Notably absent from the "Statements of support for DOT's approach to UAS registration" [1] is the AMA (Academy of Model Aeronautics)
Congress (and Obama) asked the FAA to write rules integrating UAS into the national airspace by September 2015, back in February 2012. [2] By all accounts, the section 333 exception policy does not meet that request... and now they expect to develop a full-blown registration process ready before the end of December? Please, don't make me laugh. They couldn't even answer at the press conference what the benefit of registration will be, arguing that it would be used to track down owners of drones flaunting the rules, but seemingly having forgotten that they already can't identify airborne drones properly.
I think Motherboard says it best. "It's clear that the agency, which oversees the Federal Aviation Administration, wants to crack down on the unsafe use of drones, and it's looking like it's going to try to bypass as much of the traditional rulemaking process as is possible... The short answer is, the FAA will probably cut corners and perhaps 'reinterpret' existing manned aircraft regulations" [3]
Drones should be licensed and/or registered, much the same way as cars are. There are places where you can drive an unregistered car without a driver's license. And that will be true of drones as well. There will be places where you can fly them unlimited. Just not in the common space defined by the government as such. That's what the government is for.
"Drone ranch" here we come.
I am a private pilot, so I appreciate how nuanced the airspace can be. Also I think drones are super cool and access to them should be easy. But not free. Drone operators should be required to take at least a brief ground school covering airspace (take it online!) and pass a quiz (also online!)
Yeah, we should regulate drones. Thing is, no one really flies "drones". People are just flying RC helicopters. But we call them drones and associate them with flying death machines and suddenly everyone is scared.
RC has been around for the better part of 60 years and it's never caused a major problem. The only difference between then and now is that now they are much more controllable and a little cheaper, and so more people are interested. If anything, it's safer today than it was 10 years ago. They are more reliable, more controllable, and fewer people are flying gasoline powered craft.
This won't make things any safer. Far from it. It will just stifle innovation by drying up the revenue streams of companies like DJI and 3DR. So instead of them being able to spend resources building smarter, more intelligent flight controllers and guidance systems people will just look to DIY kits.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned toy fucking magnets, but 250 people got shot yesterday and any legislation about firearms is off limits. Can't talk about registration or "tests" or anything. Someone, somewhere, maybe almost had a "close call" a few months ago with a plane and an RC helicopter. Better get the DOT, FAA, and Congress on this stat. It's literally the next 9/11 just waiting to happen.
So we'll come up with a registration list, licensing parameters, mandatory insurance, and we'll start "banning" anything that doesn't meet FAA specifications from being imported or manufactured.
Meanwhile, in the time it takes them to draft their first proposal 7,000+ people will get shot. A few thousand will die.
but 250 people got shot yesterday and any legislation about firearms is off limits.
Further legislation is "off limits"; you're ignoring the "20,000" gun laws already on the books and the severe restrictions we gun owners are already living under. Something tells me you won't like getting a fraction of these applied to you.
Can't talk about registration or "tests" or anything
Why bother with that precursor to confiscation when Obama after Oregon and Hillary! during the debate called for mass confiscation of all handguns and semi-auto long guns?
(More generally, registration has gotten about as far as it's going to go short of sparking the 2nd Civil War, and the plaintiff's bar has what's covered by legitimate testing under control, as Remington is experiencing with their shoddy Model 700 rifle safeties.)
Meanwhile, in the time it takes them to draft their first proposal 7,000+ people will get shot. A few thousand will die.
Most gun fatalities are suicides; I'm not aware of suicide by drone existing, let alone being a major issue.
Half-humorously: maybe guns can save quadcopters? Let's encourage people to make flying handguns and thus turning the drone debate into gun control issue, at which point we can rest safe that it won't be resolved for the next couple of decades.
As far as I can tell, gun owners are no more thrilled about irresponsible drone operators as we are about irresponsible gun owners.
We also tolerate, more or less, licencing to carry loaded guns outside our dwellings, which this sort of drone licencing could resemble (same generally goes for cars and other motor vehicles). The increasing spread of "constitutional carry", no license required, with Maine just being added a day or two ago, is based on a lack of problems with licensed concealed carry. Which is the opposite of the drone situation, with problems steadily increasing.
