What's up with NASCAR & NBC using drones to film at Watkins Glen?

[Snowboarder_Bo]

[I just saw this a couple of days ago:

Drone usage is prohibited near the track at Watkins Glen International for the second year in a row.

President of Watkins Glen International, Michael Printup, said it is a safety precaution for the drivers, crew and spectators.

](http://www.mytwintiers.com/story/d/story/drones-prohibited-at-wgi/42577/czmQclgL2UWzCYQ1rUCVGQ)
Also, I thought drones were still illegal to use for commercial purposes in the US. But there’s plenty of drone footage on TV right now coming from the race events at Watkins Glen.

What gives?

[andrewm]

Are you sure it’s drone footage and not from manned aircraft?

[Pork_Rind]

@Snowboarder_Bo

I just saw this a couple of days ago:
Also, I thought drones were still illegal to use for commercial purposes in the US. But there’s plenty of drone footage on TV right now coming from the race events at Watkins Glen.

What gives?

You can get an exemption from the FAA now while they’real still evaluating what they’real going to do long term.

http://knowbeforeyoufly.org/for-business-users/

@The FAA

The FAA currently authorizes the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for commercial or business purposes on a case-by-case basis. You may not fly your UAS for commercial purpose without the express permission from the FAA. You should check with the FAA for further determination as to what constitutes a commercial or business use of small UAS.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Huh. YEah, I see that NBC had an exemption granted so they could film golf at Watkins Glen; maybe they did the same for the races.

[Hampshire]

I didn’t see it but could it have been the cameras that are suspended and run along cables similar to the NFL cameras?

[gotpasswords]

A couple of the local TV news stations have been messing around with drones. The utterly stupid thing is that like the “whirrrrrrr” background noise that TV news people like to use to say “From NewsChopper 7” they’re now using that nasty “wheeeeeeee” drone noise to denote “From SkyDrone 5!”

[Zakalwe]

@Hampshire

I didn’t see it but could it have been the cameras that are suspended and run along cables similar to the NFL cameras?

Watkins Glen is a 2.5 mile road course. Not a lot of places to hang the wires (they’ve also backed off those quite a bit since the disaster where the wires snapped and damn near cut Jeff Gordon’s car in half).

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Zakalwe

Watkins Glen is a 2.5 mile road course. Not a lot of places to hang the wires (they’ve also backed off those quite a bit since the disaster where the wires snapped and damn near cut Jeff Gordon’s car in half).

Not a lot of non-fans know about that; here’s an article and some videos. Most of those are fan videos taken from the stands or broadcast clips that don’t show incident, only the aftermath. In fact, broadcast footage seems to be lacking, for some reason, as if there might be people who would rather that this incident wasn’t well-known and discussed… but no, nothing like that would ever happen concerning NASCAR, right? :dubious: