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FAA Taking a Look At News Corp's Use of Drone
nonprofiteer writes "The News Corp iPad newspaper has a drone they've been using for news gathering — mainly flying it over disaster zones in N. Dakota and Alabama. However, FAA regulations on drones are very restrictive at the moment, and they're not supposed to be used for commercial purposes (law enforcement is free to use them). The FAA is now examining The Daily's use of its drone. Could this set a precedent for how private businesses can use drones?"
As a private pilot, drones scare the #$%@ out of me. Planes are hard enough to see at over 200mph closing speed.
It's not really different from an RC plane or helicopter. There's currently no legal way to use any of them for commercial purposes. RC aircraft may be used only for recreational purposes, as spelled out in FAA Advisory Circular 91-57. A UAV for commercial purposes would have to be certified, and the pilot would have to have a commercial certificate and whatever ratings the UAV required.
"Oh, right, it's News Corp.... so it must be evil."
Yeah, I guess all that spying, hacking, manipulation of global politics, extortion, bribery... isn't really a big problem. They're fair and balanced!
Great Intellect...
Of course, it can't be explained in a 30 second sound bite. Sorry if I have exceeded your attention span.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Not only that, but the FAA employees who are still on the job keeping the public safe in the air, are doing so at their own expense. As in, "not getting paid".
Interesting how public employees are often characterized as "mooches" and "leeches". I wonder how many members of the Tea Party (at least the few who are not on Social Security or disability) would ever put in a day's work for free.
These FAA employees are what's known as "public servants" and they are apparently more honorable than the Republican senators who ran out of town on vacation rather than fund the agency whose job is regulating air traffic and air safety.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Drones can fly significantly higher than RC planes or helicopters, and have a greater likelihood of interfering with air traffic.
Drones ARE RC planes.
Don't confuse military drones with those used by newscorp. They used the md4-1000.
http://www.microdrones.com/produkt-md4-1000-industrie-en.php
climb rate 7,5m/s *
cruising speed 15.0m/s *
Peak thrust 118N
empty weight 2650g
recommended payload 800g
maximum payload 1200g
maximum take-off weight 5550g
portability arms foldable
dimensions 1030 mm from rotor shaft to rotor shaft
flight time up to 70 minutes (dep. on load/wind/battery) *
battery 22.2V, 6S2P 12.2Ah or 6S3P 18.3Ah LiPo
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
They are jackasses, but the summary could have at least used the title of the magazine rather than "News Corp iPad Newspaper", when further down in the bit taken from the Forbes blog named the Daily, but didn't have a URL to it.
That said, the Daily is pretty good, not much News Corp bias in it, a far-left coworker who hates everything Fox News/NI turned me onto the Daily after trying it out when it launched in March.
I'm a fan of the Tea Party (I won't go so far as to call myself a member, since it's kind of like Anonymous in that regard... It is what you want it to be) and I've done more free work at my current job than I care to think about. I've also volunteered quite a bit of my time to causes slightly more important than my job. I have a feeling that if I thought my job was keeping planes from falling out of the sky, I'd probably keep doing it through a "blip" in my paycheck. Also, if I thought I would be potentially fired on the resumption of my pay. Would you really be comfortable walking away from your job just because the pay stopped temporarily? Don't pretend that wouldn't be held against you...
How is it different from an RC plane or helicopter? Those are used all the time for commercial arial photography and videography.
Using an RC plane or helicopter for commercial purposes requires a license to do so, its in a subsection for experimental aircraft in the FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations).
If you're not doing it commercially, its not illegal to do in certain areas. Pretty much anywhere thats populated is not one of those areas unless you get a waiver, which is what flying clubs do, with the assistance of the AMA who provides the club insurance, and thus has it in their best interest to make sure the club follows the rules. Its an actual functional self policing system.
Any serious RC pilot is an AMA member. Its cheap ($60 bucks this year for an individual, a little more for an entire family) and comes with a couple million in insurance for when you put your tricked out heli through some beamers front windshield ... which I've done. You won't find too many RC pilots that will even talk to you about RC without an AMA membership as its one of the few organizations that fight for RC pilots (Think of them as the EFF for RC pilots, though they are a for-profit organization).
With that said, the AMA will help you get waivers, and they'll help you get the permits to do commercial work, but that requires a massive amount of FAA ass kissing cause frankly, its far too easy to do bad things or hurt someone fucking around with an RC aircraft, for instance:
My all electric seaplane weighs about 1.5 pounds, and will do roughly 70mph before it becomes dangerous for the aircraft. That'll take your head off if it hits you at full speed, and if the motor is throttled back, you won't even hear it happen, which is generally how it sounds when its out of control on its way towards the ground.
