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Drones Under 2kg May Be Set Free Under Forthcoming FAA Rules (suasnews.com)
garymortimer writes: The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is establishing an aviation rulemaking committee with industry stakeholders to develop recommendations for a regulatory framework that would allow certain UAS to be operated over people who are not directly involved in the operation of the aircraft. The FAA is taking this action to provide a more flexible, performance-based approach for these operations than what was considered for Micro UAS. The committee will begin its work in March and issue its final report to the FAA on April 1.
wondering how many registrations they received in the first few days
... (FAA) is establishing...
The FAA is taking this action...
The committee will [...] issue its final report...
Uhm. Yes, and? Poor submission. Sorry.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
I watched some of the initial drone racing promotional videos and thought cool but kind of ignored them.
Since that time there's been many more videos come out and I'm beginning to get the idea as a video game player that these things can really be appreciated by the kinda 10->50y/o crowd who grew up with gaming.
With the FPV goggles the guys have for them, the performance of the things and the complexity of some of the 'tracks' they do actually seem kind of great.
I wonder if these things could be this generations F1 at some point?
Here's a couple of videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcLk_uZe33w&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkIGord9w8o&feature=youtu.be
Those videos making it look fairly awesome from the pilots perspective but don't do much to make me want to attend the event as a spectator. If the drones all had 360 degree video streams available in real time time to the spectators that might make it a bit more interesting to a wider audience.
How about you realize that the registration does not matter one single bit, if someone desides to do that.
The drone is well trained at keeping itself in the air. (The pilot isn't flying it, he's only telling it where to go).
Training wouldn't fix the reasons the drone goes down. And when it falls, its not like 2kg dead weight, it falls under prop spin to make rather boring news items about what might have been.
Everyone will have their favourites. Debian-testing would be my recommendation. Mint for the gaming machine.
Isn't that more an argument for banning drones completely? Or at least for registering and licensing each and every one of them and permitting their use only for valid commercial or scientific missions.
Speaking of which:
- How big a Molotov cocktail can a 2 kg drone carry?
- What if someone decides to liven up an otherwise dull Sunday afternoon by flying drones with a payload of black paint into car windshields on the Interstate?
- And what happens when someone flies a four and a half pound drone into a spinning jet engine?
These things have real potential to be a major nuisance and quite possibly something of a threat. You sure you want to deal with the consequences of turning them loose? Might want to think through the pros and cons ahead of time.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Sure, but these things are already illegal. If you are willing to do any of that the possible additional penalty of 'unlicensed operation of a UAV' will likely not even bother you.
> Offtopic, I know, but I need some recommendations.
Dude, I can't even know where to start. Picture a wedding and you entering the ceremony and saying those exact words. Kinda exaggerated but some will feel that way...
> I use CentOS and Fedora at work on company-owned computers. I also do some work on a couple of supercomputers running Scientific Linux. I'm no stranger to coding, especially with C, shell scripts, and in Matlab.
From this I know you probably are trolling. But what the heck, lots of folks wanna know about that...
> I just bought a couple of laptops from around 2008, so they're Core 2 Duos with around 4 GB of RAM. They were inexpensive and I trust the seller to make sure I'm not buying garbage. I'd like to put Linux on them, but I'm not too familiar with my choices in distros. I intend to do a lot of work for my job on one, so I'll need a good assortment of math, science, visualization, and development tools.
Probably nice machines. I'm typing this on a Core 2 Duo myself (an Intel E7500, 2GB RAM). Quite nice CPU, not new for sure, but good enough for a lot of tasks. If your work uses supercomputers, though, you might need something with more oomph, for graphics processing mainly. I've used this machine for serious work and can't complain -- but I only deal with business data, not scientific. Of course you could remote desktop or something.
> The other I'd like to use primarily for gaming, using older software and doing some emulation. I'll need a good assortment of emulators and packages for stuff like wine.
There are games and then there are games. For retro gaming that's more than enough; for last month FPS', your problem will be the graphics subsystem, which you cannot change in a laptop. Not a wine user myself, but if you will emulate (hehe, "not emulate") XP, I guess they are more than enough -- 4GB will only help for dealing with massive data, otherwise 2GB are ok (specially with 32-bit Linux, but have in mind some apps are forsaking that and going 64-bit only... e.g. Chrome -- the only way to watch Netfilx on Linux). Also, check some benchmarks, 64-bit might be important in your line of work.
> And while I'm capable of doing so, I'd rather not have to get under the hood and do much configuration to make things work and be secure.
My exact situation. I know how to catch a pig, have done it before, but I'm not in the "mud" now... :-P
> Any recommendations for distros I should use? Thanks!
