Frequently asked questions
How does the tool find a good FPV spot?
It lays a grid over your search area – one point every 150 metres by default – and rates every point twice: how few people are likely to be there, and how good the flying is. It weighs the distance to buildings, residential areas, roads, paths, signposted hiking and cycling routes, popular destinations, power lines and railways, plus the land use at the spot itself.
Am I allowed to fly at a suggested spot?
The tool cannot decide that and does not claim to. The rating is a heuristic over open map data. Whether you may fly depends on the EU drone regulation (2019/947), national law, geographical UAS zones and current NOTAMs. Check before every flight – in Germany most easily on dipul.de. Every spot in the finder links straight to it.
Why is a point greyed out or blocked?
It breaks a hard rule: less than 150 metres from a residential, commercial or recreational area (following EU category A3), too close to buildings, roads or railways, inside a nature reserve or near an aerodrome. Such points stay visible so you can see why an area is ruled out.
What are the reasons shown for each spot?
Instead of a bare number you see why a place scores well – "nearest path 420 m away" or "open terrain". That lets you check the rating on the satellite image and on the ground.
What does the time profile do?
A farm track on a Tuesday morning is not the same place on a Sunday afternoon. The time profile weighs paths, destinations and recreational land by day and time. By default the finder picks the profile that matches right now.
How current and accurate is the data?
Map data comes from OpenStreetMap and is re-imported regularly. In well-mapped areas the results are very usable; in sparsely mapped ones an area can look empty although something is there. Look at a spot on the satellite image and in person before your first flight.
Which areas are covered?
All of Germany. Searches near the edge work, but points beyond the border are not rated.
Where does the flight weather come from?
For the selected spot your browser asks Open-Meteo directly for the forecast: wind and gusts at 10 and 80 metres, chance of rain, temperature and sunset. The traffic light is a rough guide for small quads, not a weather briefing.
Does it cost anything, and what happens to my data?
Nothing and nothing: no sign-up, no cookies, no ads, no tracking. Your location is sent to the server for the search only and is not stored. If you want to help with the server costs you can, voluntarily – it changes nothing about the features.
Can I tune the rating or run it myself?
Partly: under "Expert" in the finder you can set radius, grid and time profile. To set the weighting yourself, run your own instance – there is a ready Docker image, every weight lives in one file, and the source is free (AGPL-3.0).