Question 1

I am confused, some pictures show rings around blades other show exposed blades, why ?

Accepted Answer

Well.. The drone comes with two shells or bodies.. The one with those rings is an indoor body that allows you to fly this indoors.. It adds protection, saves the blades themselves as well as stuff in your house, including the people you might fly into. It is extremely helpful; I say that from experience..

The outdoor hull is probably a little lighter and perhaps allows better performance cause of better aerodynamics also maybe? I'm not sure, however you can choose to use it when flying outdoors, especially once you've mastered control..

Question 2

What is the average flight time per charge and the distance from controlling device that it will operate... also, what happens with loss of signal?

Accepted Answer

Avg flight time depends on which battery you get since there is now a official "long" lasting Parrot battery. With the stock battery I got about 10 minutes. But it really depends on what you do. Flips for instance take a lot of juice from the battery and if you add things to your drone you increase the payload and reduce battery. so it depends. but expect about 10-12 minutes.

With the longer battery you get 50% more time (or so they say). so maybe 15-20 minutes?

Not sure on exact distance, but it's standard wifi. so not too far. It'll go pretty high but you risk possibly losing signal. Which leads me to....

Loss of signal  again depends. They have a GPS dongle you can attach to the drone that would make it theoritacally come back to it's "HOME", but in most cases if you lose signal and it's a windy day then consider the rest of your day a drone search. You can read up on the various instances on the Parrot forumns, but some people have lost it in trees and others have said it will eventually just drop around them.

Question 3

FAA has regulation on UAV, is this legal to use outdoor?

Accepted Answer

I don't know, however it's been selling for years now by Parrot, which is a proper brand. I don't think this should be an issue.

If you wanna check yourself, why don't you mail customer support on parrots website? If an issue arises you can quote their mail.

Sorry that's all i can say.

With this recent stuff about amazon coming up, we can't be too sure. You should note however that the ar drone is a recreational device. It hasn't been designed for surveillance. It has a short range, no mic for audio (I think), isn't silent when flying.. Stuff like that doesn't make an extreme surveillance device. So yea. Just keep that in mind.

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