U.S. Will Require Drones to Be Registered

Eh, a friend of mine on facebook, Peter Sachs now has a paper airplane with a 333 exemption, and the FAA now legally have classified indoors as navigable airspace. Yet you can fly an 85 pound, manned U/L without being registered. A lot of crap is going to be thrown around until the dust settles, the FAA are overreaching their authority and congress is going to have to give them more power, or rebuke them.

By the way, 333 exemptions are an example of this overreach, you really don't have to have them legally to fly commercially, though many people will want this before hiring you and same goes for insurance.
 
ringolong said:
The sad part is that it's many irresponsible people endangering others causing all of this chaos.
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As much as anything the media is the cause of this.

Just about any media source makes money by choosing stories and making a narrative that bring people flocking to watch and create advertising revenue. Quotes get skewed by taking the context and facts get misrepresented, and stories are cherry picked. It does not really matter which side of the media you are on.
 
I agree about the media stuff - when was the last time you saw a report that said:
Today - 200,000 Drone flights were conducted legally with no problems and nobody was annoyed....
You will never see it - only negative stories that can be sensationalized. Basically - we are a nation ruled by nuts, legislating for nuts. It is only the nuts that are important - it does not seem to matter what they have to take away from the rest of us to try to control the uncontrollable. When they find they could not affect change - they just pile on with more.... Somehow, we seem to all buy in and re-elect these guys so it must be what we want?
 
I agree with you guys in that the media takes things too far.

If we did not draw attention to the media in the first place then none of this would be happening. The real issue is the few irresponsible fliers that put people in danger, not the media. The media is only drawn to what exist, and if everyone flying was responsible then they would not have an interesting story to tell.
 
ringolong said:
I agree with you guys in that the media takes things too far.

If we did not draw attention to the media in the first place then none of this would be happening. The real issue is the few irresponsible fliers that put people in danger, not the media. The media is only drawn to what exist, and if everyone flying was responsible then they would not have an interesting story to tell.
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The media profits more from building up and then tearing down, as you get a shock factor. No matter what you do you are going to have a few people irresponsible. There are multiple cases every day of armed citizens stopping crimes like rape or armed robberies, you won't see these on a liberal media, what you will see will be stories that support their narrative. (not just picking on liberal media, but it makes a great example) The media can make things appear to occur more often than they really do, by reporting on them more, less, or not at all. The media already has their narrative chosen, and there will always be stories of misuses if you look hard enough. The best way is to get them to change their narrative, "drones" saving lives, and doing other good things are a great way this can happen. The picture the mainstream news in the US is painting is that "drones" are cool, seen as cutting edge, but under-regulated.
 
Back to the topic of regulation.. It sucks. I see the future this as like driving a car. You will have to have it registered, yourself a licence to fly it, and liability insurance. Everyone who can will want a piece of cash from this bullahit. There will be fines, tickets, and if you're caught operating a business with out all of the above AND a business licence you face major fines. It's total crap and its all about money in this corrupt place this country has become.

I've had RC since I was 10. Tamiya cars, RC10s, then airplanes and waht about rocketry?! I once had one that would hit 1500', pop open and a spring loaded camera would snap a picture of the ground. I lived in the flightpath north of DFW airport, never heard a peep from the law. Shot that thing up alllll the time.

And yes, I think if ppl would stop flying in obviously restricted airspace we wouldn't hear anything. Those drone owners are to blame.

What a great time to promote responsible flying, so they don't take it away or make the barrier to entry so high that only deep pockets can enjoy the hobby and business opportunities these things can provide us.
 
Just saw that. At least the govt recognizes there is a majority of responsible people, and that a few are ruining it for the whole.
 
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I think the biggest issue is that they think they can have something in place by December. No one knows the details yet, not even them it seems. My assumption is that it will be some sort of online registry and they will outsource the work and overpay for it - and it won't be delivered on time. And when it does go live, it won't work right and there will be a lot of maintenance and postponement of enforcement. Then there's the question of notice. Typically you'd see something like this coming for quite a while to give you time to comply, but it doesn't sound like that will happen if they want something in place by December. Unless that means they want the registry in place by then and will begin to enforce later?

