on who produced the part. The surveillance marketing the FCC quoted is supporting color. This time the supplier’s name and the chip’s function happened to point the same way. The same test bars a DJI flight controller from a US-built drone with no finding about what that board does, which is the asymmetry I wrote about in September.

The FCC should publish the FCC IDs or grantee codes. Other companies buying the same camera module have a reason to know, and an enforcement action nobody can look up teaches the market nothing. My read is that these chips were spotted in the internal photos a certification filing carries, because a HiSilicon package has its logo printed on the lid. A DJI-made board in a drone filing is just as easy to see, and US drone builders should assume the examiners are now looking.

Source: FCC News Release, October 22, 2026, FCC Covered List, FCC Third Report and Order FCC 26-50

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

MassDOT Says Amazon Hasn't Applied for the Drone Pad Permit It Needs

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:04:00 GMT

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation told Amazon on Thursday, October 22, that it cannot open a Prime Air drone takeoff and landing area in Westborough, or anywhere else in Massachusetts, without a certificate of approval from MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division. The division also says it has not received an official notification or request for review from Amazon. Its letter refers to an earlier introductory meeting at which, it says, the division had already explained that oversight role.

Aeronautics Division Administrator Denise Garcia wrote that Amazon should expect at least one public hearing before any decision on the certificate. MassDOT’s communications office sent DroneXL the two-page letter, addressed to Jonathan Greeley, Amazon’s head of policy in New England, and Tareq Wafaie, its economic development policy manager, along with a statement from Interim Transportation Secretary Phillip Eng.

Wafaie told a Westborough audience on September 23 that Amazon planned to launch there possibly by the end of October, and that it did not yet have its remaining approvals, including a MassDOT Aeronautics inspection and registration of the landing area, as DroneXL reported from that meeting. Massachusetts rules want a landing-area application on file at least 90 days before the site is first used.

Massachusetts’ 90-Day Filing Rule Puts Amazon’s Westborough Pad Into 2027

As I read 702 CMR 5.03, an application filed on the day of Garcia’s letter would meet the rule’s 90-day lead time no earlier than January 20, 2027 (October 22 plus 90 days). That holds only if a certificate had issued by then.

January 20 is a floor rather than a forecast, because the certificate has to come first, after the inspection and the public hearing in the town that the same rule requires. DroneXL’s article earlier today read M.G.L. c. 90, § 39B and 702 CMR 5.01 as the rules behind the state certificate, because the 16 legislators who asked Governor Maura Healey for a freeze cited no statute. Garcia’s letter cites § 39B directly. She writes that Amazon’s FAA approval as an air carrier and operator under Part 135 makes its proposed operations commercial flights subject to that section. DroneXL removed the two Amazon employees’ email addresses from the copy linked here.

The central passage of Denise Garcia's October 22, 2026 letter to Amazon. Document: MassDOT Aeronautics Division

The legislators had asked the state to stop accepting or processing certificate applications from drone delivery operators, and Garcia’s letter shows Amazon has not reached that step. She closed by asking Amazon for an update on its plans and the project’s status.

Eng’s statement puts the burden on Amazon. “We will carefully scrutinize their plans,” he said, adding that Amazon will need to show its operations will not pose a risk to public safety and will minimize safety impacts on surrounding neighborhoods and the environment.

MassDOT Ties Its Safety Review to Low Flights and the Aircraft’s Weight

Garcia lists the community concerns that could bear on the division’s safety determination: flights over private property at very low altitudes, the potential for harm to people and property given the size and weight of Amazon’s vehicles, and deconfliction with public safety agencies and other drone operators.

The division must complete its suitability review and ensure “that the proposal poses no threat to safety before any operations can begin,” she writes. The letter does not name the aircraft or mention a parachute. Amazon’s MK30 has an 83.2-pound (37.8-kilogram) maximum takeoff weight under an FAA re-evaluation of Prime Air’s Pendleton, Oregon test site, and it carries packages of up to 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) with no parachute on board.

The division will also assess the risk of adverse environmental impacts. Garcia says that includes considering the results of pending litigation over the federal approach to environmental review for this type of installation, and deciding what Massachusetts environmental review the pad needs. The letter does not name the case. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette identified it as the suit Massachusetts joined with other states, which DroneXL covered when 15 states sued the FAA on September 28.

Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Telegram & Gazette or the Boston Globe, both outlets reported.

The same state office also has a say over Westborough’s 510-to-13 bylaw banning commercial drone pads, passed October 19. It takes effect only after the attorney general approves it or lets 90 days pass without acting, and the warrant says MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division must approve it too. Locally, the Zoning Board of Appeals hears the residents’ appeal on November 2, and the Planning Board resumes Amazon’s site-plan hearing November 10.

The Drone Delivery Tracker lists the Westborough hub as in review, and DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can still do once a hub is proposed. Residents can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.”

DroneXL’s Take

MassDOT’s letter does more for Westborough than the freeze the 16 legislators asked for, in my view, because it moves the decision to a state hearing where the aircraft’s size and weight are already part of the record. As I read the clause about pending litigation, it also leaves the division room to wait on the states’ case against the FAA before it rules.

The reasoning isn’t aimed at Amazon alone either. Garcia’s test is Part 135 status, and DoorDash holds a Part 135 certificate of its own, so any drone delivery operator that wants a Massachusetts pad needs the same certificate from the same division, with a public hearing in the town under 702 CMR 5.03. That settles the equal-treatment worry I raised earlier today better than a moratorium could. Drone delivery that carries medication or a defibrillator can make its case at that hearing. An 83-pound aircraft with no parachute carrying five-pound consumer orders low over Westborough’s backyards will have a harder time, I suspect, and it should.

Sources: MassDOT Aeronautics Division letter to Amazon, October 22, 2026 (PDF, email addresses redacted by DroneXL), statement from Interim Transportation Secretary Phillip Eng provided to DroneXL by MassDOT, The Boston Globe, Worcester Telegram & Gazette, 702 CMR 5.03, M.G.L. c. 90, § 39B.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Healey Weighs a Drone Delivery Permit Freeze Aimed at Amazon's Hub

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 16:09:00 GMT

Governor Maura Healey’s office says it is reviewing a request from 16 Massachusetts state legislators to create a task force on commercial drone delivery and to stop every state agency from accepting or processing a certificate application from a drone delivery operator until that review is done. The lawmakers sent the letter to Healey, Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll and Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell on Monday, October 19. It is the state-level answer to Amazon’s plan to fly Prime Air MK30 drones from its warehouse at 64 Otis Street in Westborough, and it went out the same day Westborough voters voted 510 to 13 to ban commercial drone pads, a bylaw the attorney general and MassDOT Aeronautics still have to approve.

The letter names no state agency as the one to freeze, but it is copied to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. At its September 23 Westborough meeting, Amazon said it did not yet have its remaining approvals, which include a MassDOT Aeronautics inspection and registration of the landing area, and hoped to have all of them by year-end, as DroneXL reported from that meeting. Boston.com reported the next day that Amazon was still awaiting approval from the Aeronautics Division.

Healey’s Office Is Weighing Options and Has Not Endorsed the Freeze

Healey spokesperson Jacqui Manning told State House News Service, in a report the Boston Globe ran on October 21, that the office has been closely monitoring Westborough. “We are evaluating our options to make sure that the community’s interests are protected,” she said.

The statement, as the Globe quoted it, named neither the task force nor the freeze. The administration pointed instead to the multistate lawsuit Massachusetts joined against the FAA. Senator Michael Moore, D-Millbury, whose office released the letter, told the news service he wants the state to impose the freeze immediately. He said federal preemption can leave the state unable to speak for its own communities, and he asked whether drone delivery is worth it to Amazon if opposition keeps spreading and costs it customers.

The Letter Targets the Ground End of Drone Delivery, Which the FAA Leaves to States

The 16 legislators ask the state to plan where commercial drones take off and land before it approves any site, and to freeze certificate applications until a task force reviews the Commonwealth’s rules and recommends changes. The letter names 15 cities and towns Amazon could reach in whole or part.

Those communities are Ashland, Berlin, Boylston, Grafton, Hopkinton, Hudson, Marlborough, Millbury, Northborough, Shrewsbury, Southborough, Sutton, Upton, West Boylston and Worcester. The letter says they “have suddenly found themselves opted into a new form of air commerce” because Amazon believes it can add drone takeoff and landing to an existing distribution center by right under zoning rules, and it says that leaves the state no say in planning where drone hubs go.

The legal footing is the FAA’s own July 2023 fact sheet on state and local regulation, which the letter quotes: states “have a valid interest in choosing where aircraft may operate on the ground,” and laws designating takeoff and landing locations have no direct effect on where drones fly. The lawmakers acknowledge that Congress and the FAA control the airspace and ask the state to use the authority it keeps.

The letter cites no statute, so the certificate it means is my reading of the Massachusetts rules. Under 702 CMR 5.01 and M.G.L. c. 90, § 39B, nobody may establish an airport, heliport or restricted landing area without a certificate of approval from MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division. The exemption for private landing areas covers non-commercial use, and a Prime Air pad is commercial. Section 5.03 of the same regulation says the application goes in at least 90 days before the site is first used, and the division holds a public hearing in the town before it issues anything. Amazon said on September 23 that flights could begin as soon as late October, and This Week in Worcester reported on October 19 that the zoning appeal had pushed the expected start to at least early November. A filing on the day Amazon spoke would put the earliest permitted use on December 22 (September 23 plus 90 days). If MassDOT treats the pad as the certificated landing area Amazon described, a freeze on that certificate would, as I read the regulation, hold the Westborough pad at the state level whatever the Zoning Board of Appeals decides.

The letter also raises health care and public safety facilities, which often have landing sites of their own, and says siting a drone hub wherever a warehouse already stands ignores them. It names DoorDash, which earned its own FAA Part 135 certificate on July 29 and has talked about delivering “a coffee or hot meal,” as an example of why the state should set rules for every operator now rather than for Amazon alone.

“Our window to regulate drone delivery services is closing,” Moore said in the statement that released the letter. Representative Hannah Kane, R-Shrewsbury, said drone delivery “once started will spread statewide.” Moore, Kane and Representative Kate Donaghue wrote the September 28 letter that asked Amazon to pause. This time they are joined by Senators Robyn Kennedy, James Eldridge, Ryan Fattman and Peter Durant and Representatives Meghan Kilcoyne, James Arena-DeRosa, James O’Day, David Muradian Jr., Carmine Gentile, Daniel Donahue, Joseph McKenna, Paul Frost and David LeBoeuf. Moore’s office says Amazon hopes eventually to make up to 1,000 deliveries a day from Westborough. Amazon told the September 23 meeting it would start with about six drones and several hundred daily deliveries.

Worcester Asks for an Amazon Forum and Turns Down a Zoning Review

Worcester’s City Council voted October 20 to ask City Manager Eric Batista to arrange a community forum with Amazon “as soon as possible,” and it turned down Councilor-at-Large Gary Rosen’s second order, which asked the city solicitor about zoning control of drone launch sites.

The zoning order did not get enough support to pass, the Worcester Guardian reported, and the paper gave no vote count. “All I’m asking is some recommendation or some information from the city solicitor,” Rosen said. Vice Chairman Khrystian King backed the forum and said he supports bringing Amazon in for a community discussion.

Worcester City Hall. On October 20 the City Council asked the city manager to arrange a community forum with Amazon and turned down an order for a zoning review of drone launch sites. Photo credit: Farragutful, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

This Week in Worcester pointed out before the vote that an adopted order is only a request. Section 2-3 of Worcester’s charter says the council deals with the city’s administrative service “solely through the city manager,” so Batista decides whether to hold the forum, and nothing in the order can make Amazon attend. The same outlet reported that Amazon had not publicly addressed the forum request as of October 19, and that neither Amazon nor the city has said which Worcester neighborhoods fall inside the 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) circle Amazon showed the Westborough Planning Board on September 15. The council adopted Rosen’s October 6 order asking whether the city has any authority to restrict or control the drones, and This Week in Worcester said the city had not released that report as of October 19. The only drone items on the October 20 agenda were Rosen’s two new orders.

Amazon’s Westborough Hub Faces a State Freeze Request on Top of Local and Federal Fights

The Zoning Board of Appeals hears the residents’ appeal November 2, and the Planning Board resumes Amazon’s site-plan hearing November 10. Four members of Congress want written replies from Amazon and the FAA by October 29 on a site-specific environmental review, and Massachusetts is among 15 states suing the FAA.

Amazon told State House News Service it knows an appeal of the town’s zoning reading has been filed and is working through the process with local officials and the surrounding communities.

Castle Rock, Colorado, is the clearest adopted freeze DroneXL has covered: its council stopped taking drone hub applications on July 21 for six months, and neighboring Parker did the same for nine. Those were towns acting on their own land-use power. The Massachusetts letter asks the governor to do the same thing statewide with a certificate only the state issues. The Drone Delivery Tracker lists the Westborough hub as in review, and DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can still do once a hub is proposed. Residents can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.”

DroneXL’s Take

I think the legislators found the lever that works. The other fronts argue zoning with Amazon, ask the FAA for more paperwork or ask a court to undo the FAA’s finding, and the FAA’s own fact sheet recognizes the states’ interest in where aircraft operate on the ground. By my reading, a freeze on the landing-area certificate does what no town bylaw can do without first getting through the attorney general.

The letter’s closing line already argues that a review before any application treats every operator equally. A freeze aimed at one company’s pending paperwork still invites an equal-treatment fight, and my read is that a task force with a stated end date survives that fight and an open-ended moratorium does not. Healey can create the first without a vote, and her office’s first answer committed her to neither. Westborough’s Zoning Board of Appeals sits November 2 and its Planning Board November 10, so a review that starts after those dates starts after the town has ruled.

Amazon could defuse this by changing the aircraft. I’d expect a different letter from these 16 for a tethered drop from a Zipline P2 carrying medication than for an MK30 with an 83.2-pound (37.8-kilogram) maximum takeoff weight, no parachute and packages of up to five pounds bound for all or parts of 15 cities and towns whose legislators say they were opted in without being asked.

Update, October 22, 2026, 1:25 p.m. ET: MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division told Amazon in a letter dated October 22 that it cannot open a drone takeoff and landing area anywhere in Massachusetts without a certificate of approval under M.G.L. c. 90, § 39B, that the division has received no request for review from Amazon, and that Amazon should expect at least one public hearing. DroneXL’s report on the MassDOT letter has the details.

Sources: Letter to Governor Healey, Lieutenant Governor Driscoll and Attorney General Campbell, October 19, 2026 (PDF), Office of Senator Michael Moore, State House News Service via The Boston Globe, Boston.com, Worcester Guardian, Worcester City Council agenda, October 20, 2026 (PDF), Worcester Home Rule Charter (PDF), This Week in Worcester, FAA, State and Local Regulation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Fact Sheet, July 2023 (PDF), 702 CMR 5.00, M.G.L. c. 90, § 39B.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Wentzville Started Writing Drone Rules After Wing's June Walmart Pitch

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 15:45:00 GMT

Wing, the Alphabet-owned company flying drone deliveries for Walmart, is the operator whose June presentation set off the drone delivery ordinance Wentzville, Missouri, is now writing. City minutes show Wing’s manager of local policy, Catherine Lovett, pitched an 18-drone nest at the Wentzville Walmart to the Planning and Zoning Commission on June 8. The commission voted 6 to 0 that night to have staff write a zoning category for it.

The Board of Aldermen gave that ordinance, Bill 4914, its first reading on Wednesday night, four weeks after postponing it. It would make drone delivery a conditional use in Wentzville, a city in western St. Charles County, and require a noise study before any nest goes up. The local TV report on Wednesday’s vote did not name Wing.

The commission’s June 8 minutes record Wing’s aircraft as carrying 2.3 pounds. That matches, in kilograms, the five pounds Wing published on October 5, and Bill 4914 sets no weight limit at all.

Wing Asked for a Nest Beside the Wentzville Walmart’s Curbside Pickup

Wing’s June 8 presentation covered the Wentzville Walmart. Lovett described a standard 18-drone nest beside the curbside pickup area, all-electric batteries instead of diesel, flights at 150 to 200 feet (46 to 61 meters), and deliveries in five to 15 minutes during the store’s curbside hours.

The commission asked for that meeting. Its May 11 minutes record a direction to staff to set one up with Wing representatives. Walmart and Wing had named St. Louis as a market in their 150-store expansion in January, but KMOV’s August list of St. Louis-area targets left Wentzville off, two months after the pitch.

Lovett told the commission the drones lower packages without landing, carry no audio or live feed, and deliver only to homes away from power lines and commercial property. Community Development Director Doug Forbeck said the zoning code had no category for drones, according to the June 8 minutes, and the commissioners pushed on the site more than the flights. Vice Chairman Bob Schmidt objected to a chain-link fence and asked for the nest to go behind the store. Lovett said it could not sit too close to the building or the truck entrance, that Wing was looking at other fencing and screening, and that it was open to another area. Commissioner Timothy Bubenik asked what happens when Target wants drones too, and Lovett pointed to the FAA’s unmanned traffic management system.

Bill 4914 Puts the Noise Data on the Applicant

Bill 4914 makes commercial drone delivery a conditional use in Wentzville’s C-2, C-3 and I-1 zones. It is allowed only as an accessory to an existing business. Applicants must file FAA authorization, insurance, state licensing and a noise study measuring decibels at the dispatch pad and at a receiving home.

The ordinance text in the Board’s October 21 agenda packet limits flights to 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, subject to each permit. Operators may not intentionally collect images or data unrelated to deliveries and must publish a privacy policy. The Planning and Zoning Commission can set conditions on fencing, lighting, truck traffic and setbacks.

The commission approved the text on September 14. At the Board’s September 23 meeting, Alderman Frank Martell said he was not a fan and that the city was not ready for the noise or the potential liabilities. City Administrator Doug Lee said drones could fly in from outside city limits without being subject to city code. City Attorney Jim Hetlage said the FAA has already authorized the operation of drones for commercial deliveries, so the city’s rules reach only the base where drones take off and land, the same line Northglenn’s staff drew for a Walmart and Wing hub in suburban Denver. Mayor Nickolas Guccione asked who would be responsible if a drone damaged infrastructure. The aldermen postponed the bill 6 to 0, and Forbeck offered to ask the drone delivery vendor to present to the Board.

The bill’s applicability line still covers operations that “involve delivery of goods to properties within the City,” which as I read it reaches past the base the city’s attorney said it can regulate.

The bill passed first reading Wednesday, according to Guccione, and KMOV reported the aldermen are expected to take it up again in about two weeks. The Board’s next regular meeting is November 4.

Wing’s Payload Figures Run From 2.3 to Five Pounds on the Record

Wentzville’s June 8 minutes record Wing’s aircraft at 11.7 pounds, carrying 2.3 pounds. Wing’s October 5 announcement of its Denver and Seattle markets says its aircraft carry up to five pounds, which converts to 2.3 kilograms. Wing’s Walmart orders in Charlotte cap at 2.5 pounds.

