Ability to drop a new flight plan anywhere on the map at will

So far my number one pet peeve on DD is the fact that the map defaults to my current location when I create a new flight plan. Sure, it’s a logical starting point, but I can forsee most of my flight planning being done on the computer at home where I know i will have internet access, and it’s supremely irritating having to zoom out and drag a tiny little square to a spot 40 miles away. I know I can search for a location, but I expect a lot of my work will be done in remote areas where i would have no other option than to look up coordinates for each location. It would be so much more simple and intuitive to drop the new flight plan in the center of whichever area I’m looking at when I hit the button.

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+1

I agree with this completely. May not be as important on the mobile app, but definitely would be an improvement with the desktop version. And often times, the home location on my laptop gets set as the location of my ISP which is 40 miles away from where I’m actually at.

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While this can be annoying I have used a work around that works quite well. Zoom out to where you want to fly your mission then drag your dots(all bunched up cause of zooming out) to the location you want, then zoom in and plan your mission. If it’s really far you drag your dots to the edge of your screen or monitor then move the background then drag dots until your there. Second nature after several missions.

EXTREMELY frustrating when you are trying to do some jobs in a state or two over from your own and have to try to find farm property, solar farms, etc. on the DD map when you had to start with the plan at your location. I found the best way to help is to have google earth open in another window - but still time consuming. You can also save what you create to work offline - but when you get to the place to run the mission out in the middle of country with sporadic coverage DD has to download it. What? I thought that is why you saved it to work off line. A REAL HEADACHE when you are off the grid doing farms, etc. DD needs to get their act together on saving missions only to not work when you try to run them.

Thanks for the feedback, we are going to revise out UX for planning in coming months. Will share our mockups with you when they are ready.

Have you guys tried using the ‘Search functionality’ which will let you search for a location to plan and then start planning there?

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Agreed, not being able to start at will is very frustrating. The search feature works fine if your at a know location but most of my work is out in the sticks

Hi All,

I’m new here and am experiencing the same frustration in trying to plan a flight that is 150 miles away. The search does not find the town nearest the flight project.

Because of this, will I be able to open DD at that distant site with no cell or internet connection and create the flight plan there?

Thanks for your help!