I really don't see a manufacturer component in this, since there are far too many home made frames, control boards built out of raspberry pi's, etc., and existing stuff out there that doesn't have any unique identifiers on it. It sounds like the best they can do is require you to put a registration sticker on your frame like you would on offroad vehicles (ATV's, dirtbikes, etc.) - although those have identification numbers tied to their registration. If it does end up having some manufacturer components to it, you'd have to wonder if some of the bigger names lobbied for it to make things harder for some of the mom and pop manufacturing operations, cheap clone manufacturers, etc.

Then the most important question is - what is the cost going to be? Will it be a one time fee, or will we have to keep them registered and then cancel registration when we dismantle, wreck, etc.?? I'm sure they're going to look at what people pay for their copters and know that most have some money to spend. But then again, what about the 20 dollar plastic piece of junk quadcopter that my sister bought my niece from target? Will toy "drones" go away because it won't be economical to register them? Also - I got some parachute men from Chuck-E-Cheese's with the tickets I won the other day. Do I have to register them before I throw them off my balcony?

On one hand though, I don't have an issue with requiring registration because there are a lot of dumb people who do dumb things and there is really no easy way of tracking down who did it, but then again, kids break windows with baseballs and run away every day and we don't require baseballs to be registered. If property damage isn't the issue and this is all about restricted airspace, it seems like a lot of work and money for a lot of people for not much gain. In order for the registration to even be useful, someone would have register their "drone" AND fly in restricted airspace AND crash AND not be able to retrieve their "drone" before they got caught for the registration to even be useful to the government.

What would probably be more appropriate would be to increase education and make it very clear where you can and can't fly and how to be safe. And then they should be looking for solutions to better detect and neutralize "drones" when they fly in restricted airspace, because you know that just like with guns, bad guys aren't going to worry about registering their "drones" because they plan to break a lot more laws than failing to register.

Maybe offering a free online safety course and a quick exam to get a pilot certificate would be better. They do this with certain automobile AC recharge products before you can buy them.

In the end, if the registration is free and I can print out labels and tape them on my quadcopters before flying, who cares =)
 
This is brilliant commentary from everyone. We are fortunate to have a lot of smart, savvy members. There is no question that the new regulations will affect us. It looks like there is still some time to influence parts of the process, like registration requirement details, before everything is locked in. The question now is what are we, the community, going to do about making sure our voice is heard?
 
Consumer grade UAVs are NOT near as dangerous as they are painted, more people have died in the last few weeks on latters than the last few years on consumer grader UAVs. With anything you have to have acceptable risk, even leaving your house or not leaving your house has some risk tied to it, we have to decide what is an acceptable risk and what is not. A plane being hit by a consumer grade UAV is really unlikely, and it being brought down by the hit is even less likely. I agree what registration may be a good idea, providing it is done online and cheap enough (or free). Perhaps even use only a user identifier that can be put on multiple devices. If someone is flying somewhere questionable they do you think they will have that little sticker to make it easier to identify them?
 
I have talked in person with three of my state congressmen, and one thing that they each have said is that they don't get hardly any calls from citizens on issues and when they do it makes them really consider/reconsider their views. We really should call out local congressmen, it would only take one really getting on board with us to be able to stop this!
 
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GJH105775 said:
I have talked in person with three of my state congressmen, and one thing that they each have said is that they don't get hardly any calls from citizens on issues and when they do it makes them really consider/reconsider their views. We really should call out local congressmen, it would only take one really getting on board with us to be able to stop this bill!
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Now you're talking! I will do that tomorrow. A call to arms on the forum getting as many members as possible to call their Rep. should have an impact. Sailorsam has it right; no "drone" reference when calling your congressman. Quad, Multi or toy copter.
 
ringolong said:
It starts at 9:40

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So many problems in that video (thanks for sharing BTW).

§ 91.15 Dropping objects.
No pilot in command of a civil aircraft may allow any object to be dropped from that aircraft in flight that creates a hazard to persons or property. However, this section does not prohibit the dropping of any object if reasonable precautions are taken to avoid injury or damage to persons or property.

Apparently the FAA don't know their own rules (not going to use the term laws). You legally could mount a firearm on a UAV and fly it somewhere that nobody could be shot (like in an enclosed bullet resistant room).
 
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