The minutes are a recording secretary’s summary, not a transcript, and they do not say which unit Lovett used. My read is that 2.3 is the kilogram figure recorded as pounds. It could also be a per-order cap, which has moved before: Wise News Network put it at 2.1 pounds when Shelby, North Carolina, started flying in February.

A Wing package left on a driveway after delivery. Bill 4914 regulates the nest it came from, not what it weighs. Photo credit: Wing

Wing’s Jessie Poole-Strang told KMOV in August that it would deliver “just over 2.5 pounds, maybe 3 pounds,” and Kirkwood’s draft special use permit capped deliveries at 2.5 pounds before the City Council let it die without a motion on October 15. Wentzville’s bill asks for no figure. Its permit conditions name hours, noise, lighting, location, access, truck traffic and fencing, but neither weight nor drone count, though Forbeck told the Board on September 23 that drone numbers could be handled through the permit. A resident’s October 3 letter in the Board packet asked for limits on both.

DroneXL’s Take

Wentzville is doing this the right way, and I’d pass Bill 4914 at its next reading. The city wrote its rule before any application arrived (the September staff report lists none) and put the cost of noise data on the company that wants the nest.

That beats Kirkwood, where the council had a finished permit in front of it and let it go without a reason on file. The bill does need two edits first. The permit application should state the aircraft and its per-order payload cap in writing. None of that regulates a flight, which Hetlage correctly says the city cannot do, and it gives the required noise study a known load to measure. Wing’s public numbers include a five-pound aircraft capacity and 2.5- to 3-pound order caps, and the only Wentzville record of what it told the city is a secretary’s summary. The second edit is to strike “properties within the City” from the applicability line, so the bill claims only the nest its own attorney says it can govern.

Sources: City of Wentzville, October 21, 2026 Board of Aldermen agenda packet (a 373 MB PDF: Bill 4914, staff report 26-48-PZ, September 23 minutes excerpt, resident letter), Wentzville Planning and Zoning Commission minutes, May 11, June 8 and July 6, Wentzville Board of Aldermen minutes, September 23, KMOV, October 22, KMOV, August 5, Wing, DroneXL Wing tracker

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Insta360 Mic Undercuts the Mic Pro by $80 and Runs Three Hours Longer

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:27:00 GMT

Insta360 launched the Insta360 Mic on Thursday, October 22, 2026, a wireless microphone that slots between its flagship Mic Pro and the entry-level Mic Air. The kit with two transmitters, a receiver and a charging case costs $249.99, which is $80 less than the same Mic Pro kit. A one-transmitter kit is $139.99 and a spare transmitter is $79.99. All three are on sale today through Insta360’s store, Amazon and authorized retailers.

The Mic transmitter weighs 19.4 grams (0.7 oz), 0.3 grams less than the Pro’s, and carries the same 1.22-inch, six-color E-Ink screen, which shows whatever logo or picture you upload through the Insta360 app. Insta360 rates the Mic at up to 13 hours per charge. The more expensive Mic Pro is rated for 10.

The Insta360 Mic transmitter's 1.22-inch E-Ink screen with a custom flower graphic. Photo credit: Insta360

Insta360 Mic Trades the Pro’s Three-Capsule Array for One Omni Mic

For $80 less, the Mic drops the Pro’s three-capsule array, with its four pickup patterns (omnidirectional, super-directional, cardioid and figure-8), and its 32GB of built-in storage. In their place are a single omnidirectional capsule and a microSD slot, with the card sold separately.

Without a card there is no internal recording at all. Audio still reaches the camera or phone through the receiver or over Bluetooth, but the backup file that saves a take when the wireless link drops only exists once a card is in. With one inserted, the transmitter records 24-bit or 32-bit float files and starts a new file every 30 minutes. Insta360 lists storage use at about 700MB per hour in 32-bit float and 500MB in 24-bit, so a 32GB card holds roughly 45 hours of float audio.

The rest of the audio chain carries over from the Pro: two-level noise canceling on a dedicated AI chip, Automatic and Dynamic gain modes, three voice tone presets, and 1,312 feet (400 meters) of range to the receiver. Insta360 measured the 13 hours, and the 34-hour total with the charging case, with noise canceling and internal recording both switched off. A five-minute charge is rated for 2 hours 20 minutes of use, against 1.5 hours on the Pro.

Mixing Mic and Mic Pro Transmitters Cuts a Four-Person Kit to $410

One Mic receiver takes up to four transmitters at once, and Mic and Mic Pro transmitters can share it. A four-voice setup built from the $249.99 Mic kit plus two $79.99 transmitters comes to $409.97. Insta360’s Mic Pro kit with four transmitters sells for $528.99.

Anyone who already owns a Mic Pro kit can also add Mic transmitters at $20 less apiece than the Pro’s $99.99 transmitter, according to Insta360’s store. For multicamera shoots, two transmitters can feed up to four receivers. Insta360’s store page promises four independent tracks, but its footnotes say stereo mode with more than two transmitters merges them in pairs onto the left and right channels. True four-channel output works only on select Sony cameras through Insta360’s Camera Adapter, sold separately.

Direct Connect Drops the Receiver and Three-Quarters of the Range

Insta360 Direct Connect pairs a Mic transmitter over Bluetooth with the X6, X5, Luna Ultra, Luna Pro, Ace Pro 2 and GO Ultra for 48kHz audio with no receiver, and the X6 and Luna take two transmitters at once. Range drops to about 328 feet (100 meters) from 1,312 feet.

Insta360 measured that shorter figure on an X5 and says it varies with camera model, orientation and shooting mode. Paired this way, the transmitter’s power button starts and stops the camera, and a camera menu setting makes internal recording start and stop with the camera, if a card is in the mic. Jake Sloan’s X6 review recorded its Alaskan ice-cave audio on a Mic Pro.

Pairing a transmitter straight to a phone is more limited. Insta360’s footnotes say it works only with third-party apps, not the phone’s own camera app, and captures audio at 16kHz. For phones and cameras, the receiver with its USB-C adapter or 3.5mm cable is the route to 48kHz audio.

Insta360 Mic’s Timecode Does Not Work in the United States

Insta360’s product copy for the Mic says the receiver supports high-precision timecode in and out for syncing cameras. The comparison chart Insta360 published with the launch marks timecode on both the Mic and the Mic Pro “Do not support in United States.” Neither document says why.

Timecode lines up footage from several cameras without syncing clips by hand, so the gap falls on multicamera shooters. DJI’s Mic Mini 2S, its first Mini-tier mic with 32-bit float internal recording, launched worldwide in August with no US page, price or sale. The DJI Mic 3 two-transmitter kit carried a $259 street price in July, about $9 more than the Insta360 Mic, when DroneXL tracked it on sale at $219.

DroneXL’s Take

I’d buy the Mic over the Mic Pro unless I needed directional pickup. I shoot with DJI’s Mic 3, and its internal recording is the safety net I’d least want to give up. The Mic gives you that for the price of a microSD card, with storage that grows with the card instead of stopping at 32GB. Its battery lead is shakier than the spec sheet suggests, because Insta360 measured the 13 hours with internal recording off, and I’d expect the safety net to eat into that margin. The Pro’s three-capsule array earns its $80 in noisy interview rooms, where a directional pattern keeps more of the room out of the track. My bet is that most creators clipping a mic to a shirt would never leave omnidirectional anyway. If you’re building a multicamera rig in the US, ask Insta360 about timecode before you order.

Sources: Insta360 press release (October 22, 2026), Insta360 Mic Pro and Mic store page, Insta360 wireless microphone lineup.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Evolver DFR Offers Police a Parrot Drone and Dock With No Subscription

Haye Kesteloo — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:23:00 GMT

Drone Nerds launched Evolver DFR on October 22, a packaged Drone as First Responder program that sells police, fire and emergency agencies the aircraft, the dock, the software and the setup work on a single purchase order. It pairs the Parrot ANAFI UKR GOV with a DBOX PRT autonomous dock and SkyfireAI’s FlyAura software, and it goes on show at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Orlando, October 24 to 26, at booth 2761.

Drone Nerds, the drone dealer XTI Aerospace bought in November 2025, pitches Evolver as a multi-year program with no recurring subscription fees. The launch announcement gives no price.

The ANAFI UKR GOV Flies From a Dock Built Around It

The ANAFI UKR GOV carries 35x zoom and a 640 thermal sensor and encrypts its radio links with AES-256, Drone Nerds says. It launches from and lands in the DBOX PRT dock, which recharges it between flights, and SkyfireAI’s FlyAura software streams its video to dispatchers in a web browser.

Drone Nerds calls the aircraft Blue UAS approved and FIPS 140-2 compliant, and Parrot’s own page calls it Blue UAS compliant. DroneXL covered the ANAFI UKR when Parrot unveiled it at the Paris Air Show in June 2025 with defense and public safety versions. FlyAura adds TAK integration and a searchable record of every flight, and SkyfireAI CEO Don Mathis says agencies can run the program themselves or have SkyfireAI’s team fly it.

The Evolver DFR package: DBOX PRT dock, Parrot ANAFI UKR GOV and SkyfireAI's FlyAura software. Image credit: XTI Aerospace

DBOX is based in Vilnius, Lithuania, and its CEO, Dr. Linas Gelazanskas, says the company engineered the PRT around the ANAFI UKR so the two work as one system in any weather. Drone Nerds’ product page rates the climate-controlled dock for -32°F to 122°F (-36°C to 50°C), with an IP55 weather rating marked pending.

Evolver DFR Swaps the Subscription for One Purchase Order

Drone Nerds says one purchase order covers a complete multi-year program across multiple locations, with no recurring subscription fees for the contracted solution. Neither the announcement nor the Evolver DFR website lists a price or a contract length. The dock alone sells for $35,962 in Drone Nerds’ online store.

The package includes the needs assessment, coverage planning, site selection, installation, training and help with FAA paperwork, including Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) authorizations. Drone Nerds’ Always Flying program supplies expedited replacement aircraft when one is damaged, plus technical support and maintenance. “Launching a DFR program involves more than purchasing a drone,” said Jeremy Schneiderman, CEO of Drone Nerds and interim CEO of XTI.

The release sets Evolver against DFR offerings built around ongoing subscriptions. Lakeland, Florida, bought its DFR flights this month inside a 10-year, $21.98 million Axon contract that also covers body cameras, TASERs and in-car video.

The FCC Counts the DBOX Dock as a Drone Component

The FCC treats a docking station as a drone component, according to its July Public Notice DA 26-758, and foreign-produced drone components have been on its Covered List since December 22, 2025. Items on the Blue UAS Cleared List are exempt until January 1, 2028, the Covered List page shows.

Buy American domestic end products and devices with a Conditional Approval are exempt too. The same notice proposes ending import and sales of foreign-made drones and docks the FCC calls military-grade, a category that names docking stations and any drone with a thermal camera, with the same exemptions. The release calls the DBOX PRT NDAA-compliant but does not say which exemption, if any, covers it.

XTI Is Restructuring the Notes It Used to Buy Drone Nerds

XTI’s drone holding company missed $1.5 million in note payments due September 30 to the sellers of Drone Nerds and Anzu Robotics, two companies in which Schneiderman holds an economic interest. The sellers signed waivers on October 16 that hold off collection through December 31, 2026, at the latest.

The missed payments also triggered a cross-default on the JPMorgan credit line Drone Nerds borrows against, which the waivers do not cover, according to XTI’s October 16 filing. XTI’s quarterly report filed October 20 flags substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern and lists state and federal inquiries involving Drone Nerds and Anzu, whose outcome XTI says it cannot predict. XTI expects $125 million to $130 million in 2026 revenue and says operating cash flow should turn positive in the fourth quarter. The Evolver release’s own forward-looking statements name the credit-line cross-defaults, the note waiver deadline, the going-concern doubt and the Anzu inquiries.

DroneXL’s Take

Dropping the subscription is the right instinct, and I’d like more DFR vendors to try it. In my view a 10-year contract like Lakeland’s risks tying a city to hardware that ages before the term ends. Evolver also gives agencies a French-designed aircraft and a dock from a registered NATO supplier, at a time when the FCC keeps narrowing which foreign drone hardware can be sold here. A chief at booth 2761 should get two answers in writing before signing: which FCC exemption covers the DBOX dock, and how payments line up against delivery over the life of the program while XTI restructures the debt from buying Drone Nerds.

Sources: PR Newswire, XTI Aerospace SEC filings (Form 8-K of October 16, Form 10-Q and earnings release of October 20, 2026), FCC Public Notice DA 26-758

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Avata 360 Firmware Adds RC Pro 2 Support and Waypoint Missions

Shawn Air Photography — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 02:19:00 GMT

Good day, folks. Shawn here from Air Photography. DJI just released a firmware update for the DJI Avata 360 that makes it compatible with the DJI RC Pro 2. This is a feature a lot of people have been waiting for, and it’s finally available.

I’m really happy about it, because I use my RC Pro 2 a lot for flying, and now I can bring my Avata 360 along and just carry the one controller. DJI also added a few new features for the Avata 360 in the same update, so I took it out over the water for a quick test flight to try them.

Both the RC Pro 2 and the Avata 360 need new firmware

You need two updates. The RC Pro 2 firmware is now version 1.00.0900, adding support for the DJI Avata 360. The Avata 360 moves to version 1.00.0800, adding RC Pro 2 support, waypoint flight, zoom for Focus Track and automatic display switching in Vision Assist.

The automatic orientation switching in Vision Assist was added to some of DJI’s other drones not too long ago, and it’s now available on the Avata 360 as well. If you haven’t linked your controller yet, I covered the process in my guide on how to pair goggles and controllers to the DJI Avata 360. Russ has a full DJI RC Pro 2 review on the controller itself.

The DJI RC Pro 2 and the DJI Avata 360 after the firmware update. Photo credit: Air Photography

Vision Assist now follows the direction you fly

The first change you’ll notice is that Vision Assist now switches automatically: fly forward and it gives you a forward-facing view, pull the stick back and you get a rear-facing view, and move sideways in either direction to see that side.

It works vertically too. Push up and it’ll show you what’s above the drone. Pull down and it’ll show you what’s below. I tried all of this on a quick flight out over the water, with the fall colors just a little past prime. So that’s a nice new feature. DroneXL has more on Vision Assist on the DJI Mini 5 Pro, one of the drones that got it earlier.

Waypoint missions on the Avata 360 calculate time and distance

Waypoint missions are the big addition a lot of people will be happy with. You bring up the map, add your waypoints, then add a point of interest and link waypoints to it. Hit go, and the drone heads to waypoint one, showing mission time, progress and total distance.

Building a waypoint mission with a point of interest on the RC Pro 2. Photo credit: Air Photography

On my test, it calculated a minute and 50 seconds for the mission, showed me I was at waypoint one of five, and gave me the total distance. Because I had a point of interest set in the middle, the drone stayed focused on it as it flew around. If you’re new to waypoints, my DJI Mini 5 Pro waypoint tutorial covers how to build a mission.

Setting a point of interest or the direction of the drone isn’t as important on the Avata 360, because you’re filming in 360 and you can set that later while editing. If you’re using some of the auto export features, it does matter. Those export what you see on the screen, so make sure you set your direction and angle.

I had the mission set to automatically return home when it finished, so once it reached waypoint five I canceled the return to home and kept flying.

Waypoints and 360 video open up creative reframing

Being able to fly the Avata 360 with the RC Pro 2 and to create waypoint missions is going to let you get really creative. That’s because you can do some really interesting reframing of a waypoint flight while you’re filming in 360 with the drone.

I finished by flying over to capture some of the fall colors and headed back with the battery down to 48%. That was just a quick test flight with the DJI Avata 360 and the RC Pro 2, testing out the new waypoint missions.

This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Shawn from Air Photography. Watch the full video on the Air Photography YouTube channel, and find more of Shawn’s work on his DroneXL author page.

Antigravity A1 Follow Me Bundle: I Left the Goggles at Home

Jake Sloan — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:39:00 GMT

Antigravity just released the Follow Me Bundle for the A1, and it totally changes how you can control and interact with this drone. Up to now, you could only fly the A1 wearing the goggles and holding the control stick. That was fine, unless you were somebody like me who wanted to track yourself through a place.

Then you had to put the goggles on, get the drone set up and get it going, then hang the goggles around your neck and walk through the place while the drone tracked you. Kind of a pain. The new watch controller and ring controller change that completely. Antigravity sponsored this video, so a special thank you to them.

The Follow Me Bundle gives you the wristband watch controller and the ring controller. You can also get prop guards and a few other accessories, so you can fly safely closer to people or objects.

The Watch Controller Flies the A1 From Takeoff to Landing

The watch controller lets you control pretty much everything about the A1 from a little OLED screen on your wrist. You can take off, fly manually, start Deep Track and cycle through the pre-programmed quick shots. You wear it on your left or right wrist and tell it which one.

To take off, you push and hold the green button and the drone goes up. Then you pick your mode. In manual mode you tap and move the drone forward, backward, up and down. It also warned me there were obstacles, because I was standing right in front of the drone.

Deep Track, the tracking mode, puts a box around you on the screen. You tap yourself, hit start, and it begins tracking. I set it to follow me from behind at a long distance and low altitude, put the watch back on my wrist and just started walking.

Swipe down on the watch for settings like sensor calibrations, safety settings and find my drone. Swipe up for the flight modes: manual, Deep Track, Orbit Follow, Cycling Track, Ski Track, Fly Away, Ascend, Orbit, Spiral Ascent, Arc Shot and Arc Out. Tap the bottom of any of them to change the direction and pick slow, medium or fast, and in Fly Away you also set the distance. There’s more on Antigravity’s Follow Me Bundle page.

When it’s time to land, you hit stop, switch to manual mode and move the drone over a spot that’s safe to land, or over your landing pad. I really should have a landing pad. I don’t. The A1 puts its little feet down as it gets close and goes into landing mode. How easy is that? Crazy, crazy easy.

The watch and ring go on the same wrist and hand, and they pair with each other before the drone is switched on. Image credit: Antigravity

Pairing the Ring With the Watch Turns the A1 Into a Wireless Selfie Stick

Pair the ring controller with the watch, hold the ring button down in a tracking mode, and the A1 enters wireless selfie stick mode. Point at the drone and roll your wrist toward you to bring it closer, or roll it away to push the drone farther out.

You can also move it up, down, left or right. The whole time it keeps tracking you, turning around to make sure it’s not going to run into obstacles. When you’re ready, you just start tracking again.

There’s a trick to pairing that I found. Turn the watch on first, then the ring. The ring has a little blue light, which was hard for me to see in the sunlight that day. Once the two pair to each other, turn the drone on and fly. You have to wear both on the same wrist and the same hand for this to work.

The ring handles a few things on its own too. With the drone on and connected, push the button once to start or stop recording, and do that before you take off. With the drone on the ground, push and hold the ring button and it acts like the takeoff button.

