Drone Flight Takes To Living Rooms, Gymnasiums, and Parking Garages (hackaday.com)

szczys writes: The FAA can regulate the skies, but they don't own the airspace inside of buildings. There are many ways to get your flying fix indoors. Perhaps the most obvious is flying tiny quadcopters (about 1 inch on each side) in your living room. But for years, hobby groups have formed relationships with schools and churches to have meetups in their gymnasiums. It's not limited to propeller-aircraft; ultralight rubberband power fixed-wing is a popular indoor option. And FPV enthusiasts can get competitive by setting up race courses in parking garages.

Comments

Gives 'Underground drone racing'...

[iced_tea]

A whole new meaning. I smell a new sport.

There is no regulation against such use.

[ScentCone]

The 2012 FMRA law prohibits the FAA from burdening recreational users of model aircraft with any further reguation. There's plenty of debate about whether the administration's recent end-around of using the DoT to push the new Suzy Must Register Her 9-Ounce Pink Plastic Copter In A Public-Facing Federal Database is already a direct and willful violation of that law (to be determined in court).

So unless we're talking about people wanting to race their FPV quads right next to an airport, there's really nothing driving hobbyists indoors. Especially since going indoors doesn't exempt them from that dubious new registration program anyway: if it flies by remote control and it weighs more than half a pound, it has to be registered before it ever flies if it's purchased new, or otherwise by February 19th. So grandpa needs to get busy with that garage full of 50-year-old balsa wood models, lest he become liable for a $20,000 civil fine (and that's before the criminal penalties, possibly including jail time).

Sure, those 1-inch-wide micro-quads are under the weight limit. They're also more or less no fun at all, compared to the real thing.

Good idea esp. For beginners...

[ClarkMills]

Good idea especially for beginners. My first (toy) drone lasted about 2 hours... Learning to fly it in the lounge was interesting but I got ejected outside after shredding the wife's flower arrangement. From there it was up up and blown away... I still haven't found it.

In a gym you will be hard pressed to lose your done and I'd expect the the environment to be stable.

Re:Gymnasiums?

[ScentCone]

BTW, mega-churches exist because people want them. It's a bit presumptuous of you to claim that your town has been infested simply because a facility doesn't cater to your point of view.

Actually, they exist in our area because of a perverse loophole in zoning laws. Most are financed by third parties with a business interest in the proceeds from the church-run retail operations, and the bigger the facility, the more cash they make as a non-profit, paid out through very high salaries to key figures, and very high returns on the got-nothing-to-do-with-religion investors. Yes, people want them. Because they are very large recreational facilities that get to benefit from a tax dodge, and they are killing off attendance at the little mom-and-pop social institutions that we used to think of as churches.

It's not "presumptuous" of me to correctly relate the nature of these facilities and the way they interact with (or don't) the county, municipal, state and federal governments as they move millions and millions of dollars around while enjoying special zoning exemptions, tax avoidance, and all sorts of hiring and labor exemptions. These are large businesses that throw on the hair-think veneer of religiosity in order to avoid operating and real estate expenses that any other operation of that size would have to pay. Investors see that it's a good business model, and clone them until there's literally no room to do it any more.