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Take detailed notes before your next auction. If you try to put a drone up for sale on eBay, you’d better include your legal expenses in the asking price.
I wasn't sure about that either so I read the article. It says "full waypoint capability" is what makes it illegal. Actually I don't think it would be that hard to hook a $99 cell phone up to an RC plane and get the plane to follow waypoints in the phone's GPS. The article doesn't say whether you can do that yourself or not, it just says you can't sell it.
Originally posted by no special characters
Not sure why a RC plane (ok it's quite tech) is illegal.
I think you're probably thinking of this:
Originally posted by earthdude
I was told that civilian GPS is purposly off by a few feet to keep military GPS on top for targeting.
The WAAS gets accuracy to within about 25 feet. The military may have even more advanced augmentation systems, I don't know what accuracy they can attain.
Initially, the highest quality signal was reserved for military use, and the signal available for civilian use was intentionally degraded ("Selective Availability", SA). This changed with President Bill Clinton ordering Selective Availability to be turned off at midnight May 1, 2000, improving the precision of civilian GPS from 100 meters (about 300 feet) to 20 meters (about 65 feet)....As of 2006, even low-cost units commonly include Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) receivers.
That plane doesn't look big enough to fly above 11 miles high. If it was, I could understand a restriction like this:
Maybe there is a chip, or software in this toy plane that is the thing they want to keep from the public. It is not really a weapon, but I bet it could be weaponized.
At least that one I understand.
All GPS receivers capable of functioning above 18 kilometres (11 mi) altitude and 515 metres per second (1,001 kn)[48] are classified as munitions (weapons) for which U.S. State Department export licenses are required. These limits attempt to prevent use of a receiver in a ballistic missile.