Arc Out Wraps 180 Degrees Around You and Pulls Away

Arc Out is the coolest shot I found on the A1. The drone wraps around you 180 degrees and pulls away as it comes around the other side, so you get a reveal shot. In a cool location with mountains behind you, I thought the shot was really impressive.

There’s also Orbit Follow, where the drone orbits you clockwise or counterclockwise while you keep moving through a space, and Deep Track will follow you from any position.

Control Range Stays Close, Around 100 to 200 Feet

The watch and ring need to stay fairly close to the drone, maybe 100 to 200 feet (30 to 60 meters) depending on your surroundings. Don’t expect the range you get with the goggles and control stick, because this is for close-distance tracking, mostly of yourself.

The Follow Me Bundle Removes the Friction of Filming Myself

The Follow Me Bundle removed the friction I had filming myself with the A1. I no longer take the goggles or the control stick, just the watch and, if I want it, the ring. That’s an incredibly small and lightweight package to throw in a backpack or camera bag.

When I first started flying the A1, it blew me away how fun it was, because the goggles make it so immersive. I said as much in my first Antigravity A1 review. You feel like you’re flying, you can look in any direction, and I think that got missed early on. The hard part was always getting shots of myself, and now I can take the A1 hiking in the mountains or exploring a glacier-filled lake with almost nothing extra.

There’s a whole other use case for the A1 that hasn’t been explored very much, and that’s splatting. You create a hyperrealistic 3D model on a computer that somebody can walk through and explore as if they were there, all shot with the A1. You can also use something like the Insta360 X6. I’ve got a whole video on splatting coming up.

If you’re new to the A1, or you already have one and want the Follow Me Bundle, Antigravity is running a promo from October 20 to November 11 with a bunch of stuff 20% off, including the drone, the bundle and accessories. I’m pretty dang impressed. The watch and ring are intuitive, easy to use and work great, provided you mostly want to track yourself.

If you have questions, ask me in the comments on the video or join my live stream, which happens some Wednesday nights at 4:00 p.m. Alaska time, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, at least if I’m not out filming or working on a job.

This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Jake Sloan. Watch the full video on the Jake Sloan YouTube channel, and find more of Jake’s work on his DroneXL author page.

Amazon Targets Mid-November Tallahassee Drones. A Permit Is Pending

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 18:48:00 GMT

Amazon Prime Air is slated to start drone deliveries in Tallahassee by mid-November, the company’s Josh Brundage said at a public showing of its MK30 drone at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center on Tuesday, October 20. The drones will fly items of up to 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) from the Mahan Drive fulfillment center to homes within 7.5 miles (12 kilometers), and Brundage put the fee at $4.99.

Brundage is senior manager of commercial operations for Prime Air. The Tallahassee fleet will have up to 21 drones, with up to 10 in the air at a time, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

The structure that will house the drones at the warehouse is still under permit review, the Democrat reported, and Brundage declined to give details on it. The FAA’s public list of drone delivery environmental reviews had no Tallahassee entry when DroneXL checked it on October 21.

Amazon Offers Tallahassee Customers Preset Drop Points Away From Trees

Amazon has “a very good understanding of everything in that seven and a half mile circle,” trees included, Brundage told the Tallahassee Democrat. At checkout, a drone customer sees a satellite image of their property. It shows several drop points Amazon picked in advance, away from trees.

That goes to the question Commissioner Jeremy Matlow raised last month, when he said he imagines Tallahassee’s tree cover will make many neighborhoods hard to serve without flying dangerously low, as DroneXL reported when a city commissioner called for drone rules Florida law doesn’t allow. The drone still comes down to about 12 feet (3.7 meters) in the backyard to release the box, and that, Brundage told WCTV, is when it’s “going to be the most noticeable.” WTXL reported he likened it to a vacuum or lawn mower.

Amazon's illustration of drone delivery checkout, with the drop spot pinned on a satellite map of a Phoenix address. Image credit: Amazon

The Amazon warehouse on Mahan Drive stocks more than three million drone-eligible items, each small enough for a shoebox-sized package. A display case at the event held examples: crayons, a thermometer, cough medicine, wipes, markers and batteries. The Democrat reported deliveries in as little as 30 minutes; Brundage told WCTV the goal at launch is under two hours.

The $4.99 fee may not be what every customer pays. Amazon’s national pricing, published in August, is $2.99 for Prime members on orders under $50, free for Prime orders of $50 or more, and $4.99 without Prime. The Democrat quoted Brundage as saying the cost varies by market and can be free, without saying which customers the Tallahassee figure covers.

Brundage Calls Viral Mishaps Outliers. Amazon Hasn’t Explained Two Landings

Brundage suggested viral videos of a Phoenix-area dust cloud and a pool drop are outliers, saying Amazon builds the MK30 in-house and spots problems “almost in real time.” Amazon had not explained MK30 landings in Baton Rouge and Waco when DroneXL reported them on September 12 and 25.

“We’re the only ones that have to do that, so we’re incredibly nimble,” he told the Democrat, after describing how Amazon designs the drone, builds it and writes its software. The Baton Rouge drone set itself down on a grass strip beside Florida Boulevard on September 11 as storms crossed the parish. The Waco drone was found on a lawn with a wheel extended. Amazon also let a September 5 deadline pass on eight written MK30 safety questions from DroneXL.

After two MK30s hit a construction crane in Tolleson, Arizona on October 1, 2025, Amazon resumed deliveries there two days later. It said an internal review found no issue with the drones and that it had added visual inspections for cranes, as the NTSB opened an investigation.

The Democrat described the MK30 as a 70-pound drone. The FAA’s Florida environmental assessment puts it at about 78 pounds (35.4 kilograms) empty and 83.2 pounds (37.7 kilograms) at maximum takeoff, for a 5-pound box. It has six propellers and, as DroneXL reported from Commercial UAV Expo, no parachute.

Florida Law Limits What Tallahassee Can Do With Amazon’s Pending Permit

Florida’s protection depends on what Amazon builds. If the unit is a stand-alone building of up to 1,500 square feet and 36 feet tall in a nonresidential area, Florida Statute 330.41(3)(c) bars the city from withholding a development permit over its location. Amazon has not published its plans.

The city keeps the setback and landscaping rules that apply to every use in the zoning district, may not demand extra landscaping, and under subsection (3)(d) keeps its general nuisance and property-damage laws.

Since July 28, a hub that fits the FAA’s national programmatic assessment needs no new environmental review, and one that doesn’t gets a narrower tiered review, with no public comment period on either path. DroneXL covered that change when Washington cleared the runway for 500 cities. Amazon’s operating authorization is not public, so the FAA’s environmental review page does not show whether Tallahassee has been cleared. Ruskin’s neighbors got a signed Florida assessment, dated June 1, 2026, that caps each of six hubs at 1,000 flights a day.

Ruskin, outside Tampa, is the only Florida hub listed as flying on DroneXL’s Amazon Prime Air tracker as of October 21. The Democrat wrote that Ruskin has had drone delivery for more than a year; DroneXL’s Ruskin guide dates its first deliveries to March 9, 2026, about seven months before the Civic Center event.

Residents with a problem once flights start can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331, or use the customer-service chat (“Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery”). DroneXL’s guide covers what residents can still do when Amazon’s drones arrive.

DroneXL’s Take

Brundage’s pitch is that Amazon owns the whole stack, so it can find and fix a problem fast. I believe that part, because no outside supplier stands between Amazon and a fix. But fixing a problem isn’t the same as explaining it. For the two September landings, I think Amazon has done neither in public. Residents in Baton Rouge and Waco found MK30s sitting on grass and posted them to Facebook, and Amazon had given no reason when DroneXL reported either one.

Starting as soon as mid-November, an 83-pound drone with no parachute is set to drop boxes from about 12 feet into Tallahassee backyards. Zipline’s P2 shows the other way to do it: a lighter aircraft that stays high, lowers the package on a tether and carries a parachute. I’d happily see a thermometer reach a sick kid quickly, but half the items in that Civic Center display case were crayons, markers and wipes. Before the first flight leaves Mahan Drive, Amazon should commit to publishing the cause of every precautionary landing in Tallahassee.

Sources: Tallahassee Democrat, WCTV, WTXL, FAA Florida Environmental Assessment, FAA NEPA and Drones, Florida Statute 330.41, Amazon.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Wing and Walmart Now Fly Drones From 7 Charlotte Stores, 2 More Due

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 18:45:00 GMT

Wing and Walmart are now flying drone deliveries from seven Walmart Supercenters around Charlotte, North Carolina, in Charlotte, Gastonia, Concord, Kannapolis, Lincolnton, Shelby and Kings Mountain. Wing announced the metro launch on Wednesday, October 21, offering groceries, household goods and over-the-counter medicine in as little as 30 minutes, with no tipping.

Walmart counts 10 communities in range, adding Huntersville, Indian Trail and Matthews to the store towns. Customers within about 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) of a participating store qualify. Several of the seven stores were flying long before Wednesday, though. Kings Mountain started Walmart drone deliveries in December 2025, Shelby in February, and Kannapolis was already flying by June.

Wing’s Charlotte Launch Makes a Store-by-Store Rollout One Metro Service

Wednesday’s launch packages stores that started one at a time into a single Charlotte metro service, with two more Charlotte stores coming online within a week. Walmart and Wing demonstrated it Tuesday at the Supercenter near Monroe Road in east Charlotte, Business North Carolina reported.

Wing was counting Charlotte among its five flying metros when it named Denver and Seattle on October 5. At the Monroe Road Supercenter, Wing has fenced off a corner of the parking lot as a nest with departure spots for about a dozen drones. The Charlotte-area stores are part of 60 Walmart stores nationwide that now offer the service, toward a target of more than 270 by the end of 2027.

A Wing drone leaves a fenced nest in a Walmart parking lot in the Charlotte area. Photo credit: Wing

Gastonia’s store had no start date ten days ago. When the city told residents about the drone site at the Myrtle School Road Supercenter, WSOC-TV’s report named none, as DroneXL reported. The store is now on Wing’s list.

The Lincoln County town on that list is Lincolnton. The Walmart in Denver, North Carolina, whose drone site Lincoln County commissioners approved 3 to 1 on June 15 after more than 200 people signed a petition against it, is not among the seven.

Customers in range will see a drone option appear in the Walmart app and on Walmart.com, Chain Store Age reported, and can also order through the Wing app. Charlotte had Wing drones before Walmart arrived: DoorDash and Wing began flying restaurant orders near The Arboretum Shopping Center in May 2025.

Wing's October 21 post announcing Walmart drone delivery from seven Charlotte-area Supercenters. Photos: Wing / Facebook

Charlotte Orders Cap at 2.5 Pounds and Come Down on a Tether From About 23 Feet

Wing’s drones weigh 11 pounds (5 kilograms) and never land at the customer’s home. They hover about 23 feet (7 meters) up and lower the order on a tether. Orders cap at 2.5 pounds (1.1 kilograms), and Business North Carolina reports that more than half of Walmart’s items qualify.

The cap has moved. Wise News Network put it at 2.1 pounds when Shelby launched in February, and Progressive Grocer’s account of Walmart’s announcement says Wing’s drones carry up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms). DroneXL’s October 5 coverage gave that five-pound figure for Wing’s two Hummingbird aircraft, and neither Charlotte report says which one flies here.

A Walmart order left on a driveway after a Wing drone lowered it on its tether. Photo credit: Wing

Business North Carolina says delivery is now free in the Wing app and for Walmart customers. In February, Wise News Network reported a $19.99 fee per delivery for shoppers without Walmart+.

A home needs a clear drop spot about the size of a picnic blanket, Wing spokesman Tom Kuhn says, and some apartment buildings with shared delivery spots qualify. Flammable goods, alcohol and pharmaceutical products are excluded, although Wing’s own post advertises over-the-counter medicine. The drones cruise at 150 to 200 feet (46 to 61 meters) and up to 60 mph (97 km/h). Business North Carolina’s reporter put the noise at Tuesday’s demonstration on par with a quiet lawnmower.

DroneXL’s Take

Kuhn told Business North Carolina that Walmart and Wing don’t need permission from local towns to fly, because the FAA regulates the flights, and only the use of the parking lot needs city approval. He has the law right, and I hope it stays that way. The FAA’s 2025 review for this metro already sets the flight hours and caps Wing at 25 hubs. A town council vote on flight paths would hand the 10 communities on Walmart’s list 10 sets of rules for the same aircraft. That leaves the parking lot as the one place a town gets a say, and Lincoln County showed how loud that hearing can get. Kuhn says Wing and Walmart keep local officials and neighborhood groups informed, and that outreach decides whether a zoning vote on one store becomes a referendum on drone delivery itself.

Sources: Wing on Facebook, Business North Carolina, Progressive Grocer, Chain Store Age, Wise News Network, FAA written re-evaluation, Wing Charlotte metro, April 29, 2025

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

3D Printed Helicopter Rotor Lifts 140 Grams, Steered by One Motor

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:36:00 GMT

A maker who posts on YouTube as worked in theory has built a 3D printed micro helicopter rotor that changes its blade pitch with no swashplate and no servos. A single motor does all of it, steering the rotor by speeding up and slowing down within each turn. On a homemade test stand, the final version lifts about 140 grams at 5,500 RPM while drawing 29 watts.

The video, posted Monday, is the channel’s first and Part 1 of a series that is supposed to end with the helicopter flying on basic FPV gear. It did not start as a one-motor design. The maker’s first rotors adapted the wheeled swashplate inside the Black Hornet military nano drone, and friction dogged every version.

Friction Hobbled The Black Hornet Wheel Design, And Weight Ended It

The Black Hornet replaces a helicopter’s swashplate linkages with tiny wheels on the plate. The maker built three versions from its patent. The first locked the rotor when the plate tilted, the second stuck in neutral at speed and wore its wheels, and the third dragged on brass bushings.

The maker thought that third version was on the right track. The switch came down to weight. In the video, the maker says dropping the swashplate and its actuators saves grams on a helicopter meant to fly on basic FPV gear. The replacement, “at least for now,” is the hinged underactuated rotor that British YouTuber Tom Stanton, whose 3D printed windup plane DroneXL covered in April, has explored. Joshua Bird’s one-motor drone, which DroneXL covered on Tuesday, flies on the same principle.

The test stand is an old IKEA cutting board on three load cells, read by an ESP32. Photo credit: worked in theory

A Single Center Hinge Beat Separate Blade Hinges

Run at about 3,000 RPM, the one speed where the dual-hinge rotor worked, a single center hinge gave more control authority and a faster response than a hinge on each blade. It also overshot the commanded pitch and resonated as inputs got faster.

The dual-hinge version gave no useful pitch below that speed, and above it hinge friction swamped the control signal. It also ignored small commands in a dead zone, which the maker blames on friction a better build could have reduced. Both rotors ran identical automated test sequences through load cells capped at 80 Hz by their HX711 amplifiers.

Standard PLA Beat The High-Temperature Blades On Stiffness

The final blade beats the maker’s first design, built in MATLAB with blade element theory, by 47% in lift and 26% in efficiency. Part of that gain came from the filament rather than the shape. The early blades were printed in Polymaker’s high-temperature PLA and bent under load.

Standard PLA proved stiffer, beat nearly every blade tested before it, and sent the maker back to rerun every earlier test. The blades are not printed in their final shape. A Fusion script the maker wrote unwraps each one into a flat blank and generates a mold that heat-presses it into its curve, which avoids the weak layer lines of a blade printed in 3D. The maker may release the script as an add-on if enough people ask.

Drag then twisted the finished blades off center. Small bolts and nuts added as balance weights pulled them back to neutral, and their inertia damped the rotor. In the final step test it settled on the command with barely any overshoot, and the resonance in the bandwidth test all but disappeared. SolidWorks flow simulation matched the measured lift almost exactly, while measured power ran higher, which the maker puts down to losses in the test setup.

Nothing has flown yet. The rotor has only run on the stand, and the video gives no target weight for the finished helicopter or says how it will counter the rotor’s torque.

DroneXL’s Take

I like where this maker landed, because the rotor is now the cheap part and the electronics carry the difficulty, and electronics are where a builder who wrote a blade generator in a couple of days is strongest. The custom PCB in Part 2 has to prove that. Steering this rotor takes one speed pulse per revolution, and at 5,500 RPM that is roughly 92 pulses a second. A standard drone ESC lost sync above 50 a second on Bird’s drone, and Bird ended up on a $94 servo drive that reads rotor position from a magnetic encoder. My guess is this board needs the same kind of position sensing, and that is the first thing I’ll look for in Part 2.

Source: worked in theory on YouTube

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Keeps the Mavic Air 2 and Air 2S Alive With Oct. 20 Firmware

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:00:00 GMT

DJI released new aircraft firmware for the Mavic Air 2 and the Air 2S on October 20, 2026. The Mavic Air 2, which DJI announced in April 2020, moves to v01.01.18.00, its first update since September 2023. The Air 2S moves to v02.04.28.00, its first since April 2024. Each release note lists a single change: bug fixes.

Neither drone was updated on its own. DJI posted firmware the same day for the Air 3S and the Neo 2, and the same batch brought the Mini 3 Pro its first update since July 2024 and the original Mini 2 its first since 2023.

Mavic Air 2 Firmware v01.01.18.00 Also Updates Both Of Its Controllers

DJI’s Mavic Air 2 forum announcement pairs aircraft firmware v01.01.18.00 with RC-N1 firmware v04.11.05.00 and DJI Smart Controller firmware v01.01.00.76. The September 2023 release it replaces shipped v04.11.02.00 and v01.01.00.72. DJI describes the whole package in one line: “Fixed some bugs.”

That 2023 release added support for American Remote ID requirements, which let Air 2 owners broadcast without a bolt-on module.

Air 2S Firmware v02.04.28.00 Updates The DJI RC And RC Pro, Not The RC-N1

The Air 2S package pairs aircraft firmware v02.04.28.00 with DJI RC v01.03.2600 and DJI RC Pro v03.02.0900. Two controllers did not move: the RC-N1 stays at v04.12.02.00 and the DJI Smart Controller at v01.01.00.76, the same builds DJI listed with the April 11, 2024 release.

That April 2024 update, posted in the same DJI forum thread, was the Air 2S’s last one with features. It added EU C1 certification, the retrofit DroneXL reported in January 2024, plus Remote ID support for more countries and an option to reset all settings and clear all data.

The DJI Air 2S, which moves to aircraft firmware v02.04.28.00. Photo credit: DJI

DJI Fly 1.21.16 Ties The Mini 3 Pro, Air 3S And Neo 2 To The Same Release

October 20 also heads DJI’s forum notes for the Mini 3 Pro at v01.00.1000, the Air 3S at V01.00.1800 and the Neo 2 at V01.00.0800. All three list DJI Fly 1.21.16, as do the Mavic Air 2, Air 2S and Mini 2. None of the six says what it fixed.

