Drones Under 2kg May Be Set Free Under Forthcoming FAA Rules (suasnews.com) 103
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.
So? (Score:1)
... (FAA) is establishing...
The FAA is taking this action...
The committee will [...] issue its final report...
Uhm. Yes, and? Poor submission. Sorry.
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So upgrade your tinfoil hat to a hardhat when at a concert or in some other crowd someone may want to film, because there's going to be a good risk of untrained idiots flying 2 kilos of weight around. Likely high enough that it's going to really, really hurt when it falls down and you're under it.
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It's based on speculation without any reference to why this speculation is justified.
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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.
Hardly further from the truth. Look at the UAV forums - "Why did my Phantom crash" is a perennial source of amusement to the regulars [phantompilots.com].
And, in order to help Timothy out, This [faa.gov] is the document that small UAV enthusiasts are pinning their hopes on.
The good: Minimal or no registration, no complex GeoFencing (UAV won't start in certain places, stops flying, complains loudly, software crashes because the idjits set it up wrong).
The bad: Daylight only. Visual distance only (how far can you see a 10 cm object?)
T
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This just shows exactly how America is really messed up. There is going to be massive regulation framework for the operation of a 2 kilo drone. But the operation of a gun with massive more kinetic energy doesn't require any regulation.
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Quite the imagination you have
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That's why using a cell phone while driving is banned. And it is for the same reason carrying a gun should be banned.
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Guns are dangerous and everyone knows it. Pools are even more dangerous but too few people seem to care. That's why far more children drown to death in the US every year than in accidents with weapons.
All the gun nuts always bring up the "swimming pool argument" whenever someone brings up gun control. Here is why this argument is stupid:
1) There is actually a lot of regulation for having a swimming pool. In Europe at least there are building regulations that require among other things that private swimming pools be elevated from the ground specially so that young children don't fall in.
2) You can't fly the swimming pool or stick it in your pocket when going outside. It is restricted to a certain location
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Get away from guns? That's as easy as going to a gun-free zone. Duh.
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Guns are dangerous and everyone knows it. Pools are even more dangerous but too few people seem to care. That's why far more children drown to death in the US every year than in accidents with weapons.
All the gun nuts always bring up the "swimming pool argument" whenever someone brings up gun control. Here is why this argument is stupid:
1) There is actually a lot of regulation for having a swimming pool. In Europe at least there are building regulations that require among other things that private swimming pools be elevated from the ground specially so that young children don't fall in.
I'm not advocating against gun control and I was talking about the US. Anyway, even with regulations in place, there are still more accidents with pools than with guns, because responsible parents don't let their guns at a kid's reach. They know that guns were created for killing and they don't want any killing to happen near their children.
2) You can't fly the swimming pool or stick it in your pocket when going outside. It is restricted to a certain location. Usually private. 3) Swimming pools actually have a valid purpose. They are used for swimming lessons and are not designed to kill people. you might argue that they are dangerous when used for recreation, but then you always have to option of choosing of not going to a swimming pool. With guns you can't do that.
That's why people tend to consider swimming pools as completely innocuous, and because of that, a parent may not see a problem in leaving children unattended near a swim
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even with regulations in place, there are still more accidents with pools than with guns,
Then what is needed is more regulation and more monitoring. We still need to have swimming pools for teaching but we don't need more guns for killing.
There is no problem if drone regulation comes before gun regulation in the US.
The problem is that there will never be any gun regulation in the US. In 50 years there will still be regular mass shooting in the US.
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Disarm you?
With some top notch humor of course.
But seriously, I'd go for preventative measures that reduce to a minimum the likely hood of that kind of 'armed' behavior happening in the first place, and if need be with the effective threat containment and deescalation measures carried out by well trained and competent individuals.
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They are obviously not regulated enough when people who should not have guns get their hands on them and there are gun show loopholes around any regulations.
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They are obviously not regulated enough when people who should not have guns get their hands on them and there are gun show loopholes around any regulations.
There is no "gun show loophole" - that's just propaganda.
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there's quite a bit of difference between a patchwork of localized regulations that change every few miles, and a universal regulation applicable to the entire nation.
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Bicycles kill more in 1 year than mass shootings in 15 years.
