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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

>You're not going to have enough battery or gas in your rc plane to fly cross-country or even a two-hour round trip.

There was an R/C plane that flew trans-atlantic; it wasn't much larger than a hobby store plane. Cross country is much, much farther (about twice as far as the transatlantic flight), but this is what makes the problem so much fun.

(link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3145577.stm)

(Picture of the plane: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39393000/jpg/_39393283...)

>Also, your radio won't be able to communicate with the plane for more than a hundred meters legally and a few miles illegally.

The point is to make these things happen autonomously. Beyond that, yes, it is absolutely possible to control the thing all over the world (albeit this would be illegal). While it absolutely wouldn't work for doing real-time controls, HAMs have been bouncing radio waves around the planet for longer than I've been alive.

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Aerosonde's Laima, with a wingspan of under 10 feet and a fuel capacity of about 1.5 gallons, flew trans-atlantic in 1998, a distance of 2044 miles. It's 2462 miles from LA to NY by air. (It was partly R/C and partly autonomous.)

http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/insitu-aerosonde-laim...

autonomously? that's definitely illegal.

I know, that is the point.

Cite?

There's a whole thriving community of hobbyists building and flying autonomous aircraft, publishing information and code, and selling custom designed hardware.

Here's _their_ take on the legality of autonomous aircraft

http://diydrones.com/forum/categories/regulation-1/listForCa...

It's technically illegal according to the FAA.

You can only do it so long as you could take control of the aircraft any time. This means you need LoS, and you need a radio.

Yep. Conditions which the NYC flight could probably claim to have had ( it's a little unclear whether the on board video let them fly it outside LoS, and if it did whether they ever did fly it outside LoS.)

I guess my point is that it's no more "definitely illegal" than driving a car. There are rules and regulations, but there are many people working within those rules, and legally flying autonomous drones. Nobody says driving a car is "definitely illegal" because you need to have a license, a registered roadworthy car, stop at red lights and drive on the correct side of the road. The regulations do allow for autonomous rc aircraft. They don't allow for them to do 60 mile round trips to collect cookies from your Mom, but saying "thats definitely illegal" needs at least qualifying with something like "except under certain constraints and conditions" or it's at least misleading, if not outright wrong.

People keep saying this, but I cannot find proof. The best I can find is a regulatory advisory: http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAdvisor...

Current drones fly under FAA part 91:

http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid...

Here is where they are talking about drones:

http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=62...

"Recreational use of the NAS is covered by FAA Advisory Circular (AC) 91-57 which generally limits operations to below 400 feet above ground level and away from airports and air traffic."

This is recreational use, and I consistently see people deferring to this "Advisory" circular which specifically states it merely "encourages voluntary compliance"

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