The controller firmware overlaps as well. The DJI RC build in the Air 2S package, v01.03.2600, is the same one the Mini 3 Pro lists and the one DJI posted for the standalone DJI RC that day. The DJI RC Pro build matches across both drones at v03.02.0900, and the Mini 2 notes list the same RC-N1 build as the Mavic Air 2, v04.11.05.00.

Neo 2 owners get one practical warning in their notes: the update may reset RTH Altitude and Maximum Flight Distance, so write those settings down before you start.

In the US, all six updates arrive under the FCC waiver that lets previously authorized Covered List drones receive firmware until at least January 1, 2029, which DroneXL covered when the FCC extended it in May. Neither the Mavic Air 2 nor the Air 2S appears on DJI’s end-of-service list, where the Phantom 4 Pro V2 loses support on October 31.

DroneXL’s Take

My read is that this batch is DJI keeping old aircraft working with the current DJI Fly app, and that’s worth more to American pilots than to anyone else. Since the FCC put foreign drones on the Covered List on December 22, 2025, no new DJI model can get authorized here. A US owner can still buy an Air 3S authorized before that date, but no newer DJI model will follow it here. That turns a 2020 Mavic Air 2 into a drone you keep flying, and it stays useful as long as DJI ships firmware that matches the app on your phone. Install the aircraft and controller files DJI released together, on the same day.

Sources: DJI Forum, New Mavic Air 2 Firmware Released (10/20/2026); DJI Forum, New DJI Air 2S Firmware Released (2026.10.20); DJI Forum, New Mini 3 Pro Firmware Released; DJI Forum, New DJI Air 3S Firmware Released; DJI Forum, New DJI Neo 2 Release Notes; DJI Forum, New DJI RC Firmware Released; DJI Mini 2 Release Notes (October 20, 2026); FCC Public Notice DA 26-454.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Mini 3 Pro Gets New Firmware, but Its Last New Feature Was in 2023

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:51:00 GMT

DJI released aircraft firmware v01.00.1000 for the DJI Mini 3 Pro on October 20, 2026, the drone’s first update since July 23, 2024. DJI’s release notes say only “Fixed some known issues.” It ships alongside DJI Fly v1.21.16 and arrived on the same day as firmware for several other DJI drones, including the Mini 2 and the Mavic Air 2.

The Mini 3 Pro has had 13 firmware releases since it launched in May 2022. The last one to add a feature, support for DJI Goggles 2, Goggles Integra and RC Motion 2, came out on April 25, 2023.

DJI Updated Two Mini 3 Pro Controllers but Not the RC-N1 Firmware

The October release moves the DJI RC Pro to v03.02.0900 and the DJI RC to v01.03.2600. The RC-N1 firmware DJI lists for the Mini 3 Pro stays at v04.14.0700, the version it first listed on November 8, 2023, nearly three years ago.

The loaner DJI sent DroneXL for our May 2022 Mini 3 Pro flights along the Hudson River came with both the RC-N1, which uses a phone as its screen, and the DJI RC. An owner with that kit will find an update for the DJI RC and none for the RC-N1. If the update fails, DJI’s release notes say to restart the aircraft, the remote controller and DJI Fly or DJI Assistant 2 (Consumer Drones Series) and try again.

The Mini 3 Pro’s Feature Updates Stopped After Its First Year

DJI added features to the Mini 3 Pro in eight releases between May 2022 and April 2023. Since September 2023 it has shipped five more. Four of them say only that known issues were fixed, and the fifth optimized compatibility with Huawei Mate 60 series phones.

DroneXL covered the larger releases as they shipped, including the October 2022 update that brought US Remote ID and wide-angle lens support, and Air Photography’s look at the March 2023 update that added Gain and Expo tuning. In July 2024 DJI shipped two fix-only releases 12 days apart, and we reported the second one the day it came out. Then the release notes went quiet for nearly 27 months.

An FCC Waiver Running to 2029 Lets US Owners Install the Update

The FCC’s Public Notice DA 26-454, released May 8, 2026, lets foreign-made drones authorized before the December 22, 2025 Covered List addition keep receiving software and firmware updates until at least January 1, 2029. The Mini 3 Pro has been sold in the US since 2022 and qualifies.

The notice limits the waiver to updates that mitigate harm to US consumers. Without it, the FCC’s prohibition would reach even routine Class I changes, which DroneXL explained when the agency extended the waiver in May.

DroneXL’s Take

A used Mini 3 Pro is still a sensible buy for a US pilot, as long as the buyer pays for the drone as it flies today. The Covered List blocks new FCC authorizations for foreign-made drones, and the Mini 5 Pro doesn’t have a page on DJI’s US download center. This release shows DJI still maintains the Mini 3 Pro nearly four and a half years after launch. The release history shows its last new feature arrived in April 2023. I’d price a used one with both facts in mind and expect bug fixes when DJI gets around to them, not new flight modes.

Sources: DJI Mini 3 Pro release notes, DJI Download Center, FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Public Notice DA 26-454.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Mini 2 Gets Its First Update Since 2023, Under an FCC Waiver

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 15:25:00 GMT

DJI released aircraft firmware v01.07.0300 for the original DJI Mini 2 on October 20, 2026, the drone’s first firmware update since March 2023. It ships with remote controller firmware v04.11.0500 and DJI Fly 1.21.16 for iOS and Android, and the release notes describe the whole package in one line: “Fixed some known issues.”

The Mini 2 went on sale in November 2020, and I flew one in New York for my first impressions of the 249-gram drone the week it launched. On December 22, 2025, the FCC added foreign-made drones, DJI’s included, to its Covered List. FCC rules prohibit permissive changes, firmware updates among them, to equipment on that list.

DJI’s Notes Show Eight Mini 2 Updates in 29 Months, Then Nothing Until October

DJI’s Mini 2 release notes list eight releases between November 5, 2020 and March 2023, roughly one every four months. The last of them added Reset All Settings and Clear All Data options. Then the page sat untouched for three and a half years.

The new edition disagrees with DJI’s earlier record of that release. It dates that last release March 28, 2023, as aircraft firmware v01.07.0100. DJI’s own forum announcement and the 2023 edition of the same notes list it as v01.07.0200, released March 31. The Mini 2 download center carries the new notes alongside DJI Assistant 2 (Consumer Drones Series) 2.1.42, the desktop route for owners who would rather not update through the app.

The Mini 2 does not appear on DJI’s end-of-service list. The drone it replaced, the Mavic Mini, left production in October 2021 and lost DJI service on April 1, 2026.

An FCC Waiver Lets DJI Patch US Mini 2s Until at Least January 2029

DJI can send this update to American owners under an FCC waiver for drones that were authorized before joining the Covered List. The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology extended it on May 8, 2026, in Public Notice DA 26-454, and it now runs until at least January 1, 2029.

The Mini 2 has held its authorization since 2020. DroneXL spotted its FCC filing, SS3-MT2PD2007, on October 6 of that year, a month before launch. The first waiver, DA 26-69 of January 21, covered Class I changes and ran to January 1, 2027. The May extension added Class II changes that mitigate harm to consumers. The notice describes the covered updates as ones “that patch vulnerabilities and facilitate compatibility with different operating systems.”

A later FCC order on logic-bearing drone components tightened the rules for Covered List companies and left those waivers in place.

DroneXL’s Take

DJI should tell Mini 2 owners what this update fixes. The FCC waiver names two kinds of update, security patches and compatibility fixes for newer phone operating systems, and DJI’s note doesn’t say which one this is. That matters to someone deciding whether to put new firmware on a drone that hasn’t had any in three and a half years. It’s also a DJI habit: the Mini 2’s entire March 2022 note was a three-word line about optimized flight safety. I’m glad DJI still patches a drone it launched in 2020. But the FCC has put DJI’s drones on a national security list, and an empty firmware note asks owners for trust at exactly that moment. A real changelog is the cheapest answer DJI has.

Sources: DJI Mini 2 Release Notes (October 20, 2026); DJI Download Center, DJI Mini 2; DJI Forum, New DJI Mini 2 Firmware Released; DJI Support, Notice of Suspension of Service and Support for Old Product Series; FCC Public Notice DA 26-454.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Amazon Has Lobbied Washington on Drones for 52 Straight Quarters

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:45:00 GMT

Amazon listed drones on the federal lobbying report it filed on October 20, the 52nd quarterly report in a row to do so. Its in-house lobbyists worked on drones and air cargo from July through September with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Transportation, the TSA, the Executive Office of the President, the White House science office and both chambers of Congress. Amazon’s in-house report put its federal lobbying for the quarter at $4.49 million, a total that covers every issue it works on.

DroneXL went through every Amazon lobbying report filed since 2013 to count the run. It starts with the report covering the last three months of 2013, when Jeff Bezos unveiled Prime Air on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Thirteen years later Amazon says it plans to fly the MK30 in nearly 500 US cities and towns by the end of this year, and Westborough, Massachusetts, voted 510 to 13 on Monday for a bylaw banning commercial drone launch pads, aimed at Prime Air.

The FAA’s rule for routine flights beyond visual line of sight, Part 108, is due by December 7. Amazon’s 80-page comment on that rule backs the proposed 110-pound cap on delivery drones as a transitional baseline and asks for a way to exceed it. The word “parachute” appears neither there nor in Amazon’s follow-up comment in February.

Amazon Has Hired Outside Drone Lobbyists in Most Years Since 2014

TwinLogic Strategies listed drones for Amazon in early 2014. Akin Gump registered that June for a client it named Amazon Prime Air, reported $860,000 in fees through mid-2017, and described its work the same way on every report: federal advocacy on testing and operating drones in the United States.

Michael Drobac, Amanda Armistead and Gregory Walden were still on that account at the end, and the same three names appear on McGuireWoods Consulting’s Amazon registration, filed July 19, 2017, the day before Akin Gump’s termination report. Armistead is now on Amazon’s in-house roster for the drone issue in the October 20 report, alongside Brian Huseman and five other lobbyists.

Amazon’s current outside firm is Origin Advocacy, which registered in December 2023 and has listed drones on every report since. Origin has reported $570,000 in income from Amazon through September, a figure that also covers other issues, because the disclosure form does not split fees by issue. Origin’s lobbyist on the drone line every quarter is Sean McLean, whose disclosed former jobs include associate director in the Executive Office of the President and a post the filings list as legislative director/legislative assistant for Senator Ted Cruz. Cruz has chaired the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FAA, since January 2025. McLean started on Amazon’s drone issue in December 2023, when Cruz was the committee’s ranking Republican, and the filings give no dates for his Cruz job. They list the Senate, and since 2025 the House, without naming offices, and in the last three months of 2025 Origin first listed the FAA. Halie Craig, whose disclosed former jobs include policy director at the Senate Commerce Committee, was on the drone line from early 2025 through March 2026.

The drone makers DroneXL has covered lobbying against DJI operate on a smaller scale. Skydio’s federal lobbying has stayed under $1 million a year since it began in 2019, counting its own reports and its outside firms’ fees without counting the same dollars twice, and BRINC’s outside firm, Mehlman Consulting, has reported $60,000 a quarter since 2023. Neither company’s reports name DJI. BRINC’s firm listed the Countering CCP Drones Act in 2024 and the 2025 defense authorization bill in 2025, and Skydio’s firms listed “drone national security issues” and the same defense bill, whose Section 1709 set the deadline that put DJI on the FCC’s Covered List. The reports do not say which provisions either company pushed.

Amazon’s Lobbyists Listed a Bill to Let Towns Limit Drones Below 200 Feet

The Drone Federalism Act of 2017, S. 1272, would have stopped the FAA from preempting reasonable state and local limits on drones flying below 200 feet or within 200 feet of a structure. McGuireWoods listed it on its 2017 Amazon reports. The filings do not say which side Amazon took.

The bill text lists the local interests it would have protected, including privacy, property rights, land use, and noise. Senators Dianne Feinstein, Mike Lee, Richard Blumenthal and Tom Cotton introduced it on May 25, 2017, and it went nowhere. When Lee tried to revive it in 2021, DroneXL urged readers to oppose it, arguing it would make flying an administrative nightmare for hobbyists and drone operators.

Without that law, towns are left with the ground. Westborough’s bylaw bans commercial drone launch pads, landing pads and drop zones, and it takes effect only after the Massachusetts attorney general approves it or lets 90 days pass, with MassDOT Aeronautics approval also required under the warrant. Residents in other towns facing the same question can start with DroneXL’s guide to what residents can do about Amazon drones. Amazon takes drone complaints at 1-888-280-4331 or through Amazon customer service chat, under “Something Else” and then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” Every Amazon site, approval and incident DroneXL has documented is on the Prime Air page of our drone delivery tracker.

Amazon staff watch an MK30 test flight. The MK30 weighs about 83 pounds at takeoff, as DroneXL has reported, and has no parachute. Photo credit: Amazon

Amazon Asked the FAA for a Way Past the 110-Pound Cap and Opposed Its Noise Rule

Amazon’s Part 108 comment, dated October 6, 2025, supports the proposed 110-pound limit on delivery drones as a transitional baseline but asks the FAA to let operators exceed it case by case by showing an equivalent level of safety. It also opposes the proposal’s noise requirements as written.

The comment, signed by Matt McCardle, Prime Air’s director of global regulatory, infrastructure and expansion, puts the weight argument plainly: “A fixed 110-pound cap is prescriptive, not risk-based.” It says safety in package delivery depends on design assurance, redundancy, reliability, and containment or termination, not on one weight threshold, and it notes that the proposal already contemplates drones up to 1,320 pounds under Part 108. The MK30 tops out at about 83 pounds, as DroneXL reported from Commercial UAV Expo in September, so the request would not change the aircraft Amazon flies today.

DroneXL searched the full text of the comment, and of Amazon’s eight-page February 11, 2026 follow-up, on October 21. The October comment mentions flight termination three times: as a function the FAA should set performance standards for, and as a safety measure for demonstration flights and for testing over more populated areas. Neither filing mentions a parachute. The FAA’s own proposal mentions parachutes once, as an example of a mitigation for flights carrying hazardous materials, and requires none. Amazon’s MK30 page, as of October 21, describes a monitoring system that can hand control to a backup controller and send the drone home, with no mention of a parachute. DroneXL asked Amazon in writing on September 3 why the MK30 has no parachute, and Amazon did not answer by the deadline.

Much of the comment asks for tighter rules. It wants every drone delivery company to hold an FAA certificate rather than the lighter permit the proposal created. It wants every crewed aircraft below 500 feet to broadcast its position, and it tells the FAA that others pushing for less rigorous standards without safety evidence may be doing so to avoid necessary costs. It also asks the TSA to withdraw from the rulemaking. Amazon left the Commercial Drone Alliance in March over whether detect-and-avoid should be mandatory.

The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which Amazon’s reports have cited every quarter since it passed, first by bill number and then as public law, gave the FAA four months from its May 16, 2024 signing to propose the BVLOS rule, which meant September 16, 2024, and 16 months from publication to finish it. The FAA published the proposal on August 7, 2025, so the final rule is due by December 7, 2026. A Federal Register search on October 21 found no final rule. Amazon’s lobbying reports name the law, not the sections Amazon pressed on.

DroneXL’s Take

I don’t object to Amazon lobbying, which is legal and disclosed. My objection is to the gap in what it asks for. Much of its Part 108 filing argues for stricter rules, and I agree with some of it, but my read of 80 pages that treat the 110-pound cap as a transitional baseline, ask for a way past it, and never mention a parachute is that Amazon wants to keep open the option of flying heavier aircraft than the 83-pound MK30 over people’s homes. The comment does not say Amazon is building one. The FAA’s proposal requires no parachute either, so nothing in this rulemaking pushes Amazon toward one. Zipline’s P2 lowers its package on a tether and carries a parachute, and that is the standard I’d hold any heavy delivery drone to.

This is the second time I’ve watched lobbying shape this industry. By the count above, Skydio has never reported $1 million in federal lobbying in a year, BRINC’s firm reports $60,000 a quarter, and Amazon reported $4.49 million for this one quarter across every issue it works on. In my view, Skydio’s and BRINC’s years of lobbying on drone security, including the defense bill whose Section 1709 set the DJI deadline, helped get foreign drones onto the FCC’s Covered List last December. Amazon has been at this since 2013. Nothing in the filings shows McLean has lobbied Cruz’s office or that Cruz has acted on Amazon’s drone issues, and hiring former congressional staff is legal, disclosed and common in Washington.

In 2021 DroneXL opposed the Drone Federalism Act, and I’d oppose it again, because a patchwork of town rules below 200 feet would ground hobbyists and small operators long before it slowed Amazon. Federal preemption that protects a hobbyist’s Mini also protects an 83-pound MK30. But the federal deal should come with federal obligations sized to the aircraft. The final Part 108 rule is due December 7, and I’ll be reading it for two things: whether the 110-pound cap survives, and whether it asks anything of a heavy drone over a backyard.

Sources: Lobbying Disclosure Act filings for Amazon.com Services LLC, TwinLogic Strategies, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, McGuireWoods Consulting, Origin Advocacy, Skydio, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Holland & Knight and Mehlman Consulting (2013 to 2026), Amazon Prime Air comments in FAA Docket FAA-2025-1908, Federal Register, FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 (P.L. 118-63), S. 1272 Drone Federalism Act of 2017, Senate Commerce Committee.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Rick Scott Backs DJI Ban. Florida Idled an Estimated $200M Fleet

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:12:00 GMT

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., used a press release on Monday to promote his October 14 letter asking FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to keep DJI and Autel Robotics on the Covered List. DroneXL covered the letter last week, when the FCC entered it into both companies’ dockets. Scott wants the agency to reject DJI’s petition for reconsideration and Autel’s application for review, which would leave both companies blocked from new FCC equipment authorizations.

Scott’s home state already bars its agencies from flying Chinese-made drones. When that ban took hold in Florida, state Sen. Tom Wright estimated that police and local governments had spent at least $200 million on the aircraft they had to park. The Legislature set aside $25 million to replace them.

Wright Put Florida’s Replacement Bill At Twice The $200 Million Fleet

Replacing Florida’s grounded drones would cost at least twice the $200 million agencies had spent, Wright said in 2023, because American manufacturers had doubled their prices. Against that, the Legislature’s $25 million covered one-eighth of what the grounded fleet had cost in the first place.

“It’s money, taxpayer money, that’s gonna get wasted,” Wright said of the $25 million plan, according to Lawrence Mower’s May 2023 report for the Miami Herald. DroneXL carried Wright’s estimate the same week. The ban came out of SB 44, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in 2021, more than two years after Scott left the governor’s office for the Senate.

The grounded aircraft were supposed to go to the University of South Florida’s cybersecurity center so it could assess what risk they posed. When DroneXL checked in November 2025, USF had published no findings. That same month, Florida arranged to send more than 500 of the confiscated drones to U.S. Special Operations Command, whose operators were to shoot them down with shotguns at a counter-drone training event scheduled for December 4 to 6 at Camp Blanding.

Florida Police Rebuilt On Skydio And BRINC, Often On Multi-Year Deals

The St. Cloud Police Department flies Skydio X10 drones from two autonomous docks, with two more planned, under a five-year program projected at $890,000. AirMed&Rescue, which reported the figure in December 2025, called it Central Florida’s first full drone-as-first-responder program.

