i'm just waiting for some yocals to fly drones into a stadium during a football game, and lose control of the drone.

or when pedestrians in parks are struck by drones....

it's in the near future

Generally aircraft, other than on approach to land or taking off (I'd assume crashing here is fine too) are supposed to stay above 500'. I say generally, because there's crop dusting, fire suppression, air ambulance's, etc that in order to do their jobs, can't adhere to that. There are no actual rules when it comes to model aviation. There are guidelines, but no actual rules which can be criminally prosecuted. I'm sure at some point criminal negligence will come up though. We're supposed to stay below 400' AGL, (gives us a 100' seperation), and stay away from airports. I think it's three miles. Anything not in those area's, is fair game. You have to be pretty f-ing stupid to not be aware of aircraft in the area anyways.





I fly stuff at regatta's all the time. I've flown stuff at work, at the park, in my front yard in town, on the side of the road, all over the place. As has most people in the RC hobby for decades. Drone is just a hot button word that the @ssholes in the media have come up with to get the sheep's attention and sell more advertising.






Dude, everything can hurt somebody. So can our boats. If we banned everything that could hurt people, we wouldn't be allowed to walk around even. Trust me, nobody wants to see their toy damaged, or cause damage. Unless you're a criminal, then there's nothing that can be done. More regulation doesn't prevent anything.
I've got a cheap hexacopter, and I've still got $2k into what is flying around, it's NOT real robust either. Even a rough landing can break stuff. What I'm getting at, is nobody want's to see that much money go up in smoke. So you tend to be fairly careful with it, but $hit does happen. Just like operating a car, firearm, pencil, toilet seat, spork, or actual airplane. Find some statistics about how many people are killed a year because of RC planes/helicopters, and how many are killed because of manned airplane/helicopter crashes. Or a combination.
I can promise you, at some point, there will be a collision that causes a fatality with a manned aircraft colliding with an RC aircraft. That's a statistical reality. But that can happen with birds too. We aren't banning birds.





That organization exists. It's the AMA. They do not insure their members that are using their widgets commercially though. Which is fine, it can't cost that much to insure it like any other business.





Too late. The AMA has pissed away a lot of money on this. At it's very core, all it is, is the gov't wanting something else to tax and control people on to justify adding some more people to the FAA's payroll. I think there needs to be regulation on stuff too, but not when it's a 5 pound toy aircraft with a camera hanging off of it. If you're talking about putting a thousand pounds of something in the air, that's where it needs to have some regulation. But there is no logic in what they are doing.


I just don't see why now this has become an issue. RC has been around for quite a while. I first started when I was eleven, that was twenty three years ago, and I know the hobby was around long before I got into it. Because some mild levels of automation have been introduced, and camera's have gotten cheap and tiny it's now a problem? Drone is also the dumbest word. Drones are for blowing up <insert whomever we're blowing up this week> with no risk to the human pilot. People are raising a stink over less than 25lbs of RC toy.


One more thing. If you screw up flying an RC toy, and kill someone, you should likely be imprisoned. But that is no different than anything else. If you damage someone's property, you should pay for it. But that too is no different than anything else.

Easy, easy. I have been a long standing member of the AMYA until recently. Many of these drone pilots have absolutely no skill or background in model RC. Most AMYA members do fly at designated flying fields out of convenience (we don't all live in the flat-lands). I'm just suggesting that some more organization around the new drone guys might help...geesh. hot button.

It's an issue because every other 12 year old, from age 10 to 60, is getting a drone. They can fly them over crime scenes, through fireworks, and between buildings. My cousin watched a guy just chew himself up with a big one at the beach last week. It's different than modeling has been in the past and it's growing like wild fire. There are more of them and they're more nimble and it's reasonable to do something to keep it from getting out of control (but this FAA over-reaction is not it). Until recently you had to build your own model airplane too which provided a substantial filter. The level of pre-kitting, especially with the drones now, has opened their use up to a lot more people.

As far as air space is concerned - the coast guard could have been (and likely was) in the air around the start of the Everglades Challenge at low altitude. It's a legitimate concern but I think it can managed by requiring a little bit of demonstrated responsibility through licensing. The AMYA has done an excellent job of self policing and easing the concerns of the FAA in the past by creating the type of structure that educates people, sets certain requirements, and provides insurance. The people can organize and show the restraint to keep drones from being a problem themselves or the government will require it for us. It's that simple. I'm just suggesting that it might be better for the people to do it.

A drone potentially colliding with a coast guard helicopter on it's way to save someone seems like a scenario worth doing something to make sure it's avoided. That's all I'm saying.

