It Shouldn't Be This Hard to Responsibly Fly a Drone
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
If you pilot a plane, and you make a mistake, your own life is on the line.
When you fly a drone, you still constitute a danger to other aircraft and the people in it, or people on the ground. Why should you be subject to fewer rules, just because you are not aboard the aircraft, and thus not at risk?
Imagine remote controlled cars on the road. Should we allow some drunk kids without license on their computer at home to control cars on the road (and endanger everyone else), just because they are not in danger? Of course not.
So, my sympathy for people clamouring for less restricted drone flights is limited. Having said that, there are tools that facilitate planning a flight (in a safe and lawful manner), and having something similar for drones would obviously be great.
Because a drone is a lot smaller and thus constitutes a heavily reduced risk.
> Imagine remote controlled cars on the road. Should we allow some drunk kids without license on their computer at home to control cars on the road (and endanger everyone else), just because they are not in danger? Of course not.
So, to borrow your imagery here: A bicycle is a lot less risky to traffic and people than a car is and thus you are allow to drive it without a license and punishments for violations are in general lower than for cars.
Existing European regulation is clear on drone operations: it is just as illegal to put in a restricted airspace without permission as any other man created flying object. You can go to jail over simply violating the airspace, even if no danger was even remotely possible.
Follow those rules and you're riding the bike path, not mixing in with major air traffic. Hence why flying a drone is nothing like flying an airplane.
* for certain definitions of airport
If anything if we are using cars as a metaphor. Drones are like dirtbikes. They aren't allowed on public roads. But can be freely driven on private property and BLM territories.
That sure is a lot of military-sounding acronyms which I haven't the slightest idea what they stand for to end that with, "that's literally it".
If I was to guess, you have experience in piloting airplanes, and flying a drone would be in comparison, a lot simpler, but it doesn't sound simple.
Drones present a much lower risk profile, so it is not surprising that drone operators are subject to fewer rules.
> Having said that, there are tools that facilitate planning a flight (in a safe and lawful manner), and having something similar for drones would obviously be great.
That... is exactly the subject matter of the article. The FAA, the government agency governing airspace in the USA, has an app that purportedly tells the drone operator when it is or isn't OK to fly. The problem is that the operator cannot rely on it, because of local laws which may prohibit drone flight.
The article's author was an AMA member, which means he has insurance. He is obviously the kind of consumer drone operator you want more of, he has downloaded the FAA's app and is trying his best to make sure he flies legally. The drone he's flying is a tiny 300g, almost "toy" grade drone from parrot.
It should not be this difficult to fly a drone legally.
That's why I brought it up. My point is that it piloting drones should be carefully regulated, and violations harshly punished, but it should not be unnecessarily difficult to fly legally (as it lamentably appears to be).
But you're right, most pilots on most flights probably do not take an hour to flight plan - but that's often because they've done so before.
1. Register the drone online for $5 (done, took 2 minutes).
2. Take an exam. They won't tell me what's going to be on the exam, but instead recommend I go to one of a long list of "drone schools" who have 'self declared' that they can teach what will be on the exam. The exam is $10, but who knows what these schools will charge or if they're even reputable.
3. Not be within 5 miles of most airports, or 1-3 miles from most helipads. (Didn't we convert to metric before I was born?). At least they've made a helpful tool with that https://nrc.canada.ca/en/drone-tool/. The tool also helpfully shows that oh right, most lakes are used for sea-planes to take off and land so avoid those too.
4. Never fly within 100 ft (30m) horizontally of any 'bystander', ie: they aren't with me flying the drone.
What this all boils down to is that there's no reason to own a drone anymore unless you own a very large property far from any populated areas. There is no place less than a 20-30 minute drive away from my home that I can even legally fly it. Even then, any park or place I might legally go to without trespassing will have too many people to be more than 30m from anyone else. Even the less-populated parks and recreation areas- how do I even tell if there's someone 29m away from me through a forest or behind something?
All the while: for what benefit? Who has been seriously injured in Canada by drone accidents?
3. obviously necessary
4. Drones are a public nuisance. The sound, having a dot just floating in view, zipping around - it's annoying and even scary to bystanders.
I own and fly several drones, but I was relieved when America started banning drones from wilderness areas, national parks, and many state/city parks. The serenity of those parks is far more valuable than private drone photography / selfies.
One could argue that drones should be allowed to get right up next to helipads, lat/lon-wise, as long as they stay a safe distance away from the helipad altitude-wise.