Lakeland went longer without. Its five Chinese-made aircraft sat grounded from 2022 until February 2025, and the restart cost $162,095 for four Skydio drones through Axon on a three-year deal plus one BRINC aircraft. On October 5 the city commission approved a ten-year, $22 million Axon agreement that adds docked drones to a bundle of body cameras, TASERs and software. DroneXL covered St. Cloud’s price tag when it was announced.

Wright’s 2023 estimate priced the drones agencies had already bought. Docked drone-as-first-responder programs are a new capability that would cost money with any vendor, so not all of that spending is ban cost. The ban decided which vendors Florida agencies could buy from.

Scott’s Dumping Claim Cites A Coalition Of American Drone Makers

Scott’s letter says “China has flooded the global market with artificially low-priced DJI and Autel drones” since 2015. The footnote behind that sentence links to a white paper on AUVSI’s website filed under its Partnership for Drone Competitiveness, a coalition of drone makers the trade association launched in 2023.

The four-page letter says the dumping has driven numerous American companies out of business. It names none of them. AUVSI used the same partnership’s name in a January 2024 email to a Utah lawmaker in which the association backed SB 135’s proposed ban on purchasing drones made by covered foreign entities.

Scott’s press release credits him with passing the Countering CCP Drones and Supporting Drones for Law Enforcement Act in the FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act. When Scott introduced that bill with Sen. Mark Warner in July 2024, his office said it created a short-term Department of Transportation grant program for first responders to replace Chinese drones. Section 1709, the provision that became law, has no grant program.

DroneXL’s Take

I think Scott is asking Brendan Carr to hold the whole country to a plan Florida police have been paying for since their ban took hold. His office still uses the bill’s full name, but the half that would have paid first responders to replace their drones never made it into Section 1709.

The federal listing doesn’t ground drones already in the air, and that is a real difference from Florida. It does block every new DJI model, and the FCC has proposed a sales ban that would reach models it already authorized. And a senator arguing that subsidized imports wiped out American competitors should be able to cite something other than a paper from those competitors’ own coalition, and name at least one company.

The FCC still has to rule on DJI’s petition. If your department flies DJI, I’d treat Florida’s numbers as the best estimate you have of what replacing that fleet will cost.

Sources: Office of Sen. Rick Scott press release, October 19, 2026, Sen. Rick Scott letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, October 14, 2026, Office of Sen. Rick Scott press release, July 30, 2024, Public Law 118-159, Section 1709, Miami Herald via Stars and Stripes (Lawrence Mower), May 3, 2023, AirMed&Rescue, FOX 13 Tampa Bay

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Spray Drone Sales Fell 59%, and Dealers Want an FCC Carve-Out

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:31:00 GMT

U.S. sales of new agricultural spray drones fell from about 8,950 in 2024 to about 3,711 in 2025, a 59% drop, according to the American Spray Drone Coalition. The group represents spray drone distributors and says its members handle nearly 80% of U.S. sales. It blames the hold U.S. Customs and Border Protection put on DJI shipments in October 2024 under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

The coalition now wants the Federal Communications Commission to keep the next restriction off the farm. In comments filed September 1 in PS Docket 26-189, it asked the FCC to exclude FAA Part 137 spray drones from its proposed ban on foreign “military-grade” drones and to give operators a multi-year off-ramp.

Drone-sprayed acreage in the U.S. still rose 58.7% in 2025, to more than 16.4 million acres, according to the same ASDC survey.

A 58% Jump in Part 137 Operators Carried the 2025 Acreage Gain

The FAA counted 1,710 approved Part 137 drone operators in 2025, up 58.3%, and that growth carried the acreage gain. Average acres treated per operator held at 9,584, statistically flat on 2024, even with newer sprayers like the DJI Agras T50 and XAG P150 on the market.

ASDC president Eric Ringer said in an AgFunderNews interview published October 9 that the sales drop “was not because of a lack of demand.” He said CBP’s blocks come in fits and starts, with some DJI shipments stuck in the ports and others cleared, and that operators are buying up whatever existing DJI models they can get because they don’t yet know what to expect from American aircraft on reliability and capability. DJI calls the forced-labor claims behind the hold categorically false.

The survey also found the average price per sprayed acre fell 38%, from $21 to $13. ASDC members blame undercutting by operators flying without a Part 137 certificate, the FAA approval nuWay Ag’s crews spray under, particularly in the corn belt. The survey polled Part 137 certificate holders, and its unit counts come from interviews with manufacturers and distributors plus public statements, so they are industry estimates rather than customs records.

DJI’s Block Moved Buyers to Other Chinese Brands

Chinese drones made up 75.75% of U.S. spray drone sales in 2025, down from 93.52% a year earlier, by ASDC’s count. American-made aircraft nearly quadrupled their share, to 24.25%. The brands that gained most from the DJI block were XAG and EAVision, both Chinese manufacturers.

The coalition says the American gain mostly reflects the hole DJI left, and its survey explains why. Of the operators who answered, 49% said they would refuse to pay any premium for an American-made drone, and another 41% would pay at most 25% more. Operators ranked productivity first and said country of origin had little influence on what they buy. Ringer told AgFunderNews that U.S.-sourced batteries and motors cost orders of magnitude more than Chinese ones.

American builders are trying to close that gap, and Ringer has a stake in it: AgFunderNews reports he recently cofounded American Autonomy, which writes software for U.S. drone makers. The same report names Texas-based Hylio and Exedy Drones, which is repurposing manufacturing in Michigan. Missouri’s Agri Spray Drones plans to build EAVision-designed aircraft under license. When Senator Todd Young visited an Indiana spray drone field day in June, the aircraft on the tarmac were still Chinese.

The FCC’s Military-Grade List Covers Every Foreign Spray Drone

The FCC’s July 21 proposal counts as military-grade any drone that can dispense “economic poison,” which the FAA’s Part 137 rule defines as any substance meant to prevent, destroy, repel or mitigate pests, or to act as a plant defoliant or drying agent.

That is the definition of a crop sprayer. The public notice, issued by the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and the Office of Engineering and Technology, argues that aerosol platforms flying alone or in a swarm could carry out chemical or biological attacks on Americans and the food supply. DJI’s comments, as quoted by AgFunderNews, call the category “a roundabout way of describing every agricultural drone” that sprays pesticide or spreads seed. It was one of several objections in DJI’s filing against the proposal.

If the FCC adopts the plan, importing and marketing foreign military-grade drones on its Covered List, and their critical components, would stop 180 days after the order appears in the Federal Register. Drones already in farmers’ hands could keep flying. Domestic aircraft and imports for federal government use would be exempt. Comments on the proposal DroneXL reported in July were due September 2, and as of October 21 the bureaus have not adopted it.

ASDC Asked for Two Years of Spare Parts and a Tariff-Funded Rebate

Beyond the Part 137 exclusion, the coalition’s FCC filing asks for a guaranteed two-year window after any ban takes effect to keep importing flight controllers, motors, batteries and repair modules for drones bought legally before it. ASDC counts more than 15,000 spray drones in U.S. service.

A typical spray drone package costs more than $40,000, the filing says. The coalition paired the parts window with audits meant to stop manufacturers and distributors from assembling new aircraft under the guise of spare parts. The Texas Farm Bureau made the parts argument in January, after the FCC added all foreign-made drones to its Covered List.

The filing also asks the FCC to work with other agencies to send tariff revenue from foreign drone imports into a direct-buyer rebate for American drones, open only to makers holding an FCC Conditional Approval or an equivalent clearance. It prefers data rules, such as U.S.-based cloud storage and regular software audits, over hardware bans. The filing says ASDC supports a secure domestic drone manufacturing base, and Ringer told AgFunderNews the coalition agrees on that goal and disagrees with the FCC’s approach.

DroneXL’s Take

I think the FCC should grant the parts window even if it rejects everything else in this filing. The notice promises that drones already in use can keep flying, but a sprayer keeps flying only as long as someone can replace its motors, batteries and flight controller. Once those imports stop, every worn-out part turns an aircraft its owner bought as part of a $40,000-plus package into a donor for the next one.

The FCC’s stated worry is a chemical or biological attack on the food supply. A two-year supply of replacement motors and batteries for aircraft already in the country does not make that attack any easier, and the coalition volunteered the anti-circumvention audits itself. I’d also point the bureaus to ASDC’s sales table: blocking DJI in 2025 moved farmers to XAG and EAVision, and it bought American makers a 24% share.

If you fly a DJI or XAG sprayer, watch the Federal Register. The order’s publication date starts the clock on your parts supply.

Sources: American Spray Drone Coalition 2025 Industry Survey, ASDC comments in PS Docket 26-189, FCC Public Notice DA 26-758, AgFunderNews

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Birmingham's $500 Drone Fine Spares Pilots Who Follow FAA Rules

Haye Kesteloo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:55:00 GMT

The Birmingham City Council voted Tuesday to let police write $500 citations for drones flown near ticketed events in the city. The timing is deliberate: the Magic City Classic brings Alabama A&M and Alabama State to Legion Field on October 31, and police asked to have the fine in place before the game. Councilor Hunter Williams said a second offense could lead to arrest.

The ordinance is the city’s enforcement tool for Alabama House Bill 429, a state law that took effect October 1. That law exempts any drone pilot who is flying lawfully under federal rules.

Alabama’s HB 429 Bans Drones Within 400 Feet of Ticketed Events

Alabama’s HB 429 makes it unlawful to fly a drone within 400 feet (122 meters) of, or above, a ticketed music, sporting or performing arts event held behind gates. A first violation carries a fine of up to $500. A second or later violation is a Class A misdemeanor.

In Alabama, a Class A misdemeanor carries up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $6,000. The enrolled bill passed the House on February 24 and cleared the Senate with an amendment on March 10. It lists seven exemptions: consent from anyone with legal authority over the event, operators flying lawfully under federal regulations, venue employees on the job, utility employees on the job, state agency, police, fire and emergency management staff on official business, middle and high school sports, and landowners flying their own drone over their own property. That last one excludes commercial flights and any flight that records, monitors or carries a message.

The police exemption covers Birmingham’s own fleet. The council approved $1.5 million for 16 DJI Matrice 4TD drones for the department last year.

The FAA Stadium TFR Cancels the Exemption at Legion Field

HB 429’s federal exemption does not help anyone flying near Legion Field during the game. The stadium seats 71,594, and the FAA’s stadium flight restriction covers NCAA Division I football in stadiums of 30,000 seats or more, banning drones within 3 nautical miles and below 3,000 feet.

The restriction runs from one hour before the game until one hour after it ends. For a hobby or Part 107 pilot, only an FAA waiver lifts it. A pilot flying in that window without one is not flying lawfully under federal rules, so HB 429’s exemption does not apply. ABC 33/40’s report on the October 13 committee meeting noted that a Part 107 certificate alone does not necessarily exempt an operator, and that officers would also check whether the event organizer authorized the flight.

This is the same restriction the University of Alabama cites when it bans drones over Bryant-Denny Stadium on game days. HB 429 only reaches drones within 400 feet of the event. A drone a mile from Legion Field still breaks the TFR, and that remains a matter for the FAA.

Birmingham Officers Must See the Operator Before Issuing a Citation

Williams said an officer has to see the person flying the drone before writing a citation. Under the ordinance as presented to the committee, a first offense can be paid like a ticket. No court date is needed until a second offense, which requires a court appearance.

Williams said the ordinance gives police “a tool to keep our visitors and our citizens safe” at large events, according to ABC 33/40. He said drones over crowds are a security risk, especially if someone attaches an object to one. Police told the committee they already have drone detection equipment and are still building out that capability.

Seeing the operator is harder than seeing the drone, but Alabama police have done it before. In 2024, Gulf Shores police arrested a Foley man who flew over the Hangout Festival. They had watched where he launched the day before and waited for him there. Gulf Shores’ beach ordinance carried the same $500 maximum fine.

DroneXL’s Take

I like how this law is built. HB 429 doesn’t invent new airspace or a state drone registry. It defers to the FAA and gives local police a ticket for flights the FAA’s own rules already ban, which is what the stadium restriction always lacked. The FAA writes the rule, but it isn’t standing in the Legion Field parking lot on game day. My worry is the exemption’s wording. It covers operators “authorized by federal regulations,” and recreational flyers fly under a federal statute, 49 U.S.C. 44809, not a regulation. A hobbyist flying legally near a concert could end up arguing statute versus regulation with an officer who was told to look for a Part 107 certificate, and I suspect the officer wins that argument on the night. If you’re going to the Classic on October 31, leave the drone at home.

Sources: ABC 33/40, Alabama Legislature (HB 429 enrolled text), FAA

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Joshua Bird's One-Motor Drone Flies, but Only in His Bedroom

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 23:38:00 GMT

Maker and YouTuber Joshua Bird has flown a drone that hovers and steers on a single motor, with no servos, no tail rotor and no second propeller. His video, posted Saturday, shows the 3D printed aircraft lifting off and holding level while it answers his stick inputs. The firmware and CAD files are free on GitHub.

Bird says it can’t fly outside his bedroom yet. Its sense of direction comes from an infrared beacon aimed at one corner of the room.

A 45-Degree Hinge Turns Motor Speed Into Pitch And Roll

The propeller hub replaces a helicopter’s swashplate with hinges angled at 45 degrees. When the motor accelerates, the blades lag behind the hub, so one blade pitches up and the other pitches down. Time those surges to the right point in each rotation and the drone tilts in any direction.

Hinged rotors have flown before. The University of Hong Kong’s PULSAR flew on one motor in a 2023 Science Robotics paper, and British YouTuber Tom Stanton, whose 3D printed windup plane DroneXL covered in April, built a swashplateless helicopter that Bird notes still needs two motors. Bird went small instead. His 6-inch propeller spins at almost 20,000 RPM while the motor speeds up and slows down 300 times per second. He says that is more than six times less propeller area than PULSAR, and the smallest and fastest-spinning hinged propeller flown on a drone that he knows of.

Drone ESCs Lost Sync, So Bird Switched To A Servo Drive

A standard drone ESC lost sync above 50 accelerations per second, because it estimates rotor position from back EMF and the torque swings made that signal too noisy. Bird swapped in an mjbots moteus r4 servo controller, which reads rotor position from a magnetic encoder.

At 20,000 RPM the propeller completes a turn every 3 milliseconds, and routing commands through a separate microcontroller left them about 20 degrees of rotation late, by Bird’s count. He rewrote the moteus firmware so the motor controller talks to the flight controller directly and computes the motor commands itself. The hub shrank to a single pivot at less than half its old size, printed in carbon-fiber-filled PPA on an H2C printer that Bambu Lab sent him.

A Homemade Strobe Camera Found The 160 Hz Vibration

The first flights crashed, and a 160 Hz vibration swamped the accelerometers. Bird built a strobe rig that fires a camera flash at a known blade angle, freezing tips moving at over 310 mph (500 km/h). The photos showed the blades flapping and bending.

Stiffer blades cured the vibration. Over weeks of testing, crashes cost him propellers, motor controllers, receivers and several cracked TPU bodies, until he moved tuning to a test stand weighted down with a takeaway bag.

The single-motor drone hovers over Bird's bed. It can only fly where his infrared beacon can see it. Image credit: Joshua Bird

An Infrared Beacon Ties The Drone To One Room

The drone’s 3D printed body never stops spinning, and its motor sits too close for a compass to work. An infrared sensor on the drone spots Bird’s beacon each time the body turns past it, and his ArduPilot fork uses each sighting to correct the heading estimate.

Without that correction, the drone loses track of which way is forward and becomes uncontrollable. The beacon itself is an infrared blaster borrowed from his earlier motion-capture project. Bird says his next video adds a linear camera sensor that scans the room as the body spins, so the drone can hold its heading and navigate on its own.

DroneXL’s Take

Bird opens the video by saying one motor could make drones smaller and cheaper. Smaller is on screen. I’m not sold on cheaper yet, because the mechanical parts he deleted came back as custom firmware and a $94 moteus servo drive where a hobby ESC used to sit. That is a fair trade to make in public, and Bird posted the fix for every dead end on GitHub, the way quadmovr shared the files for its 3D printed impeller quad. The next video decides whether this stays a bedroom demo. If the linear camera holds the heading without a beacon, the drone can leave the room.

Sources: Joshua Bird on YouTube, jyjblrd/single-propeller-drone on GitHub, Tom’s Hardware.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

WSJ Says Musk Ordered Ukraine's Starlink Cap. Musk Said POTUS Decides

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 23:32:00 GMT

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter, that Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of Starshield, the military-grade Starlink service Ukraine’s drone units depend on. The slowdown began October 14, the Journal reported. Its sources say the cap left some of Ukraine’s strike drones and interceptor drones virtually useless.

That same day, replying to Mykhailo Fedorov on X, Musk wrote that Starshield is owned and controlled by the U.S. government and that “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” Last Thursday, Reuters, citing two U.S. officials and a Western official, reported that the order came from inside the White House. A senior U.S. official told Reuters the president never made such a request.

Musk Talked to Trump About the Cap, Two of the Journal’s Sources Say

Musk and President Donald Trump discussed the Starlink decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public, while Trump was campaigning, two people told the Journal. One of them said the two men had also discussed it before Musk throttled the service. Trump has denied ordering the restrictions.

Some U.S. officials told the Journal that Musk acted unilaterally and that Trump didn’t specifically order any retribution against Ukraine. A person familiar with the situation said Musk spoke with several senior administration officials, Trump among them, before imposing the cap. During the uproar, SpaceX representatives called their White House counterparts seeking “a unified understanding and subsequent message” that the company and the Trump administration coordinated ahead of Musk’s directive, the Journal’s sources said.

Kyiv had been told something else. A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters last week that Ukrainian officials called senior officials at the White House, State Department and Pentagon for answers and were told it was a White House decision.

Trump told reporters Monday that he didn’t know who was responsible for the slowdown, “but I would like to find out.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, that the Pentagon hadn’t pulled anything back or issued any directives, and added: “Starlink has the option to make decisions concerning its terms of service.” SpaceX didn’t respond to the Journal. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the report, and Musk, SpaceX and the White House did not immediately respond to Reuters.

Musk and Trump had both voiced anger in recent weeks at Ukraine’s strikes on Russian diesel refineries, which Trump blames for high energy prices ahead of November’s midterms, the Journal reported. Most analysts say the Iran war has done more to push prices up. On October 10, Trump said he had told Volodymyr Zelensky not to hit the refineries. Musk replied to a White House video of those remarks by writing on X that Zelensky had gone too far. Four days later, Ukrainian drone operators reported losing unrestricted access. Reuters has reported that Ukraine can’t use Starlink for its long-range strikes on Russian energy sites at all, because the system doesn’t work inside Russia.

