Drone dangers rising, FAA says

Hmm, I was looking into joining the AMA but after looking at what "club fields" in my area none of the mention allowing quadcopters.

Also reading the the statement from a AMA member it appears they want to separate themselves from "untrained drone operators". What about those that use "Drones" safely.

Couldn't be more from the truth. He is trying to separate the traditional rc aircraft they fly at their club due to a knee jerk regulation that the county had introduced that would have banned them as well as "drones". I can tell you this is NOT the stance of the AMA, no way! I am an AMA member as we all should be in this hobby. We need to embrace the untrained and take them under our wings to educate them as to the rules we need to fly by or we may not be flying in the future.

The AMA are their to support the interests of our hobby. They have been tasked by congress to self regulate, establishing rules for safe flight and educating its members. You do not have to be a member of a local club to join. Believe me, they are extremely supportive of multi rotors and FPV flight. They are our strongest voice, lobbying congress and the FAA to allow them to continue to establish and maintain guidelines which we fly by. So far the AMA has been successful at keeping government regulation out of our hobby. Commercial use of these aircraft, will at some point, see more regulation.

So please support the AMA. They are our voice.
 
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August 14, 2015, USA Today.......fellow pilots, this is the kind of stupid stuff going on out there. Who are these morons?? When one one of these jerks brings down an airliner our piloting days will be over. Is there any way to stop these idiots before hundreds of people die. One drone sucked into a jet engine and we are all toast in my opinion. Any ideas?

Here is new article.
Report: Documents reveal nearly 700 close calls between drones and planes http://flip.it/qSe8W
 
Ah this is what I was looking for! Great thread guys! One thing I would like to clear up was a mention that they didn't see how a small drone/Uas could bring down a manned aircraft, yes it can. I've had a small stone rip a hole in my tailrotor when flyjng, I didn't notice till a post flight inspection but the aircraft was grounded till the blades could be replaced. I'm also terrified of a bird strike as that would cause either the blades to delaminates or if it comes through the thin plastic screen into the cockpit it could knock out the pilot or kill them in flight.

When flying in southern Florida I would occasionally hear of a drone being spotted at 1000ft near an airport. What we would love is to know where you're flying so we can avoid that area or be extra vigilant.

I do agree that safety courses need to be implimented and Iove the idea mandatory training or licenses but is that feasible?
 
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I was just writing a post to see if anybody had ever seen video of a drone at an airport in the united states. I hear all this talk, but realized I had never actually seen evidence of such behavior. I Googled it first so I didn't look like an idiot to all you guys lol and hot damn those shots looks good, I get why it could be a problem. lol sorry I know I'm not helping.
 
You said armed! AAAAHHHhhhhhh
Sorry had to first thing that came to my mind was rifling a AGM from your UAS.

There isn't a single piece of software that hasn't been hacked to bypass serial number activation. The day software locking motors came out, would be the same day a software hack would be released and posted on all forums.
 
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There isn't a single piece of software that hasn't been hacked to bypass serial number activation. The day software locking motors came out, would be the same day a software hack would be released and posted on all forums.
Very good point!

Also, what do you do about all the drones already in circulation?

And how are "training courses" going to prevent people from being stupid or irresponsible?
 
There's a lot of activity on this thread similar to another thread, so I thought Id repost something I wrote yesterday on another thread....

I have a few random thoughts i'm just going to throw out here for the sake of conversation.

  1. Safety and responsible decision making can not be regulated and must come from us as individual operators. (I'm speaking to those trying to earn a living with a drone)
  2. Law enforcement should have carte-blanche approval for shooting down drones (be it by bullets, buckshot, water from a fire truck, or some super top secret laser gun thingy) flying in, near, or around any airport, federal building, prison, hospital, forrest fire, etc; you know, all the places that common sense says you shouldn't be flying. Don't document each scenario, because they'll come up with hundreds of them. Just leave it to law enforcements best discretion. When law enforcement downs a few drones, drones will stop showing up places they shouldn't be real fast.
  3. No licensing, registration, safety class, fines, or even risk of being shot down by law enforcement will ever stop a bad actor from his plight. You can't stop bad people from doing bad things when they want to. Hence...gun violence.
  4. Accidents are inevitable, they are a part of life. We do our best to avoid them, we always strive to make good decisions, and they're tragic and sometimes heartbreaking when we have them, but we don't let them dictate our lives, and we don't live life in a constant state of fear.
  5. We as operators need to come together somehow and do some educating of the public ourselves (however I do believe the public is not our problem as long as we are respectful of them, its the officials who are lining up to get a piece of us). We should be producing campaigns telling stories and facts on all the new job being created, how we are now doing things never before possible, how kids are being self-taught on software development and engineering, how 14 year olds are creating robots and UAVs all around the world, how farmers now have options for crop dusting (a guy in giant airplane or a few drones with zero noise or air pollution doing laps back and forth 24 hrs a day), or 17 year olds finding their passion for geo mapping...underwater...with sonar...on Mars, from an app they wrote themselves. These are the kinds of stories we need to be telling. People need to know that lives are being changed and lives are being saved with this technology. That its creating 10s if not 100s of thousands jobs from software development, to mechanical and robotic engineers, to communications, to sales, marketing, distribution, fulfillment, to new energy development (battery and solar), to designers, innovators, entrepreneurs and small business startups, and operators of all kinds.
  6. And my last point. When is the last time the government did anything right or remotely competent. I know they put 14 year olds out of business by making it illegal to shovel snow off their neighbors' driveway without a "snowplow permit". I know they have shutdown countless lemonade stands of seven and eight year olds for not having a business license; and after actually acquiring their own business license for their lemonade stand, was shut down again for not having been registered and inspected by the FDA. And I won't even begin to list the data on gun violence as it pertains to regulations and permitting or the corruption that comes from government interfering with the free market.
My apologies for writing all that. Chime in at will if you like.
 