There are helipads on top of buildings. If the helipad is at ~1500ft, and my drone never exceeds 300ft, then it's not endangering the helicopters, even if it's right next to the building with the helipad on it.
But instead, because of the way the law is phrased, if there's a helipad on top of a building in downtown, now I'm not able to film anywhere in downtown.
(This same argument could apply to airfields, but airfields "above" neighbouring geography are pretty rare. I guess you could be filming against the cliff adjoining Lukla Airport in Nepal?)
I don't think all helipads have so much restrictions around them. We are a few blocks away from one, and we fly drones all the time. Legally. It must be a matter of how the specific piece of airspace got regulated, who did it, etc. I also see plenty of FAA maps that were drawn very thoughtful and detailed, versus others where there's just a big circle around an object.
The issue is the distance reserved is conservative so people slightly encroaching don’t instantly cause problems.
Pilots and ATC refer to these dimensions as laterally and vertically.
A drone near a helipad is an undeclared obstacle, and permitting any drone near a helipad increases the probability of a conflict.
Take a look at Congonhas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A3o_Paulo%E2%80%93Congonh...), it's a very busy airport right in the middle of a major city, and its runway sits higher than the roof of many of its adjacent buildings. As a passenger, landing there feels like you are going to land on top of the buildings until the last second. If a plane overruns the runway, it'll go downwards, cross a major road, and hit a building on the other side (yes, this has happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054).
Until the drone police give you a ticket and take your license away. In combination with the near-blanket bans on drone use (see above) licensing would effectively mean you can only fly a drone until someone complains.
I work in aviation. I'm the the air force and used to be a pilot. The bans on drones are ridiculously over-inclusive. Miles from any helipad? There are helipads everywhere. The better scheme is to regulate them by mass and construction. They don't need extensive steel or ceramic structures. Biuld them out of aluminum and plastic. So long hitting them is less dangerous than hitting a duck, they should be given freedom at low altitudes. Allowing drones to do what they do best may reduce the need for other manned aircraft (short-haul cargo, floatplanes and such) and make the sky a less cluttered place at altitude.
A drone maliciously aimed at a helicopter's tail rotor could conceivably cause an accident depending on the construction/trickery selected by the operator, and a helicopter crash at a hospital has the potential to be a major disaster.
A gun maliciously fired at a helicopter's tail rotor could conceivably cause an accident. A laser fired maliciously into the eye of a helicopter pilot could etc etc. Do we ban any of those brought near a hospital out of fear that a malicious actor would use them in the worst possible way?
A malicious actor can always find a way to cause problems. A benign but stupid actor is the one we should be regulating for, and IMO keeping your drone 50 yards away from a helicopter landing pad should be sufficient.
Getting a drone into a tail rotor would be very tricky. If the helo is in forward flight you would need a comparably fast drone to approach from the side, without being blown off course by the main rotor downwash. I doubt it possible. It might be done with the helo in a hover, but even there there would be only seconds of vulnerability. Say you get close enough, the tail rotor is itself another massive powerful fan. This wouldn't, couldn't, happen by accident.
The greater threat is pilots reacting badly to sighted drones. Fear of drones might well cause more accidents than actual collisions.
>> A trainee had been practising hovering about 15m (50ft) above trees ... Seeing a quadcopter flying towards them, the instructor had taken control. But he had clipped a tree with the tail rotor, causing the helicopter to crash to the ground and tip on to its side.
I fly drones as a photographer/videographer and, for the most part, don't find the regulations too heavy handed. Worrying about distance from every single tiny airfield is the main one since, as you noted, they are everywhere (unmanned fields, helipads, etc). Applied as a hard-and-fast rule, this can be a bit much when you just want a tree-height photo of a building or similar.
I was in the US recently and took my drone (https://www.instagram.com/__serio__/ ). We were often in national parks, and there are also airfields everywhere so I barely found opportunities to fly. The official FAA app is a bit hopeless and it's often unclear about whether you're good to go or not. I think that a much better app from the authorities would be a major help. The casual drone operators I know in Australia make use of the official app here to stay abreast of options.
I'm in Australia and all the "casual drone operators" I've seen DGAF and just fly the buzzing menaces wherever they want, including in National Parks.
Are you allowed to fly drones over people in Australia? Because they do that too.
Getting permission to fly in NT national parks is quite straightforward. My flights in other parks have been organised by tourism authorities. I don't doubt there are people (I suspect the majority are international tourists) pushing the rules. One thing I think doesn't help is that the official flight check app for drone operators often doesn't factor in national parks, or maybe it's if you don't have phone coverage in an area - common for parks.
