Busting the GoPro Drone Cowboys

wheelsup said:
The FAA fined someone for flying "for hire" but that was thrown out by a low level judge. Currently being appealed.

No action yet from my understanding by the FAA on anyone else flying those things.

Yes it's dangerous. IMO it's probably best handled by local authorities as some sort of public endangerment charge IMO at this point.

In their defense, look at how many birds are out flying, and we hit a very few number of them except for t/o and landing. I've only hit one bird outside of final and that was in a decent about 10 miles from the field.

The technology involved with this stuff is pretty neat IMO.
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The difference is birds have much better situation awareness and at least some survival instinct. A guy flying an RC toy and essentially looking through a straw has no idea about the plane coming up on his 6.
 
mshunter said:
The FAA shouldn't be regulating the average hobbiest. But they should regulate the crap out of the "for hire" guys. I fly a lot of "park flyers." The FAA has no reason to regulate a guy like me. But the videos posted in this thread are a problem.
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I agree, park zone Cubs with a 36" wingspan isn't exactly a problem. But there are people out there that build 1/2 scale stuff and fly it beyond the local RC park. Such as the large scale F-4 phantom that had a near miss with a CRJ in the TLH area earlier this year. That's a problem.
 
It sucks that there are some who totally, willfully, dis-regard common sense with some of the FPV flying. I imagine there will come a time when a couple of the "cowboys" get hit with a fine, and either the activity gets attenuated, or they stop putting it on youtube. Probably a mixture of both.
 
Roger Roger said:
Cool then, put ADSB and or TCAS in them and we won't have a problem.
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As I see it, there is no way the FPV crowd can 100% safely play anywhere near airspace that contains aircraft. Done sensibly, there would not be any problem. But there are a lot of cowboys out there who get a thrill climbing to 11000 feet for some reason.
 
wheelsup said:
... look at how many birds are out flying, and we hit a very few number of them except for t/o and landing.
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Speak for yourself, I would say I average a bird strike (somewhere on the aircraft) every couple of months. Into the blender and those little meat sacks can still wreck it (right Sully?) I would certainly hate to see how something with metal parts would fair through the engine, or worse, through the windscreen.
 
As far as I can tell there are only a few options for drone free-flight:

Much better sense and avoid technology.
Altitude Restrictions and / or a new type of airspace.
 
Tld said:
Speak for yourself, I would say I average a bird strike (somewhere on the aircraft) every couple of months. Into the blender and those little meat sacks can still wreck it (right Sully?) I would certainly hate to see how something with metal parts would fair through the engine, or worse, through the windscreen.
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What sort of flying are you doing? And where? After 8500 hours I've hit a single one outside of short final. IMO the safety issue, provided these things stay outside of final, is way overblown.
 
When it comes to R/C aircraft, line of sight operation has always been the constraining factor. Now, GPS, gyros, and autopilots have removed this constraint.
 
Tld said:
Regional jet, primarily in the Midwest and south.
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You're hitting birds every couple months outside of final/takeoff? I find that really hard to believe based on my own past experiences.

Nobody is saying these guys should be allowed to operate over top airports, but outside of that the possibility is so low it's borderline negligible.

FWIW, it's estimated that there are between 10-20 billion birds in the United States...
 
Mea culpa, most have been below 5000 feet. That's not the argument. Objects have hit my aircraft and the aircraft has always (so far) won. I'd like to keep it that way. He's not allowed to shine a laser in my face, I'd also like to know that Joe Schmo is somehow being deterred from sending a flying object in my path as well.
 
Tld said:
Mea culpa, most have been below 5000 feet. That's not the argument. Objects have hit my aircraft and the aircraft has always (so far) won. I'd like to keep it that way. He's not allowed to shine a laser in my face, I'd also like to know that Joe Schmo is somehow being deterred from sending a flying object in my path as well.
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What is the argument? That there are things out there that you hit? Of course there are. But saying they pose a big safety issue when they compose .000025%* of the bird population is disingenuous.

*estimated
 
I think it's a big threat as well. We're going to have more and more hucksters going for "super cool videos for the youtube" and something unfortunate is going to happen.

What's hilarious is that I went to an outdoor sports n guns event in Arizona a few years ago and the event had a hexacopter with a camera to film some of the event.

People literally flipped out and all of the conspiracy nutbags went off. Obama is going to catalog all the gun owners!
 
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