It's a hot button for me because it's just another case of the "what if's" and a string of mythical scenarios. What if somebody is kiteboarding, and it tangles a rescue helo? What if it's a Cessna? What if you fall off your boat, die, and somebody is stranded because your corpse fowled the prop 10 miles out and they've got no radio and are dumber than a bag of hammers? What if's are just hand wringing and BS.

Stupid is stupid. There's no getting around that. People die every day for really dumb reasons. You take responsibility for your actions. If you can live with being responsible for killing somebody for no reason, then that's your deal.

More rules, means less rights. Every time one of these jackholes passes a fresh law, it's less you can do. If the dude downed a Coast Guard Sea Hawk, nail him to a cross, literally, and make an example of his mistake. But quit taking sh!t away from me!

I want to make some extra cash for fun with my hex doing real estate photos, maybe some wedding stuff, or crop surveys. Who knows, it might lead into something else and get me out of the cabinet shop, but I can't legally do it with out shelling out a massive amount of money to do so. There's less than 50 companies in the US legally using UAS for profit. There's just no reason for that. Sure, if you're buying surplus Reapers, or Predators for whatever you're doing a couple hundred miles out, than yeah, there should be some regulation. But for me to have 5,10,15,or 20 pounds of helicopter flying not much above the trees and getting paid making me a criminal, is just dumb.

I still have a little bit of faith in the system. I think (hope) we still live in a country where insane laws don't last too long.

I would just rather try to prevent the tragedy in the first place than to just let it happen and then react afterwards. Besides, if there is a major drone incident, the over-reaction and anti-drone sentiment will be overwhelming and even more ridiculously dramatic than it is now. There would be even less chance to keep it pragmatic.

It doesn't have to be done with a significant loss of freedom other than getting people start to respect the liability by putting forth some simple effort to reserve the privilege to operate a drone in certain circumstances. It should probably take less effort than it takes now to get an automotive driver's license (which has probably proven to be a reasonable limitation on operating a car).

You can't pass a law for everything. At some point people need to take responsibility for their own actions. Otherwise things start getting Orwellian rather quickly.

Which is why I suggested that an organization of interested people should come up with a licensing system and work with the FAA to manage the concerns for risks associated with the proliferation of hobby drones in the same way the AMA did with model planes (sorry, I said AMYA earlier...that's the model yacht association)

Every time we sail into the beach with the wind and waves behind us, we pose more of a problem than some guy flying a drone. If you think otherwise, you must be sailing off a deserted island.

I'm not sure we were comparing that to landing a beach cat...but even so, there are a lot fewer beach cats coming to the beach with an onshore breeze than drones being operated out there. That makes the drones a bigger concern.

I think I have to agree with Jake's point on the CG vs. drone issue.

There are several CG helos that operate right along the beach at low altitude - I've seen them many times along those beaches. What they're looking for (besides bikinis) I am not sure. Maybe because of the large port and shipping traffic right there.

Also, McDill AFB is right near there, so I'm sure they've got their own stuff going on. I recall a few friendly conversations with black RIBs that found us "cutting the corner" during MachoMan...

Finally, I'm more interested in privacy protection. I don't want Karl II flying over my boat and seeing the jet-packs I'm bolting to the rear beam. Or the meth-lab I'm building in the back yard...

Dude, you live in Florida. Your back yard would stand out like a sore thumb if you didn't have a meth lab.

Or a weed farm

or a human trafficking barn

When I was flying spotter for the Sheriff's Dept. we spent most of our time taking pictures, circling over semi truck trailers, hidden deep in the woods.

The Sheriff's Dept. got the addresses from the electric company, which would point out 'high usage' remote locations. The Sheriff told me they also look for pigs, as the growers will often set up a hog operation next to the grow houses, just so the smell will put off the search dogs.

I was always a little nervous flying so low/slow over those places, I figured we'd get shot at if we hung around too long.

The google empire... I was just presented with an advertisement, on an NFL football site, for the AMA pushing membership to drone owners. They're watching everything I type. It's a little creepy.

Adblock Plus Killer app that is highly customizable.

Jake, I would have thought you'd be the second person to use TOR browser.

Todd would have been my first guess, but I don't know if he uses internet...

Nah, generally I don't worry about it. I am but a tiny minnow in a very large sea. Sometimes those ads have interesting stuff in them. I do have adblocker, though...not sure why it's not working anymore.

Because Adblocker started getting paid by advertisers to let their ads go through.

Adblocker is now old hat. There are other products on the market now that don't play by the advertisers rules - but the advertisers are fighting back.

A lot of the ads these days have "pingbacks" of sorts to the server - so that when they're displayed on the client machine, they let the server know "hey, it showed up" and this tells the server to display the content that you want to see. Its nefarious but its a constant game of cat and mouse between the people who don't want to be bothered by ads and those who will stop at nothing to show them to you.

Personally I find it fascinating.