Slashdot Mirror
FAA Proposes Rules To Limit Commercial Drone Use
An anonymous reader sends this report from the NY Times:
In an attempt to bring order to increasingly chaotic skies, the Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday proposed long-awaited rules on the commercial use of small drones, requiring operators to be certified, fly only during daylight and keep their aircraft in sight. The rules, though less restrictive than the current ones, appear to prohibit for now the kind of drone delivery services being explored by Amazon, Google and other companies, since the operator or assigned observers must be able to see the drone at all times without binoculars. But company officials believe the line-of-sight requirement could be relaxed in the future to accommodate delivery services.
"If you can see me, I should be able to see you," is a core consequence of free society.
The operator needing line of sight with the drone is per se much less important than the ability for the drone to be recognised and associated with its operator.
Amazon employees have become frequently sighted in the Space Needle holding remote controls. Waves of reportings across town have been made of drones carrying lightweight parabolic solar reflectors that can be seen by the unaided eye dozens of miles away....
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
The last thing I want to see is hundreds of cardboard packages flying by in the sky every fucking day.
Isn't this what the rules say now? How does this differ from what is already in place?
The FAA's current position is that ALL (with very, very few waivered exceptions) commercial use of UAS is not allowed. Their proposed new rules would reduce their restrictions, not add to them. You can't get more restricted than "completely banned." But don't get your hopes up. It will take two or three years before these proposed rules, or some variation on them, actually take effect. In the meantime, thousands of small businesses, farmers, etc., will continue to just operate on the down-low and risk large fines.
Especially ridiculous, of course, is that people flying the exact same machines, in exactly the same place, at exactly the same time, with all of the exact same safety precautions and practices, but who are doing it for recreational purposes, will not be beholden to the same rules. Flying after the sun goes down? Just fine if you're an enthusiast. Making exactly the same flight, but getting $50 to do it? Federal fine!
Another capricious, irrational regulatory stance on the part of the executive branch. The new rules, if and when they ever stick, despite congress requiring them, by law, to have it done by September (it will never happen), will have zero impact on a reckless amateur noob or someone malicious. This is just a fee grab looking to feed the FAA with $150 every 24 months from some guy who does roofing and wants to inspect gutters without putting up a dangerous ladder. Right now he's not allowed. Someday he will be able to, if he pays more money to do so. But his neighbor can do it for fun with no legal risks. Absurd.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Here's what they published
http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/media/021515_sUAS_Summary.pdf
Except for the last sentence, it does not appear to touch recreational use.
It does not eliminate FPV, but does put some reasonable limits on how this fun tech can be used.
The only thing I see that they still need to figure out is how to allow a farmer to fly over his own land without direct visual control.
This seems a private property right versus NAS public rights issue, much like the chicken house issue from years past.
I can see that it is useful to cover most of the cases quickly (in govt time scales) and then sort out this more complex issue.
The only folks unhappy with this should be the cowboys accustomed to no rules.
They don't rule out autonomous drones (Mr. Calo said the rules might be revised to allow the development of delivery businesses. "They could change, especially if someone shows autonomous flight modes can be safe,” he said.). But there need to be rules to make sure these things are falling out of the sky on people, interfering with aircraft or powerlines, etc. So if someone want to put in the work, the possibility is there.
how will the drones be able to fly through my pet door to deliver my bag of potato chips directly to my couch?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"keep their aircraft in sight"
So they're basically negating the one major aspect of a drone, the ability to fly significant areas autonomously by tethering it to someone on the ground. Sounds like bureaucratic red tape to me, if you can't kill a thing make it useless to do it by wrapping it in so many "common sense" measures as to make it useless. I can understand some things, requiring insurance, constant tracking, keeping records, but maintaning line of sight either shows a complete lack of understanding of what a drone is or a blatant attempt to kill a (possibly) nascent industry.
FAA Proposes Rules To Limit Commercial Drone Use
I've always thought commercials drone on and on. Glad to see the FCC is doing something about this.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
now they just need to put limits on military & law enforcements usage of them.
"In an attempt to increase their staff & budget,"
...be paid to landowners for easements? We've already been sold down the river when it comes to commercial aircraft and radio waves that pass over our property. Personally, I think the line should be drawn here. You want to fly a drone a few feet over my house, you pay.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
So if we add an external camera on a stick, pointed toward the drone, does that count? /duck
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
...think they should pay anything for stealing the rights away from property owners.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Can you promise the drone, out of your site, will not run into another aircraft, person or building?
For experimental situations over known terrain maybe autonomous drones will work fine. For commercial operations in situations where other aircraft may be operating (IE EMS helicopters, AG aircraft, other drones, etc), the drone needs to operate under the same rules as the manned aircraft they are in the vicinity of. Manned aircraft have to see and avoid other aircraft. It doesn't always work, but certainly with two pilots looking gives a fighting chance of one pilot noticing. Today pilots have a hard time seeing birds, and putting drones in their way will cause more accidents.