I've had good experiences with Mint (debian/Ubuntu-based), Mageia (independent) and Salix (Slackware-based, for computers older than what you got).
Mint, despite the recent security problems, is good; go with Xubuntu if you wish. Ubuntu itself uses the Unity desktop, which is a little heavier and too Mac-looking -- yes, that's a minus for me: commercial offerings (Windows, Mac) are too restricted in usability.
The Mageia folks usually go further to help the user. They still have that awesome Mandriva spirit. Recent times have been quite hard on distros, though (big overload with things like UEFI and systemd), so expect some tweaking to make things perfect (mainly in the multimedia dept). They tend to have things that work better than Mint, for example, but are too conservative in some aspects (e.g., looks). Mint is excellent, too, but they are somewhat undercrowded, so packages are provided as is, while other distros (e.g. Mageia) might fix some shortcomings like providing additional packages (e.g. sounds) to enrich your desktop experience.
> Yes, mod me offtopic by all means. I know it's offtopic. But I don't know a better group of nerds to ask these questions to. Thanks!
I know you're sugarcoating it but dude, there's lots and lots of places to ask that. Heck, there's lots of places with answers already posted for those questions! Googling it for an evening would make you much more informed than asking here. Besides, have you seen the number of articles about Microsoft here lately? I guess a good number of users here still think of Linux as "too difficult for me"...
It's the size of the swarm.
How much did the the pressure cooker bombs used in the Boston marathon attack weigh?
a) More than 2kg, if you'd ever picked up a pressure cooker you might know this.
b) How about you stop living in media-induced fear that someone is going to attack you? If your first thought about everything is "how might terrorists use this," the Government has won.
SEC. 336. SPECIAL RULE FOR MODEL AIRCRAFT.
(a) IN GENERAL.
—Notwithstanding any other provision of law
relating to the incorporation of unmanned aircraft systems into
Federal Aviation Administration plans and policies, including this
subtitle, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration
may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model
aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft, if—
(1) the aircraft is flown strictly for hobby or recreational
use;
(2) the aircraft is operated in accordance with a community-
based set of safety guidelines and within the programming
of a nationwide community-based organization;
(3) the aircraft is limited to not more than 55 pounds
unless otherwise certified through a design, construction,
inspection, flight test, and operational safety program adminis-
tered by a community-based organization;
(4) the aircraft is operated in a manner that does not
interfere with and gives way to any manned aircraft; and
(5) when flown within 5 miles of an airport, the operator
of the aircraft provides the airport operator and the airport
air traffic control tower (when an air traffic facility is located
at the airport) with prior notice of the operation (model aircraft
operators flying from a permanent location within 5 miles of
an airport should establish a mutually-agreed upon operating
procedure with the airport operator and the airport air traffic
control tower (when an air traffic facility is located at the
airport)).
It's the fact that the FAA does not have the authority to regulate model aircraft. The prohibition is right there in the FAA Modernization Act.
According to the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, âoethe Federal Aviation Administration may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft,â as long as operators abide by certain safety rules.
A Federal Judge has also ruled (in 2014) that the FAA cannot regulate radio-controlled aircraft.
A "drone" is a remote-controlled or autonomous aircraft that can fly beyond the line of sight of its operator. An R/C aircraft that remains within sight of the operator and is under their control at all times is NOT A DRONE. The Federal Courts have ruled on this and the FAA is ignoring that ruling in violation of the Law.
While I'm happy to see that the FAA is starting to work on UAS regulations, they're tackling one of the most complex, contentious, and largely irrelevant aspects of UAS: flying small drones over people.
Instead of addressing the commercial-use policies and incompatibilities with existing aviation law, they're going to tell us how much foam your drone needs to be covered with so that you can fly it over your kid's softball game.
I can save them some time: Don't do it. Short of mandating prop guards, no amount of frangibility will solve injuries from props. Also, some work has already been done on this in the form of the lower bounds for drone registration. The sub-250g/.55lb class was calculated to be "safe" should it fall out of the sky.
At best, the final law should involve some legalese like "you may only fly over other people if you have taken reasonable precaution to protect bystanders."
~JB
Registration does one thing- force a group of people to do something or if they don't, they're then illegal.
Joe Schmoe goes out and flies his multirotor every day, one day he is legal, the next he is a criminal. With no ill intent.
What's next, register your computer if you use encryption? If you don't register, fines/jail time. Boom, created a group of criminals overnight.
No info and an April 1st deadline? WTF /.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I wouldn't register a 100 lb drone.
