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Drone Search and Rescue Operation Wins Fight Against FAA
An anonymous reader writes: Back in February, officials at the Federal Aviation Administration told a Texas search-and-rescue team they couldn't use drones help locate missing persons. The team, which is called EquuSearch, challenged the FAA in court. On Friday, the court ruled (PDF) in favor of EquuSearch, saying the FAA's directive was "not a formal cease-and-desist letter representing the agency's final conclusion." EquuSearch intends to resume using the drones immediately. This puts the FAA in the position of having to either initiate formal proceedings against EquuSearch, which is clearly operating to the benefit of society (as opposed to purely commercial drone use), or to revisit and finalize its rules for small aircraft entirely. The latter would be a lengthy process because "Congress has delegated rule making powers to its agencies, but the Administrative Procedures Act requires the agencies to provide a public notice and comment period first."
You can visit the FAA comment site to comment on proposed rule changes that address this issue. The comment period ends on July 25. The proposed rules will cripple drone use by civilians and also cripple most RC aircraft operations in the USA. The proposal is simply draconian. Check it out:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!d...
If you 'search the net' for events relating to drones ... take away the EquuSearch related results, you'll find that pretty much EVERY ONE OF THEM is some fucking moron doing something that either DID hurt someone, was dangers as shit, came very close to hurting someone, or certainly had the potential to hurt someone.
I've been paying attention to the almost daily news stories about "drones," and I have not observed what you claim. The vast majority are people spooked by multirotors hovering around.
A commercial drone at a wedding
A creepy guy flying a multirotor around a medical faciltiy
NYPD getting excited about another multirotor
FAA warns a multirotor pilot to stay at low altitude
"Drone" crashes in someones yard
"Drone" videos Pirates baseball game
Drug smuggling with a multirotor
"Drone" reported outside someone's apartment
"Drone" used to spy on French football team
Woman Attacking Teen with "drone"
Some of those were dangerous to aircraft, but most didn't involve manned aircraft, and no one was hurt or killed. There have been plenty of close calls with model planes, but there haven't been many actual collisions and I'm not finding any deaths due to collisions with manned aircraft.
In all likelihood there won't be either. Most of these "drones" are small and light. When they collide with manned aircraft they disintegrate and perhaps scratch some paint. Here is what happens when a aerobatic aircraft slams into a typical model plane. Balsa and foam don't rate against aircraft aluminum. Is a death possible? Of course. Obviously. However, I think the interval between such events will be many years and the fault will not be attributed to the drones in every case, either.
I'm with you in that the stupid among us are creating the need for regulation. Adding to the hysteria of it all with claims of imminent "danger" is not useful.
I've gotten involved in a couple of rounds of agency rule-making before and it taught me a few things. I learned that this is where the skills learned writing papers in school can really be useful. The folks at the FAA think they know something about this topic, so they tend to discount comments that sound like the person is spouting off emotionally without having any real knowledge of the subject matter. On the other hand, they don't know everything that everyone is doing in the field, so they'd like to hear comments from people doing different things. For example, my local university has a drone research center and the FAA doesn't know what all the research center is doing, so they can appreciate comments about using drones in a research and educational setting.
IF you really care about this topic, it may be worth putting some time into writing your comments well, or supporting an organization who will, such as the model aircraft association.