You can fly within 30m of people with their permission. Not over people though I imagine that's subjective - directly over people? Roughly over people?
If you're trying to compare cars to drones then IMO, that is a false comparison. You usually need to use a car to get into the park. Cars have a purpose. People generally turn their cars off when they arrive and get out to walk around. Drones flying around dominates the area with their annoying sound for no reason.
Even though I hate consumer drones (especially in National Parks), I don't have much problem with people who actually go through the proper channels. I strongly doubt the annoying people are getting permission to fly.
On multiple occasions, I've had people flying their drones directly over my head while I was at a lookout. There is little more irritating than going out of your way to enjoy a bit of nature and peace and quiet only to have it ruined by an idiot with a drone, especially when it almost certainly is against the rules anyway. Can we not have a single quiet place?
Let's look at some of your bits here: "dominates the area with their annoying sound for no reason", "hate consumer drones", "little more irritating than going out of your way to enjoy a bit of nature and peace and quiet only to have it ruined by an idiot with a drone".
Drones have a purpose, maybe it's just not something you appreciate. Cars dominate areas with their annoying sounds, and I'd suggest that you're more used to their sound so you tune it out. I've been to national parks in dozens of countries around the world and, like you, I appreciate peace and quiet, but I've heard planes and helicopters go over in almost all of them. They're background noise because they are not new, so no one gets outraged. Go to a national park almost anywhere central in the USA and the sky is streaked with contrails that impact every scene and photo for the entire day.
At Kings Canyon last year, someone flew a drone over the area and everyone looked up. Minutes before and after (in fact, most of the day), much much louder scenic helicopters flew a circuit and almost no one reacted at all. (You can get easy permission to fly a drone at Kings Canyon, you're just not meant to fly over the canyon proper and rim.)
Like I said, I suspect most flying drones in parks are not locals so they figure they'll be gone before someone sees their photos online and pulls them up for it.
All of those things are enjoyed in your own home without having an effect on others.
I did consider all the language that I used and that was the most diplomatic that I could muster for such pointless and stupid annoyance in the only land area we have that is relatively free of buzzing things.
I'm not a fan of Planes/helis/car noise either, but they are usually going somewhere, so they don't hang in a single area ruining the environment for 20 minutes at a time.
I dread batteries getting even better/cheaper so drones can ruin the environment for even longer.
I wouldn't care about drones if they would only fly in an area for the time needed to transit through that area, but they hover and annoy until the controller finally gets bored of irritating everyone around them.
What is the greater purpose of consumer drones that you refer to that I am overlooking? I mean other than, "wow, I'm controlling a flying thing"?
No. In my hometown the park where people have been safely flying model airplanes decades before the drone craze is 2.5 miles from the town's airport. 5 miles is incredibly restrictive and not justifiable.
By that description we should ban dogs. Surely the number of people terrified by dogs far exceeds the number of people scared of drones, by a huge number.
Whenever someone raises this gripe about drones, I wonder how they feel about cars. I'm currently in my office, with the windows closed and a heater audibly running. I can hear trucks/buses and occasionally cars on a 30-50km/h minor arterial road two blocks away. I can hear every car that drives down the road a block away.
(I own two cars and two drones.)
I guess that his answer would be that this nuisance is good for the economy where flying a drone for entertainment doesn't. His argument was also about them being at at least 30m from bystander, which the nuisance is a good argument for.
OP talked about them being a distracting dot in the periphery. Like birds? People overreacted to books, radio, magazines, TV, etc - it comes with all new things.
I often think of the "but what about the animals" people in national parks. Those are national parks at the end of roads bordered by roadkill and with parking lots and shoulders absolutely flooded with cars, often idling. I am not arguing for drones all over national parks 24/7, but I marvel at reactions like OP's which could easily describe cars or dogs:
"Drones are a public nuisance. The sound, having a dot just floating in view, zipping around - it's annoying and even scary to bystanders."
As the article suggests, drone rules in the USA and Australia aren't outrageous, but the B4YFLY app is very poor.
With all due respect, that is not a particularly valid point, I mean, the people that just got your 5 dollars (and soon will get another 10) will readily tell you how that never happened because unauthorized drone flying was forbidden before that happened and probably expect an applause or a pat on the shoulder for being so much efficient in preventive measures.
