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Drone Ban Extends 30 Miles Around DC, Per FAA (wusa9.com)
DewDude writes: If you thought done registration was bad enough; it just got worse for anyone living in the nation's capital. On Christmas Day (of all days); the FAA put into effect a rule that bans the flying of drones/quadcopters within a 30-mile radius around DC. This more than doubles the initial 15 mile radius no-fly-zone. The ban includes the counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William, and the independent cities in the vicinity on the Virginia side. On the Maryland side; it includes Montgomery, Prince Georges, Howard, Anne Arundel; and parts of Calvert, Baltimore, and the extreme north-western end of St. Marys Counties in Maryland.
Yes. That's how it works. First they ban our drones, next they're asking as for papers. Get over yourself.
So if I owned property within 30 miles, I can't fly my little RC plane or Quadcopter in my backyard?
Because....why? And how does doing that affect you or anyone else?
From TFA
"So, anyone who flies drones or RC airplanes or anything within 30 miles of DC is now officially grounded," said hobbyist Cyrus Phillips.. "That came out on Christmas Day."
He said the notice effectively closes the Capital Area Soaring Association and all other hobbyist parks within 30-miles.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Actually, the Constitution requires 51 senators for quorum, or else the vote is not valid. Three senators voting unanimously to pass a bill in an empty Congressional meeting wouldn't meet requirements any more than dressing up in full court regalia and decreeing new US laws from your toilet seat would.
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You know what I find amusing? For a country that enjoys a lot of freedom, American citizens complain a lot of about tyranny and oppression, as if they've lived through it. The TSA is an agency that has been mismanaged due to a lack of oversight. That is not a definition of tyranny. That's just the american public being suckered into voting for people who aren't interested in representing them. All of the problems that plague the political system in the U.S. -- all of it -- can be resolved if the masses can agree not to be swayed by thirty-second ads. Whatever form of oppression Americans think they are in, believe you me, is a self-inflicted one, as the power to vote and bring about political change still rests with the voters. I have lived in a totalitarian country. One of their ways of getting their kicks is killing your relative and billing you for the bullet and time. Perhaps I'll join the melodrama when I start seeing similar occurrences happen in the U.S.
Do you believe every stupid thing you read? The House passed the Federal Reserve Act 298 to 60 and the Senate passed it 43 to 25. And President Wilson signed it.
Correction from info posted by bws111: The votes I posted were for the initial passage. The votes bws111 posted were for the reconciliation form of the Act. Those are more technically correct.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
A supermarket drone is less than a pound (half a kilo) and has a ceiling far below cruise for an aircraft. An aircraft on takeoff or approach will be flying pretty slowly. A Canada goose is somewhere in the vicinity of 8 lbs. and will stop a jet-engine, but still won't destroy a jumbo jet.
You might as well worry about flocks of songbirds, which as you may know far outnumber and predate drones.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Great, then just program all of those dangerous birds flying around to obey the same zone.
This whole fucking discussion is predicated on the "fact" that these drones pose a danger. Yet, while we have drones enjoying unprecedented popularity, we do not have any incidences of an aircraft being in any real danger. Even if we did, how many more bird strikes are there each year?
This is yet another example of failure to do a cost-benefit analysis and simply accepting the government's default position of safety over freedom on something. Let's not allow the crippling CYA culture that dominates the public sector to invade our lives. Please?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Pssssst
We don't have to live through it. We've seen first hand how well it worked out for all the other countries who went through it over the years. Even had to send troops over to help deal with them. ( See: WWII )
Learning from your own mistakes is expected. Learning from the mistakes of others is what sets folks apart from the average ones.
Your liberty doesn't extend to flying quadrocopters wherever the fuck you feel like it.
My liberty has nothing to do with flying or not flying quadcopters at all. That is the problem you're not realizing in your haste to critique Libertarians. You're logic is simple binary and thus incapable of judgement. Or as the good saying goes, only the Sith deal in absolutes.
No, the idea of liberty is fraught with messy dangerous things. If you want to live in a nice peaceful totalitarian state, where everything is mandated, regulated and bubble wraped for your protection, then fine, move to North Korea, where the state protects its people from the evils of Liberty. Because that is what you have advocated.
But lets take a look at what is REALLY happening. It is now, against the law to fly a drone within 30 Miles of DC. That means that I cannot fly my drone, over my backyard (acreage) because you're too fucking scared. Now, I am a criminal for not doing anything other than minding my own business, harming, threatening, or otherwise anyone else.
The real spoiled children are the ones crying for big government to protect them from scary imaginary boogiemen.
So yeah, be riduculously afraid of my quadcopter on my property, and make me a criminal simply because you're too fucking stupid to have any judgements and thus deal in the absolute binary world you're comfortable in.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Special snowflakes are the people demanding government protect them from all the imaginary boogiemen they can dream up. I am asking nobody to protect me from anything other than governments making things illegal, simply because people like you can only make binary choices.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
To my understanding there really is all that much in the way of boogie men people are demanding protection from. The biggest demand right now regard protection from--very real--thug law enforcement officers.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
30 miles from washington national airport covers the southern portion of Baltimore, including the inner harbor, as well as a significant portion of the state of Maryland.