Please consider aircraft of all sizes and types. Sure a 5lb drone may not hurt a 747, but a 5lb drone will probably go through the windshield of a small twin engine aircraft. If the drone were to be ingested by a turbine engine, it is likely to cause damage to the engine (and destroy the drone), but who gets the bill. If I were running an airline, I would certainly want the $millions to repair that turbine reimbursed.
The no night flying restriction is incredibly myopic when it comes to search & rescue operations. As an 8-year veteran of SAR ops, I can tell you that most searches start at night. Why? Because it's only after it gets dark that the reporting party decides that they need help. We never ever delay an initial response for daylight hours. Low-cost FLIR cameras are starting to become available. And I'm certainly not going to submit a flight plan 24 hours in advance. 87% of all searches are resolved in the first 12 hours. For this administration to tie one hand behind our backs is further evidence that Washington knows nothing about what goes on in the real world. I have the same opinion towards the line-of-sight rule. We may need to get eyes on in a remote canyon that we can't see from a decent launch point or it might take several hours to hike up to where we would have line-of-sight.
Granted that this is all supposed to be about commercial flying but try convincing some bureaucrat that SAR ops are not. For evidence I point you towards the recent FAA/Texas Equusearch dust up. Personally, I would enjoy introducing said bureaucrat to the family of a missing 3-yr old with the following words, "Allow me to introduce Mr. Head-up-his-ass who won't allow us to use every tool to find your child."
I think the FAA (other other reg. bodies) should emulate the amateur radio license system that the FCC et al has: a "base" license that allows you line-of-sight operation, and stepped up training for more complex flying scenarios, just like frequency and power restrictions are present with the hams. Or requesting operator numbers like the MMSI numbers in modern marine VHF radios: no cost, done online, with simply some contact information necessary.
The FAA already has experience in graduated licensing: private pilot license (PPL) which is VFR-only, IFR rating, multi-engine and complex endorsements, commercial license (CPL), airline license (ATPL).
One certainly doesn't need to have the "heavy" learning of the pilot licensing system, but a modicum of learning and effort of the radio stuff wouldn't a bad thing. At the very least being aware of airspace classes would be nice, perhaps with an online registration of drones larger than a certain size/mass and for commercial purposes.
The government isn't getting their cut
Why should this cut exceed the tax on the income that an independent contractor already declares on form 1040?
This very much goes in line with the rules hobbyist have followed for years. The AMA is very clear about what you can and can't do with a remotely piloted vehicle. I deplore the use of the term Drone to apply to people actually flying a helicopter / quadcopter / airplane. What Amazon is doing is a drone. What I am doing is a remotely piloted vehicle.
FPV or First Person View of with an RPV is prohibited without a spotter. Under all circumstances you cannot fly beyond line of site with any model aircraft. Those that are members of the AMA have always followed these rules and respected what they mean. The fact that all of these things are now in the hands of people that have no real interest in the hobby is the problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws
The early laws regarding self propelled carriages were just as stupefyingly ridiculous.
Our founders NEVER intended to create an agency that thought it owned ALL of what ancient people called "the elements"... in this case AIR.
NO WHERE in the Constitution is a clause to be found that gives the Federal Government authority over all of the air above ground level over all of the dirt and water of the nation. The FAA, like MOST of our current bloated tyrannical federal government, was justified before a Democrat-packed Supreme Court many decades ago as an expression of the Interstate Commerce Clause (in which our founders gave the Federal Government the job of making interstate commerce regular - i.e. preventing trade wars between the states). As long as a drone is too low and/or too far from an airport to interfere with interstate airline and cargo flights, that drone SHOULD be none of the Federal Govt's business and any regulation of it ought to belong to the state and local governments where it is operated.
This nation, which was founded on FREEDOM and rights of the INDIVIDUAL, has been gradually distorted and warped into just another top-down tyranny where government knows what's best for everybody, has the right to control everybody, and ignores its own rules and laws while using the public schools to propagandize children to be submissive to their overloards. It's as if the Magna Carta has been rolled-back.
Had the FAA existed, the Wright Brothers would never have been authorized to build the first airplane and the FAA would never have been able to be established. It ought to be a basic rule of government that no agency can erect any rule that would have blocked the rise of the industry it seeks to regulate... because all such instances become crony-capitalist tools that grandfather-in the early players and then act as a barrier to new entrants.
