Terms of Service

1. About these Terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") form a legally binding agreement between you and David Graeme Middleton, operating as SkySpot SA ("SkySpot", "we", "us", "our"), governing your access to and use of the SkySpot SA mobile application, website, and related services (together, the "Service").

By creating an account, signing in, or otherwise using the Service, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, you may not use the Service.

These Terms should be read alongside the Privacy Policy. In the event of a conflict between these Terms and the Privacy Policy on a privacy matter, the Privacy Policy prevails.

2. Eligibility and Age (18+)

The Service is intended solely for users aged 18 years or older.

By creating an account you represent and warrant that:

• •You are at least 18 years of age;
• •You have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract in your jurisdiction;
• •You are not barred from using the Service under the laws of South Africa or any other applicable jurisdiction; and
• •The information you provide during registration is true, accurate, and current.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from, or provide the Service to, anyone under 18. If we become aware that a user is under 18, we will remove the account in line with Section 12 of the Privacy Policy.

3. Your Account

3.1 Account creation

You may create an account using an email address and password, or through a supported third-party sign-in (e.g., Google). You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials and for all activity under your account.

3.2 One account per person

Each person may hold only one active account. Creating multiple accounts, or creating an account after a ban, is a material breach of these Terms.

3.3 Accurate information

You must keep your account information (including display name, province, and pilot type) accurate and up to date. You may not impersonate another person, misrepresent your affiliation with any organisation, or use misleading identifiers.

3.4 Account security

Notify us at support@skyspot.co.za immediately if you suspect unauthorised access to your account. We are not liable for losses resulting from your failure to protect your credentials.

4. The Service

SkySpot SA is a community platform for South African RC, FPV, and drone pilots. The Service includes, without limitation:

• •A map of user-submitted flying spots and registered SAMAA/RCASA fields;
• •Airspace, NOTAM, and weather information layers;
• •Check-ins, hearts, vouches, XP, badges, and other community and gamification features;
• •A vendor directory of RC/FPV/drone-related businesses;
• •User profiles, comments, reports, and bug reports;
• •Optional phone verification and notifications.

We may add, change, suspend, or remove features at any time. Some features (such as Weather Window Alerts, or paid vendor placements) may require a paid subscription if and when such tiers are introduced.

5. Safety, Airspace & "Informational Only"

You acknowledge and agree that:

• •You are solely responsible for the safe and lawful operation of any aircraft you fly, including compliance with the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA), the Civil Aviation Regulations, and any applicable local bylaws, field rules, or club requirements.
• •Airspace, NOTAM, weather, and field data displayed in the Service are supplied by third parties (including Open-Meteo, OpenAIP, and others) and may be incomplete, delayed, inaccurate, or out of date. You must verify all airspace and NOTAM information with authoritative sources (SACAA, ATNS, the relevant aerodrome, etc.) before every flight.
• •User-submitted spots and fields are community submissions. Their presence on the Service does not mean the location is legal, safe, authorised, or permitted by the landowner or any authority. You must obtain any required permissions before flying at any location.
• •Vouches, trust ratings, check-ins, and XP are community signals only. They are not guarantees of any user's identity, qualifications, trustworthiness, or fitness to fly, buy, or sell.
• •Vendor listings are not endorsements. We do not vet vendors' products, services, licences, insurance, or conduct, and we are not a party to any transaction between you and a vendor.

If you are unsure whether a flight is legal or safe, do not fly.

6. Community Rules & Acceptable Use

You agree that you will not, and will not attempt to:

1. 1.Use the Service to break South African law, international law, or the laws of any jurisdiction from which you access the Service;
2. 2.Fly unlawfully or unsafely, or use the Service to coordinate or facilitate unlawful or unsafe flying;
3. 3.Post content that is illegal, infringing, harassing, hateful, threatening, defamatory, deceptive, fraudulent, invasive of another's privacy, sexually explicit, or harmful to minors;
4. 4.Impersonate any person, group, or entity, or misrepresent your affiliation with them;
5. 5.Submit false, misleading, or spam spots, fields, vouches, comments, reports, or vendor listings;
6. 6.Use vouches to engage in retaliatory, coordinated, transactional, or bad-faith trust manipulation;
7. 7.Submit photographs of people without their consent, images that identify private homes or sensitive sites, or content you do not have the right to post;
8. 8.Collect, scrape, harvest, or otherwise extract personal information of other users (including phone-number fragments, usernames, or location data) other than as permitted by the Service's ordinary features;
9. 9.Probe, scan, reverse-engineer, interfere with, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service, its APIs, its servers, or its security mechanisms (including Firestore Security Rules or Cloud Functions);
10. 10.Upload viruses, malware, or other malicious code;
11. 11.Create multiple or sockpuppet accounts, evade a ban, or circumvent rate limits, quotas, or trust gates;
12. 12.Use the Service to send direct marketing to other users without complying with applicable law (including POPIA s.69 and the Consumer Protection Act);
13. 13.Use automated means (bots, crawlers, etc.) to access the Service, except for publicly documented endpoints used in good faith;
14. 14.Use the Service to support any activity that endangers life, property, aviation safety, or national security.

We may adopt and publish additional community guidelines from time to time; those guidelines form part of these Terms when published in the Service.

7. Your Content

7.1 Ownership

You retain ownership of the content you submit to the Service, including spot and field submissions, photos, bios, comments, reports, and bug reports ("Your Content").

7.2 Licence to SkySpot

By submitting Your Content to the Service, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable licence to host, store, cache, reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly display, publicly perform, and distribute Your Content for the purpose of operating, improving, moderating, promoting, and providing the Service, including across our apps, website, and promotional materials.

This licence survives deletion of Your Content or your account only to the extent necessary to: (a) retain anonymised copies as described in the Privacy Policy; (b) comply with legal obligations; (c) enforce these Terms; and (d) support moderation and abuse prevention.

7.3 Your warranties

You represent and warrant that:

• •You own or have all necessary rights to submit Your Content and to grant the licence in Section 7.2;
• •Your Content does not infringe any third-party right (including copyright, trademark, privacy, or publicity rights); and
• •Your Content complies with these Terms and applicable law.

7.4 Photos at submission only

Photos of spots and fields may be submitted only at creation time and only by the submitter. Fields are registered SAMAA/RCASA datasets and do not accept user photos.

7.5 Vouches are community records

You acknowledge that vouches are permanent community trust records while your account is active. A vouch you give cannot be individually retracted. On account deletion, vouches you have given and vouches you have received are deleted, which may cause other users' trust ratings to change. This behaviour is described more fully in Section 10 of the Privacy Policy.

8. Moderation, Suspension & Termination

8.1 Our moderation

We may, at our sole discretion and with or without notice:

• •Remove, hide, edit, or refuse to display any content that we believe violates these Terms, the community guidelines, or applicable law;
• •Restrict, suspend, or terminate your access to the Service, including banning your account;
• •Retain a limited safety record after a banned account is deleted, as described in Section 10 of the Privacy Policy, to enforce bans and prevent abuse.

8.2 Appeals

If you believe a moderation action was taken in error, you may contact support@skyspot.co.za. We will review the matter in good faith but are not obliged to reinstate content or accounts.

8.3 Your right to close your account

You may delete your account at any time in the app under Profile → Delete Account. The consequences of deletion, including anonymisation and hard deletion of certain records, are described in the Privacy Policy.

8.4 Effect of termination

On termination, your right to access the Service ends immediately. Clauses that by their nature should survive termination (including Sections 5, 7.2, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, and 19) will survive.

9. Paid Features & Vendor Listings

9.1 Paid features

At launch the Service is free. We may introduce paid features (such as Weather Window Alerts, premium vendor placements, or subscriptions) in the future. Any paid features will be offered under additional terms presented at purchase, which will form part of these Terms for users who purchase them.

9.2 Vendor listings

Vendor directory entries are provided for community convenience. Vendors are responsible for the accuracy of their listings and for compliance with applicable law, including the Consumer Protection Act and POPIA. We do not mediate disputes between users and vendors.

9.3 Reviews

Vendor reviews must be honest, first-hand, and not incentivised by the vendor. We may remove reviews that breach this rule.

10. Third-Party Services

The Service integrates with third-party providers including Google Firebase, Google Maps Platform, Open-Meteo, and OpenAIP. Your use of those integrations may also be governed by the third party's own terms and privacy policies, which we do not control. We are not responsible for third-party content, services, or outages.