And while I recognize the humor you're applying here, your short description of the situation with gun control doesn't really capture the reality. We've been fighting this since right after the Civil War, restrictions on freedmen a large part of the reason for the subsequently judicially nullified 14th Amendment. Ignoring a lot of anti-immigrant state level legislation, FDR then tried to license all handguns with a $3,500 in 2015 dollars transfer "tax", and since, oh, the '50s-'60s, the fundamental argument has been over whether we'd be allowed to possess any guns, with Obama and Hillary! just now calling for mass confiscation of all handguns and semi-auto long guns. I'm not aware of confiscations being on the table with drones, although that could quickly change if/when one brings down an airliner.
And from the view of the FAA, it makes only so much difference if a jet engine injects a big drone vs. a big drone carrying a dense gun.
But I am continuely amused by perceptions of our political power, which comes from at least two things: there are a zillion of us and we vote, and we have been motivated by a lot of government atrocities starting in the early '70s, plus, as noted above, a clear existential threat. The drone situation today currently lacks every single element of our history, but I can imagine murderous enforcement of these coming regulations changing some of that.
I think GP meant that registration will make people much less willing to get into the hobby, which will dry out the revenue for quadcopter-making companies, making them raise prices or close shop altogether. The few people who really want to play with those machines will prefer to order cheaper DIY kits, and since you can't effectively regulate the components they'll be flying whatever they could get assembled instead of tested constructions with proper safety measures. Also almost no one will bother to register DIY drones, since FAA won't fund an army of inspectors to check for license every time someone takes a quadcopter to the park.
It's slightly more complicated, seeing as how shooting them down with nets is a bit difficult (although we may see widespread application of serious DEATH RAYS, excuse me, lasers for that (hey, I want the future that was promised to me in the '60s to come to pass)). There's also the ECM approach, or maybe even EMP.
Rather, follow the drone until it lands. If the owner is stupid enough to bring it back to him, you can go quite a bit further.
How would you find the drone owner and/or operator, exactly? I can see this being used to further erode the right to not be stopped and frisked without probable cause. Now, a drone flying overhead in a public place is probable cause to stop and search everybody in sight.
>RC has been around for the better part of 60 years and it's never caused a major problem.
Its not true that RC has been problem-less - there have been malicious uses of the technology, and fatalities, since the day it was possible to rig up a plane and fly it around. Flight systems, of any variety, are easy to weaponize.
Regulation is a good thing because it requires a more responsible response from civil society. The number of times I've seen day-one flyers out at the local park with their new toy, swooping and hawing over peoples heads recklessly, crashing far too close to civilian life for comfort .. as an RC pilot with 30+ years of experience, I welcome a little enforcement on this subject, frankly. Todays new flyers are quite reckless. Not everyone, obvious, but enough evidence of recklessness exists that I think its a perfectly reasonable requirement that people be registered in order to fly.
>So instead of them being able to spend resources building smarter, more intelligent flight controllers and guidance systems people will just look to DIY kits.
That's not a bad thing, imho, because - especially in the RC world - the DIY crowd have always driven progress in the technology. Flight hobbyists have always been a significant contributor to the science - I would say that flight nerds manifest some of the very same traits that the hacker world admire, inasmuch as the desire to experiment and use technology in interesting ways is promoted with every successful landing.
> That's not a bad thing, imho, because - especially in the RC world - the DIY crowd have always driven progress in the technology.
That's true in many fields and particularly quadcopters are, as far as I can tell, just like 3D printers - the entire industry exists because some hobbyists started making DIY models accessible to general public, and someone saw a new market in that.
> Also I think drones are super cool and access to them should be easy. But not free.
Why not free? Surely their use should be regulated on the basis of scope and competency rather than cost.
Use of drones in personal airspace ( a few metres above one's land ) within the boundaries of one's property should not be the concern of the Government. This would be the equivalent of driving an unlicensed car on one's property.
However if one wished to operate more freely in Class G airspace then I can understand operator and drone registration being necessary. But this should not be based on cost as the gate, but demonstrated competency.