Since when has the US switched to metric?
http://www.suasnews.com/2016/0...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I find this interesting. There's talk of banning things, heavily licensing them, etc etc - all on the basis that someone *might* misuse them. In the case of drones, getting one to carry anywhere near enough paint (or petrol) to cause anything more than a nuisance on the freeway requires some very, very deliberate acts. You've got to seriously consider how that extra weight affects handling, flying time, etc. You've also got to figure out how to tip the paint out at the right time, and presumably only tip a bit of it at a time, or else you only get one shot at it before the cops get to hear about it and start looking for you. That all sounds pretty hard to me.
Contrast this with how little effort it takes to shoot someone (by accident or otherwise) when guns are freely available.
Seems to me if you want to liven up a dull afternoon, screw with an airliner, or generally cause trouble there are far easier ways to do so.
Interesting...
It's like a video game, except that it has real noise besides synthetic noise.
The only way to make micro-drone racing take off is to arm the spectators. Shotguns will make this fun.
The problem with drones is that they have substantial potential for misuse and not all that positive uses. Moreover the positive uses -- surveying, search and rescue, (very small) package delivery are things where licensing wouldn't likely be much of a problem.
I'll bet that if the folks in 1789 had been aware what the clumsy, inaccurate, and not very reliable flintlocks, wheellocks , and matchlocks of their day were going to evolve into, they'd have been a lot more careful how they worded the US second amendment. BTW, some folks (and I'm one of them) think the second amendment was intended to prevent the government from disarming the town militias, not to protect some individual right to bear arms. Disarming the militia was, if you will recall, the proximate cause of the unpleasantness at Lexington Common and Concord's North Bridge that started the American Revolution.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I'd have to say you are wrong.
The primary purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that the citizenry remained armed so that an over reaching government could not subject them to tyranny.
For the record:
The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are —
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia."
It's not me saying it. That's Section 311 of US Code Title 10. So basically if you want to make a case that people over 45 and women who are not in the National Guard should not be allowed to own firearms under the Second Amendment go right ahead. I've just got to say: Good luck with that.
You must really hate cars.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
He's talking about the props. On quads that small you can still cut your face wide open by messing about. Maybe not the store bought ones, but the ones people are building themselves.
Could... And mostly likely you are grabbing the thing out of the air and holding it against your skin to actually get a cut. Seems we are way beyond the threshold of reasonable regulation to be talking about the operation of small toys.
Maybe there should be a warning about not being operated by anyone under 5 years old.
We like big drones and we can't deny ....
those other fellows might get by
with an itty bitty drone with no heft or strength
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How much did the the pressure cooker bombs used in the Boston marathon attack weigh? Finding, capturing and prosecuting the perpetrators of that attack was bad enough. Let's not give any potential copycats the benefit of remote attack capabilities.
Not sure. You can ask my first cousin. They took one of the pressure cooker fragments out of her leg that they used to prove who did it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
See the snip below from the FFA modernization and reform act of 2012. You will see that Congress specificly FORBIDS the FFA from creating ANY new rules in regard to model/hobby aircraft. So from a legal standpoint this and the initial attempt to regulate hobby aircraft is unconstitutional. You can find the full documents @ https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/...
SEC. 336. SPECIAL RULE FOR MODEL AIRCRAFT.
(a) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law
relating to the incorporation of unmanned aircraft systems into Federal
Aviation Administration plans and policies, including this subtitle,
the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration may
not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft,
or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft, if—
(1) the aircraft is flown strictly for hobby or recreational
use;
(2) the aircraft is operated in accordance with a community-based
set of safety guidelines and within the programming
of a nationwide community-based organization;
(3) the aircraft is limited to not more than 55 pounds unless
otherwise certified through a design, construction, inspection,
flight test, and operational safety program administered
by a community-based organization;
(4) the aircraft is operated in a manner that does not interfere
with and gives way to any manned aircraft; and
(5) when flown within 5 miles of an airport, the operator
of the aircraft provides the airport operator and the airport air
traffic control tower (when an air traffic facility is located at
the airport) with prior notice of the operation (model aircraft
operators flying from a permanent location within 5 miles of an
airport should establish a mutually-agreed upon operating procedure
with the airport operator and the airport air traffic control
tower (when an air traffic facility is located at the airport)).
(b) STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section shall
be construed to limit the authority of the Administrator to pursue
enforcement action against persons operating model aircraft who endanger
the safety of the national airspace system.
(c) MODEL AIRCRAFT DEFINED.—In this section, the term ‘‘model
aircraft’’ means an unmanned aircraft that is—
(1) capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere;
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(2) flown within visual line of sight of the person operating
the aircraft; and
(3) flown for hobby or recreational purposes.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...