One of the issues with this is that public safety agencies also want to use drones and probably don’t want to have to buy the special expensive government-only jamming evasion package. And jamming is messy and will probably interfere with users of other radio technologies.
There have been instances over the past few decades of people being maimed or killed by RC aircraft. Not very often, but it has happened.
Things have changed, though - in the old days it required significant skill to control RC aircraft, and the control range was very limited. It wasn’t something you could causally pick up on a weekend. Payloads and flight times were very limited due to technological limitations.
Now, though, flight times have increased considerably, as have control ranges, and there’s on-board computer chips that give the aircraft some autonomy (potentially, a LOT of autonomy) and take over a lot of the work of keeping them up in the air. That’s not all bad - these days, a lot of “drones” have chips on them that, in the event it loses contact with the controller, will bring it to a safe landing rather than a crash, and when combined with GPS can even allow it to return, on its own, to a designated spot. As currently used, these actually make the things safer and easier to use. Those are good things.
However, as I have been saying for years, these are real aircraft. They’re real small aircraft, but still real aircraft. We should no more allow unregulated drone use than unregulated helicopter or airplane use. That doesn’t mean a 2 seat Cessna needs or should have the same rules as a 747 seating hundreds of passengers, but for the sake of those the aircraft might fall on, there needs to be some limits. Likewise, a quadcopter of soft plastic weighing only a few ounces doesn’t need the same rules as something much larger with a 200 pound payload capacity.
Now, there are some drones/quad copters that a very, very much toys - I have one I can fly in my living room, it’s soft plastic, if it hits you or the wall it will literally bounce off. That sort of thing doesn’t need much in the way of rules. I suppose you could mount a teeny camera on it and spy on people, but you’re not loading it with TNT and using it to blow anything up, it simply can not do that. But there are some drones that weigh as much as a person, or more, that do have the potential for mayhem. In theory, I not only don’t have a problem with them being regulated, and operators being required to get training and licensing, I think it might be a good idea (speaking as someone who, in order to continue enjoying a hobby, might well have to get a “UAV” rating added to my current pilot’s license, so it’s not like that wouldn’t affect me personally).
However, that’s mostly keeping honest people honest. Just as there have been instances of people stealing aircraft, you’re still going to have rogue drone operators. You will still have the potential for a bad guys to hijack a legitimate drone. Registration and regulation will help cut done on the problems caused by ignorance, it won’t stop frank criminals. It is, after all, a defining feature of criminals that they break the law.
I also don’t want to see regulations placing a hobby and/or useful tool out of the reach of regular people. I don’t want false security. I don’t want rules for the sake of rules, I want rules that are sensible.
Yes, organize and regulate these things before the National Drone Association comes into being.
yeah, except the difference is that most of us real R/C folks belong to sponsoring/sanctioning organizations like AMA, IMPBA, etc. and we take the time and care to secure permission for places to run. In the process we also indemnify the property owners with millions of dollars in liability insurance coverage.
these douchebros buying these stupid things at 7-11 or Target and flying them up in everyone’s business are fucking it up for the rest of us who do it properly.
“You can have my remote control when you pry it from my cold, dead hand.”
I think his point is that one drone might be easily digested by a big GE turbofan, while a half-dozen geese or more (some 10 lbs of meat & bone each) might not be so easily digested.
There are drones that weigh 10 times what a goose does, and are made of more durable materials than meat and feathers.
The difference with these things is that they have been designed to require virtually no skill to fly, and are sold in a ready to fly state.
In addition to making them easy to fly, gyroscopic stabilizers, GPS, and electronic compasses, and on-board video mean that the drones can be flown well beyond the range/altitude where the pilot can judge the orientation, and may in fact be completely out of sight. Some even include software that will return them to the launch location if radio communication is lost.
Traditional modelers invest a lot of time and personal energy in building the things, and they are not at all easy to fly. Much harder than actual aircraft in my experience. They are very invested in NOT getting the thing hit or crashing it. In order to judge the orientation, the model needs to be kept within 1000’ for a large model, and much less than that for smaller models, and if you fly out of radio range, then you almost certainly lose the model or crash.
Agreed. Type stupid into YouTube, and watch a few videos. We really don’t want these people flying drones. These twits will ignorantly harm everyone around them just to post a ‘cool’ video.
How would some basic registration requirement put it out of reach of normal people? Sensible hobbyists probably are smart enough not to do things that would be forbidden. That some cars get stolen doesn’t make car registration useless, after all. Most of the problems I’ve seen reported seem to come from ignorance and stupidity, not malice.
Such restrictions are already in place and have been for some considerable time. However, the people buying these things at Wal-Mart or ordering them on-line are not aware of those rules and are not being adequately informed about them.
Even those of us who don’t care for the “sponsoring organizations” (there’s a lot of complaints about the AMA, for example) have usually been a member at some point and will readily state that those organizations do a good job of getting out the rules and safety messages.
I’m speaking as someone who has been active in various sorts of aviation since 1995 (wow! 20 years already?) Regulations tend to accumulate and drive costs up. When I got my private pilot’s license there wasn’t really a lower cost alternative, and I was required to learn and practice skills I didn’t really need for the type of flying I actually do. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with those things, learning them didn’t hurt me, but it did cost me several thousands dollars more than if Sport Pilot had been available back then. It took decades to achieve the current tiered system of licensing which makes the lower tiers just a little more accessible.
I think some quads don’t need regulating - the soft plastic toy ones. The ones TV stations want to fly with multiple cameras? Yeah, I think there should be some training, not just skills but how to share the airspace with everyone else, for those. There should be a higher level of skill and responsibility demanded of people flying drones as part of a job or for profit. I’m not opposed to registration/licensing of the larger drones just as we ask it of cars, motorcycles, and other aircraft.
The problem is politicians and scaremongering of the general public. Drones are like computers - they’re tools, with the potential to be either used or abused. Or like cars. Or power tools. I have concerns that there will be kneejerk restrictions that are more theater than useful, that’s all. That’s based in part on some of the crap that went on after 9/11 in relation to aviation.