I suppose the cost argument is meant to present a minimum barrier to entry to get rid of out completely random participants. However I've observed that usually the more irresponsible/douchier people have disproportionally more resources available for "tech toys" whereas actual hobbyists are often poorer, so I see cost barriers as driving out exactly the wrong part of the userbase.
Agreed. But it takes money to run testing. So that's really where I was going. If the barrier to entry is a $40 online quiz, is that going to stop anyone? Not likely. But it would allow the government to pay for that online curriculum.
I am not a pilot (although the right $$ would have me there in a an instant... wishful thinking), but I have been flying various remote control aircraft (including so-called "drones", now) for nearly 20 years.
A sensible system seems like it would be three tiered:
Very small stuff would remain unregulated - obviously there is no concern with things like the CX-10, right? I can't imagine a "drone" of anything near that size causing any size of full-scale aircraft problems.
Mid-tier stuff would be a world like Amateur Radio - modernized to be online or something as you've suggested. You are free to participate in the big boy's airspace within the rules, but some education and proof-of-knowledge about those rules is required.
... and of course large things should not be any different than a full-sized aircraft, with the same regulations.
Also, about the proposed registration, they fully acknowledged during the press conference that the trouble is tracking down the owners. You aren't going to be able to read the markings on a Phantom at any useful distance when you're trying to track down a violator.
I'd propose instead a requirement for ADS-B for the mid and large classes below... Micro ~100g transponders exist, fully integrate with the existing aviation infrastructure, etc. [1] ... and most importantly would enable identification of the UAV, which is apparently the most pressing concern at the moment.
Why bother with transponders when most new transmitter/receiver technologies already have unique MAC-address-like fields, precisely for the purpose of identification?
I guess its for the 'flew dangerously and then got away with it' case, where some followup/law enforcement would be required to nab the perps, and not so much for the 'lets find out who is flying this thing right now and where they are located' ..
For the situations where a drone is flying autonomously or out of range of a transmitter; You could still use ADS-B type transponders to track it and avoid it.
ADS-B is competent in its own space, but is really just a clever hack on top of all sorts of Big Aeroplane Regulations and it carries a lot of financial and weight penalties as a result.
Thanks for the info, I hadn't heard of it and it looks pretty interesting. I would note though, in case you missed it, that ADS-B transponder I linked is only 100 grams, vs 250+ for the powercore unit.
I'm not sure about all the associated regulations, but my point was there's not any technological holdouts preventing the integration of medium to large UAVs into the existing infrastructure.
FWIW, 100g is over 30% of the all-up weight of two of my quadcopters. I think very carefully about tens of grams of additional weight for better GPS or FPV antennas...
Sure, which is why I suggested this only for the mid-to-large "classes". I have flown several myself, all the way from the CX-10 (< 12g), to a custom 800 size (> 3kg range). The high end of that could handle an extra 100g without much fuss. The high end of that is also what the airlines are most worried about.
Granted there is some grey area in the 300-500 size copters, where they are large enough to possibly cause some minor damage to an aircraft, but small enough that the weight of an additional TX would pose an issue.
The registration being proposed by the DOT/FAA isn't going to help with these either; they are quite simply too small for any "tail numbers" to be visible at any distance that matters.
How about requiring a POV (persistence of vision) display on such a drone? At a cost of few additional LEDs (or even not, if you reuse onboard ones) and some CPU cycles you could have the drone flash its serial number in a way visible on cameras as the drone moves around.
That's still a large amount of weight to carry on a device.
There are 250 class quadcopters that are built for First Person View racing. Races are won and lost because of the difference in a few grams of extra weight.
Any extra weight you add to a device reduces the flight time of the battery.
> Mid-tier stuff would be a world like Amateur Radio - modernized to be online or something as you've suggested.
I generally agree with you, but I want to vent out about that amateur radio bit. Going on-line is something that makes it meaningless. Doing radio over real radio waves is playing with the limits physics throws at you. Doing it over the Internet is just throwing logs under your own feet because Skype isn't cool enough. It's like going outside vs. playing a video game in which your character goes outside.