A related thing that didn’t occur to me until recently: if you keep your all-up weight under 250g, all of those regulations go out the window and drop back down to “fly responsibly”. I’ve been working on drones professionally for a year now, and am just in the process of putting together a tiny kit for fun. This idea clicked for me when a Transport Canada-certified flight examiner sent me a really cool FPV video that was clearly flying around people. You can do a lot while staying under the weight restriction.
Are there commercially available drones that light? My Mavic Air is tiny, and it's still over 400g. The only way I can imagine making it under 200g and still able to fly is to reduce the battery to something that can only fly for a few minutes.
For home-built though, you can definitely put together a rig that'll do GPS-based hover and other semi-autonomous flight modes. For example:
In the professional work I've been doing, I've been using ArduPilot (which, despite the name, isn't Arduino-based). I'm debating whether to use ArduPilot or BetaFlight for the flight controller, but if it's possible weight-wise, I am going to try to squeeze GPS onto it to get more autonomous/stable flight out of it. We'll see how it all goes. Maybe there'll be a "Show HN" post in a few weeks :)
You pay to rent the space and put up a barrier. These laws were designed to allow drones used for filming (and ensure the production company has to cover the costs of ensuring safety for said filming.) They give no consideration to hobbyists, or anyone else who isn't making enough of a profit off of the thing they're doing in the air to be worth paying people to clear out of the area.
Basically, it's like food licensing. They only care to ensure that people trying to make a profit off of their food-service business aren't doing so at the expense of public safety; they don't care how many "food hobbyists" (e.g. parents who bake brownies for school bake sales) they prevent from engaging in their hobby in the process.
I could understand if a nursing/retirement home had its own rules for not sharing food, but this is actually illegal?
Edit: OP edited comment with a different scenario.
In my personal experience, the drone rules are impacting aviation more than expected. The problem is that people are actually following the rules. NOTAMs are being issued to notify manned aircraft of drone activity. Large manned aircraft at thousands of feet are being redirected because someone with a 2kg drone is running a test.
Example of how complicated this can become for pilots: https://www.tc.gc.ca/en/services/aviation/drone-safety/notic...
Apart from being way less cool is it also under the effect of this kind of law?
Drones can be a rather severe nuisance and potential safety hazard when mishandled. As an example I was at the beach in San Francisco once, and someone flying an obnoxiously loud FPV drone was repeatedly buzzing everyone's heads, often just feet overhead. It completely ruined the beach for anyone nearby.
Even without such dickish behavior, the sound of a million angry wasps and the possibility of unwanted aerial photography is generally not a welcome addition to most of the places people want to go.
Aviation uses imperial units (feet for altitude, knots for speed, and nautical miles for distance).
Unfortunately, the influx of consumer drones has set the expectation that you should be able to fly anywhere you want. That simply hasn't been the case for any RC aircraft for a long time.
I've found if you keep a respectful distance from people, nobody gives shit that you are flying a drone. If anything they're more likely to come up and ask questions, curious about what you are doing.
The problem I see is drone manufactures marketed their products such that "they're just another toy". It's led to drone operators acting like they're entitled to fly wherever they want. Combine that with pressure to capture an incredible shot for Insta/Pinterest/etc, and you get people that have completely disregarded for long standing rules designed to keep people safe.
The reality is drones are able to operate in vastly more areas than RC aircraft have in the past. Clearance from bystanders/structures, height restrictions, airport proximity, etc have all been things RC operators have dealt with for ages. Problem is people don't just want to fly a drone, they want to operate them in dangerous manners and in places they really shouldn't.
Yes, people should be aware of their obligations, but the companies selling the products bear some of the responsibility for educating the customers, and absolutely should not be free to actively hide that information.
Launching is a different matter and the author is right. You can certainly fly in a lot of places but touching the ground can be tough. Public parks can be difficult and depends on the whim of whoever is on duty. One park I flew out for months then one day a ranger tells me there is no flying there. Nothing is posted and when I go to challenge this imaginary rule it only made the ranger angry. Now I fly from public easements: sidewalks, river fronts, jetties, high tide lines. There appears to be no central authority. And the people who would try and chase you off don’t think they have authority there (lots of waterfront is Corp of engineering)
If you’re saying it’s permissible to stand outside the park and fly the drone in that sounds like the worst kind of hairsplitting to me and totally goes against the spirit of the rule.
As the purpose of the regulation is due to “this new use has the potential to cause unacceptable impacts such as harming visitors, interfering with rescue operations, causing excessive noise, impacting viewsheds, and disturbing wildlife.”
