Trey was feeling bold since they have been flying the quad copters for several days around police without anyone stopping them. One female Chinese officer finally did when he flew the quad copter by the Chinese version of the NSA and FBI. Here is the video. I am also including a link below to trays article where he tells the story of exactly how he was detained. I do think it’s really funny that Tom Anderson hid in the bushes.
Let me set the stage here. Beijing is the seat of all Chinese government power. So, deciding to fly a drone over China is kind of like Luke Skywalker deciding to ride his landspeeder on the Death Star.
There are multiple “rings” that encircle Beijing. The first ring is the Forbidden City. The second ring has many monuments and other houses of government. It’s kind of like Washington D.C., except with less communists.
I had flown the DJI Quadcopter for about five days with no problem. I was there with my friend Tom Anderson who also had the same DJI Quadcopter setup as I did. We were both having a great time and getting some really cool shots. I am so excited to take photos and experiment with this thing! We had even flown it several times around police in various places. They never said anything. The police were probably generally confused; their lack of interference only emboldened us.
Note To Future Self: Do Not Fly Quadcopter Over The Chinese NSA Intelligence Buildings
So here comes the juicy bit. Well, it could have been worse. But I was certainly at fault!I was at Beihai Park. Now, some of you may already be rolling your eyes, because you know what I did not know. That behind those trees there are all their government buildings, where they would rather not have things flown above.
My DJI remote control was low on batteries, and I have this rather sane fear of the controller going dead while quadcopter is off having a party somewhere without me. So I set the quadcopter on the ground beside my assistant. My assistant is this 28-year-old female who was kind of cute and quite bubbly named Ady. I say this because it comes into play later in the story. One other thing I can tell you about her is that she was absolutely zero help in warning me that I was about to fly the quadcopter over the Chinese NSA and FBI buildings. That’s one of those things I would have liked to know… My plan was to take an aerial shot of the White Dagoba on Qionghua Island…
Click here to read the rest of the story on Trey’s blog
Source: Stuck In Customs
