Good day! Today we're going to go over drone night flight requirements for both
recreational and Part 107 pilots and how this little guy the VIFLY strobe can not only help
you meet those requirements but could help you out during the day too! Now's a good
time to hit that thumbs up button below and subscribe to your TMac FPV channel
your home for your Journey to Better FPV fun, flights, and racing stuff!
First, let's take a look at this VIFLY strobe, it's features, and how easy it is to operate
then I'll get into the drone night flight requirements and how you might want to use this
little VIFLY strobe. Here's what you get in the box. You get the strobe itself, a USB to micro USB
charging cable, a couple pieces of 3M dual lock, and a nice little user manual for both operations
and charging. The first thing I noticed about this thing is how small it is.
It comes in at 28 by 15 by nine. If you include the button at top,
about 12. I was also surprised to find out how lightweight it is,
coming in at less than six grams. This is important for us FPV pilots who fly micro FPV
drones four inches and below, or especially if you want to keep any of your aircraft under the 250
gram limit. Comparing the VIFLY strobe's weight to that of similar type drone strobes it's easily the
lightest weight. Next, we can compare its cost. This little VIFLY strobe currently runs about $15
whereas other drone strobe lights cost two to four times as much. So you could get three or
four of these VIFLY strobes for the price of one of those others. Keep that in mind because
in a bit I'm going to show you why that may be something you want to think about doing.
Of course, it's the smallest, the lightest weight and least expensive, but does it work? Well,
let's see how this VIFLY strobe actually works. First, we're going to charge it up using the micro
USB. The red light comes on when it's charging and it goes out when it's fully charged. It
charges up fairly quickly and it takes about one and a half hours. That charge lasts about four
hours in the strobe mode continuously. Alright, now that it's charged up with the red light off
to turn it both on and off we long press this button.
It has three modes – strobe, a slower consistent flashing mode, and also a continuous on mode.
To switch modes, we short press this button to go from one to another. We're on strobe now,
push the button and we're on the slower consistent flashing mode and if we push the button again
it's in its continuous on mode. It also has three different colors - white with three LEDs you see
here, red with one LED (and there's three modes for this color as well), and it also has green
with the three different modes and one LED. We'll long press to turn it off.
Another feature this VIFLY strobe has is it remembers its last
setting you use, so when you turn it on, it automatically powers up in that setting.
Remember we just turned it off when it was in the continuous on mode in green?
There it is! The same mode we had when we turned it off. That's nice! So, how bright is this? Well,
VIFLY says it meets FAA requirements to be seen for at least three statute miles
and they've confirmed this using a DJI Mavic Air 2 flight. I have a light meter available
to measure its illumination in terms of lux. So, let's check it out. First of all we're going to
take a look at what the ambient light measures in lux by taking this cover off the light meter.
Then, we'll subtract that number from the overall value that this gives when it's powered on.
Now, keep in mind I'm on my workbench sitting next to an open window and it's a fairly sunny day out.
On top of that, I've got the overhead light on in this room. So, in this range we're getting a value
of about 1380 lux. Now, I'm gonna have to change the range on this meter in order to measure lux
from the VIFLY strobe because it's so bright it'll basically blank the screen out. So,
by changing the range, remember this is about 1370 1380 . . . I'm going to click it once and
you'll see it comes up to times 10. So this 13 . . . so this 135 times 10 would be 1350.
So, that's the range we're probably going to need to use for our VIFLY strobe. Let's check
it out. Turn it on and in order to measure it I'm going to put the sensor perpendicular to
the light which is what you're supposed to do with the meter. We're going to turn this on.
We are reading at this distance about 3800 – 3900. Remember this is times 10. So, 3900 - 4 000
and we can compare that value 3900 to 4000 to the IES table of recommended lighting values.
By the way, IES stands for illuminating engineering society. They're just a bunch
of really "bright" guys! Anyway, typical values for lux in various situations I've displayed on
the screen and you can compare the lux values that we just measured of 3900 to 4000 from the
VIFLY strobe to those. You can see that, in addition to nice features, it's super bright!
Now, let's see why we might want or need to use it. Now we'll go over the drone
night flight requirements according to the U.S. FAA. If you're outside of the
U.S. I encourage you to become familiar with and follow your own country's rules and regulations.
When you're flying in the U.S. the drone night flight requirements are going to differ slightly
between whether you're flying recreationally (just for fun) or for non-recreational purposes. Tese
requirements are really on a per-flight basis. What do I mean by that? Well, I can be (and
am) an FAA certified remote pilot with a small unmanned aircraft systems or sUAS rating. However,
if I'm conducting a flight only for fun the requirements I need to meet are different than if
that particular flight was for non-recreational purposes. The three categories of requirements
I'm going to go over pertain to the type of training and knowledge you're required to have,
the equipment you're required to have, and the rules and regulations you're required to follow.