11. Intellectual Property

11.1 Our IP

The Service (including its source code, look and feel, brand, "SkySpot SA" name and logo, icon set, and non-user-generated content) is owned by or licensed to us and is protected by copyright, trade mark, and other laws. Except for the limited right to use the Service under these Terms, no rights are granted to you by implication, estoppel, or otherwise.

11.2 Feedback

If you send us suggestions, ideas, or feedback, you grant us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use them without restriction or compensation.

11.3 Copyright complaints

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright or other intellectual property right, email support@skyspot.co.za with: a description of the work, the URL or in-app location of the allegedly infringing content, your contact details, and a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised. We will review and respond.

12. Privacy

Our handling of personal information is described in the Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. By using the Service you acknowledge that personal information will be processed in accordance with that policy.

13. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, reliability, availability, and that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure.

Without limiting the above, we specifically do not warrant that:

• •Airspace, NOTAM, weather, or location data is accurate, current, complete, or safe to rely on for flight decisions;
• •User-submitted spots or fields are lawful, safe, or authorised;
• •Other users are who they claim to be, are of the age they claim, or will behave lawfully;
• •Vendor listings, reviews, or trust ratings reflect the actual quality of any person, product, or service.

Nothing in these Terms is intended to exclude or limit any right you may have under the Consumer Protection Act, 2008, or any other South African law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

14. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law:

1. 1.We will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, data, goodwill, or aircraft, arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service, whether based on contract, delict (tort), statute, or any other legal theory, and whether or not we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.
2. 2.Our total aggregate liability to you arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service is limited to the greater of (a) ZAR 1,000 and (b) the amounts you have paid to us for the Service in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim.
3. 3.We are not liable for damages or losses arising from: (i) your own unlawful or unsafe flying; (ii) your reliance on airspace, NOTAM, weather, or field data; (iii) the acts, omissions, or content of other users or vendors; (iv) third-party services, outages, or data; or (v) your breach of these Terms.

Nothing in this Section limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, or gross negligence where limitation is prohibited.

15. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless SkySpot SA and David Graeme Middleton from and against any claims, demands, losses, damages, costs, and reasonable legal fees arising out of or related to: (a) your use of the Service; (b) Your Content; (c) your breach of these Terms; (d) your violation of any law or third-party right; or (e) your operation of any aircraft, whether or not informed by information obtained through the Service.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will:

• •Post the updated Terms in the Service and on our website;
• •Advance the "Last updated" date; and
• •Where appropriate, notify you in-app or by email before the changes take effect.

Your continued use of the Service after the updated Terms take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not accept the updated Terms, you must stop using the Service and may delete your account.

We will retain reasonable records of the version of the Terms you accepted at signup (stored as a termsAcceptedVersion audit field).

17. Governing Law & Jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.

You agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service that is not resolved informally will be submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent South African courts, save that we may seek urgent or injunctive relief in any court of competent jurisdiction.

Before commencing formal proceedings, you agree to first contact support@skyspot.co.za and attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute for at least 30 days.

Nothing in this Section limits your rights under the Consumer Protection Act, 2008, including your right to refer a complaint to the National Consumer Commission or a relevant consumer tribunal, or your rights under POPIA to complain to the Information Regulator (see Section 7 of the Privacy Policy).

18. General

18.1 Entire agreement

These Terms and the Privacy Policy form the entire agreement between you and us concerning the Service and supersede any prior agreements on the same subject.

18.2 Severability

If any provision of these Terms is held invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in full force and effect, and the invalid provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it valid and enforceable.

18.3 No waiver

A failure or delay by us in enforcing any right is not a waiver of that right.

18.4 Assignment

You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign or transfer these Terms (for example, in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets) without your consent, provided the assignee agrees to be bound by these Terms.

18.5 No agency

Nothing in these Terms creates a partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship between you and us.

18.6 Force majeure

We are not liable for any failure or delay in performance caused by circumstances beyond our reasonable control, including natural disasters, power or internet outages, acts of government, labour disputes, or failures of third-party service providers.

18.7 Language

These Terms are provided in English. If we provide a translation, the English version prevails in the event of a conflict.

18.8 Electronic communications

You consent to receive communications from us electronically (including in-app messages and email). Electronic communications satisfy any legal requirement that a communication be in writing.

19. Contact