Daily Flight Check

Today's KC Drone Flight Light

The same daily drone flight condition color posted on Facebook each morning, right here on the home page. One look tells you whether today is a flying day in Kansas City.

Saturday, October 31, 2026

GREEN

Today's light is green. Conditions look good for flying in the KC metro. Still check your airspace and fly safe. The light is updated every morning. Winds 6 mph, gusts to 19.

Brought to you by AHP Servicing LLC

What's Buzzing

Drone News

The big stories in the drone world this week, rounded up plain and simple. If it affects the rig in your trunk or the rules over your favorite field, it lands here.

↻ Week of October 26, 2026 — updated October 31, 2026.

Rules

Part 107 Test Changed October 26, Flying Rules Did Not

Heads up if you are studying for your Part 107, or know somebody who is. Starting October 26, the FAA knowledge test includes image based questions built from current sectional charts, not just the figures in the printed testing supplement. The rules, topics, 60 questions, two hours, and 70 percent to pass did not change, and the supplement is still handed out for now. Translation: memorizing figure numbers will not cut it anymore, you have to actually read a chart you have never seen. If you already hold your certificate, this does not change how you fly.

Rules

FCC Opens 800 MHz to Drones, BVLOS Still Waits on Part 108

On October 29 the FCC voted 3 to 0, Report and Order FCC 26-72, to let drones use the 800 MHz cellular band for command, control, communication, and payload links, ending a 1991 airborne ban on 50 MHz of licensed spectrum. That is a connectivity move, not a flight permission. Routine beyond visual line of sight flight still waits on the FAA and its Part 108 rule, which federal law requires by December 7 and which had not been published as of this week. Until Part 108 is final, BVLOS still means a waiver or an exemption.

New Gear

Autel EVO Lite Enterprise Gets Its First Firmware in 17 Months

Autel pushed a fresh update for the EVO Lite Enterprise 640T and 6K, aircraft firmware v1.0.3.154 with Autel Enterprise App v1.4.280, reported October 26 and 27. Autel lists three things: optimized flight performance, an optimized online map service, and bug fixes, with no new headline feature. It is the first update for the line since May 2025, so if you fly one, plan about 20 minutes, keep everything powered and paired, and install it before your next job, not at the job.

FPV

DJI Avata 360 Gets Waypoints, a First for the Avata Line

DJI firmware v01.00.0800 for the Avata 360, notes dated October 20, adds Waypoint Flight, zoom inside FocusTrack, and support for the RC Pro 2 controller, which needs its own firmware update to work. Neither the original Avata nor the Avata 2 ever got waypoints, so this is a real line in the sand for the family. One practical warning from DJI's own notes: the update can reset your return to home altitude and maximum flight distance, so write both down before you tap update.

Military

Army Paratroopers Fly Armed FPV in Alaska Live Fire

The Army reported this week that paratroopers with the 11th Airborne Division in Alaska integrated armed FPV drones with reconnaissance, sniper teams, and gun trucks in live fire exercises at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, including the first kinetic drone strike inside the Richardson Training Area. The training ran October 19 and 20, with an earlier session September 29. It is one more sign the small FPV skills hobby pilots practice on weekends are now a standard part of how soldiers train, even if the Army did not name the drone model it used.

Previous Roundup

First Person View

FPV Corner

FPV means you fly from inside the drone. Goggles on, sticks in hand, and the quad becomes your eyes. It is the closest thing to growing wings that a hobby budget buys, and it will humble you for the first month. Worth every crash.

Start Here

Tiny Whoops

Little 65mm and 75mm ducted quads you can fly around the house, under chairs, and through the kitchen without breaking anything more expensive than your pride. Cheap, tough, and the best first FPV drone there is. Winter in Kansas City was made for whoop season.

The Classic

5 Inch Freestyle

The workhorse of FPV. A 5 inch freestyle quad will do flips over a bando, dive a parking garage, and carry an action camera while it does it. This is where most pilots end up living. Buy spare arms and props. You will need them. That is not a warning, it is a schedule.

Smooth

Cinewhoops

Ducted, guarded, and gentle. Cinewhoops exist to fly slowly through tight spaces and come home with smooth footage: through a doorway, over a wedding crowd, down a hallway. Less adrenaline, more artistry. If freestyle is a dirt bike, a cinewhoop is a camera dolly that flies.

Starter Tips From the Field

The Big Birds

Military Drones

Before drones were a hobby, they were military hardware, and the military side of the family is still where the wildest engineering lives. A plain look at the systems everybody has heard of, from public information.

Strike & Surveillance

MQ-9 Reaper

The Reaper is the best known armed drone in the world. Built by General Atomics, it flies long endurance missions, roughly 27 hours or more depending on configuration, carrying cameras, radar, and precision weapons on the same airframe. A pilot and sensor operator fly it by satellite link from a ground station that can be on the other side of the planet from the airplane. It grew out of the smaller Predator and has been a fixture of U.S. operations for years.

