Drones and Common Sense Rant

Itchy said:
Well, I'm all ears. Not sure where I misread or what. He lost me on the Big Boys with Big toys part. I take that as Captain Joe in his Cirrus or C 172 heavy.
Click to expand...

I took it as guys playing with big drones, in an area where it's "sanctioned."
 
I have signed up at this forum and chosen my nick only to join this discussion and make my suggestions. I know that the sUAV industry is still way to small compared to the full scale planes and helicopters industry to get an ear from the FAA. But it is growing rapidly. I want to avoid that someday something happens between unmanned and manned air traffic with my suggestions.
You can’t stop the progress if you hate or despise it.

I know both sides of the story. I fly sUAV because it is technically challenging. The biggest challenge is the radio stuff, frequencies, etc. I know that there are useful applications for sUAVs. But the FAA should give people and the industry room to make progress. The safest way is to separate it with extra airspaces. That’s my dream.
 
Drone Flyer said:
My suggestion is that every dealer, who sells sUAVs, should hand out a flyer where people can learn what is legal and where they can get information about airports, TRA, etc. (I use skyvector.com).
For old fashioned RC models 400 ft AGL is mostly enough, but sUAV are different. I am convinced that they are safer than normal RC models. I saw some flyaways from RC models and it happened once to me in the 1980s. I had crashes with RC planes, but nothing since I fly sUAV.
My second suggestion is that the FAA gives some airspace to sUAV flyers. Outside of the cities you could establish a "Drone Zone" where people can legally fly up to 10,000 ft AGL in a radius of 10nm. These "Drone Zones" are in the VFR maps and all the air traffic can easily fly around. Some big boys with there big toys think that all the sky belongs to them. But that must change. Soon there will be more sUAV pilots than full scale pilots.
Click to expand...
You have to be kidding. You think that hobby drone flyers should be flying around at 10,000 feet (no eyes on them and why the hell do they need to be at that altitude?) and that all the traffic can just be re-routed around them. Would this include LEOs and the Military? How about actual aircraft in an emergency situation? What about rescue helicopters and medical helicopters? What about firefighting planes and choppers? How about search planes and choppers? What about mapping and surveillance aircraft? What about choppers flown by utility entities? What about aircraft and choppers flown by and for ranchers, and farmers for various reasons? What about Fish and Game aircraft? How do you plan on effectively handling communications?

"big boys with big toys"? (sounds like some envy issues) You mean the more than 87,000 flights per day that take place in the US compared to some pissant with a drone? A third being commercial flights, some 27,000 GA flights, some 24,999 air taxi flights, over 5,200 Military fights, and over 2,000 air cargo flights. There are over the country some 5,000 planes at any given time. Do you seriously think that some Stevie drone flyer is going to learn anything of real value or even understand what he is reading, off of some flyer or even read it to begin with? Drone Zones outside the cities? Of course no aircraft (as mentioned in the first paragraph above) ever fly outside the cities. Bejebus.

Your last paragraph is just too inane to even bothering replying to. I am surprised you didn't mention how many people die of cancer every year too, because that's just as non pertinent and irrelevant as the rest of your defense/reasoning.

While stupidity cannot be stopped, at some point, heavy fines, the confiscation of their toys, jail time and a prison record might.
 
Last edited:
Drone Flyer said:
I have signed up at this forum and chosen my nick only to join this discussion and make my suggestions. I know that the sUAV industry is still way to small compared to the full scale planes and helicopters industry to get an ear from the FAA. But it is growing rapidly. I want to avoid that someday something happens between unmanned and manned air traffic with my suggestions.
You can’t stop the progress if you hate or despise it.

I know both sides of the story. I fly sUAV because it is technically challenging. The biggest challenge is the radio stuff, frequencies, etc. I know that there are useful applications for sUAVs. But the FAA should give people and the industry room to make progress. The safest way is to separate it with extra airspaces. That’s my dream.
Click to expand...