It seems like flying is what’s discouraged.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. They want to ban flying over the park, but they don't have the legal power to do so. So instead they banned a bunch of other things (launching, landing, operating) to make flying over the park as inconvenient as possible.
The hairsplitting that goes totally against the spirit of the rule, in my opinion, is not the hair splitting that lets you continue to fly over the park, but the hairsplitting that let them pass this regulation in the first place.
We live in a democracy governed by the rule of law though. I'm strongly against attempts to work around the rule of law by government agencies even if I think the outcome is somewhat positive.
In this case that means in order to ban drones flying over national parks they either need to convince the legislative branch to grant them the power to do so, or if the FAA has already been granted such power they need to convince the FAA to pass such regulations. What they shouldn't be doing (in my opinion) is work arounds like this trying to seize authority that the legislature has not granted them. (I acknowledge but disagree with an argument that this is not a workaround/splitting hairs but instead a legitimate use of their granted power)
Drone flying is a fundamentally antisocial activity. If you're doing it far away from others then that's fine, but I have no sympathy for the drone pilots in this thread complaining that they're forbidden from flying over crowded city streets or in similar scenarios. National Parks have tons of people in them, while National Forests are generally rather empty. Those are better locations for drone pilots.
Congress should pass a law that says state and local jurisdictions must register their anti-drone laws with the FAA in a formal way by January 1, 20XX otherwise they are legally unenforceable.
Then there's a guarantee that what the app gives is valid information, and it's incumbent on local governments to make sure of that, and drone users aren't liable if they don't.
A parallel might be drawn to the concealed carry reciprocity act (https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/69) currently pending in Congress, in the sense that it would also prevent state and local jurisdictions from enforcing local regulations against individuals who met some Congressional standard (in that case, that they were registered for concealed carry in their place of residence). Constitutional scholars don't have a firm answer for that bill's constitutionality because it's sort of a unique proposed application of Commerce Clause power.
(I work for Skyward, who were the first USS that implemented LAANC.)
airmap.io is helpful
If you used this level of due diligence on whether it's permissible to do anything, you'd find you're allowed to do nothing.
Rules and advises about using it would be better than the current prohibition.
I understand no one wants ten jerks flying their loud drones during summer time at Yosemite's most crowded areas... but this ignores the fact that you can drive 1h inside the park and find a place no one will be bothered.
Regarding dealing with wild life, etc. the best thing would be advises on how to deal with such an encounter. You can fly a small plane near a whale, and no one will complain... but try to fly a small drone 100m away, and suddenly, you'll be shamed for scaring the huge mammal.
https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/management/permits/aircraft.htm...
edit - Not sure about the downvoters here, it's an established fact. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-military-son...
But people do and it’s at best annoying to other visitors and at worst dangerous.
Two drone experiences come to mind...
First, hiking in Scotland. Some other guys had drones (3 or 4 of them in a group). Buzzing around what should have been a quiet, relaxing area. The noise was annoying and when the batteries died, the drones landed in less than ideal spots.
Second, camping in the Blue Ridge, at a full-service camp site. Guy in the next site was flying one around while drunk, at low altitude. Then, he passed out and left the drone on. Battery got low and stupid damn thing started calling out “battery low” every 5 minutes for an hour until it finally died.
People are jerks. This is why we can’t have nice things.
I get that some of the existing drone regulations, especially on private property, may be overly restrictive. I could barely fly a drone around my multi-acre property between general aviation airports and a nearby Army area.
I also get that striking appropriate balances for multi-use of federal land is difficult. For example, I'm perfectly happy to argue both sides of very limited snowmobiles in Yellowstone in winter.
However, other than individually-permitted commercial drone use, (or SAR etc. obviously), I see no scenario where hobbyist drone use in National Parks should be an allowable activity.
in total, US national parks consist of about 50 million acres of land. are you really saying it's completely unreasonable for hobbyist drone users to enjoy any of it?
The distinction is huge. Consider 'responsible drug use'. Is a 20 year old in a bar being irresponsible because they're in the US and not the UK?
(ok, they probably are, but in a different way entirely...)
An early iOS success story, founded in 2007, and recently acquired by Boeing. They are the dominant software company in this niche, and are well positioned to add a “UAS tier” subscription in the future.
By the way, "UAS" is an unnecessarily gendered, self-important term that often doesn't even cover the subject. "Drone" has none of these problems, and it's what people "get".
That's why there are tax agents and lawyers.