What I meant to suggest was that mid tier applications should be regulated like amateur radio; strict rules about what takes place, but anything goes within those confines.
By online I meant the testing process could be done online.
The one big ask I have is to learn to understand airspace, including reading charts, and be required to do a preflight including airspace and NOTAM checks. If that were done before a UAV/drone/multicopter/FPV/etc flight, everyone could easily coexist.
I would assume that registration would be free, but now that I think about it I wonder if it will be that way (or stay that way). It seems like this may be less about the "protection" of people and just another revenue source for the government.
Registration might be free, but the cost of insurance if required would probably depend on the capabilities of the drone. I might imagine an insurance market in which there is a discount for flying under the control of open source software.
The current and proposed restrictions on drones seem insane to me. To see why, do the reversal test.[1]
Imagine if single-prop planes didn't exist, and drones were already used for productive purposes. Courier drones deliver packages in minutes. Construction drones monitor work sites and inspect structures for safety. Police drones scout and warn people near any crimes in progress. Ambulance drones alert drivers and secure intersections so emergency vehicles can respond faster. Some even deliver life-saving equipment or medicines. People have personal drones to follow them on bike rides or runs, carrying supplies and lighting the way at night. Etcetera.
Now imagine someone wanting to restrict these drones so that a few people can use cloth-winged planes that run on leaded gasoline. It would be a joke, right?
Edit: I'm talking about general aviation, not civil aviation. Airliners and drones operate at very different altitudes. Except near airports, there's ≈0 risk of a collision.
Many find my example too skewed in favor of drones, but I think I've been rather conservative. Due to restrictions, there are many applications that haven't been explored. In all likelihood, the "killer app" for drones has yet to be invented.
This is a great example of how the reversal test is fundamentally question-begging -- you propose an idealistic version of the future (ignoring the reality of drones falling out of the sky and injuring people, preventing firefighting efforts, and invading people's privacy by hovering outside their apartments with cameras), and assert that it's desirable. Of course it's desirable, you made it up to support your point!
My point is that the current and proposed rules are centered around preserving general aviation. Nobody is seriously proposing restricting general aviation to the benefit of drones, despite the fact that it would almost certainly be better for the vast majority of people.
Because of CYA syndrome, it's generally easier to pass new laws that to repeal them. If drones actually start causing the problems you suggest, it makes sense to restrict them in specific ways. But preventative legislation kills countless beneficial uses.
Drones are already doing/have already done the things dogecoinbase listed in his parenthetical. He's not fear-mongering some possible future state, but referencing issues that have already happened with drones.
Drones would have to be much more troublesome than they currently are to justify the current or proposed restrictions. Every time a drone causes a problem, there's a story about it. Could you imagine if the same were true for private aircraft? Or cars? Newspapers would have to be much thicker. Every day in the US, 100 people die from cars. 15 are pedestrians.
I'm flabbergasted that people worry about drones falling on them, then they go outside and think little of walking next to giant metal boxes zooming by. Can't they see how mistaken their priorities are?
I see your point, and I admit that incidents have occurred where they have prevented firefighting efforts and have fallen, injuring people.
I'm not going to comment on the 'invasion of privacy' part, as it's a strawman; there are no cameras that are easily available on these devices that can 'hover outside someones apartment' and spy on them any more reliably than a cell phone on a stick.
However, and this is a very important distinction; these are the small majority of all RC flights by all amateur pilots.
I agree that there should be stiff fines for those that break the regulations. I do not agree, however, that everyone should be subject to some crazy ill-advised extra regulations.
I really don't see even the remotest of relevance of said test to the situation at hand. Airplanes do exist, they carry millions of people a day, and governments must issue and enforce regulations to ensure their safety. It doesn't seem like a stretch of the imagination to envision a drone flown by someone without training flown into a jet engine or the blades of a helicopter because they weren't required to be aware of FAA airspace restrictions. Aircraft are already heavily regulated, so I don't even see your point.
> People have personal drones to follow them on bike rides or runs, carrying supplies and lighting the way at night.