1. You won't be arrested when you land and tossed into a bang-me-in-the-butt prison.
2. It helps provide money to government, and jobs to bureaucrats, which together provide job safety for politicians and government employees
Here's what it WON'T do:
1. Prevent hijackings, crashes, and aircraft-as-missiles; ALL the 9/11 incidents occurred aboard commercial carriers with commercial pilots
2. Prevent intoxicated operators; plenty of airline pilots have been arrested for drunk flying in the past decade
3. Make sure every operator knows how to operate his drone; the FAA does not know how to operate a custom-built drone it has never seen so it cannot teach the operator to fly it - but the designer/builder DOES.
Rule of thumb:
If government requires a license or certificate to do something "for profit" but NOT for the EXACT SAME ACT by the EXACT SAME PERSON AND EQUIPMENT at the EXACT SAME TIME AND LOCATION, then it has NOTHING to do with "safety" and everything to do with "control". In such cases, the agency involved is engaged in extreme overreach and it KNOWS it - and it therefore only licences commercial uses because it knows businesses will just roll-over and pay the fees to avoid the hassle, but the general public might become enraged and politically active if made to jump through those illegitimate hoops. Anybody qualified to operate a drone safely is qualified to do it whether making a profit or not. Anybody qualified to fly a jumbo jet is qualified to do it whether it's empty and flown "for fun" or full of cargo for Fed-Ex or passengers for United. "For profit" has NOTHING to do with whether the underlying activity is more or less safe.
by interfering with your (presumably commercial) flight, the operator is ALREADY GUILTY of violating a federal law.
This is almost exactly like the arguments over gun control - there are already laws that are not being enforced, and we ought to get about enforcing THOSE before adding more and more rules and regulations. There are already so many laws that nobody can know them all and even lawyers need lawyers of their own.
Do you know approx when and where the strike ocurred? Did anybody look for the drone's wreckage or try checking for witnesses in the vicinity? I'd bet any drone debris would have the operator's finger prints all over it and any general alert to the news media by law enforcement should turn-up tips about people whose friends notice no longer seem to have the drone they used to be showing to everybody...
I thought they meant they were gonna get control of the army of drones who sit at desks writing rules and regulations (and surfing for porn at taxpayer expense?) at the FAA... THOSE drones missed all the battery problems on the 787 when they were supposedly doing due dilligence regulating commercial aviation...
LOS is a joke. At 100ft away, you'll lose orientation... I don't care if you're some expert 3D pilot. Even the best WILL screw up.
Look at the advisory committee... the FAA is in bed with the defense contractors and big money, i.e. those film firms willing to spend 20K on a rig that's used to shoot things a GoPro can do--a RED camera is NOT the solution for great action shots, though it sounds awesome--ah... a new myth. Even with the argument of flying a $5K lens. These are wide-angle shots, thus can be altered greatly in post. Not close ups of Meryl Streep--which a $5k lens is worth it to help make her look 10yrs younger.
From film to oil rigs to power line inspection --force fit the DoD system: remotely piloted drones, not autonomous aircraft. That's great for remote, open wide spaces, but not the environments we are looking at. The FAA likes that cause it relies on one specific role: the pilot. Yes, trust the hot shot pilot.
But much like 787's to F15's, highly manueverable aircraft (like a sUAS) runs on 95% autonomy. And the FAA hasn't a clue on how that fits with regs... considering autopilots in these sUAS can fly circles around a pilot. We've already proven the current regulation paradigm (pilot centric) doesn't fit these vehicles. Autonomous cars are in the SAME boat.
I envisage a helicopter load of UAV operators in "line of sight".
For the helicopter providers, it is a great opportunity.
For the LOS UAV operators, it is a wonderful range extension.
For the rest of us, underneath, maybe not so great.
--
Most people are not nearly as paranoid as they should be.
Posing politicians are part of the process, no doubt. To what extent the model we learned about in school exists, or whether it ever existed, is not terribly relevant. There is a belief about the US government that many Americans share. Here goes ...
Fundamentally, complaints should go through the judicial branch; if they are serious and lingering enough, legislators write laws to address the issue; and finally, the executive branch is supposed to enforce the laws.
When the executive branch circumvents the complaint and legislative processes, as we're seeing with "proposals from this federal agency, or that federal agency" it raises concerns about conflict of interest. How much scrutiny of the solution is happening by other authorities? Doesn't the scientific method demand more eyes and more input?
Why not let small players, new graduates out of MIT or the local tech school, innovate drone technology at the street level for awhile. If there is abuse of drones, address it through channels, for example complaints through the judicial branch.
So many times, the executive branch has the appearance of favoring entrenched players that contribute to the party in power. It appears to be a driver of many of their proposals that bypass the judicial and legislative branches.
Seriously I can understand if a kid is using these drones but not Companies like Amazon Etc you people working for the FAA are stupid idiots with these regulations it also would be a different scenario with ISIS etc but this won't be used for that! It will be used for delivering a package quicker to your door step and that's all you fools!ðYðY'ZðY±