We'll start with training. For recreational flights and pilots only, you're required to take
"The Recreational UAS Safety Training" and test or TRUST and pass the short multiple choice test.
This online training is free, takes about 20 minutes to complete, and you're really not able
to fail the provided test because they tell you what you got wrong and you have the opportunity
to correct it. Once completed, you'll immediately be issued a certificate of completion which you're
required to have as proof of test passage and make it available to FAA or law enforcement
representatives upon request. This is really the FAA's way of trying to ensure that everyone who
flies a drone in the U.S. has some sort of basic safety knowledge baseline. It's really simple to
take the training. I myself have completed it recently. In my opinion, it's always good to
enhance your knowledge. If you're conducting a drone night flight for non-recreational purposes
then you'll need to either have passed the initial Part 107 exam or the required recurring
training after passing the initial exam after April 6 2021. I'll use myself as an example.
I passed the initial Part 107 exam and became an FAA certified remote pilot back in August of 2020.
Normally, I wouldn't need to take the recurring training for another two years. However,
with a new rule coming into effect for "Operations of sUAS Over People" which includes night flight
operations (not necessarily over people), I am required to take the new recurring training
if I wanted to fly legally at night. So, recently I've completed that training also.
It was online and free and took a total for me of about two hours both the training content
and taking the test. Once again, you're issued a certificate which you're required to have and
make available to FAA and law enforcement reps upon request as proof of completion. The next
category we'll take a look at is if there's any specific lighting requirements for recreational
and non-recreational flights. Through my research, I've discovered there's not really
any additional specific lighting requirements for recreational night flights. However, just
as with flights during the day, you are required to keep your drone within visual line of sight
or VLOS of yourself or your visual observer. Of course, if you want to increase your visual
line of sight distance (and this applies for both night and day operations as I'll
demonstrate here shortly), it's probably a good idea to have some lighting on your drone
like the VIFLY strobe. If you're conducting a drone night flight for non-recreational purposes,
as I'll be doing here shortly, there are specific lighting requirements for you to follow.
In addition to keeping your drone within VLOS of yourself or your visual observer in accordance
with part 107.31 which includes location, altitude, attitude, and direction of flight you're
also required to have anti-collision lighting that is visible for at least three statute miles with a
flash rate sufficient to avoid collision per part 107.29. This is required for both night flights
and flights during civil twilight which is defined below. The last category of requirements we'll
take a look at are the rules and regulations. For recreational flights, these are covered in
49 United States Code 44809 which states your aircraft needs to operate in accordance with
or within the programming of a community-based organization's set of safety guidelines. To date,
the FAA has not officially recognized any community-based organizations. So, you're supposed
to follow the safety guidelines on the FAA website or those of an existing organization such as the
FPV Freedom Coalition (or FPVFC whose site I've got a link to in the description below), the AMA,
and/or the FAA Advisory Circular 91-57B which is also linked below. For non-recreational flights,
of course, you're required to follow everything in 14 CFR Part 107. This and all of the resources and
documents I've mentioned I've made available to you in this video's description below. Now that
we've covered the three categories of requirements for both recreational and non-recreational
night flights, let's go outside and see how the VIFLY strobe can help us meet the lighting
requirements for night flights and extend our VLOS distance both at night and during the day!
All right, it's about four o'clock p.m. local.
I'm just gonna take my Nexus build and hover somewhere over here in the corner of my front
yard without the use of the VIFLY strobe we'll see how easy it is to see the quad.
I'm heading out over to the corner of the front yard
and I've turned around facing the camera. I don't even know if you can see the quad
from this distance away in the middle of the day. I'm going to come back and land
and slap the VIFLY strobe on the quad and we'll do the same thing to see how easy it is to see then.
All right, this time I've got the VIFLY strobe strapped onto the front of the quad
and I'll be using the white light in the steady on mode.
We'll see if this makes a difference and you can actually see it during the middle of the day.
So, all right I've turned around and I'm facing the camera.
I'll put this up side by side with the first flight see if you can tell the
Difference.
All right, this is our fly spot. It's almost twilight
and I'm gonna be flying alongside this road (it's a country road with no traffic on it)
up towards that hill up there which is about a little over 300 meters.
I
hope you found this "enlightening." Thanks for your time. I'll catch you next video.
Clear skies friend!