What's 100 feet between friends? RVSM all the things.

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Can't allow competition with the aerial photog guys.

The DJI quads are that hobby's equivalent of the AR15.

The RC exception has always been for hobby use.  The FAA is rabid on all levels of commercial aircraft operation.

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Wait, they dropped the scaling height restriction based on distance?  Now it's just a 5 mile no-fly zone?  

AC 91-57 (from 1981) put it at three miles without the airport operator/tower's approval and a 400 foot ceiling.  No upside down wedding cakes.

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Dangit, now I want one.



 

That Advisory Circular appears to have been "Cancelled" as of Sept 2nd of this year.

No shit. I foresee massive non-compliance by those who either don't know or just don't care. It's basically unenforceable anyway.

Anytime the gov't enacts rules, regs, or laws that are completely unenforceable, thinking they're enhancing control over the citizenry, they don't realize that more and more people just say, "fuck it, I'll do what I want".

Shit, national gun registration in Canada got, what, less than 20% compliance? CT's "assault weapons" registration scheme got about 14% according to Forbes. I'd be amazed if drones get even half that.

I put most of the blame on some of the dumbass FPV pilots that think it's cool to fly out 5-10 miles.  
The requirement to keep it in line of sight is there for s reason.  Mainly so that you can see what is around you.  
Real aircraft travel a hell of a lot faster than most RC aircraft and with FPV you can not look behind you (with a few exceptions)
Then you have the guys running unlicensed video transmitters but that is another gov agency that will eventually get pissed off.

So basically I can't fly anywhere in town here.

Just trying to show that this isn't horribly more restrictive than the previous guidance.

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You can ignore all the rules/laws/regulations/etc you want.

What you can't ignore are the consequences if you get caught.

Every law on the books is one more you can get nailed with.Maybe not today.Maybe not tomorrow.But someday they just might decide to crack down,or you are just an unlucky one that gets caught.

Without knowing specifics, maybe.  Legally.  Outside at least.

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Maybe I'm reading you wrong,but you seem to be trying to rationalize it.

I'm correcting innacuracies and adding my experience.  I believe something needs to be done before a pile of bodies is at some operator's feet but this is unlikely to actually help with that goal.

Short of nailing some people to the cross for violating airspace rules I don't know what that would be.

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The problem isn't drones, it is the growing number of people being able to fly RC vehicles.  How many RC airplanes and helicopters do you think there were in the US before drones?  This year alone they are expecting 1.6 million drones to be sold, the numbers are increasing 300% to 500% every year.

Thats why you write your congressmen, letting them know the FAA is skirting a law passed by congress. If your rep is pro-gun, make the comparison.

That's fine-nail people to the cross for violating the airspace around airports.

Just like the laser pointers-go after those that misuse something,not lump everyone into some registration/licensing/whatever scheme.

I don't have any of these things,but am still against the new regs.

The barrier to enter the hobby has decreased to the point where there just isn't one so the community that enforced the rules internally (the AMA) doesn't have the contact or influence with the new operators.

Without the self flying devices there wouldn't be the explosion in units.

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Its not just airport airspace but all the regulations.

As I said earlier this isn't horribly surprising as an enforcement method since that's close to how they work today.  Most of their actions are administrative, pulling a pilot's ticket for example.  Doing real enforcement on non-aviation folks is outside their comfort zone.

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They will never take me alive...  It's the only option when they have made everyone a criminal.



 

I downloaded the Interim Final Rule here

Look for the PDF link near the beginning.

It is 211 pages so I may never read and fully understand the entire document.  However, the initial parts strongly suggest safety related incidents that drove this rule.  Frankly, every one listed is a legitimate concern.

What I doubt is whether this registration scheme will do anything to reduce or eliminate future incidents.

Obviously people cannot fly drones anywhere close to airliners.   I would also like to not have them flying where I might fly into them.  Both of these are probably education issues.   How can a person fly a drone close to an airliner if they are in visual range of the drone?

As for people flying a drone near a fire, over a stadium or other gathering of people, again education is important but reality is that you can't reach everyone and some people will ignore valid rules.

