Sigh. I'm a "drone hobbyist" myself, although I mostly refer to the hobby as "RC model flying". Nothing new, because the RC flying hobby has been around for decades.
Part of me applauds the stricter rules. It's just so easy for some knucklehead to buy a quadcopter from China and fly it around the White House or an airport or over someone's backyard. Unfortunately, these people destroy the hobby, giving it a bad name.
On the other hand, the rules we have had for decades (don't fly near airports or restricted zones, don't fly too high, don't fly over crowds, etc.) are perfectly fine and reasonable. We don't need stricter rules and regulations, we need common sense from drone pilots.
Secretly I hope that drones are really a fad, and the interest will fade away. That leaves the hobby for the real enthousiasts.
I'm a big drone enthousiast. I'm all for some form of regulation in the form of registration or a license, provided that the cost won't prohibit getting into the hobby too much.
However, I'm afraid it's not going to work. The people that do crazy stupid things with their drones are the same people that buy their RTF drone at Walmart, thinking it's just a toy. Or import it from China. You can't regulate that. There have been adequate rules for decades, for instance that you can't fly near airfields with your RC plane.
Until a couple of years ago, flying RC planes was both rather expensive to get into, but there was also a steep learning curve. Nowadays you can buy a drone for under 200 bucks and it will practically fly itself. Anyone with half a brain can fly it. I'm torn about this. I love the fact that the entry point for getting into the hobby is lowered so more people can enjoy flying. OTOH, the entry point is now so low that there is a large group of people who are hurting the hobby with their thoughtless behaviour.
A couple of months ago I saw an ad for the Lily drone, I'm sure you saw it too. In the ad they launch and land BY HAND. If you value your fingers I wouldn't recommend this, it's really dangerous.
It's a bit like gun control in a fictional state where you can buy guns without a permit. You can regulate and registrate all you want, but that won't stop loonies from doing stupid things.
Hobbyists have had FPV in RC planes and helis for 10+ years, but it's easy now so everyone is doing it. You don't need to know how to solder, program transmitters, cobble together TX/RX equipment, have a ham license, etc etc etc. There wasn't a problem before, because the types of people who would cause problems and do stupid stuff didn't generally have the patience / skills to get it working to the point that they could actually do damage with it. It's cool that this is a more accessible hobby now, but kids being kids without the adult supervision that would have come with affording, designing, acquiring, assembling, and flying + operating such a device is gone with cheap drones + the internet.
I think that regulating it will be bad for hobbyists. Drones are already banned in national parks and some city / county parks (shame since there's an entire category of "park flyers" and few AMA RC flying fields in the Bay Area). I've given up on RC flight for now, but drone racing in warehouses and parks seems insanely fun.
I think the problem is that drones are very accessible for the general public, which isn't fully aware of all of the rules that the previous generation of RC aircraft hobbyists is all to aware of (e.g. in order to get a permit to fly with their club in a certain area)
It's amazing, I'm not really in tune with the state of the art with drones (but fly a little Cherokee Arrow, to give some perspective, and have friends that have been RC enthusiasts going back significantly). I looked on Youtube for that DJI Phantom you mentioned, and all I can say is, wow. It is truly amazing how poorly behaved and entitled some of the operators are, especially in comparison to a lot of the RC guys that have proceeded them. I remember that the RC planes only could be flow in restricted areas (unpopulated, usually), and you had to be real careful regardless. I know those guys were just happy the city let them fly their RC planes at their little airstrip near the dump, and tended to be respectful of airspace.
In contrast a lot of these drone owners act like they should be able to fly everywhere at any time, and have their craft be exempt from the same governance that aircraft seem to obey, and RC at least seemed to use to have to adhere to. I guess it's even more crazy to me that the vast majority of Youtube comments seem to like to compare FAA regulations to some sort of facist plot. I really don't understand why drone and RC pilots don't have to obey similar if not the same kind of regulations planes do, as it would probably save us from so many stupid incidents, like the drone recently preventing fire helicopters from handling that highway accident in California. [1] I am also shocked that the UVA student flying that drone over campus [2] only got a $10,000 fine; just watching that video of the flight made me cringe so much, at the amount of dangerous and recklessly negligent behavior. I am a little worried that as RC gets democratized in the form of drones, and grows way beyond the hobbyist following it had in yesteryear that we're going to have to clamp down in a significant way because of the lack of understanding/caring and the abuses that get perpetrated by a contingent of asinine, but hopefully few, reckless drone operators.
