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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.
fp
props to all dead homiez
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.
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.
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.
Offtopic, I know, but I need some recommendations. I'm a user of Linux to some degree. 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. 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. 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. I'm not interested in building the software on these machines, so I'd like a good assortment of packages. 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. Any recommendations for distros I should use? Thanks!
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!
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.
It's the size of the swarm.
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
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."
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.
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! --
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...