Ukraine’s Drones Hold the Link Only Below 81 mph, Kofman Says

Ukrainian strike and interceptor drones are still throttled at 99 mph (160 km/h), Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told the Journal, and in practice the connection now holds only below 81 mph (130 km/h). He said the limits continue to hamper strike operations and air defenses.

The 99 mph cap is the same ceiling a person in Ukraine’s Defense Ministry described to Reuters last Thursday, when service had partly returned. SpaceX gated Starlink by speed once before, in January, when it cut service on terminals moving faster than about 47 to 56 mph to stop Russian strike drones, with a way for registered Ukrainian units to lift the limit. Ukrainian officials have said the cap let Russian missiles evade their defenses, according to the Journal, and Zelensky warned publicly that Ukrainians could die if the unrestricted service wasn’t restored.

Denys Sienik, whom the Journal describes as Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington, said Tuesday that Ukraine was still waiting for an official answer from the Pentagon and SpaceX on what happened and whether the connection has been restored or will be.

Nine Senators Asked Who Caused the Cap and Whether SpaceX Acted Alone

Nine senators from both parties, led by New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, asked the Pentagon’s inspector general on October 15 to learn whether the administration or its contractors caused the disruptions, and whether SpaceX acted alone in violation of its contract, and asked for a first briefing by November 1.

Republicans Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Cornyn of Texas signed the letter alongside Democrats Jack Reed, Dick Durbin, Chris Coons and Richard Blumenthal, the Boston Globe reported. The letter also asks whether Pentagon officials authorized, approved or knew in advance of any change to the service, and tells the inspector general to preserve communications and contract records involving the Pentagon, SpaceX and other agencies.

In the House, Rep. Mike Levin, a California Democrat, posted on X Tuesday morning, linking Reuters’ October 15 report, that the Trump administration “deliberately restricted technology Ukraine relies on to intercept Russian drones and ballistic missiles.” He called it a betrayal of an ally and said Americans deserve to know who made the decision.

DroneXL’s Take

If the Journal’s sources are right, a network Musk himself calls owned and controlled by the U.S. government was slowed on the order of its contractor’s CEO, after he talked it over with Trump according to one of them. Hegseth says the Pentagon issued no directive. I don’t think his answer that Starlink can set its own terms of service holds up for a military network carrying a U.S. partner’s air defense.

This isn’t the first such report. In July 2025, Reuters, citing three people familiar with the matter, reported that Musk ordered Starlink coverage cut near Beryslav during Ukraine’s 2022 Kherson counteroffensive. SpaceX didn’t publicly confirm that account, and Musk has denied disabling terminals. The briefing the senators requested by November 1 could show whether the Starshield contract lets one executive throttle the drones defending Ukrainian cities. If it does, Congress should make the Pentagon rewrite it.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Reuters via Yahoo News, Boston Globe, Kyiv Independent, Rep. Mike Levin on X.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Antigravity A1 on a Watch and Ring Tracked Me Through a Dense Forest

Mihail Svilenov — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 23:07:00 GMT

Antigravity just released two new accessories that change the way you fly the A1: a Watch Remote and a Ring Remote. With the new Follow Me Bundle, those two are all you need to control the drone. You ditch the goggles and the controller and focus on whatever you’re doing.

The bundle also comes with four propeller guards that install easily, so you can fly the drone safely around you, even up close, without worrying about the blades hitting you. That turns the A1 from a 360 camera drone into a 360 follow-me drone. You let it do its thing and still come home with crazy-looking 360 shots. I took it into a dense forest on a quad bike sure it would crash at least a couple of times, and it didn’t crash once.

The Watch Runs the Show and the Ring Launches the A1 From Your Palm

The Watch Remote is the brain of the whole operation. It weighs 44 g, has a 1.72-inch screen and is IP67 water resistant. From your wrist you get the controls to take off, land, switch modes and change your follow settings.

It also gives you a live preview, so you can check your framing without pulling out your phone. That saves so much time and trouble, and I’m a big fan of it.

The Ring Remote is tiny: 8.2 g with a single button. That one button handles palm takeoff and a feature called Drag-to-Fly, which I’ll get to in a second.

Palm takeoff is a major change for the A1. You hold the drone in one hand, press and hold the ring button with the other, and it takes off. That’s it. For anyone shooting on the move this is a big deal: before, you needed a level surface free of debris, sand or little rocks that could damage the drone on takeoff. Now the ground below doesn’t matter.

A New Tracking Algorithm Fuses Vision With the Watch’s GPS

Antigravity shared with me that it developed a new tracking algorithm for the A1, because the drone now operates as a follow-me drone. It combines visual tracking with GPS positioning from the watch, so if you move fast or get briefly blocked behind something, it holds onto you better.

The A1 was originally meant to work in a completely different way, so the algorithm has to be very smooth and smart enough to predict where you’re going.

Maximum tracking speed is about 22 mph (10 m/s), and that’s with the guards installed. For cycling, hiking, skating or running around with kids, that covers most of what I would actually film with the A1.

There’s also a new feature called Wave to Track. You tap a button on the watch, wave your hand above your head, and the drone locks onto you. It’s a small thing, but it removes the fiddling with selecting yourself on the screen.

Drag-to-Fly Puts the Drone Where Your Hand Points

Drag-to-Fly positions the A1 with your hand. Hold the ring button until you feel the watch vibrate, then move your hand left, right, up or down, and the drone follows that movement. Rotate your wrist inward and it comes closer. Rotate it outward and it pulls away.

It’s a very convenient way to place the drone around you and find the spot you want before you start filming. If you want to adjust the position or change direction, you don’t have to land or touch the phone. For more precision, the watch screen has sliders for altitude, yaw and direction.

Then there’s Sky Genie, which we’ve seen before: one-tap cinematic moves, with orbit, fly away, ascent and spiral to choose from. You pick one on the watch and the drone flies it. Since this is a 360 drone, you don’t have to worry about exact framing in any of those shots. You sort that out later in the edit.

The Prop Guards Push the A1 to 351 Grams and About 23 Minutes

With all four propeller guards installed, the drone weighs 351 g, so it is no longer a sub-250 g drone and falls into a different category. Make sure you’re aware of that before you fly. Flight time drops to about 23 minutes, and that’s in ideal conditions.

As we all know, conditions are never ideal when we fly, so expect a bit less.

The A1 Chased Me Through Bushes and Branches Without a Scratch

I’m super impressed by the tracking algorithm: open fields were no problem at all, and the little orbit it flew around me while I rode gave me shots I was really happy with. Then I rode into a super dense forest, and the A1 never crashed once.

Even I couldn’t see where I was going in there, with bushes hitting me in the face, and the drone kept following without any problems whatsoever. Twigs and branches didn’t bother it either: it navigated around them very smartly, and I got it back in one piece without a scratch.

When I jumped off the quad, it kept me in frame for a while, then did some weird maneuvers around the trees to keep me in view. It still didn’t lose me, and when I got back on and started riding, it carried on following.

It did lose me once, when I went through a lot of bushes. Behind them it couldn’t keep following, it got stuck, and I had to go back and retrieve it. Other than that, I’d say it performed flawlessly. The one thing I’m not a fan of is the lens flares in the footage. They don’t look very nice in my opinion, and the lens was clean, so it isn’t an issue on my end.

The Follow Me Bundle Is for Footage of Yourself, the Goggles Bundle for Flying

Which bundle to buy comes down to how you want to use the drone: the Goggles Bundle, discounted during the campaign, is the more immersive way to fly, while the Follow Me Bundle is built for convenient, hands-free tracking during outdoor activities.

With the goggles on, you see what the drone sees. With the Follow Me Bundle, you have the watch and the ring, you pull the drone out, and you’re already filming. If you want the full flying experience, go for the Goggles Bundle. If you want footage of yourself while you ride, hike or play, go for the Follow Me Bundle. I’ve linked both in the description of my video.

Personally, I feel this makes a completely different drone out of the A1. It’s now a follow-me drone on top of the camera drone we’ve seen before, and it’s all in 360, so the tracking shots keep the freedom of reframing in post. For me that’s a fresh way to fly this drone. Let me know in the comments under the video whether you agree.

This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Mihail Svilenov. Watch the full video on the Mihail Svilenov YouTube channel, and find more of Mihail’s work on the DroneXL author page.

DJI Dock 4 Demoed for Belgian First Responders. US Teams Can't Buy It

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 23:01:00 GMT

Belgium’s UAS State Operator program, which trains drone pilots for police, fire and civil protection, turned ten on Friday, October 16, 2026. About 250 visitors marked it at PLOT, Limburg province’s safety school in Genk, among them colleagues from across Europe and the United States. Lead instructor Bart Ramaekers wrote afterward, in Dutch: “More than 500 drone pilots were trained for police, fire and civil protection.”

The anniversary doubled as a trade show. DJI, Autel and DroneVolt exhibited next to software vendors, and Ramaekers called the presentation and live demonstration of the new DJI Dock 4 a special first. DJI had launched Dock 4 two days earlier. It has no FCC authorization, so the American guests Ramaekers thanked cannot buy it at home.

EU Aviation Law Lets Belgium Write Its Own Rules for State Drone Pilots

The EU’s basic aviation regulation excludes aircraft flying police, search and rescue, firefighting and similar state missions from its scope, and leaves those flights to national law. PLOT’s UAS State Operator course is a Belgian training track for the pilots who fly them, and it turned ten this month.

Article 2(3)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1139 carves out aircraft and their remote-control equipment “while carrying out military, customs, police, search and rescue, firefighting, border control, coastguard or similar activities” under a member state’s responsibility. Member states may opt those missions back into the EU system. Without that, a police drone pilot sits outside the open and specific categories that govern a civilian Matrice 4D crew, including the compliant BVLOS rules DroneXL covered in July.

PLOT, short for Provincie Limburg Opleiding en Training, runs the province’s police, fire and emergency medical schools. It inaugurated a €12.5 million building on Zwartegoudlaan in Genk in 2024 with a drone platform on the roof. Director Jacky Vastmans told VRT at the time that PLOT is Belgium’s safety school specialized in drone training for police, fire and ambulance crews, and that he wants to launch an autonomous drone from that roof for operational missions.

The anniversary lanyards carry the Belgian flag and the police, fire service and civil protection emblems, the three services the course trains pilots for. Photo credit: Bart Ramaekers via Facebook

DJI Dock 4’s Radio Specs Cover Europe and Skip the FCC

Dock 4, launched with the Matrice 5TD on October 14 as the first DJI dock that swaps the drone’s battery itself, carries a spec sheet with transmitter power for Canada, the European Union, China and Japan and nothing for the FCC.

The FCC put foreign-made drones on its Covered List on December 22, 2025, and no new DJI model has received FCC authorization since. Drones Americans already own stay legal to fly. A second proposal, in FCC Docket 26-189, would bar the import and sale of foreign drones with thermal imaging, LiDAR or a docking station. The Dock 3 and Matrice 4TD that US departments can still buy each have two of those three. DJI asked the FCC bureaus to withdraw it in September.

Ramaekers tagged Kyle Nordfors in the post, the Weber County Search and Rescue captain in Utah who told the FCC on September 2 that the proposal would cost American lives. Luis Figueiredo, co-host of the Drones After Dark podcast, shared the post with his own thanks for the invitation and the hospitality.

A humanoid robot also worked the show floor. Ramaekers wrote that it, together with the drone-as-first-responder sessions and automated drone deployment, gave the room plenty to think about on where robotics fits in police and emergency work.

A humanoid robot on the exhibition floor at PLOT in Genk while attendees film it. Photo credit: Bart Ramaekers via Facebook

DroneXL’s Take

Belgian public safety agencies buy DJI hardware and get on with the work. I think American departments deserve the same choice. The Vilvoorde-Machelen police zone bought DJI’s M30T, M4T and Air 3S in 2025 to find missing people and watch festival crowds, for €22,000 in total.

Genk showed the rest of that picture: ten years of state pilot training, more than 500 graduates, and the newest DJI dock as the headline demo at a police school. Where DJI’s data ends up is a fair question for any connected aircraft. My read is that Belgium handled it by keeping the aircraft and putting its state pilots under national rules and a proper training course. Docket 26-189 would instead stop a US department from buying another Dock 3, the generation Belgian first responders just watched DJI replace.

Sources: Bart Ramaekers and Luis Figueiredo on Facebook, VRT NWS, Regulation (EU) 2018/1139, The Brussels Times, DJI press release

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Antigravity A1 Hits $799 Without Goggles. New Controller Skips the US

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 20:11:00 GMT

Antigravity put the A1 on sale today, October 20, in a Follow Me Bundle that costs $799 and leaves out the Vision Goggles and the Grip motion controller every A1 has shipped with since December. In their place come an Insta360-branded Watch Remote and Ring Remote, a set of full-coverage propeller guards and the high-capacity flight battery. The Standard Bundle with goggles stays at $1,599, and the new bundle sells through Antigravity’s site, BestBuy.com and 266 Best Buy stores.

The same announcement, a three-minute video and two press releases out of Los Angeles, adds a dual-stick Remote Controller and a 4G Cellular Module. Antigravity’s UK store sells both today. Its US store answers both product pages with “this page is (currently) unavailable in your country or region.”

The $799 Bundle Weighs 351 Grams and Gives Up 16 Minutes of Flight

The Follow Me Bundle takes off at 351 g (12.4 oz), Antigravity’s spec sheet says, against 249 g for the Standard Bundle. The same high-capacity battery that gives a bare A1 39 minutes delivers 23 once the guards are on.

Top speed falls from 35.8 mph to 24.6 mph (16 to 11 m/s) and wind resistance from 24 mph to 12.1 mph (10.7 to 5.4 m/s). Antigravity rates every figure with the guards installed, and the guards are the point of the bundle. They enclose each propeller so the drone can track a rider or a child through trees and close quarters. The box holds one A1, one Watch Remote, one Ring Remote, four guards, one high-capacity battery, a lens guard, four spare propellers and a crossbody bag. No charger brick, no goggles, no motion controller.

The weight matters for an American buyer. The A1 has sold on its 249 g standard configuration since launch, a figure DroneXL has set against the roughly 400 g DJI Avata 360 more than once, and the $1,999 Infinity and $2,249 Ultimate bundles have always carried the heavier battery and needed FAA registration. The $799 bundle is the cheapest A1 that must be registered and broadcast Remote ID as it comes out of the box. Antigravity’s buy page says as much in a footnote, that takeoff weight exceeds 249 g with the high-capacity battery. A Follow Me buyer who adds the $99.99 standard battery and takes the guards off is back at 249 g.

The Watch Remote is a 44.7 g, IP67 wristwatch with a 1.72-inch touchscreen and a GNSS receiver on GPS, BeiDou and Galileo. The drone fuses that position with its visual tracker, which is how Antigravity says the A1 keeps following a cyclist who ducks behind a tree. Its Bluetooth live view runs at 360p and 15 fps with about 300 ms of latency, out to 490 to 656 ft (150 to 200 m) in the open and 66 to 164 ft (20 to 50 m) around obstructions. The 8.2 g Ring Remote is one button on a strap. Hold it, point at the drone and move your arm, and the A1 follows your hand from up to 33 ft (10 m) away.

Existing owners can buy the watch, ring and guards as a $339.99 accessory kit, listed on the US accessories page at $271.99 under what Antigravity calls a 20% owner discount. Goggle-free Infinity and Ultimate versions of the bundle sell for $1,049 and $1,265, marked down from list prices of $1,169 and $1,409, and a Motion & Follow Me Standard Bundle with goggles costs $1,789. The buy page labels that goggles-plus-watch upgrade ”+$100” on both base bundles, and the video description says the same. The Infinity pair is priced $100 apart. The Standard pair is $190 apart.

The full-coverage guards enclose each propeller. The Watch Remote and Ring Remote are the only controls in the $799 bundle. Image credit: Antigravity

The Dual-Stick Controller Antigravity Promised for Summer Sells in the UK for £52

Antigravity’s Remote Controller is a 256 g, two-stick transmitter that supports Mode 1, 2 and 3, runs five hours on a 2,300 mAh battery and needs the Vision Goggles to fly. The UK store sells it for £52, down from £65. The US store does not sell it.

This is the product Antigravity’s FAQ said was coming in summer 2026, which DroneXL flagged in its coverage of the April spring update as the answer to the most consistent complaint about the A1, from pilots who want sticks rather than a wand. It arrived on October 20 with a new Fixed View that locks the goggle image to the drone’s heading so a pilot can frame with the Virtual Gimbal, alongside the existing Free View where head and drone move independently. It talks to the goggles over a 33 ft (10 m) link, and two of its buttons are customizable.

The press release says nothing about which regions get it. Its footnotes say product availability may vary by region for all three products, and that 4G services, data plans and network availability may vary by region for the module.

The Antigravity Remote Controller: Mode 1, 2 and 3, five hours per charge, goggles required. Image credit: Antigravity

The 4G Module Covers US LTE Bands but Lists Coverage Only for China and Europe

The 4G Cellular Module is an 11 g box with a built-in eSIM that takes over the A1’s video feed whenever the OmniLink 360 link drops. One module costs £95.20 in the UK plus a data plan, and Antigravity lists coverage for mainland China and Europe only.

The UK product page lists FDD-LTE bands 2, 4, 5, 12, 13, 25, 26 and 66, bands the US carriers run on, next to the European and Chinese ones. It names no US carrier, and the US store returns the same regional block as the controller. A drone-plus-goggles pair of modules costs £220.80, each with its own plan.

Antigravity first showed the module at IFA in Berlin on September 4 and said then it would be available by the end of September. It went on sale three weeks late, with two conditions the IFA announcement did not mention. It cannot be used with any propeller guard, so it rules out the Follow Me Bundle’s main safety feature, and it cuts flight time to 29 minutes on the high-capacity battery and 17 on the standard one, at a takeoff weight over 249 g either way.

Since December 22, 2025, the FCC’s Covered List has barred new equipment authorizations for foreign-made drones and the components the agency’s determination names as critical, a list that includes controllers and data transmission devices, as DroneXL reported the day the order came down. The A1 itself was authorized before that date, and Antigravity said in January that its import, sale and operation continue without restriction. Whether that order is what keeps a controller and an LTE module off the US store is something Antigravity has not said, and the word “currently” on its block page is the only hint it has given that the block is temporary.

DroneXL’s Take

The Follow Me Bundle is the first A1 configuration I would hand to a parent without a lecture, and it costs half of what the goggles kit did when I first flew the A1 last December. Antigravity has also delivered the two things reviewers asked for most, a stick controller and a goggle-free way to fly, nearly four months after MKBHD said the ring remote was still in development.

The cost is the number Antigravity built the A1’s marketing on. Regulation-friendly 249 g is still the headline on the buy page, and the cheapest A1 you can now order weighs 351 g at takeoff, which puts a $799 family drone in the same FAA registration and Remote ID bracket as the Avata 360 that opened US orders at $719. An American buyer who wanted the sticks or the 4G range gets neither, and I would not expect a conventional controller for a Chinese-made drone to clear FCC authorization quickly under the Covered List as written. Buy the bundle as the easiest 360 follow-me drone on the market, and budget five dollars and ten minutes for the FAA registration it now needs.