People are getting away with using drones as you mentioned, but the FAA's rules have had a real chilling effect on the hobby, which is a problem. Where drone piloting is a now a necessary skill for soldiers to have, and we're not encouraging the hobby, I think the next few decades aren't going to play out as well as they could.
I'm curious if you've flown a modern consumer drone recently? Something like a Phantom or a Mavic.
I have and I would trust a reasonably intelligent person who is into the hobby to handle them with care and educate themselves on the proper regulation and procedures (and other details like caring for LiPO batteries). I don't know if I'd trust the average person with the hobby.
I'm not claiming that we need extremely strict regulation, but I can see why people would want to over-index on more regulation.
I've seen people here compare drones to boats, cars, etc. I feel like that's a bit of a false equivalency.
The first step would be to define "drone." Hobbyists have flown RC planes for decades, with little regulation, and haven't been bothering anyone. That hasn't changed. What did change is the use of drones by governments.
Regulation will probably be sold as protecting people from government drones, but I have a feeling those regulations will apply to everyone except the government.
I don't mind drone rules in principle. Wild west was fun while it lasted but we need to be aware we are in control of a flying chunk of metal going at high speed controlled by people who probably aren't experts and haven't practiced emergency avoidance maneuvers enough.
The annoying part right now though is that while we are figuring it all out, regulations are changing fast and often. It seems you could almost buy a drone and be in different legal framework by the time you fly it. Certainly inside one season the reasonably expensive (for us) dji my friend and I bought halvsies went from completely unencumbered to needing licensing because it was over 250g. In USA it seems they went through a few frameworks last few years as well. Which I understand, it's a new territory and moving fast... Just makes it a bit tricky to stay informed, legal and compliant.
I have a very hard time taking most of the drone pilot complaining seriously. RC aircraft have been around for ages and subject to nearly all of the same regulations as modern drones.
The problem I see is drone manufactures marketed their products such that "they're just another toy". It's led to drone operators acting like they're entitled to fly wherever they want. Combine that with pressure to capture an incredible shot for Insta/Pinterest/etc, and you get people that have completely disregarded for long standing rules designed to keep people safe.
The reality is drones are able to operate in vastly more areas than RC aircraft have in the past. Clearance from bystanders/structures, height restrictions, airport proximity, etc have all been things RC operators have dealt with for ages. Problem is people don't just want to fly a drone, they want to operate them in dangerous manners and in places they really shouldn't.
I'm opposed to the proposed rules. The traditional aviation hobbyist isn't ignorant, incompetent or malicious. And the problem we've seen from some drone hobbyists, resulting in the problems that this rule stems from, are ignorant, incompetent, or malicious. And this rule isn't going to fix that. It might make it very slightly easier to identify the rule breakers, but I think that's specious.
But now, there are all kinds of private for-profit forces at play to become the rent-seeking gate keepers for internet connected, and thus approved, operations. Commercial operators will have no problem with this, whether $50 or $500 a month, it's just a cost of doing business. And getting hobbyists out of the way is A-OK with them.
It's terrible, but also an entirely predictable consequence of decades of FAA defunding, and the neurotic application of politics in aviation causing decades of delays in modernizing the ATC system. Politicians and bean counters have the political capital to make the new system, not FAA enforcement experts, pilots, and user experts (including hobbyists) of that system. It's yet another example of special interests with the money winning.
Flying over densely populated areas, around other aerial operations, and over property is obviously more dangerous than flying in the middle of nowhere - there are approaches to risk mitigation that aren't "teach people how not to crash."
I think these should be regulated, even though I own and fly several quadcopters and fixed wing planes regularly. Model aircraft have gone well in the US for the last 30ish years because people tend to self-regulate and the hobby hasn't been very big. Now that every Silicon Valley joker wants in on a perceived gold rush and DJI Phantoms work well and are available for a relatively low cost, hobby flying is moving into dangerous populated areas and the density of R/C craft is increasing.