In reality perhaps what we really need is a queryable API for state and local laws? I know DC has their primary legal codex as a GitHub repo. Surely they could provide links where a state law or fed law is modified ?
With this many laws, and bureaucracy creating laws within laws with no oversight, how can we mere humans be expected to follow said laws?
with a browser this is pretty clear:
>State and Local Drone Rules
>B4UFLY shows airspace rules provided by FAA data sources.
>B4UFLY does not include local rules which may affect your planned operation – including your ability to land and take off your aircraft from certain areas. >While the FAA is the sole regulator of the National Airspace System and governs aircraft operations once airborne, entities such as cities, states, parks, and private landowners may regulate your ability to land and take off your aircraft from certain locations. Please make yourself aware of any local rules prior to your planned operation.
So, I understand the frustration in not having a definite, single, authoritative source, but the critique about the tool being deceiving appears excessive.
The reason for the byzantine complexity about drone regulation isn't that some Big Government is injecting its ham-fisted regulatory appendages into a problem that it doesn't understand.
It's that, for the most part, no one wants your drones in the air at all. People don't like these things. They're noisy. They're scary. Their operators tend to be pushy jerks more often than not. They just aren't what a median voter wants to see on a nice sunny afternoon in the park or trail or whatever. And those voters governments, at all levels, are responding to that desire.
Basically: drone operators are the mid-life-nerd-crisis version of skate punks. No one wants them hanging around either, and skateboarding regulation is at least as complicated as drone rules.
After buying the done: Let's go fly this in the forest!
Sounds like that is a person problem, not a drone problem. That hypothetical person is a creep, drone or no drone.
So you can call it what you want, but I don't want it near me.
I'll give them a pass this once. Maybe it's new and they just wanted to try it out. But I'm definitely going to take steps to remove it if I hear it again.
Whereas drones, people just don't like them at all.
This reads like the kind of pushback against the horseless carriage.
>Chicagoans called automobiles "buzz wagons" and "devil wagons." Reckless drivers were "scorchers," a word that originally described speeding bicyclists in the 1890s. "Auto Scorchers a Terror," the Tribune declared in 1902 — at a time when about 800 people in a city of 1.7 million had automobile licenses.
>The mayor, an avid bicyclist, threatened to crack down on motorists. "There are a number of young fools, who have more money than brains, who are running these automobiles over the boulevards at express time speed and they are going to get into trouble," Harrison said.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-chicago-auto-show-ear...
I allow you to drone because I need to drone too (doesn't quite add up to the general population, no?)
That's not the way it was when the automobile was first introduced. The general public argued against its utility, and made arguments that it was far more of a nuisance than anything else.
We're still in the infancy of the utility of personal drone devices.
The first paragraph is supercilious baiting and the second is a snarky putdown. Can you please not do such things on HN? We've had to ask you this repeatedly.
Right now the geo-fencing of where you can fly is very rigid, with no provisions for altitude and distance, this could be improved to include glide-paths near airports for instance. It could also be tiered depending on the pilot's qualifications (similar to scuba diving) and if the drone is fitted with a transponder, or if they have submitted a flight plan. With these, there's no reason a drone pilot can't have similar freedom as a helicopter pilot.
I think most of these problems stem from technology being ahead of legislation, as always.
Why do you say that? I've flown line-of-sight fixed wing RC airplanes before and it was loads of fun.
In our state, even the governor has tried to get the FAA to stop routing jumbo jets so that they're causing noise problems several miles from the airport to no avail. Jets regularly pass by at 2000 feet or so even though the airport is several miles away. They didn't used to do this.
When a plane or drone flies over my house at low altitude, can I charge them a toll? How high up do I own? The FAA seems to assume I own nothing at all an inch above my land.
There seems to be a need for an I'm-not-a-douche-bag certification that can be used to make exceptions for folks like myself. I try hard not just to be responsible, but also not be a douche bag with my drone.
Or prohibit the FAA to make such many confusing rules, i.e. flex the regulatory muscle on what the FAA is allowed to do.
It’s all the other parts of the government that tack on confusing rules, in an inconsistent and confusing manner.
Even then... I thought I saw a sign asking people not to do that during wildfires so as not to interfere with firefighting operations. Do these things make it into some kind of temporary no-fly zone for drones?
It would be great if the no fly zones could be uploaded to the drone itself so it would simply refuse to take off in those areas for instance.
DJI drones won't fly in no-fly zones.
* tighter clearances
https://img.eachine.com/eachine/products/original/201707/149...