Drone Vantage

Find the best launch and pilot positions for any ground, and see where a drone can fly while staying in line-of-sight. Draw a box on the map (or search a place), and the app pulls real elevation and satellite imagery for that ground, fetches FAA airspace ceilings, runs a line-of-sight analysis, and ranks the spots that cover the most flyable ground, explained in plain English, with the legal altitude ceiling overlaid and a 3D view of the parcel.

No API keys. Everything runs on free, keyless data:

• Elevation: Mapzen/AWS Terrain Tiles (Terrarium-encoded PNG, NASA/USGS derived).
• Imagery and tree cover: Esri World Imagery, classified canopy versus open.
• Airspace: FAA UAS Facility Maps (the LAANC ceiling grid, ft AGL per cell) plus nearby airports and heliports.
• All fetched on demand through small serverless proxies, decoded in the browser.

How it works

1. You draw the ground. Search to a location, then drag a rectangle over the area you want to fly or map (soft cap about 30 sq km).

2. The app builds the parcel. A Web Worker fetches elevation and imagery tiles, decodes a metric heightmap, and classifies a tree-canopy density mask (slope-suppressed so cliffs do not read as forest). Canopy matters: it occludes both visual line-of-sight and 2.4/5.8 GHz control and video signal.

3. It pulls airspace. The FAA UAS Facility Map ceilings (the LAANC grid) and nearby airports are fetched through the serverless proxy and rasterized onto the same grid, so every cell knows its published legal ceiling in feet AGL.

4. It scores every spot. For a grid of candidate launch and pilot positions it casts radial sightlines, with the pilot eye/antenna at ground plus your antenna height and the target being the drone flying at your chosen height above the ground. Terrain is the occluder, and the tree canopy is added on top when you ask signal to be blocked by trees. It then blends:

   Factor	What it rewards
   Line-of-sight coverage	sees the most flyable ground within range (drone at your chosen flight height, terrain plus tree canopy as occluders)
   Legal ceiling	more usable vertical airspace (higher published LAANC ceiling)
   Launch pad quality	open, level ground for a clean takeoff and GPS lock
   High ground	local prominence for better antenna line-of-sight
   Obstruction clearance	clear of trees and terrain right at the launch point
   Airspace safety	clear of controlled no-go cells and nearby airports

5. You get ranked spots: a launch-suitability heatmap (red poor to cyan/green great), numbered pins, each spot's exact line-of-sight coverage footprint and the acres of flyable ground reachable from it, the legal ceiling at that spot, plain-English reasons, GPX and KML waypoint export, a translucent FAA ceiling overlay you can toggle on and off, and a 3D drape of the parcel with the launch point marked and a legal-ceiling lid.

Flight-style preset, line-of-sight range, pilot/antenna height, flight height AGL, whether trees block signal, and the six factor weights are all tunable under "Tune the analysis". Any drawn area produces a shareable URL (the bbox is encoded in the link as ?bbox=...), so you can send a parcel to another pilot and it re-runs on open.

Run locally

npm install
npm run dev

Then open the printed localhost URL. npm run build produces the static site in dist/. The /api/tiles and /api/airspace proxies run as Vercel serverless functions in production and as Vite dev middleware locally (see vite.config.js), so behavior is identical in both.

Deploy

This repo is connected to Vercel, so pushing to the default branch deploys automatically. To set it up fresh: import the repo into Vercel (framework preset Vite), or run vercel from the repo root. vercel.json pins the build and both serverless functions (/api/tiles and /api/airspace).

Caveats and safety

This tool models line-of-sight and shows PUBLISHED LAANC ceilings from the FAA UAS Facility Maps. It is informational only.

• It is NOT an FAA authorization. It does not request or grant LAANC approval, and it is not a substitute for an FAA-approved app for filing LAANC requests.
• It is NOT a live TFR or NOTAM check, and not a substitute for current aeronautical charts. Always check current TFRs and NOTAMs before you fly.
• Airspace data may be stale or unavailable in some areas. Where the FAA service cannot be reached, the app degrades to a Class G 400 ft default, which may not reflect the real airspace.
• Tree classification is leaf-on and summer-biased, so deciduous winter cover is under-counted. Canopy height is an assumption that scales with density. The DEM is bare-earth, with trees added as the occluder on top.
• You are the pilot in command. Follow Part 107 or the recreational rules as they apply to you, get authorization where it is required, keep clear of airports and controlled airspace, and maintain visual line of sight with your aircraft at all times.

Attribution

Elevation: Mapzen/AWS Terrain Tiles. Imagery: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics. Airspace: FAA UAS Facility Maps. Geocoding: OpenStreetMap and Nominatim.