I don't trust the FAA to correctly regulate these, and I see a very depressing day where I won't be able to fly as a hobbyist, but I also see an unregulated future where regulation-skirting companies (maybe they'll "crowdsource drone pilots" or something similarly "sharing economy"-esque) accidentally hit people with drones and basically say "so sorry, sucker!"
As for your latter point, that's basically what happens here, too. Lots of TV and commercials are filmed using drones, but the production company either sells the footage as "found footage" or rents out some non-drone piece of equipment (camera, memory card, etc.) from a drone owner at an exorbitant rate with the understanding that the rest covers the drone rental.
People have been flying models for a long time. But originally, model planes, etc. were expensive and relatively hard to fly. So people often knew each other and could have a mostly self-policing community.
Then quadcopter were made to be very easy to fly, and popularity made them cheap.
So now we have people flying them everywhere. Quads with cameras make people nervous. Quads flying over large groups of people, make people nervous. And quads flying very close to planes is just a very bad idea.
So it makes sense to have some rules. But governments go completely over board. And instead of investing in enforcement, they introduce painful administrative requirements.
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.
For what it's worth, I have a pilot's license and also fly a quadcopter.
A big part of the issue is the separation of powers and who exactly has the right to regulate model aircraft. Congress explicitly and deliberately precluded the FAA from regulating model aircraft. A separate question is whether or not, given their proliferation, the new breed of model aircraft should be regulated. Given existing laws, that's a job for congress to decide.
As an aside: People wanting to do dumb things, will do dumb things. You don't need to create new sweeping regulation to punish people from doing dumb things either. Most cities and states have laws preventing people from deliberately invading others' privacy, or acting recklessly. Many of the concerns levied against drones are either already addressed or are impossible to regulate against. I'm often reminded of a news reporter on 9/11 that was asking the aviation expert on air with her how the planes were able to get into restricted airspace.
I don't know what the new proposed regulations are, but, for recreational use, I think the current set are fair and appropriate:
Don't fly outside your unaided line of sight.
Don't intentionally fly over people.
Stay away from sensitive areas (Stadiums, etc...)
Don't fly near an airport without contacting the airport.
Stay under 400ft
Register it and label it, so that if it does fall and hit someone on the head, they can find you and let our legal system handle the repercussions.
Given the lack of inspection, that most of these rolled off an assembly line in China, have Lipo batteries that are prone to instantly shutting off if malfunctioning or overloaded(to prevent runaway thermal effect) meaning that these likely might fall out of the sky at any time, the restriction on flying within line of sight and not over people seems reasonable, along with the sensitive area restriction.
I can't think of a major recreational use for flying over 400ft AGL, besides wanting to snap a picture of your neighborhood from the air.
The most heavy handed one I can think of (and this one is enforced in DJI firmware) is the airport restriction. The official line is 'Don't fly within 5 miles of an airport without contacting the airport' -- There are enough airports that this covers a good bit of area, and, if a plane is below 500ft more than a mile or so from the airport, drones are probably not going to put it at any more risk.
A DJI drone will not leave the ground if it detects it's within a couple miles of an airport's radius, and there is no way to override it, even with the airport's consent.
The commercial regulations, as I understand them, are a bit more ridiculous. I haven't found the relevent text in the CFR, but I'm told that to fly a drone commercially(say, for a photographer to take pictures at a wedding) actually requires a full blown pilot's license, at least a 'sport pilots license'[1]. This seems a bit ridiculous for a photographer flying a drone 10ft above the ground. I hope some changes to this portion are coming.
I have a moderately informed opinion that might change as I learn more.
It seems that a few bad drone pilots are causing problems for all of the good actors in the system. Since there is so much potential for injury, and since it only takes one terrible incident to bring down stiff regulation on everyone, perhaps drone piloting should become a licensed activity or sport.
Establishing drone pilot licensing would theoretically ensure that legal, licensed pilots are aware of the risks and are willing to assume greater personal liability in the event of operator negligence. The hobby would gain legitimate legal grounding and become less "cowboy" more or less overnight. I can't imagine it would be remain crowded with careless risk takers.
