Ya, no, I don’t think so. This is all about First Person View only flying. You can fly a camera on any RC aircraft as long as you do it line of sight and not FPV.
1 Like
California Condos endangered? Who knew? Where will non-rich people live?
1 Like
Again, blaming the thing and not the person. We have the same problem with gun control fanaticism in the US. We actually tried to blame alcohol for our social woes at the turn of the last century and it took us a decade to figure out it wasn’t the root cause. We’ll never learn. Can you believe there are legislators here in the US that think 3D printing should be regulated because they’re afraid of what someone might print?
The media has hyped drones and made us think there’s an epidemic of crazy people spying on the rest of us when in fact it’s not likely that common.
Some guidelines by the FAA would do just fine using the Constitution as a basis for what can/can’t be done. Then if a person violates privacy laws, we’ll have to let the courts decide and set a precedent.
1 Like
I think Ministry is correct: this is about the government (and their contractors) being the ones who are permitted to do FPV with UAVs large and small; they don’t want just anybody to be able to do it b/c of “terrorism”, etc.
The excuse is safety; the reason is something else. When the government uses a tool for war or to defend against a hostile actor, they tend to not like it if you also have the tool b/c it can be used against them or the powers who they serve.
Also consider this: a FPV UAV can be used to deliver drugs/weapons and to transport the same over borders.
1 Like
This. This is the case with bans that focus on the thing and not the action.
1 Like
There was an interesting Planet Money podcast on the topic of FAA authority over drones a few months back. Well worth the listen, http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/05/30/317074394/drone-wars-who-owns-the-air
Yeah, my first thought was the FAA have really screwed the pooch on this one.
AFAIK, one of the things Americans still make is RC hobby stuff… and now a big chunk of that industry just got kicked in the face.
Exactly; no doubt The Man considers this tech too empowering for the plebs to get access.
I bet those drug runners are cursing these new regulations.
They got their new drone setup and someone ran up to them and was “We can’t do it dude! These are illegal under FAA regulations!”
And then the drone pilot was like, “Bullshit. Black market clearly falls under the non-commercial use guidelines, and the FAA doesn’t regulate drones in that context.”
And then the other guy was like, “Nah man. The FAA now says that they regulate that too.”
Signing the drone pilot goes, “So like what, do we need a transponder or something? Is there some ceiling we need to stay under?”
“No dude, that is the fucking catch, there are no rules! Everything is illegal. Fly that shit over the border, and you are looking at a serious fine.”
With a sigh, the drone runner says, “Fuck it. I don’t want to upset the FAA. Lets buy a bunch of prostitutes and fill their cavities with condoms full of cocaine. I guess we are going to have to do this the old fashion way.”
Every single argument that involves, “but bad people might do something illegal” is on its face stupid. If they are going to do something illegal, they are going to do something illegal. Only law abiding citizens get brutalized by the FAAs worthless asleep at the wheel regulations.
3 Likes
Anyone know where is the best info for UK’s laws covering this topic?
Flying FPV feels too cool to obey this crap. I don’t foresee much compliance.
Edit: Thought. There are dangers associated with little drones, but at the smaller sizes and lower speeds end of the spectrum they are rather minuscule. I propose a baseline level of acceptable risk for drone-person interaction, e.g. the equivalent of being hit with a soccer ball, which happens routinely and nobody freaks about it. Any design that does not cause more harm in a collision with a person than such ball (impact energy, speed, and spreading the energy over a larger area) is therefore what I consider too harmless to discuss (and that involves design changes to e.g. put foam frames around the rotor blades as some designs already have; the bonus is protection of the propellers in case of harder landings).
For collision with bigger planes, that gets trickier but completely avoidable by avoiding their airspace (a must for the smaller vehicles anyway). A level of risk equivalent to a small bird strike can be considered acceptable-ish, together with mitigating the risk of the collision itself by other means. But things reaching these altitudes and able to cope with the winds there aren’t exactly toys anymore, at least for the frame of this discussion.
2 Likes
One thing that hasn’t been described here was how the FAA went behind the back of the AMA (Academy of Model Aeronautics) in making this ruling. The AMA had put in place some common-sense guidelines for FPV flying - stuff like requiring a spotter to watch out for any dangerous situations that the pilot couldn’t see, ensuring that the aircraft was always in sight of the spotter (and pilot if they take off their goggles), etc. They were working with the FAA in what they thought was a good relationship to make sure that FPV flown safely was not going to be impacted, and then got completely blindsided by the FAA’s announcement. The AMA is not happy about this at all.
FAA Fokkers!
They will have to pry my Snoopy Doghouse controls out of my cold dead hands:
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
