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I Walked Away From My Drone… How Far Could Remote ID See Me?

Windswept Robert

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How far away can a drone's Remote ID signal actually be detected?
@theangryscot2

In this real-world test, Eddie flies a Potensic Atom 2 while broadcasting Remote ID, and I walk away from the drone carrying a Remote ID receiver app on my phone.

We wanted to find out just how far the broadcast could be picked up in the real world — rather than relying on theoretical range figures.

I'll show you exactly what the receiver app could see as I moved farther and farther away, how the distance changed, and what happened when I pushed the range further.

This is a practical test of what Remote ID can actually reveal about a drone in flight — and the results weren't quite what I expected.

If you're flying a drone with Remote ID in the UK, this is something you may want to see.

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17 Comments

@TheMisphit 2 weeks ago

Top work as always

@PeteDevlinootnaboot 2 weeks ago (edited)

Screaming at the screen here! It was lost pretty quickly. You should be looking at the last seen field. You could have saved yourself a big walk. It'll tell you for as long as you leave it on the distance from where you are to where it was last seen!

@Ixquick979 2 weeks ago

Does the remote ID hardware aboard the drone uses a separate antenna, if it does it could be possible to disconnect it and attach a dummy load so that most of the RF energy is transformed in to heat instead of radiated as radio waves in to space?

@allieandmaria 2 weeks ago

Actual range (with this receiver) is about when you got to 20s (seconds) on the last update, give or take 10 meters.

@Jimbo878 2 weeks ago

Robert, I think for your next test, put the drone in a hover, walk 500m away, and get your wingman to move the drone away, at a right angle from your 500m mark, and see if that app updates it's position?.

@Just--Gary-drone 2 weeks ago

That is both surprising and worrying , I wonder how much battery that uses especially on something like a neo come 2028 ?

@geetee2583 2 weeks ago

I completed the same test using the same app ('Drone Scanner' yesterday with a DJI Mini 5 Pro. It lost it within a minute or two of walking ('last seen') but kept it showing on the map even when I got home. So, I think your test was a bit flawed. Worth trying again but do it the other way round. drone up, no app open. go 100 meters away then open app...more than likely you won't see the drone until you start walking closer towards it.

@NameOfTheDragon 2 weeks ago (edited)

I suspect that app was only showing distance to last known location. The GPS coordinates are rock solid throughout, which is not realistic.

@Edramon53 2 weeks ago

Pretty sure for most of that walk it was just showing the distance between the phone and where it last located the drone.
At 3:43 the app was already showing that it last heard from the drone over 2 mins ago and you're only 250m away. If the signal is basically wifi, that makes sense.

@Aerospheria 2 weeks ago

I noticed with the latest update 1.21.10 with wifi issues on RC2 it doesn’t broadcast Remote ID before it did on 1.21.08 withe Avata 360 only have to scan WiFi in your phone to see if your Remote ID shows.