Apparently this rule process still allows comments.  Look in the initial pages of the PDF file on it.   I doubt that the FAA will listen to reason.   They want to do this and can justify anything based upon "safety."

Personally, they need to blanket airwaves with public service announcements about not flying near commercial airports, near fires, and large gatherings of people.   That in itself may start reducing the bad reports they document on pages 13 and 14 of the rule.

If the FAA were serious about airport safety, they could use 2.4 GHz radio jammers around airport perimeters that have something like a 2500 ft range.

What makes you think the FCC would approve that?  Also can you identify any possible friendly fire from this jamming plan?

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I was on an RC forum a few years ago. Some dumbass posted a photo from his FPV plane at 3000ft just northeast of Seattle. Guess who ATC vectors around at 2300ft in that same area? I wrote in that thread that in no uncertain terms he was a fucking moron and that if a plane getting vectored in that area runs over his plane he will be at the least liable for very expensive repairs or at the worst culpable for negligent homicide. The thread was promptly deleted shortly thereafter!

We have a member here that likes to fly at 400-800 feet AGO and out to a mile.
He says he will not follow the LOS rule or 400 feet rule.
That kind of behavior  is why we are dealing with this FAA bullshit now.

I run frequency hopping 430-450mhz at 0.2w and up for my controls. I'm also a licensed ham.

Was it?


But as I understand it, this is more about accountability for operations, not actually regulating the nature of those operations. Either way, it's ridiculous.

On the other side of that, there is a hill in south Florida that is well known as a busy r/c spot.  It isn't uncommon for someone to stop buy for a closer look.  Damn heli pilots.  
 

lol....the irony



Hint: These weigh more than 0.55lbs

Gross weight or "flight weight"?

Is that actually in this new law? Googling has been less helpful than I'd hoped, and the only thing I could find on the FAA website was that it is "highly encouraged" that operators stick to a list of safety guidelines, which includes not operating remote aircraft within 5nm of an airport without first contacting the airport and/or control tower.

Sounds like that's the intent here. Education and accountability.

91-57 encouraged voluntary compliance with safety regulations. It was essentially a circular that said "we think that sticking to these rules will keep everybody safer, so we really encourage you to operate this way". It was non-regulatory (as I understand it based on the FAA's description) and it is, in fact, canceled.

What's the difference between a "remotely controlled aircraft" and a "drone"...?





(Unless you're actually trying to draw a distinction between RC aircraft and autonomous aircraft)

 
Kinda like the VIN on the rear axle of the rental truck in the OKC Federal Building bombing......

Define what the hell "flight weight" is and I may be able to answer that.


Just because an object is in flight does not mean it no longer has the property of weight. The object has mass, and that mass is being acted upon by Earth's gravity in the exact same way in flight (with the negligible difference of it's slightly increased distance from the COM of the Earth) as it is on the ground. A fully-loaded 747 in flight still weighs nearly a million pounds, but it is generating nearly a million pounds of lift to counteract that weight.

A lighter than air vehicle actually weighs MORE in flight than it does on the ground (mass of the structure without any gas + mass of the gas being used as a lifting force both being acted upon by gravity), but it is generating enough buoyant lifting force to counteract that weight.




Boom. STEM.

Again, I just posted it for historical context.  

ACs are non-directive in nature but basically tell you how to comply with the FAR, some are downright the bible such as 43.13 for aircraft maintenance and repair.  RC planes have always fallen under the applicability of the FAR as they fall under the applicability of 91.1 as defined in 1.1 "Aircraft means a device that is used or intended to be used for flight in the air."  The AC just basically gave the framework under which the FAA would ignore these aircraft.

Ok. Fill it up with fuel and magic gas, then hang it from a fishing scale and see what it weighs.

That's not how lighter than air craft are weighed.

In order to prove....what? That a fishing scale is an instrument incapable of accurately measuring the weight of an aircraft in flight?

I'm aware.

So then why say it?  Just trying to be flippant?