I sure see a hell of lot of people with government issued drivers licenses...not following the LAWS, let alone rules or common sense. And they had to take written and driving tests with qualified instructors.

Everything is a bell curve. You will always have people who just don't care, and the more people flying, the more of those idiots there will be. No law or mandate or software will stop this. It might lessen it, but it will not stop it. You just can't fix stupid, and as the saying goes, "if you idiot-proof something, someone will design a better idiot".
 
Very good point!

Also, what do you do about all the drones already in circulation?

And how are "training courses" going to prevent people from being stupid or irresponsible?

You can't stop people from doing foolish or bad things. There is not a single rule or regulation that would prevent anybody from acquiring or flying a drone if they wanted to. There are dozens of ways to combat drone laws.

For example, until 2015, more drones were built as kits from individual parts then were purchased ready to fly. If the government forced companies like DJI and 3DR to share information, and people did not want their information shared, the market would simply move back to building drones from scratch using individual parts. If companies like DJI and 3DR lost to much business to kit drones, then they would simply respond to the market and start selling all the parts to their products individually (if they already don't), to meet the demand of the market.

Buying and selling used drones and drone parts on eBay, craigslist, swap meets, or drone shows, would be an expected response by the market. All those places make government tracking very difficult.

If somebody wants to fly where they shouldn't, the most unsophisticated way to do it without being caught is to simply mount the controller antennas in one location and run cables to another location were you actually are (maybe a few hundred feet away in some multi-floor building, or under ground some place, camouflaging the cables or making them look like something else would be an easy way to slow things down), then make RTH a mile or two away from were you actually are, perhaps someplace if you actually decided to collect the drone at a later time, where it would be waiting safely for you, and if you were trying to throw of the authorities, this would separate you from the drone.

Not to mention programming drones to fly their course without an actual operator. If a bad guy wants to do something bad like drop contraband into a prison without getting caught. All they have to do is program it into the drone, take it to a nearby location, time delay it by a day or two (enough time to be in another state at the time of delivery), encrypt the actual software and instruct it to securely erase itself, and then press go.

There is nothing sophisticated about any of these tactics. Imagine an engineer or software developer who could actually write code so a pilot could be in one city, and a drone in another city where the developer has hacked into some cell tower or public wifi at a university, and hijacks their wireless signals in order to fly the drone.

So you can't possibly tell me there a million and half ways for those intent on doing evil to manipulate and workaround any laws and regulations.
 
For me this is more protecting people from themselves, the biggest accident cause in the aviation industry is human factors.

This isn't going to deter career criminals it's about creating guidelines so that the average person knows how to safely operate their equipment without causing injury or damage to people or property.


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Should have left this out... I don't want anyone protecting me and don't imagine many others do either.
I'll handle myself just fine, thanks.

Good point Marich, and as you're probably not the one that needs protecting from yourself it wouldn't be relevant to you. I'd sure like protecting from people that want to take their drone up to Over 1000ft just to see how high it can go when I'm flying.


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Good point Marich, and as you're probably not the one that needs protecting from yourself it wouldn't be relevant to you. I'd sure like protecting from people that want to take their drone up to Over 1000ft just to see how high it can go when I'm flying.


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Yep, I understand - wasn't trying to criticize, just pointing out that some folks are sensitive to such things even though they really do know what you mean! It's just how people are.
 
Yep, I understand - wasn't trying to criticize, just pointing out that some folks are sensitive to such things even though they really do know what you mean! It's just how people are.

Not criticism taken, I don't like to be told what to do either, yet hopefully we can reach those that don't know what they're doing and educate them.


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