If this is done early, before any major incident or bad press, the FAA won't have to step in and put more rules and regulations in place. If there are to be new rules, I imagine that they wouldn't be nearly as overbearing for a well-behaved professional hobby that doesn't needlessly put health and lives at risk.
I think professional hobbyist (not an oxymoron?) drone pilots should lobby lawmakers for something like this to take place as soon as possible, before the FAA starts making mandates. I can certainly see the FAA's concerns--there is legitimate risk and danger. Something will eventually happen that brings the entire house of cards down. If the drone pilots don't ask for this self-regulation themselves, I wouldn't necessarily be against the FAA moving ahead on its own.
On a personally related note, I'm involved in hobbyist high-wattage laser projection for making video games and interactive displays. (I think there are videos linked from my HN profile). The entire lasing community cringes when there is news of some idiot shining a laser pointer at a plane or when someone is caught using a high-wattage laser for destructive purposes. It's a seemingly regular occurrence, and I'm pretty certain there will be regulation coming down the pipeline eventually. It seems there is no shortage of careless ignorance when it comes to dangerous hobbies.
100% agree that regulation was the inevitable conclusion of the whole drone craze.
But what baffles me is the type of regulation they're proposing. The bad actor was appropriately found and punished in your story. My thought is, instead of more onerous requirements on end users surrounding registration, why not require the drones to meet some minimum technical requirement regarding capability? The problem doesn't seem to be in finding the person responsible, so why focus the legislation there, instead of trying to make the hobby safer overall?
Unless they think it's easier just to discourage people from the RC hobby altogether, which is what the current proposal would do.
As it was, the drone registration system seemed reasonable enough - it wasn't onerous, and it wasn't expensive, and to an extent, it spawned a lot of companies to make drones that fell underneath the weight limit but still had a lot of capability.
At the same time, the rules imposed a small barrier on people who were just enjoying their model aircraft flying (ie - not what we would normally consider drones).
Other parts of the law (and I am not sure this registration system being struck down for now changes anything about the rest of the laws) seem to look to stifle innovations by hobbyists.
For instance, according to everything I've read, I can't legally fly (even after registering it) an autonomous drone, because the law doesn't seem to address the concept of a drone not under the control of an operator. Nor can I easily fly a drone in an FPV manner; even if I have a spotter, I must always be able to keep in "line of sight" of the drone, which practically eliminates the head mounted display system.
Furthermore, the whole "line of sight" prevents me from attempting to create a long-range autonomous or semi-autonomous drone for hobby purposes. One might argue why anyone would want to do that for hobby purposes instead of commercial purposes, but I don't think that's a valid question. I should be able to do this, and all those other possibilities, but the laws limit that, from my reading.
Now - if anything should fail - that's on me. And that's where I thought the registry was a good idea. Make it so that someone could register their equipment in good faith, and if they cause a problem (on purpose or accident), and don't report it or own up to it, then there's a means to track them down based on their registration. This of course won't stop people who don't register.
At the same time, on all of this, it would be nice if a few bad apples didn't ruin it for everyone else. For the longest time, no one had a problem with this kind of thing, then of course bad actors had to get involved and ruin it, forcing the hand of the government to step in. This issue is far from settled.
And one of the issues here is that the existing regulations didn't make much sense. The exact same aircraft that would be considered a model aircraft if you would fly as a hobbyist would suddenly be classified as a UAS the instant you took any payment to fly it.
So, I could go out to a field and zoom around a field and record footage to my heart's content and be completely kosher. But if my buddy decided it'd be neat to have a photo of his neighborhood and gives me $5 to fly over and snap one, I'm illegally operating a UAS. Absolutely nothing has changed in terms of what the aircraft is and the level of danger it does or does not pose.
Part of me applauds the stricter rules. It's just so easy for some knucklehead to buy a quadcopter from China and fly it around the White House or an airport or over someone's backyard. Unfortunately, these people destroy the hobby, giving it a bad name.
On the other hand, the rules we have had for decades (don't fly near airports or restricted zones, don't fly too high, don't fly over crowds, etc.) are perfectly fine and reasonable. We don't need stricter rules and regulations, we need common sense from drone pilots.
Secretly I hope that drones are really a fad, and the interest will fade away. That leaves the hobby for the real enthousiasts.
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