High Altitude ISR

RQ-4 Global Hawk

The Global Hawk is the marathon runner of the drone world. Northrop Grumman's big jet flies above 60,000 feet and can stay up for more than 30 hours, mapping huge areas with radar and cameras in almost any weather. It carries no weapons. Its whole job is to watch, and it watches from so high that the curvature of the planet is part of the view. The Navy flies a sea-going cousin called the Triton.

Loitering Munition

Switchblade

The Switchblade, made by AeroVironment, blurs the line between drone and missile. It launches from a tube, flies out under operator control with a camera in the nose, and is designed to dive onto its target. The small 300 model is man-portable and aimed at soft targets; the larger 600 carries an anti-armor warhead. Soldiers on the ground nicknamed this class of weapon the kamikaze drone, and the concept has spread worldwide.

Front Line

FPV Drones in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine changed what everybody thought small drones were for. Both sides have used enormous numbers of cheap first-person-view drones, adapted from hobby and racing designs, for reconnaissance and as precision strike weapons. The conflict has pushed rapid innovation in jamming, counter-jamming, fiber-optic-controlled drones that cannot be jammed, and mass production of airframes that cost a tiny fraction of traditional munitions. Students of warfare now study it as the first true drone war.

Stories From the KC Sky

The Flying Blog

Notes from one Kansas City pilot's logbook. New posts as the flying happens.

Flying the Riverfront Without Making the FAA Mad

By Alan — Kansas City, Part 107

There is not a prettier place in this metro to put a drone up than along the Missouri River. The bridges, the downtown skyline behind you, the river bending around the bottoms. On a calm evening it looks like a postcard somebody left lying around for us.

It is also exactly the kind of place where you have to do your homework, because Kansas City airspace is a layer cake. We sit between two busy airports, neighborhoods pack both banks, and controlled airspace reaches right down over some of the spots everybody wants to fly. None of that means no. It just means you check first.

My routine never changes. Before I ever leave the house I pull up Aloft and look at the map for the exact spot I want to fly. If the grid says I need authorization, I request it through LAANC right in the app, and most of the time the approval comes back in seconds for the altitude the grid allows. Then I check again at the truck, because airspace has a sense of humor and temporary restrictions pop up around stadiums, events, and visiting dignitaries.

That five minutes of checking is the whole trick. Pilots get in trouble along the riverfront for the same reason boaters get in trouble on the river: they assumed it was fine because it looked fine. Do the check, fly the mission you were approved for, and the riverfront will give you the best footage in the metro. Legally. Which is the only way it counts.

The Night a Thermal Camera Found a Dog

By Alan — Kansas City, Part 107

People ask me what the thermal drone is really for, and the honest answer is the nights when somebody's dog is missing. A lost dog does not run in a straight line and it does not answer when you call, not when it is scared. It beds down in brush, in a ditch, under a deck, and it goes invisible. To your eyes, anyway.

A thermal camera sees heat, not light. On a cool night, a dog is a bright little signature against cold ground, and from 200 feet up you can search a field in minutes that would take a crew on foot all night to walk. I have watched that bright spot on my screen resolve into ears and a tail more times than I can count now, and the feeling does not get old.

The work is not glamorous. It is cold parking lots, methodical grid patterns, and coordinating with the owner on the ground so the dog does not bolt when people rush in. The drone finds; people recover. That order matters. A scared dog will run from the very people it loves, so the last hundred yards belong to patience, not technology.

I fly cameras and mapping gear in the daylight. But if you ask me which flights I think about on the drive home, it is the night ones, with a family standing in a driveway watching a screen, hoping that bright spot is theirs. Sometimes it is. Those are the good nights.

Rules Watch

Drone Ban Watch

Ban talk moves fast, and the headlines are usually louder than the facts. This is the running log of what is actually on the books, what is only proposed, and what any of it means for pilots here. Plain language, no hype.

DJI, the FCC Covered List, and Your Next Drone

Explainer — October 2026

The federal fight over Chinese-made drones runs through a list most pilots have heard of by now: the FCC's Covered List. DJI was placed on that list in 2022 under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act. Being listed means the FCC cannot grant equipment authorization to new covered equipment from that company, and that authorization is what a radio-equipped product needs before it can be sold in the United States.

On top of that, the defense bill signed in late 2024, the FY2025 NDAA, ordered a national security review of DJI and Autel on a deadline, with tighter restrictions on the table depending on how that review goes. Bills for an outright import and sales ban have also been introduced in Congress. As of this writing, that is where things stand: a real restriction fight, aimed at future sales, still being argued in Washington.

What none of it does is reach into your gear bag. Drones already sold and already authorized are not banned, not confiscated, and not grounded. The FAA rules you fly under, registration, Remote ID, LAANC, Part 107, are unchanged by the Covered List fight.