Sources: Antigravity press release, Antigravity Follow Me Bundle release, Antigravity A1 buy page, Antigravity

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Intel Asks FCC to Spare Its Fab Robots From the Drone-Ban Playbook

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 18:52:00 GMT

Intel asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on October 16 for an expedited waiver so the automated guided vehicles that move materials through its U.S. fabs can keep receiving hardware, software and firmware changes. The vehicles are foreign-made. Since July 28 the FCC’s Covered List has barred new foreign-produced advanced robotic devices from equipment authorization, through the same origin-based listing the agency used on every foreign-made drone on December 22, 2025.

Intel says the vehicles have run its fabs for more than two decades, that no proven domestic alternative meets its requirements, and that replacing the fleet will take years. The FCC’s own guidance says vehicles like these may be covered. Intel says it does not know whether its units are, and filed anyway.

Intel Wants the Hardware Waiver the Router Carriers Got in May

Intel’s petition asks the FCC to waive sections 2.932 and 2.1043 of its rules so it can make hardware, software and firmware changes to AGVs described in a confidential appendix. It cites the one-year hardware waivers the agency granted AT&T and Verizon for foreign-made routers and asks for the same.

Software updates were already allowed. On July 28, the day the robots went on the list, the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology issued DA 26-789, which lets every previously authorized robot and power inverter keep receiving software and firmware updates until at least January 1, 2029. That is the same relief foreign drones and routers already had. Hardware swaps on covered equipment stayed prohibited.

The carriers got around that first. On May 15, OET partially granted an AT&T petition filed four days earlier, allowing two types of hardware changes to covered routers for one year. Since then the office has issued near-identical one-year waivers to NCTA, Sercomm, Verizon, Arcadyan, WNC, Askey, USTelecom, CTIA and, on September 29, Actiontec. Intel filed its petition in ET Docket 26-256, the docket where the FCC has issued some of those router orders since September.

Intel offers the FCC the same three promises the carriers made: the changes will not alter the vehicles’ radio characteristics, will not be used to market a vehicle as a new model, and will not swap a U.S.-made part for a foreign one. The updated AGVs will not be marketed and will stay inside Intel’s facilities. Jayne Stancavage, Intel’s vice president of policy and regulatory affairs, signed the filing. The appendix that names the vehicles, their suppliers and the planned changes is redacted in its entirety, and Intel asked the FCC to keep it that way indefinitely. Tom’s Hardware, which picked up the Bloomberg report that first surfaced the petition, names Japan’s Murata Machinery and Daifuku as the biggest AGV suppliers to chip fabs. Intel’s public filing names none.

The FCC Says AGVs May Be Covered, and Identical Spare Parts May No Longer Exist

The FCC’s FAQ on the robot listing, updated October 2, says automated guided vehicles “may fall within the definition” of advanced robotic devices even when they follow predefined paths, because they operate at a distance from a human operator. Intel calls that guidance unclear.

Intel filed, in its own words, “out of an abundance of caution to ensure ongoing operation of these specific AGV units.” The definition the FCC adopted in DA 26-786 covers any mobile machine that moves on the ground, operates at a distance from a human operator, weighs more than 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) including any docking station, and carries a sensor, a network link of at least 200 kbps, and software that controls its navigation. Connected cars, rail-only vehicles, uncrewed aircraft, underwater vehicles, medical devices and fixed robot arms are excluded. A vehicle on a guided path with a sensor and a network link would clear every element, which is how the FAQ arrives at its answer on AGVs.

The same FAQ says repairs are allowed and that components may be replaced with identical parts. Intel says it may not be able to get identical parts. Its petition says many components in vehicles deployed that long ago may no longer be available, that replacements would have better metrics than the originals, and that none of them touch the radio. Under the rules the FCC adopted in October 2025, a better part in covered equipment is a permissive change, and permissive changes to covered equipment are banned. The Commission itself proposed carving out maintenance updates and minor hardware modifications in a further notice of proposed rulemaking on July 23. Intel cites that proposal too, and the Commission has not adopted it.

Intel Makes the Argument DJI Owners Made, and the FCC Has Conceded It Four Times

Intel’s filing says without the ability to update its vehicles, its fabs would face the supply chain vulnerability the robot listing is meant to stop. The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology has accepted that logic four times since January, for equipment it had just called an unacceptable risk.

The first waiver came on January 21, 2026, a month after the drone listing, and let covered drones keep receiving security patches until January 1, 2027. Routers got theirs on March 23, the day they were listed. On May 8 the office extended both to 2029 and widened them to substantive Class II changes, which DroneXL covered at the time as the agency conceding that cutting off patches would be worse than the ban. The robot waiver on July 28 borrowed that reasoning, saying the concerns about the continued safe operation of drones and routers “apply equally” to robots.

The exemption route is open too, and the FCC used it on the day Intel filed. Eleven drone makers had cleared the Department of War’s Conditional Approval process by June, none of them Chinese, and all eleven carried a December 31, 2026 end date. On the robot side, the October 16 public notice DA 26-1114 lists four companies cleared since September 9: Husqvarna’s robotic platforms, ANSCER Robotics’ three autonomous mobile robots, Matic Robots’ floor cleaner and, newest of all, the automated guided vehicles and mobile robots of Volley Automation, a robotic-parking company. Each approval is tied to an onshoring plan, and the September notice DA 26-996 says robot approvals without an end date stay in force indefinitely as long as that plan holds. None of the four makes fab equipment, and neither Murata nor Daifuku appears in the appendix.

DroneXL’s Take

The drone ban was sold as a judgment about DJI. Intel’s petition shows it has become a test of where a machine was built, applied to a foreign-made materials cart in a U.S. chip fab. The robot determination names factory material handling as a reason for the ban.

I suspect the waiver machinery exists because the ban does not survive contact with a real factory, and the agency knows it. It waived its own update ban for robots on the day it imposed the listing, and it gave AT&T a hardware waiver in four days and Actiontec one in 29. Intel is asking for the carriers’ deal, and I expect it will get it on a similar clock, because the only companies this list reliably keeps out are the ones Congress had in mind when it wrote the drone version. No robot hardware waiver exists yet, and the router ones were narrow: one year, named parts, no change to the radio. Routers and humanoid robots got the DJI treatment on paper, then got waivers in practice.

Intel’s vehicles never leave Intel’s buildings and are not marketed, so its case is easier than the one a DJI pilot flying over a city could make. The government’s own determination does not draw that line. Every waiver the FCC writes for a factory cart is one more document in the public record saying the equipment on this list is not the risk the list claims it is.

Sources: Intel Corporation, Petition for Expedited Waiver, ET Docket 26-256 (PDF), FCC Public Notice DA 26-786 (PDF), FCC Public Notice DA 26-789 (PDF), FCC Covered List FAQ on robotic devices and power inverters, FCC Order DA 26-491 (PDF), FCC Order DA 26-1045 (PDF), FCC Public Notice DA 26-996 (PDF), FCC Public Notice DA 26-1114 (PDF), Tom’s Hardware.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Apian Drones Flew 13,000 NHS Items. One Render Shows the Blood Route

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 14:08:00 GMT

Apian has flown more than 13,000 clinical items across London by drone since October 2024, by the count its vice president of robotics and design, George Cave, gave in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday. He posted it with the picture that shows what two years of that work looks like from above. Cave pulled every blood-sample delivery between Guy’s Hospital and St Thomas’ Hospital out of the company’s backend database and rendered the flight logs in Blender over a 3D model of the city. Hundreds of flights stack into one orange band from London Bridge to Westminster Bridge.

The same morning, Matternet said its drones are now carrying pediatric pathology samples out of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Apian, the third London hospital trust on a network DroneXL first covered when the Guy’s and St Thomas’ trial was announced in September 2024. The two hospitals in Cave’s render sit 1.3 miles (2.1 km) apart. The trust said the road run between their labs took more than half an hour.

The Guy’s to St Thomas’ Route Moved 6,000 Samples at 28% Lower Cost

The Guy’s and St Thomas’ service began in October 2024 as a six-month trial flown by Wing, moving blood samples between Synnovis laboratories for surgery patients at high risk of bleeding. Apian says the first phase carried more than 6,000 samples and cut costs by an average of 28%.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority approved the airspace, per the trust’s September 2024 announcement. Wing flew on demand on weekdays, up to 10 transfers a day with several samples in each canister, and the trust put the flight at under two minutes against the courier’s half hour. Wing’s own account of the launch ran in November 2024.

The trial outlived its six months. Apian chief executive Alexander Trewby put the count at 5,000 samples when he announced Matternet joining the network in June 2025. The 6,000 figure and the cost saving came with the south west London expansion in January 2026, which also put the CO2 cut per delivery at 98.4% against ad hoc courier vans. The CAA has since approved continued operations on the route until February 2027, per the operations page Apian keeps for the service. That page now lists the Matternet M2 as the aircraft, cruising at about 295 feet (90 meters) and close to 37 mph (60 km/h), Monday to Friday from 9 am to 4 pm, with the direct flight taking about four minutes against the under two minutes the trust quoted for Wing’s aircraft.

This month the same corridor extends to Synnovis’s Blackfriars hub laboratory, which analyzes 20,000 samples a day. The first flights there carry bone marrow samples used to diagnose and monitor blood disorders such as acute leukemia, including samples from children treated at Evelina London Children’s Hospital, per Synnovis’s September announcement. Cave wrote that “I’ll always have a soft spot for the first patients we helped at GSTT.”

Matternet Added Great Ormond Street on Tuesday

Matternet said on Tuesday that its M2 drones are flying pediatric pathology samples from Great Ormond Street Hospital to The Doctors Laboratory. Apian says validation flights began in July under a six-month CAA approval. The hospital’s clinical and scientific leads have since signed off a routine service.

Matternet claims the route cuts urgent delivery times by up to 90%, per its release, and chief executive Andreas Raptopoulos said the company plans to keep expanding with Apian across the NHS. More sites are planned after the first lab route. Dr Tim Liversedge, the hospital’s chief of staff for core clinical services, said children arrive from all over the country, many with rare and complex conditions, and that waiting for a test result is one of the hardest parts of a hospital stay for their families. The M2 carries up to 4.4 pounds (2 kg) and cruises at about 360 feet (110 meters) on the Great Ormond Street corridor, Monday to Friday from 8 am to 5 pm, with a pilot in command overseeing every flight, per Apian’s operations page for the hospital. Dr Kimberly Gilmour, the hospital’s chief of laboratory medicine, said its “clinicians shouldn’t have to wait on London traffic for answers.” She called the service a step toward a drone network that could serve the whole NHS.

Matternet is the newer of the two American operators on this network. It went public in June through a reverse merger, trades as MTTN, says it was the first drone delivery company to get a standard FAA type certificate, and named Apian as the UK launch partner for its M3 platform last month. London is its first UK operation. Wing, the Alphabet unit, now flies the south west London route from Nelson Health Centre in Raynes Park to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, which started in February 2026 and is slated to extend to St Helier, Croydon and Kingston.

Apian was founded by NHS doctors, and this month it said its ground robots had moved more than 1,400 live patient samples between drone landing pads and the Blackfriars lab in supervised trials.

DroneXL’s Take

This is the drone delivery I am for. A bone marrow sample from a child with suspected leukemia has to get from the ward to the one lab that can read it, and every minute it spends in a courier van in London traffic is a minute a doctor waits for an answer. The payload weighs grams, and it is worth more than anything Amazon will ever put in an MK30. Compare that with Westborough, which voted 510 to 13 to keep Amazon’s 77.9-pound drones from dropping toothpaste on lawns in Massachusetts. I don’t think the town is wrong, and I don’t think London is either. Westborough is being asked to accept the aircraft for a five-pound consumer order, and London accepted it for a child’s blood. The two votes should come out differently. A drone over a city needs urgency and value to justify it, and this route has both. Cave’s map shows two years of it, and I would hang it in every town hall about to vote on a drone bylaw.

Sources: George Cave on LinkedIn, Matternet, Apian, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Synnovis via Pathology in Practice

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Westborough Votes 510-13 to Ban Amazon Drone Pads and Drop Zones

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 12:54:00 GMT

Westborough voters passed a general bylaw on Monday night, October 19, that bans any commercial drone launch pad, landing pad or delivery drop zone anywhere in town, by a vote of 510 to 13 at a Special Town Meeting in the Westborough High School auditorium. Article 8 was the last item on an eight-article warrant, and it was written in response to Amazon’s plan to fly Prime Air MK30 drones from the parking lot of its warehouse at 64 Otis Street, the plan DroneXL has followed since September, when Amazon told a packed room its drones were coming anyway.

The bylaw sets a fine of $300 per offense and takes effect only after the Massachusetts attorney general approves it or lets 90 days pass without acting, and the warrant says the MassDOT Aeronautics Division must approve it too. Amazon told residents in September it hoped to be in the air by late October, and it now faces a zoning appeal on November 2, a Planning Board hearing on November 10, a letter from four members of Congress with an October 29 deadline, and, as of Monday, a town bylaw. Select Board Chair Sean Keogh told the meeting the board had been “unsure of what component of this bylaw will actually get past the attorney general,” the Telegram & Gazette reported, so it wrote the text redundantly on purpose.

The text says in five of its sections that it does not regulate flight, and its fourth section bans every commercial ground end of one.

The Motion Adopted a Handout and Struck One Definition

The motion adopted the bylaw by reference to a handout, because the warrant signed on October 1 carried no text. It passed by simple majority with one amendment, which the Select Board brought itself: the definition of “Public UAS” was struck from Section 2 before the vote.

The motion, as the Telegram & Gazette photographed it on the auditorium screen, read in full:

I move that the Town vote to amend the General Bylaws to add a new Article 34 that regulates unmanned aircraft and unmanned aircraft systems, as set forth in the handout entitled, “Proposed Article 8 General Bylaw Article 34, Unmanned Aircraft Systems – Select Board October 19, 2026 Version,” provided, however, that the term “Public UAS” and definition thereof in Section 2 of such handout shall be stricken.

The version the town posted on its Prime Air page is labeled the October 16 version, and the town says the Select Board finalized the language on Thursday, October 15, after a discussion on October 13. Whether the October 19 handout differed from the posted October 16 text in anything beyond the stricken definition is not on the public record. The Select Board and the Advisory Finance Committee both recommended approval. The meeting was livestreamed to a gymnasium of spectators from neighboring towns, the Telegram & Gazette reported, and residents of those towns could watch but not vote. If anyone from Amazon was in the room, the Telegram & Gazette reported, they did not speak.

The Bylaw Bans Commercial Launch Pads and Drop Zones on Every Lot in Town

Section 4 of Article 34 is the ban. No person shall establish, use or operate any ground-level or rooftop staging point, launch or landing pad, nesting grid or property endpoint for commercial drone takeoff, landing, loading, unloading or delivery. Section 4E bans commercial drop zones on any parcel in town.

Nothing in the section depends on a permit, and a customer’s own say-so does not help. Section 4F says no customer agreement or private waiver can bypass the bylaw’s public-safety protections, and it calls any commercial drone takeoff, landing or delivery destination a public nuisance affecting the entire neighborhood. Section 4G then says nothing in the section regulates the route, altitude or operation of an aircraft in navigable airspace, and Sections 1 and 3 repeat that the town is not touching aviation safety, pilot qualifications, flight paths or altitude. Altitude and flight paths are two of the subjects a federal judge in Boston took away from Newton in 2017, and DroneXL set out why that ruling matters here when the Select Board first looked at North Reading’s hobbyist bylaw.

Section 6 adds a 150-foot (46-meter) buffer between any commercial launch or landing area and any employee parking area, workplace entrance, outdoor break area or pedestrian walkway, and it bars a launch or landing while anyone not taking part is inside that buffer unless they are indoors or in a parked vehicle. Amazon’s pad would take about 27 spaces on the east side of its own parking lot, as the company presented it to the Select Board on August 18. Sections 7 through 10 bar unlawful recording and interference with emergency crews by any operator, hobbyists included, keep town employees from ordering drone deliveries to town property, and leave room for roof inspections, surveys and real estate photography with the owner’s permission. The posted text skips from Section 10 to Section 12, where the police chief enforces the bylaw at $300 per offense under the state’s noncriminal disposition statute, M.G.L. c. 40, § 21D. Section 14 makes every clause severable, which is where I read Keogh’s remark about redundancy.

“We are the stewards of the town’s character,” a representative of the resident group Mass Blue Skies told the meeting, according to the Telegram & Gazette. The group worked with the Select Board on the text. An independent resident survey had already found 92% opposition among 853 respondents by September 28.

The Attorney General Has 90 Days, and Singer v. Newton Is the Test

Under M.G.L. c. 40, § 32, the town clerk has 30 days from the final adjournment of Town Meeting to send the bylaw to the attorney general, who then has 90 days to approve it, disapprove it, or let it take effect by silence.

If the clerk filed on October 20, the attorney general’s window closes on January 18, 2027. If the clerk uses the full 30 days, to November 18, it closes on February 16, 2027, and the attorney general and town counsel can extend it by written agreement for up to 90 more days.

The review asks whether a bylaw conflicts with state or federal law, and the federal half of that question has a Massachusetts answer. In Singer v. City of Newton in 2017, the court struck Newton’s altitude limit, its overflight rule, its line-of-sight requirement and its registration scheme as preempted by federal aviation law, and left the rest of the bylaw standing. Section 3 reads as written around that opinion: it says the bylaw creates no registration system, no pilot licensing, no altitude or flight-path restriction and no aircraft equipment rule, and Section 13 says the Select Board may never adopt one by regulation either.

The Telegram & Gazette described the measure as restricting drones from being flown in navigable airspace. The posted text says the opposite in five sections. Amazon’s likely answer, as I read Singer, is that a flat ban on landing sites regulates the ground end of a federally authorized Part 135 operation, and that is the argument the attorney general will weigh.

Amazon’s Late-October Date Has Slipped and the Town Has Opened a Fourth Front

The Zoning Board of Appeals hears the residents’ appeal of the ruling that the pad is an accessory use of the warehouse on November 2, as DroneXL reported when the appeal was set. The Planning Board voted on October 6 to continue Amazon’s site-plan hearing to November 10.

On October 15, the same meeting that finalized the bylaw, the Select Board authorized the town manager to finish a letter to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and circulate it for signature to the select boards and mayors of the 15 other communities the town lists as impacted, which reach all or part of the 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) circle. The draft, dated October 23, backs the request Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Jim McGovern and Lori Trahan made on October 14 for a site-specific environmental assessment for Westborough, and asks the FAA to require it before authorizing any flight. Thirteen state legislators had already written to the four on October 5 asking what limits federal law places on commercial drone delivery and what federal money exists for noise mitigation.