My Raptor 50 heli, which has a camera attachment of my own making weighs about 7 pounds when fully loaded, will do somewhere between 45-60mph, haven't clocked it to be sure. It doesn't even have to hit you to kill you, I've seen a rotor strike the ground, break off and hospitalize a guy standing 10 feet away. Fortunatly the blade 'flew' into him like a wing in stable flight rather than end on like a knife. The bruise left behind stretched from his crotch to his nipples. Internal bruising of organs, but nothing permanent. He got lucky. Those blade tips when the rotor is at speed like its supposed to be (1800-2100 RPMs depending on your setup), the blade tips are moving at well over 300mph. When they break off, you don't want to be close by.
The real killer is the bird I'll never finish.
Its a turbine powered F-16. Will weigh about 29 pounds dry with no extra equipment when completed, between 33-35 will fully equipped and fueled. While I don't know how fast it will go once completed, others flying the same bird have broken 170 and there are some unofficial speeds of over 200mph reported. I'll never finish this aircraft because the turbine is about 3 times the price of everything else combined, and to be honest, my vision isn't good enough to see this plane at the distances you have to deal with when the aircraft is doing 150+ miles an hour, and well, why the hell build it if you're not going to fly it like its meant! This aircraft requires a special AMA waiver to be legal, which I probably couldn't qualify for due to the vision problems either.
The point to that however is that 29 pounds at 150-200 mph is enough energy to total a small house, and as such, it gets treated specially.
If you want to fly a little airplane away from people, its legal.
Flying that same aircraft in a populated area, or an area without a waiver is illegal.
Flying commercially is possible with a waiver, which is rather difficult to get especially if you're trying to do some shit thats not kosher. Its almost as difficult as getting a pilots license for commercial flight (which isn't really hard, but does take time and money and requires certification). Its almost easier and cheaper to just fly a small plane to do this as a non-government entity.
I highly doubt News Corp got a waiver, otherwise this wouldn't even be a story.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Drones have no pilot, and often suffer from doing incredibly stupid things, such as running into things, flying too low, and coming close to other aircraft.
Your point is a good one, but drones may or may not have a pilot. Predator drones for example do have a pilot -- he's just hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Ultimately, the only practical distinction between drones and R/C planes is that R/C planes are flown by pilots who always have line of sight to the plane itself (and when they lose this, the planes typically crash.) Drones often do not. And yes, people do put FPV (first person view) gear onto R/C planes and fly them like drones -- which basically turns them into drones.
The FAA is expected to clarify the distinctions between the two further soon. The R/C community is hoping that they don't get caught up in any regulations the FAA puts down, but we'll see how it goes.
Be nice. Rupert Murdoch has a kind heart. I heard he was listening to some of the tribute messages that the fans were leaving Amy Winehouse on her voice mail after she passed, and apparently he was moved to tears.
John
That aircraft requires a special waiver to be legally flown anywhere in the US. Both the pilot and the aircraft have to be certified. It is not allowed to be flown anywhere near a populated area without special exception waivers for things like air shows at airports too close to a city.
'Giant Scale' aircraft have a different set of rules specifically because of things like size and energy they contain in flight. They require all sorts of special features of the radio (which aren't really all that non-standard anymore, all my radios have the features even though I have no flyable aircraft that large) to ensure that if something goes wrong the aircraft becomes the least dangerous flying object it can be.
Its not a toy, its an experimental aircraft, and is regulated as such.
Its easier to fly an ultralight class aircraft carrying yourself than it is to fly that aircraft, and could actually be cheaper. I've got a a turbine powered F-16 that'll be a little larger than that when completed that will cost upwards of 7k USD (The turbine itself costs roughly 5k and will probably be the reason it never gets finished) to finish it and fit it out properly. You can buy a used ultralight for 6500, if you're crazy enough to do so.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I'm an air traffic controller in the US. We're getting paid. It's our support and design engineer people that got hosed, as they are paid out of the unfunded trust fund thing, not controllers. Controllers and admin are paid under the regular payroll budget. About 7000 or so FAA employees are on unpaid furlough, and about 10000 contractors are without contract. It basically affects projects to expand or renovate airports. As to the "not getting paid" part, when the federal government almost went on furlough earlier this year, we(controllers) would have been working without pay.
I have a feeling that if I thought my job was keeping planes from falling out of the sky, I'd probably keep doing it through a "blip" in my paycheck.
And this is where people get you.
"Your job is important and saves lives. We're gonna cut your pay."
"Well I'll quit then."
"You don't consider saving lives more important than money?"
"I do. I guess I'll keep working for lower pay."
"Alright, we'll see you in a few months when we cut your pay again."
If a job is so important that it would cost lives if people went on strike or quit, why are you messing with their pay in the first place? Why aren't they being paid an INCREDIBLE amount, equivalent to at least, I dunno, an entertainer?
I'm pretty sure the work that any competent FAA employee is worth more than a vast majority of sports stars, popular movie/television stars, popular musicians, and other celebrity figures. And yet they get paid a pittance in comparison.