Gotcha

Because that entire discussion is fucking reiculous. So is the one you were having earlier about how dangerous drones are to planes. And the other one where TC blamed toy users for all of this.

 

The bigger quads could definitely be a safety hazard to an airplane.  From what I've read there have been 700+ drone sightings of which only 23 were close enough that a possible collision could have happened.  There have been zero drone collisions with aircraft at this point.


That said the 0.55 (250 gram) drones are not a safety hazard, which is what makes the rule by the FAA a joke.  My little plastic toy that might fly 200' from the transmitter before losing radio signal is a threat to no aircraft.  I would have to physically be standing on the side of the runway and intentionally flying it into a plane taking off or landing for it to be hazard.  Even then the cheap plastic would just get shredded.  A drop from 10 feet busted off 2 of the motor brackets on one of my quads.  The majority of the quads that would trigger the registration rule pose no threat to aircraft.  They were just included to provide revenue to help offset the cost of program(increase in government regulation and increase in the size of the government).

You are going to have to explain what was is so ridiculous about the belief that these aircraft being operated in the same airspace as manned aircraft being a risk to safety of flight.  And while we are at it, who if not reckless operators is responsible for the administrator rescinding a policy that worked for around thirty years until it became enough of a problem to warrant action?

Again, this rule is not about safety. There will be absolutely NO improvement in safety WHATSOEVER due to this registration requirement. It is absolutely about control. The FAA has, for decades, not required registration of hobby aircraft. Now that the UAS craze has caught on, their idiot legal team told them if they don't start regulating hobby drones, they simply won't be able to. Problem is, Congress already REVOKED their legal authority to regulate hobby/recreational sUAS. Period. It isn't a matter of interpretation, it's a matter of LAW, which the FAA is flagrantly violating. Further, the FAA may not charge a fee (otherwise known as a tax) until and unless Congress SPECIFICALLY gives them the authority to do so (because only Congress has the power to levy taxes). Congress have NOT given them the legal authority to charge such a fee.

As for the "risk" sUAS pose, there is precisely ZERO evidence of any kind that indicates what level of damage a 9oz. drone would cause. None. at. all. Further, my analysis of the so-called sighting/incident data indicates to me that over 95% of the so-called "sightings" were not sUAS at all. I've done the work that shows manned aircraft pilots are RARELY able to see sUAS, even under tightly controlled circumstances. The AMA did a good job on assessing these so-called incidents. They gave every benefit of the doubt to the manned aircraft pilot reporting it. Their conclusion was that only 3.5% of the reports actually indicated a possible conflict and most of those did not represent an actual hazard. In my estimation, over 95% of the "sightings" were not, in fact, drones but something else. Of the remaining, it is highly unlikely that the pilots were able to accurately gauge how close whatever the object was, something that even the FAA's own report indicates manned aircraft pilots are notoriously bad at (distance between moving objects).

I have been advocating for over 5 years now that NASA and the FAA conduct ACTUAL crash testing of sUAS of varying sizes into things like aircraft wings, windscreens, props, and jet engines. I've also advocated that tests be done to look at the damage a crashing vehicle might do to car windshields, rooftops, office building windows, and instrumented crash dummies. With that ACTUAL data, not fear and superstition, credible risk assessments can be made and defensible rules created based on actual engineering and science, not emotion.

In addition, the FAA needs to be "educated" about the fallacy of using penetrating injury data from ballistics and shrapnel to estimate lethality of sUAS. Think of it this way, I can hit you with a basketball or I can hit you with a throwing knife, point first. Which of those two do you think will cause more injury even if the kinetic energy imparted to both is the same? Since the answer is obvious, why does the FAA insist on using data that is clearly not applicable? To exaggerate the risk, of course. Why would they want to do that? Because Congress told them they could pursue enforcement action against "reckless" operators. So, by using bogus data, all operators become reckless by design. Once again, it's not about SAFETY, it's about CONTROL. They want to control ALL of the airspace, even that airspace the Supreme Court has already ruled belongs to the landowner underneath, and, that the airspace <as a whole> belongs to the public, not the FAA.