Regulatory
ADOS is open-source software that talks to a flight controller and a radio. It does not hold a certificate, does not register your aircraft, and does not know where you are. Every obligation described here is yours.Two separate obligations
Flying a drone and operating a radio are regulated separately, often by different authorities. Meeting one says nothing about the other. Aviation covers registration, pilot competency, where and how high you may fly, whether you need permission for a given flight, and what identification the aircraft must broadcast. Depending on where you fly, the authority may be the FAA, EASA, CASA, DGCA, or another national regulator, generally working within the ICAO framework. Radio covers which frequencies you may transmit on, at what power, and with what duty cycle. This is usually a different authority from the aviation one, and the drone rules do not grant you a radio licence. The long-range video link is the part of ADOS most likely to put you outside a radio rule. It is not standard WiFi. It broadcasts raw frames in monitor mode, and the channel and power you configure are what it uses.Set your operating region
The agent has two postures. Unrestricted is the default. The radio comes up on the configured channel at the hardware-bounded power budget with no regional domain verified. You are responsible for legal RF operation where you fly. This state is shown on every status surface, never silently. Region is what you opt into. The radio applies that region’s channel set and per-channel power limit before transmitting, and refuses to radiate on a channel the region forbids. Pin a region from the CLI:/settings/region.
Restart the agent, or reboot, to apply. The radio reads the posture at service start.
A region mode with a missing or unrecognised region code falls back to unrestricted rather than refusing to transmit. Confirm with
ados network regulatory status that the region you intended is actually pinned, rather than assuming the write took.Remote ID
ADOS does not implement Remote ID. There is no Remote ID broadcast anywhere in the agent or in Mission Control. Mission Control’s aircraft registry has a field to record a Remote ID serial number for your own record-keeping. It is stored locally and is never transmitted or sent to the flight controller. Recording it there does not make your aircraft compliant. Where Remote ID is required, it has to come from your flight controller’s own Remote ID support or from a separate broadcast module. Check that requirement before you fly, because it applies in a growing number of jurisdictions and is not something you can add later in the field.Altitude and airspace
ADOS does not impose an altitude ceiling. Mission Control lets you record an operating jurisdiction, which sets default altitude and distance suggestions for geofence planning, and it recognises FAA, EASA, CASA, DGCA, and an ICAO fallback for that purpose. Those are planning defaults to save you typing, not compliance checks, and they do not stop you drawing a mission outside them. The limit the aircraft actually respects is the one you set inFENCE_ALT_MAX and the fence geometry you upload to the flight controller. See Geofences and rally points.
Airspace authorisation, flight permissions, and no-fly zones are not handled by ADOS. Check them through whatever service your authority requires before each flight.
A short operator checklist
Before flying a new aircraft in a new place:- Is the aircraft registered where registration is required?
- Are you licensed or certificated to the level this flight needs?
- Is the airspace permitted, and does this flight need authorisation?
- Does the aircraft need to broadcast Remote ID, and does it?
- Is your radio channel and transmit power legal here? Is a region pinned?
- Is
FENCE_ALT_MAXset to the local ceiling and the fence uploaded?
Where to next
- Safety - the failsafes to configure before the first flight.
- Operating limits - measured performance, and what is not yet characterised.
- WFB-ng - channel and transmit power configuration.