Golf is challenging. Give that a try.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bp
Just to make it clear: I don't fly with my sUAV in high altitudes. I know what to do. I just want to make a suggestion what could be done to make this situation better. I know what is going on in the scene. No one except me made a suggestion here how to solve the situation. I feel misunderstood.
This thread started with drones flying over wildfire. It was probably a TRA violation. Did they find the crazy pilots? We heard about a drone that hit a plane. Did they find the pilot or drone? If something happens (and I pray that it will never happen) they probably won’t find the drone or pilot.
You can make laws and threaten with fines and jail, but some people will do it anyway. You can't prohibit drones. They are here. In less than four month it is Christmas and another hundred of thousands drones go up into the air. It is the same with weapons, but they are much more dangerous.

For your information: recently someone flew in more than 15,000 ft AGL with a small EPO plane. I also think that this is crazy. Why did he/she do this? I think because (s)he could and probably wanted to find out what is possible.

Two more remarks:
1. The "big boys and big toys" was a little untoward expression from me. I don’t envy. I had my own plane for many years and it was top notch.
2. I have tried golf. I think it is boring.
 
Drone Flyer said:
Just to make it clear: I don't fly with my sUAV in high altitudes. I know what to do. I just want to make a suggestion what could be done to make this situation better. I know what is going on in the scene. No one except me made a suggestion here how to solve the situation.
.
Click to expand...
The problem is that your "suggestion" is naive, fraught with issues and unrealistic. You never bothered to even answer/address one concern or question that I asked of you in post 205 above. You apparently cannot even fathom the problems surrounding what you proposed. I find it hard to believe that you were or are a pilot either, because you should have been able to easily see the folly in your idea.
 
Last edited:
Drone Flyer said:
Again: my suggestion is, give the drone flyers their shooting range.
Click to expand...

Where? If this fantasy were ever entertained it would be WAY out in the middle of nowhere. There are what? 10 or 12 different freq's available? You're going to tie up a chunk of airspace somewhere so 12 folks can use it for a hobby? It is very naive thinking. Furthermore, many can't be bothered to drive 10 miles away, much less hundreds of miles to go fly.

What is needed is to agree manned aircraft own the sky, and play by that concept. Low and close. Going for a 30 mile out model ride is pointless and patently unsafe.
 
Drone Flyer said:
We are talking here about safety. There is no doubt that safety has the highest priority.
No law can keep some people away from doing stupid things. But a lot of people just don’t know what is right.
Click to expand...

The truth, is that a lot of these drone owners simply don't care. They'll do anything for their next video or that they think is exciting and fun. They figure they will most likely never get caught anyways, so why not do whatever they want to whenever they want to. It's their attitude that is the issue.

Safety doesn't matter to idiots and their toys. Neither does common sense, apparently. Tell me just how stupid you have to be to think that this was a great idea. What fool would believe that this was "right"? :

A drone nearly collided Wednesday with a medical helicopter that was taking a snake-bite victim to a Fresno hospital, authorities said.

The helicopter was flying 1,000 feet above the ground about 1 p.m., when the pilot spotted a large drone in its flight path, said Todd Valeri, whose company operates the SkyLife Air Medical chopper.

The pilot swiftly turned to avoid the drone, missing a potential catastrophe by about 20 feet, he said.

“It was definitely alarming to have something that close to you in an aircraft,” said Vince Ellis, a flight nurse who was attending to the patient on board. The drone was about 4- to 6-feet wide, he said.

The near-collision occurred about two miles north of Fresno-Yosemite International Airport, where the police force is investigating the incident, said Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman.

The chopper had picked up the patient at Mono Hot Springs in the Sierra and, despite the brief detour, completed its trip to Community Regional Medical Center in downtown Fresno, Valeri said.

He opined that medical choppers are more likely to encounter aerial hazards such as drones since they don’t fly in traditional flight paths of commercial planes.

“This is lifesaving work,” Valeri said. “Lives weigh in the balance.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-medical-helicopter-drone-20150812-story.html

The FAA has now documented nearly 700 reports of close encounters between aircraft and drones. The number of reports of pilots experiencing "near misses" with drones this year is on track to quadruple from the number counted last year. So with all this negative news and the known rules being disregarded, how do you explain this? What excuses are you going to make when someone is killed?
 
Last edited:
Itchy said:
Where? If this fantasy were ever entertained it would be WAY out in the middle of nowhere. There are what? 10 or 12 different freq's available? You're going to tie up a chunk of airspace somewhere so 12 folks can use it for a hobby? It is very naive thinking. Furthermore, many can't be bothered to drive 10 miles away, much less hundreds of miles to go fly.