The FAA’s drone environmental review index listed no Massachusetts document when DroneXL checked it on October 20. Amazon said on September 23 that it did not yet hold the MassDOT landing-area approval it told the town it needs, and neither Amazon nor the town’s page has reported a filing since. The Drone Delivery Tracker lists the Westborough hub as in review, and its Westborough page carries the November dates. Residents can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.” DroneXL’s guide for residents covers what a town can still do once a hub is proposed, and Castle Rock, Colorado, showed another route when it froze drone hub applications for six months.

DroneXL’s Take

Westborough is holding the better hand, and I think Amazon knows it. Five hundred and ten voters against 13 is the town speaking, and it comes on top of an appeal that can send the pad to a special permit the town may deny, a letter 15 neighboring communities are being asked to sign alongside Westborough, four members of Congress, 13 state legislators and a state that is suing the FAA. The late-October launch Amazon hoped for in September cannot happen with a site-plan hearing on November 10, and nothing on the FAA’s index or in the town’s record puts a drone over Otis Street this year.

The bylaw itself is the weakest card in that hand, because Sections 4D and 4E ban a drop zone on a customer’s own lawn, and Keogh said out loud that the board does not know which parts will survive the attorney general. Singer protected land use and the Supreme Judicial Court’s Roma III decision protected zoning of a private landing area, but Article 34 is a general bylaw that prohibits rather than conditions, so I expect the pad and drop-zone ban to get a harder look than the privacy and nuisance sections, and I read the severability clause as the drafters expecting the same. Even a bylaw cut in half would still tell Amazon what one Massachusetts town thinks of a 77.9-pound aircraft with no parachute carrying five-pound consumer orders over their roofs. Medication lowered on a tether from a Zipline P2 would get a different vote from me, and the Zoning Board of Appeals meets on November 2.

Sources: Telegram & Gazette, Proposed Article 8, General Bylaw Article 34, Select Board October 16, 2026 version (PDF), Town of Westborough, Prime Air Drone Delivery Service Application page, 2026 Special Town Meeting warrant (PDF), Select Board agenda, October 15, 2026 (PDF), Draft joint letter to the FAA and Amazon (PDF), State legislators’ letter to the congressional delegation, October 5, 2026 (PDF), M.G.L. c. 40, § 32, Singer v. City of Newton, D. Mass. 2017, FAA drone environmental review index.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Inquirer Calls Police Drones 'Cheaper.' Lower Merion Asked $375,000

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 12:52:00 GMT

Police in Upper Darby and Bensalem, two suburbs on opposite sides of Philadelphia, now send drones to calls before a patrol car gets there, and The Philadelphia Inquirer published the trend on October 20 under a headline that says drones are getting “cheaper and easier to use.” Upper Darby’s aircraft is a Skydio X10 launching from a Skydio dock on the roof of police headquarters, per Skydio’s own case study. In a photo published with the story, a screen on the wall of Bensalem’s command center reads “SkydioX10.”

The story runs through a June car-theft arrest in Upper Darby and a 29% drop in retail theft that Bensalem credits to its drones. It never names a drone maker and never gives a price for anything the two departments fly.

The one dollar figure in it is Lower Merion’s: $375,000, over five years, for a program built around a single docked drone.

Upper Darby Broke Off a Chase and Let a Docked Skydio X10 Finish It

Upper Darby Police called off a high-speed pursuit of a reportedly stolen Nissan Maxima in June and tracked the driver from 400 feet (122 meters) instead. Officers arrested David Graham minutes later on a side street, where he had stopped to work on the car, the Inquirer reports.

Graham was charged with receiving stolen property, fleeing police and related offenses, the Inquirer reported, and the case is pending trial. Superintendent Tim Bernhardt says the department had been warned a car thief from Maryland was coming through the township, and that the drone is what let his officers stop chasing without losing him.

“They don’t hear or see the police coming,” Bernhardt said of suspects watched from above, and the arrest happens without the fight or the flight. Upper Darby stood up a crime intelligence center and a Drone as First Responder program this summer, and Skydio’s own case study on the department names the hardware: the X10 and the Dock for X10. The department has eight drones and more than 20 fixed cameras at intersections, 6abc reported in July, and credited the setup with 15 arrests at a July 4 street takeover.

Bensalem Says Retail Theft Fell 29% Since Its Drones Started Tailing Thieves

Bensalem Township police have flown drones at retail theft calls since 2024. Director of Public Safety William McVey told the Inquirer retail theft is down 29% since then. The closure rate on retail cases has climbed to 75%, so three of every four reported retail thefts are now closed.

McVey cited a thief who stole from a Target in the township, fled on foot, changed clothes, and was still arrested nearby because the drone never lost him. The drones belong to the Bensalem Secure Theft Reduction Taskforce, which also wires frequently hit retailers directly to his officers.

When DroneXL covered Bensalem’s program in May 2024, the aircraft 6abc filmed on the detectives’ table was a DJI enterprise drone. The live feed on the command-center wall in the Inquirer’s photo this week is labeled “SkydioX10.” Bensalem has not said publicly what it replaced or when. The department doubled its drone unit in March with 12 newly trained pilots, and 6abc reported in May that it runs two drones from separate launch points with state money, with a third due this summer and 22 pilots working out of its real-time crime center.

McVey hears that retail theft is too minor to chase with a drone, and his answer is that the store owner would disagree.

Skydio’s 2025 Price List Puts a Docked X10 at $50,547 Before Setup

The only support in the story for the headline’s “cheaper” is one sentence paraphrasing police-tactics scholar Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, that the debate is spreading “as the technology becomes cheaper and easier to use.” Skydio’s February 2025 price list for the NCSA cooperative contract puts numbers on what these departments fly.

That price list puts the Dock for X10 alone at $36,000 MSRP and the X10 Dock Bundle, one dock plus one thermal-equipped X10, at $50,547. Deploying one dock site is a separate $35,250 line. Dock maintenance and repair is $9,900 a year, and the DFR Command license that streams the feed to a dispatcher, with T-Mobile data, lists at $9,960 with no term stated. A handheld X10 Ready Kit, with controller and three batteries, lists at $16,192.

Cincinnati’s Axon contract, which DroneXL broke down in November, works out to about $62,343 per Skydio drone with its dock and support package. Lower Merion’s $375,000 ask covers one Axon-supplied drone and five years of its program, which Superintendent Andy Block pitched at a September budget workshop, the Inquirer reported, citing Bensalem as the model. No vote was taken.

The drone that is cheaper exists, and it is Chinese. A DJI Dock 3 with a thermal Matrice 4TD listed at $23,418 to $26,412 across six US dealers in a September 29 price survey, roughly half the Skydio bundle’s list price before Skydio’s deployment fee, and agencies on the NCSA contract pay 6% under list. DJI’s spec sheet gives the Matrice 4TD 54 minutes of flight; Skydio’s gives the X10 40. Police departments can still buy that Dock 3 today because the FCC authorized it before it put every foreign drone on its Covered List in December, but a 100% tariff on imported thermal drones and docking stations has applied since September 3, and the FCC’s pending Docket 26-189 would stop further imports of docking stations outright.

That is the choice the Inquirer’s headline skips. My read is that these departments are not buying because drones got cheap. They are buying the American drone Washington left them, at American prices, and at least two have moved to Skydio docks: Bensalem, which showed 6abc a DJI in 2024 and now has a Skydio X10 feed on its command-center wall, and Montgomery County, Maryland, which rebuilt its program around docked X10s in July.

Philadelphia Flies 21 Drones More Than 8,000 Times With No Independent Oversight

Philadelphia Police have 21 drones. They had flown nearly 8,000 missions by April, more than 8,000 by this week, and unlike Boston or Los Angeles the city has no independent oversight, the Inquirer found in April. Nine of them were donated by the Philadelphia Police Foundation, Councilmember Rue Landau says.

That donation is how the program skipped Council, in Landau’s account. The department says drone footage was the primary evidence in 15 arrests but has declined to identify any of those 15 arrests or the people arrested. Commissioner Kevin Bethel agreed in April to produce an annual drone report for Council after Landau and Kenyatta Johnson pressed him at a budget hearing. The April investigation identified one of the city’s aircraft as a Skydio X10.

Ferguson, author of Your Data Will Be Used Against You, told the Inquirer the pattern repeats nationally: departments adopt the technology first and set limits only after residents find out. “I think it feels both practical and dystopian at the same time,” he said. Lower Merion’s commissioners split the same way in September, with Maggie Harper Epstein calling it “a tough thing to communicate to the residents” and Charles Gregory calling it a no-brainer.

Bernhardt and McVey both say the answer is the flight log. “Everything we do is categorized and documented,” McVey said, inviting anyone who suspects his drones fly over houses to ask the department. Bensalem told 6abc in May it does not fly over homes and uses thermal mostly at night to find people.

DroneXL’s Take

The Inquirer wrote a good story about two police departments and hung a headline on it that its own reporting does not support. Drones did get cheaper and easier to use, but the drone that got cheaper is the DJI, and these departments are flying Skydio at twice the price and 14 minutes less flight time. In May 2025 an NYPD X10 crashed onto a Brooklyn precinct roof after a worn battery connector failed, and its ejected battery caught fire. The story does not say what Upper Darby paid. I would have asked, because the answer tests the headline.

Skydio’s dock and its autonomy software are what make a program like Upper Darby’s run without a pilot standing on the roof, and that is worth paying for. It is not cheap, and no one should tell Lower Merion’s taxpayers it is. The $375,000 their superintendent wants for a program built around a single docked drone is the real price of American drone policy: the FCC shut the door on new foreign models and proposes shutting it on dock imports, the tariff put a 100% duty on what still comes in, and Skydio’s February 2025 list prices were already there before either policy. I think that is why Skydio can hold them. If a reporter wants to test the “cheaper” claim, the public records request is one line long: the purchase order.

Sources: The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 20, 2026, The Philadelphia Inquirer of April 13, April 14 and September 11, 2026, 6abc, Patch, Skydio NCSA price list, Dronebundle price survey of September 29, DJI Enterprise, Skydio.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

DJI Osmo Pocket 4P Video Lists ActiveTrack 9.0, Press Release Says 8.0

Haye Kesteloo — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 12:49:00 GMT

DJI put the Pearl White Osmo Pocket 4P on sale today at 12 PM GMT, at £529 for the Standard Combo in the UK, the price the black model has carried since the July 30 global launch. The launch video DJI posted to YouTube this morning walks through the camera’s spec list over footage shot around London, and the United States is missing from the availability list for the third Pocket launch this year.

The video’s fine print names firmware 01.02.12.01, ActiveTrack 9.0 and 18x digital zoom. DJI’s press release for the same launch, issued at 8 AM Eastern, says ActiveTrack 8.0 and 12x.

The Launch Video Advertises Zoom And Tracking DJI’s Spec Sheets Do Not Carry

The video’s disclaimers say 18x digital zoom and ActiveTrack 9.0 “require updating the device to firmware 01.02.12.01 or later.” No release notes for it are public. The newest Pocket 4P firmware third-party trackers list is 01.01.71.31 from September 3, and DJI’s downloads page returns a 404 from the United States.

Every spec sheet DroneXL has seen for this camera tops out at 12x zoom and ActiveTrack 8.0, from the China launch on June 15 through today’s press release. The rest of the video’s fine print matches the known hardware. Slow motion runs to 4K/240fps on the wide camera and 4K/200fps on the telephoto, the 17 stops apply in D-Log 2 only, and Film Tone and in-camera Beautify work in video mode only and never together. The 18x zoom is unavailable in Panorama, Slow Motion and Timelapse, and ActiveTrack drops out in Panorama, Timelapse, Motionlapse, SpinShot and horizontal FPV mode.

The 60mm telephoto at 3x optical zoom, shot above the City of London for DJI's launch video. Photo credit: DJI

DJI has done this on this camera before. In September, Pocket 4P owners in Japan found that the FrameTap remote and a DJI Mic could connect at once under firmware 01.01.71.31, a change no DJI changelog listed.

Pearl White Costs The Same As Black And Skips The US Again

The Standard Combo lists at £529 through store.dji.com and DJI retailers, with the fill light, wrist strap, threaded handle and carrying pouch finished in white to match the mica-based shell DroneXL described when DJI set the date last week. The press release names no US price and no US retailer.

The white 4P's stacked cameras: a 60mm f/1.8 telephoto on a 1/1.28-inch sensor above the 20mm f/2.0 wide lens on a 1-inch sensor. Photo credit: DJI

DJI’s US product page for the Pocket 4P still ended on “Sorry, the page was not found” when DroneXL opened it this morning, as it did on October 15. DJI has been on the FCC Covered List since December 22, 2025, which keeps new DJI hardware from the equipment authorization it needs for legal US sale. The black 4P reached American buyers through an importer on Amazon, where DroneXL found it listed at $980 on July 29 with the unit activated before export.

DroneXL’s Take

DJI is advertising a firmware nobody can download. Either 01.02.12.01 is about to ship with ActiveTrack 9.0 and 18x digital zoom, or the fine print under a model’s face is wrong, and DJI’s own press release from the same hour picks the old numbers. My read is that the firmware is real and close, because DJI’s launch videos carry legal disclaimers, not wishes. That upgrade matters more to anyone who already owns a black 4P than a white shell does, and DJI printed it in six-point type. If you own a 4P, I’d watch DJI Mimo for 01.02.12.01, because the changelog may not say what it does when it arrives. American buyers can skip the vigil. A new paint job changes nothing on the Covered List, and the camera in the video is still one no US retailer can sell.

Sources: DJI on YouTube, DJI press release via PR Newswire, DJI UK press release via Mynewsdesk, Newsshooter firmware roundup

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.

Iowa Sheriff's Thermal Drone Finds Crash Driver Unhurt in a Field

Haye Kesteloo — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 23:16:00 GMT

Webster County sheriff’s deputies in Iowa used a thermal drone to find a driver who had vanished from a crash scene near Harcourt over the weekend. The vehicle was empty when deputies arrived, and the damage was bad enough that they feared the driver had been thrown clear. The drone found the driver quickly, and the driver was not injured.

The frame the sheriff’s office released shows what the deputies saw. Rows of standing crop, corn by the look of the leaves, shot straight down in grayscale, with one body-shaped heat signature between the rows picked out in red. The office released no cause and no road, and it has not said which drone flew or who flew it.

Webster County’s own records answer part of that. The county bought a thermal drone in January 2020 with money from the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the sheriff told voters in 2024 that the office now has three certified pilots.

Dakota Access Pipeline Money Bought Webster County a Thermal Drone in 2020

Dakota Access Pipeline, LLC gave $20,000 to every county emergency management agency on its Iowa route in October 2019. Webster County’s emergency management commission moved on January 16, 2020 to spend its share on a drone with a thermal imaging camera. The low bidder was Alex Air Apparatus.

Emergency Management Coordinator Dylan Hagen told KWBG on October 18, 2019 that the county would buy new equipment, and that it could include a drone with a FLIR thermal camera. The donation came to $360,000 across the route. Three months later the commission’s minutes record three quotes for drones with thermal imaging cameras, a low bid from Alex Air Apparatus of New London, Minnesota, and a motion and second to buy. The minutes name no model and no price.

The drone became a program. By October 2022 the commission’s agenda listed a “Drone Team” among its ongoing projects, next to a storage facility and an ATV. When Sheriff Luke Fleener announced his reelection campaign in January 2024, he told The Messenger the office had partnered with Webster County Emergency Management to create a drone team, with three certified drone pilots on the sheriff’s staff. Fleener was elected in 2020 and took office in January 2021.

Deputy Nick Dunbar Took Up the Drone After the 2013 Kathlynn Shepard Abduction

Deputy Nick Dunbar, the sheriff’s office’s most visible drone pilot, was Dayton’s police chief in 2013 when 15-year-old Kathlynn Shepard was abducted and murdered there, and he told The Freeman Journal in November 2024 that the case changed the course of his career.

Dunbar led the local search for Shepard and ran the incident command center for days. Afterward he took the FBI’s Child Abduction Response training in 2020, one of a handful of Iowa officers to do so, and earned his drone pilot’s license so he could fly search and rescue missions. “That incident changed how I perceive my job,” he told the Freeman Journal. The paper reported that he searched the Farnhamville area three times with his drones during the hunt for Michele “Luna” Jackson.

He flies crash scenes too. The Messenger photographed him landing a sheriff’s office drone at a fatal crash on South 32nd Street in Fort Dodge in March 2024. Hagen flies as well, and The Messenger credited him for a drone photo of a Fort Dodge crowd in August 2023.

Iowa Sheriffs Keep Buying the Thermal Drones the FCC Wants to Stop Importing

The Emmet County Sheriff’s Office in northwest Iowa took delivery of two thermal drones the week of October 6, bought with grant money and support from the Estherville Chamber of Commerce and the Emmet County Community Foundation. Story County and Eldora have put theirs to the same use this year.

Emmet County told KTIV the thermal cameras matter most when searching large fields, wooded areas and waterways in the dark. In February a Story County thermal drone, from a team that flies the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced, found an injured man in a ravine south of Story City and relayed his coordinates to paramedics. In June an Eldora police drone with a thermal camera found a felony suspect lying in tall grass within minutes. Harcourt makes three Iowa thermal finds DroneXL has covered since February. Webster County has not named its aircraft, and the January 2020 minutes name only the vendor, so whether the Harcourt search flew the 2020 purchase or a newer drone is the one thing the record does not settle.

The question matters because of what Washington is doing to the supply. The Federal Communications Commission put every foreign-made drone on its Covered List on December 22, 2025, which blocks new DJI models from the equipment authorization they need to be sold in the United States. On July 21 the commission’s bureaus asked whether to bar the import and sale of foreign drones with “military-grade” capabilities, a list that includes any aircraft with a thermal camera, and the Section 232 proclamation has taxed imported drones with integrated thermal imagers at 100 percent since September 3. Weber County Search and Rescue’s Kyle Nordfors told The Hill this month that the US-made drones he has flown cost three to eight times as much and carry weaker thermal sensors.

DroneXL’s Take

A $20,000 check from a pipeline company bought Webster County a thermal camera in the sky in 2020. This weekend that program found someone the deputies thought might be lying dead in a field. I can’t think of a shorter argument for public safety drones than that.

Iowans are not soft on surveillance. Last month someone put a large-caliber round through a county construction camera near the Fort Dodge airport, and a week later it was vandalized again, because websites listed it as a Flock license plate reader. Fleener had to tell The Messenger that his office runs no plate readers at all. A drone looking straight down at a field for a crash victim is the use none of those people object to, and the FCC’s thermal-drone proposal lands on exactly that camera.

I don’t know whether the aircraft over Harcourt was the 2020 purchase or something newer, because the sheriff’s office has not said. Either way the next one costs more. If the FCC adopts its July proposal, thermal-drone imports stop after the wind-down it proposed, and the next county that spends a pipeline-sized donation gets a weaker camera for the money.

Sources: Iowa Pulse, KWBG, Webster County Emergency Management Commission minutes, January 16, 2020, Webster County Emergency Management Commission agenda, October 20, 2022, The Messenger, The Freeman Journal, Northwest Iowa Now, Webster County Sheriff’s Office

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.