Would you really be comfortable walking away from your job just because the pay stopped temporarily?
Yes. I can't speak for other industries, but as a programmer, if a company can't pay me, I take it as a bad sign and immediately start looking for another job. Employers like that just abuse you and take advantage.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Ah, so you like it when the employer has so much power over you that you wouldnt chance being fired. Instead, working long late night hours at the expense of your sanity, your family, and your friends?
While they get to go home, enjoy their friends, family, and insanity of having a fully stocked fridge of Grey Goose.
GG sir, you have been sold the "american dream", except you arent living it, you are just dreaming it...
That's fine, but could you please try not to fuck things up for the majority of the country while you're at it?
You might feel differently if you had a family to support.
And you might feel differently if you were ever asked to work without a paycheck for a month or more, as the employees of the FAA are doing. I'm not talking about going into the office a few weekends to finish a project and still getting you check every two weeks on schedule, I'm talking about "You're not getting paid at all, and by the way, you no longer have the right to bargain collectively, which is the very thing that made the United States into a 20th century superpower and created a growing (at the time) middle class and brought prosperity and upward mobility to hundreds of millions of people in the last 75 years of the twentieth century before Ronald Reagan decided to treat air traffic controllers the same way he later treated his diapers.
By the way, this was only 18 months after Ronald Reagan had asked for the support of the air traffic controller union, promising to fight for their rights to collectively bargain and to give them what they were fighting for in their contract dispute. He told them that in writing, too. Not surprisingly, the letter to PATCO (the air traffic controller union) did not make it into the Reagan Library, though a copy exists (or maybe the original) at the Labor & Industry Museum.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're all really funny people! Obviously you have only worked in the US or in the west. Go to Russia or Ukraine or anywhere in the former soviet bloc. You won't find any employers who pay on time every time. You only option is to go to a different employer who will also be iffy on paying on time. The problem is that most of your salary is "chyorny" meaning black: not taxed and not reported in the company's clean books (every company in Russia has two sets of books, one for the government and the other with the true numbers in it). Often because of the nature of black salary it is handed to you in an envelope filled with cash. So, therefore there is not always enough cold hard cash to pay everyone on time. It is not uncommon for the accountant to go to the local Sberbank and even though her account has more than enough money, the bank does not have the cash for the withdrawal.
Americans are spoiled by being paid on time more times than not.
Just to be clear, only 40 FAA employees have been asked to work without pay. The rest (who weren't involved in critical safety ops) weren't even given the option and were sent home. Those 40 will be paid once this is all worked out, and they will not under any circumstances walk off the job because they fought tooth and nail to get that position. We've lost a few of our best pilots in the past because they immediately jumped at the chance to work as a safety inspector, and if any of these guys walked off the job there is a line a mile long of people waiting to take their place and work for free on the hope they'd get repaid when things go back to normal.
Yes, I am serious, this is how hard people actually fight for those particular jobs.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Not to troll but if it goes on like this the safest option to travel across the US will be by car or train. And if other countries become concerned with degrading safety of US airlines it'll be ships for you if you want to go to Europe... Seriously guys, why don't you just vote all those idiots from their offices? You're a democracy, aren't you?
a) The tea party isn't like anonymous. First if all it is a registered, organized political party that claims their platform is based on reduction of government spending. In reality the tea party is more like lulzsec: a bunch of teenage 'anarchists' that are 'doing it for the lulz' b) This isn't the same as doing your job through a blip, this is paying to do your job despite your employer being incredibly negligent and incapable of doing their own jobs. These FAA folks aren't just taking one for the team, they are paying their own airfare and expenses to do the job. c) You would think the least the commercial airlines could do is belly up some free flights for them, since it is their customers and their planes the FAA is protecting. Where's that self regulating free market I was promised?
I'm a fan of the Tea Party (I won't go so far as to call myself a member, since it's kind of like Anonymous in that regard... It is what you want it to be)
Well, it isn't "what you want it to be". What it is is a PR campaign, conceived by a PR company, and funded and some very rich and powerful people, for the purposes of ensuring that their agenda steers America. And that agenda is to keep grinding the poor and middle classes into the dust while ensuring that cooperations pay no taxes and get access to lucrative government work - funded by the poor and middle classes. Reverse wealth re-distribution. When the Tea Party says "we want the government out of our pockets" by our they mean cooperations - and when they say "we want the government out of our lives" they mean they want private cooperations to provide the services that would otherwise provided by the government - they want those contracts. They cherry pick from US history (and whose history could not be cherry picked to tell whatever story you wanted?) to create the illusion that this was the society envisioned by Americas founding fathers. And they carefully construct an illusion that makes the Tea Party seem like a party of scrappers, of ordinary folk espousing the ideals of ordinary folk, when really, those people are just unpaid advertisers of big business and continuing the status quo, while America sinks.