What it means for KC pilots: fly what you own, same as always. The risk lands on your next purchase. New models, parts, and long-term support could get harder to find, so buy from established dealers and keep your receipts.

Kansas and Missouri: Targeted Laws, Not a Blanket Ban

Explainer — October 2026

Neither Kansas nor Missouri has banned recreational drone flying statewide, and neither state really can. The FAA controls the airspace, and that is federal. What both states have done instead is pass narrower laws aimed at specific places and specific behavior.

The pattern is the same on both sides of the state line: criminal penalties for flying over or near correctional facilities and jails, protections for critical infrastructure like power plants, water facilities, and refineries, and privacy provisions aimed at using a drone to spy on or harass people. Ordinary hobby flying is left to the federal rules.

What it means for KC pilots: your normal weekend flying is not a state crime, and nobody is coming for it. Just treat prisons, jails, power plants, and water treatment sites as hard no-fly zones whether or not your app flags them, because those are exactly the places state law covers.

The Rule That Actually Bites in KC: Where You Take Off

Explainer — October 2026

Ask local pilots where they have actually run into trouble and it is rarely the FAA. It is a park ranger, a city ordinance, or a posted sign. The FAA owns the sky, but cities, counties, and park systems own the ground, and they get a say in where you stand when you launch and land.

Around the metro that means a patchwork. Some park systems welcome drones in open areas, some restrict them to designated spots, and some ban takeoff and landing in parks entirely. Cities on both sides of the river have their own ordinances and they do not match each other. Commercial shoots in parks often need a permit on top of everything else.

What it means for KC pilots: a flight can be perfectly legal in the air and still earn you a ticket for launching from the wrong patch of grass. Before you fly a new spot, read the park system or city rules for that exact ground. Two minutes of reading beats one awkward conversation.

From the Local Fleet

Pilot Videos

This is the community shelf: flights shot by Kansas City pilots, hosted on YouTube and Vimeo and embedded right here. River runs, bando sessions, fall color tours. If it was flown in the metro, it belongs on this page.

Pilot Slot 1 Placeholder — a local pilot's video lands here at launch

Your Flight Here

The first slot is open. Riverfront sunset, downtown skyline run, first snow on the bluffs. Send the link and this spot could be yours.

Pilot Slot 2 Placeholder — a local pilot's video lands here at launch

FPV Pilots, This One Is Yours

Bando dives, race gates, one-pack rips through the West Bottoms. Freestyle and racing clips from KC FPV pilots live in this slot.

Pilot Slot 3 Placeholder — a local pilot's video lands here at launch

Slow and Pretty Counts Too

Cinematic passes, cinewhoop tours, golden hour over the Missouri. Not every great flight is fast. This slot is for the smooth stuff.

Fall in the Metro

Fall Foliage Contest

Free to Enter

Best Fall Color From the Air

Entries close November 30, 2026

For a few weeks every year this metro turns red, orange, and gold, and nobody sees it better than we do. So here is the contest: shoot the best fall foliage drone photo or short video in the Kansas City metro and send it in. One winner gets featured right on the home page, where every pilot who visits will see it.

Prize to be announced. It will not be anything major, just a fun prize for a fellow drone pilot. Details land here as soon as it is locked in.

How to enter: free, and easy. Send your entry the same way as a Pilot Videos submission, a link to your photo or video, and say it is for the contest. Entries close at the end of November 2026.

The Rules, Kept Simple

  • Your own footage. Shot by you, on your drone. No borrowing, no reposting somebody else's flight.
  • Flown legally. Airspace checked before the flight and LAANC authorization in hand where it is required. Illegal flights are disqualified, full stop.
  • One entry per pilot. Pick your best shot or your best clip and make it count.
  • KC metro only. The foliage has to be ours. Both sides of the river count.

Before You Take Off

KC Flying Notes

Short, practical, and worth reading twice. The metro is a great place to fly if you fly it right.

Check Airspace. Every Flight.

Open Aloft (or your LAANC app of choice) before every single flight, even at the field you fly every week. Airspace, TFRs, and stadium restrictions change. Five minutes of checking beats one letter from the FAA.

LAANC Is Your Friend

Most controlled airspace around Kansas City's airports is LAANC-enabled. Pick your spot on the grid, request the altitude, and approval usually lands in seconds. No approval, no flight. Simple as that.

Local Rules Vary

Cities, counties, and parks around the metro each have their own ordinances about where you can take off and land. The FAA owns the sky, but the park ranger owns the parking lot. Check local rules before you fly somewhere new.

AMA Fields in the Metro

Want gates, tables, and people who speak fluent Betaflight? AMA-chartered clubs around the Kansas City metro maintain dedicated flying fields where drones are welcome and nobody calls anybody about a quad over the corn. Best flying in town, and the coffee is usually on.