Look at Google maps, the mile key is on the bottom right corner. I used a post-it to mark the distance. It covers the entirety of Anne Arundel County, which includes Annapolis. That is a pretty significant reach.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Oh, it's even better than that. There isn't any regulation. The FAA has several ways to make rules about the airspace. They can publish regulations in the Federal Register; this is the hard way. Or they can issue a NOTAM, a Notice to Airmen, containing restrictions in the airspace. This is the easy way. The NOTAM for the DC SFRA is here.
It talks about model aircraft once:
"THE FOLLOWING OPERATIONS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED WITHIN THE DC FRZ: [...] MODEL AIRCRAFT OPERATIONS"
Note "DC FRZ". The DC FRZ (Flight Restricted Zone) is a 15-mile radius area centered on Reagan National. The SFRA is a 30-mile radius area centered on the same point. So where's the restriction for the whole SFRA? Well, they've published it on their website, and also in something called AC 91-57A. Thing is, "AC" stands for "Advisory Circular". By definition, it doesn't set any rules; it's advisory.
So it's really tough to challenge the regulation, because _no such regulation exists_. The FAA has told the police to shut down fields, and told the (private) Academy for Model Aeronautics to shut down fields, or else. But they haven't bothered to make an actual regulation to back up their orders.
I realize I lose the argument by starting it this way, but the above is just so clueless, that I feel I have no choice: "You're a fucking idiot."
Congress makes laws. The executive branch makes rules. The executive branch cannot make rules unless they have the delegated power to do so. Congress passed a LAW that said, in essence, that "the FAA's delegated power to make rules does not extend to model aircraft." The FAA made a rule that extended to model aircraft, which it specifically DOES NOT HAVE THE POWER TO DO.
This has nothing to do with "laws being revised to account for future development." It is a department of the government (unelected bureaucrats, no less) ignoring its enabling legislation. This is actually rule by fiat, i.e. dictatorship, and not the democratic process.
Go back to fucking civics class.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Birds are not a microscopic minority, though, and civil aviation has managed to live with bird strikes for decades.
I keep seeing this nonsense and I just can't let it keep going on. Birds are living things that, for political and scientific reasons, we cannot simply eliminate as a way of reducing the risk they cause to aviation. We have to live with them because we've decided that they have a right to live. We do take steps to limit the problem when we can.
Drones, OTOH, are not living things, and they do not have a right to live. We can easily ban them from airspace where they pose a threat to other aircraft.
The fact that one threat to something exists and cannot be eliminated does not mean we must put up with all threats, especially ones that can be eliminated. Trying to argue that since birds are a threat we cannot do anything to limit any other kind of threat is just stupid. There are all kinds of hazards in daily life that we cannot prevent, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to mitigate all of them that we can.
I am not opposed to government. I actually support a government that has a singular purpose, to protect the liberties of those that cannot protect themselves. This doesn't mean a "nanny state", but rather a government that serves to protect its citizens from tyrants, large and small. There are VERY few crimes that fall into this category.
I'm very much idealist in this regard. The purpose of the government, is the secure the blessings of liberty. Those blessings are being eroded in the name of safety and security all the time, by people who aren't really concerned about either, but rather using those concerns to control the masses.
Think of it this way, the citizens in general, are they afraid of their government or not? Personally, I do not trust the government a single bit. I don't trust those that have eroded liberties for everyone but themselves. I point to the current classic case, Hillary Clinton, who while trying to hide her public service email from everyone, including the public trust (government) is at the same time, wanting to back door Security on everyone's email (encryption) so the government can snoop. The government should not need to trust its citizens, but the citizens should be able to trust the government. Currently we are 100% backwards. And it is all done in the name of security and safety.
Or, take this example from the TSA, who won't let more than 5oz of liquids on a plane. Mind you, they wantonly toss those same "dangerous" larger capacity liquid containers into the same trash, right next to the high density choke point for travelers in airports. Further, the 5oz limit doesn't actually stop the dangerous combination chemical reactions, in a well coordinated terrorist plot. The only conclusion I have is that appearances are more important than reality.
And besides that, between 9-11 hijackings that will never happen again, and Paris Nightclub style attacks, it is much easier to go to high density population zones to mass kill people. Reality is not perception, and perception is not reality. Planes will still explode, rarely, on occasion (Egypt), and terrorists win with every tyrannical move to protect the people.
True liberty depends on eternal vigilance, and too many people want to abdicate their responsibilities as citizens and have someone in the government do their job for them. And I personally consider people like that a threat, more so than all the Jihadis in the world, because they seem so innocent as they give away their liberties.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Usually, yes, but they've told the AMA to 'temporarily suspend' operations. The AMA thinks it's going to come to an agreement with the FAA in mid-January.
http://motherboard.vice.com/re...
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]