Have you heard of these recent groundbreaking inventions called the "backpack" and the "headlamp"? I gather they last a lot longer before needing a recharge, can carry a lot more weight, and that they work much better when there are obstacles such as trees around.
If you've ever tried to run with a backpack or headlamp, you'd know it's a giant pain. Headlamps bounce up and down (no matter what sort of straps you have), often becoming dislodged. It's enough of an annoyance that I don't use a headlamp when running at night.
Backpacks also bounce around, and their inertia messes with your running form. If you use a chest strap to secure the pack better, you'll have a harder time breathing. And there's the problem of sweat. By the end of the workout, your backpack is going to be sweaty and gross. Unless it's waterproof, things inside will be as well.
When I lived closer to work I used to run every day both ways, 12km in total, so 60 km per week. (Nowadays I run with my child in a jogging stroller, so I don't need a backpack, and it's a hilly 8km one way so I don't do it every day.)
Now I always wore a backpack with a chest strap like you said, and I never had a harder time breathing than normally. It wasn't a giant pain. And I didn't have problems with getting the things inside the backpack sweaty. For reference, this is a 13 liter standard cheap daytrip backpack. If you want to get fancy, Salomon do a vest-like backpack that has a good rep in ultrarunner crowd, with literally no bounce whatsoever.
My experience with headlamps is more limited, but have you tried the type with the battery pack not on your head? The key to reducing bounce is reducing sprung weight.
I'm actually a big fan of this idea. As a private pilot, I'm excited about a lot of cool possibilities enabled by drones that aren't possible in manned aircraft (high speed, low-level FPV racing!) or are made better (package delivery with relatively high power aircraft). But I'm anxious about touching drones at all right now because the rules are either undefined or unfriendly and I theoretically have a certificate on the line.
I hope that we're able to get to a sane regulatory environment here that gives me well-defined, positive rules for flying progressively more powerful and sophisticated UAVs, including in controlled airspace. Those won't be toys, and it's debatable now whether many drones in the hands of consumers are already. The FAA is already stretched way too thin with existing manned aviation and there's no way the local FSDO is going to bother going after a kid with a small electric drone, registered or otherwise, unless they do something really stupid.
There's a lot of vitriol and misinformation flying around (pun definitely intended).
Here's my take on the situation.
Large companies building 'ready to fly' multicopters need to have some sort of communication with the FAA and other agencies.
I do not own a DJI quad myself, but I'm very familiar with them, so I'm going to use them in my example.
DJI has frequently updated firmware for their devices.
It would be very trivial for them to add in a 'default' setting on the device that prevents the device from breaking any of the already defined rules.
If the pilot so chooses, and most importantly, is authorized via a Section 333 exemption (or otherwise) can override those settings on the device.
As for all multicopters, I have no qualms about using a Dremel to etch in a registration number on my device.
I do, however, have issues with those suggesting that I must add extra hardware and extra transmitters to my device.
Etching the registration code on the device will also allow someone to return my quad if it's lost.
Ugh. So we're going to expand the bureaucracy to support this for the purpose of stopping a handful of bad actors that are going to be impossible to identify anyways.
That article was rumor/speculation a couple of days before this (the actual announcement). Good discussion in both places, but this one has the better info - thanks for keeping this one up.
Congress (and Obama) asked the FAA to write rules integrating UAS into the national airspace by September 2015, back in February 2012. [2] By all accounts, the section 333 exception policy does not meet that request... and now they expect to develop a full-blown registration process ready before the end of December? Please, don't make me laugh. They couldn't even answer at the press conference what the benefit of registration will be, arguing that it would be used to track down owners of drones flaunting the rules, but seemingly having forgotten that they already can't identify airborne drones properly.
I think Motherboard says it best. "It's clear that the agency, which oversees the Federal Aviation Administration, wants to crack down on the unsafe use of drones, and it's looking like it's going to try to bypass as much of the traditional rulemaking process as is possible... The short answer is, the FAA will probably cut corners and perhaps 'reinterpret' existing manned aircraft regulations" [3]
[1] https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/statements-of-s...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/faa-regulation-of-dr...
[3] http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/8-questions-raised-by...