What is needed is to agree manned aircraft own the sky, and play by that concept. Low and close. Going for a 30 mile out model ride is pointless and patently unsafe.
Click to expand...
Manned aircraft do not own the sky. The FAA is the owner/regulator (effectively) and gives you the authrority to operate there under certain guidelines.

Keep in mind, the FAA & NTSB have already ruled that UAS are classified as "aircraft" and subject to FAA regulation. Interesting, as it is tough to comply with the RC flyers' AC the FAA put out in 1981 and the 14CFR regs pertaining to aircraft, min altitudes to operate at, required equipment, etc. The government is very much behind the curve here.

I don't disagree that they sometimes are operated in an unsafe manner posing a danger to manned aircraft. Especially those flying them high above the ground. However I find it amusing folks here are calling it a hobby. Yes to some it is (like me), but this is big business. These things are going to replace manned aircraft in a lot of uses, especially the aerial survey industry, just for starters. They offer a safer alternative to manned aircraft at a fraction of the operating costs. Reading this thread reminds me of the guys I fly with and their neanderthallic viewpoints towards cellphones and computers. Amusing to listen to but that time has come and past.
 
Well, my suggestion may sound naive, but I think some of you also don’t get it.
Let me explain: there are several hundred thousand active RC model flyers in the US. I once came to our airfield and someone from our club was there with a drone. He handed me his second goggle and I could watch him flying. That was so immersive. Wow! That’s what I wanted to do. The old guys still fly around, make some loops and rolls and are happy, but a lot of the younger RC pilots jump on this kind of flying. BTW, it is called FPV (First Person View), because they use a camera that can be panned and tilt. That’s why I think you will have hundreds of thousand drones sooner or later. The number of full scale pilots is shrinking, but the number of FPV pilots is growing rapidly. “A Life Aloft” said there are 5000 flights over the US at any given time. Maybe even today there a more drones flying at the same time. It’s time to give them their space.

When you think that manned aircraft own the sky then you are wrong. First were the birds (remember New York and the Hudson River), then the manned aircraft, now the unmanned aircraft.

I have a new suggestion to enhance safety: you could make two groups of drone and RC flyers. The first group just flies up to 400 ft AGL like today. The second needs a certificate. To get this certificate you have to pass a written test that is especially about airspaces, right of way, etc. Then the sUAV that is flying in higher altitudes should have a strobe light and FLARM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLARM).

If someone flies a glider in 17900 ft and you come with a jet, the glider has the right of way. If you come from behind, the glider is hard to recognize. I know what I am talking about! It is pretty much the same, but accepted in general that gliders are aircraft.

We have drag-strips and raceways so that people can enjoy their cars in a way that would be illegal on the roads -- so perhaps it's time to create some bits of airspace designated as "no-go" for full-sized aircraft -- in the name of SAFETY.
Weapons are outlawed, at least for some people here and in general in other countries. But they are in our world and you can't get them out. We all know hundreds of thousand examples of misuse of weapons. There would be much more if we don’t have shooting ranges. People would fire their guns in the forests or where ever and kill other people.
Again: my suggestion is, give the drone flyers their shooting range or racetrack.
Of course you cant stop idiots with weapons or drones with this.

A word about frequencies: right now you have about 35 frequencies for FPV, but you cant use them all at the same time. Here ichtv is right. Do you remember the old days with analog TV and bad pictures? You had one frequency per channel. Today with digital TV you get 6 channels on one frequency. I have heard that something similar is coming for FPV. Maybe you can get 500 channels simultaneously.
It’s the same with the RC radios. The old 72 MHz could only be used from one per channel. Now you have frequency hopping and spread spectrum and you can use hundreds together. The world record is 132 drones at the same time ().
 
mshunter said:
Then IMO, you should be the one having the bad time. Do away with GA, and give that airspace to drone operators. It's a huge industry, and growing fast. It has the potential to outstrip light singles.
Click to expand...

Yeah, seeing as how GA isn't holding up firefighters and using their airplanes as a high tech peeping toms, I don't think you'll have much luck with that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top