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-g... [breitbart.com]
FTA
"Death statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) coupled with crime statistics from the FBI show that bicycle and falling deaths far exceed deaths from “mass shootings.”
For example, on September 24 the FBI released a study showing there were 64 incidents of “mass killings” (mass shootings) for the years 2000 through 2013. The gunmen in these incidents took the lives of 418 people."
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What? Did you just use a stupid Breitbart article where bicycle deaths and falling down are lumped together and compared them to mass shootings?
1) The mass shootings are just a tip of the iceberg. You can't just single those instances out and compare them with ridiculous things. You have to compare it at least with gun killings in general.
2) How in the world are we supposed to stop falling down accidents? Ban gravity?
3) You do realize that most bicycle deaths are because those on the bicycle where hit by a
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Are you telling me that people riding bicycles actually hit and kill more people than all of the gun killing? I seriously doubt that. Citation needed.
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You might want to double check your physics. I haven't gone through and done the math, but I wouldn't be surprised that a drone moving at full speed has more kinetic energy than a bullet. The bullet just seems like it has more as it's not very massive, so thus the energy translates into a very high velocity.
What is the terminal velocity of an unladen Phantom 3?
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This just shows exactly how America is really messed up. There is going to be massive regulation framework for the operation of a 2 kilo drone. But the operation of a gun with massive more kinetic energy doesn't require any regulation.
If you really think that, you're seriously misinformed.
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You are the one who is seriously misinformed:
https://www.faa.gov/news/press... [faa.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As it currently is you need to register to own a hobby drone, but not to own a gun.
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You are the one who is seriously misinformed:
https://www.faa.gov/news/press... [faa.gov] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
As it currently is you need to register to own a hobby drone, but not to own a gun.
You can buy a drone with cash, anywhere, no questions asked. You cannot buy a gun without 2 forms of identification, a federal background check, and possibly a wait a few days for the background check to clear. Lots of people cannot buy the gun at all and will be arrested for trying. MANY states ALSO require you to have a license before you can buy a gun - for instance, in you need a license first to buy a gun [smartgunlaws.org].
Maybe you are trolling, or stupid. But now you are at least a little more informed.
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You can blame the founding fathers for that, for you should know the second amendment strongly limits what any government can do regulating firearms.
Especially since the NRA transformed itself from an organization dedicated to elevating the skill level of riflemen from "can't
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And that is exactly why America is messed up. Either the 2nd amendment needs to be revoked or it should be clarified to only allow muskets as it was originally intended.
I'd like to see these things take off as a sport (Score:2)
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 gen
It's not the weight of the drone (Score:3)
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I was thinking the same thing :) My swarms of 64 1.9kg drones are going to make good money!
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Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these
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The Obama Administration has thus far not run into any problems with ignoring the Law. What makes you think that is suddenly going to change?
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here is a good discussion:
http://amablog.modelaircraft.o... [modelaircraft.org]
Misses the point (Score:1)
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
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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.
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Lame little electric motors.
For real prop breaking excitement you want a 20k+RPM nitro-methane burning RC plane.
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One cup of water is 225 grams, even if you wrapped that up in a balloon and dropped it with precision on a person from a thousand feet you're not going to cause serious injury.
A drone is not a water balloon. It is a rigid body.
And a "drone" (drones by definition are capable of autonomous flight, almost anything below a few pounds is going to be RC only) has a far larger surface area and hence a much lower terminal velocity,
It is powered, thus capable of exceeding terminal velocity. Powered flight into ground (or face) is a thing.
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And how many of them have EVER decided to accelerate towards the ground unintended?
I don't know. You tell me. I wouldn't be in a hurry to report it if it happened. What I do know is that many of them have continued on whatever vector and at whatever speed was last commanded, and that could easily intersect a person.
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Drone crash after eagle attach [youtube.com]
It becomes readily apparent how it tumbles and tries to right itself, slowing down the decent. It did not power itself into the ground. In fact, the only damage was the broken prop. The rest of the plastic craft was just fine.
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"sub-250g/.55lb class was calculated to be "safe""
Based on what?
Based on the FAA Interm Rule for Registration and Marking Requirements for Small Unmanned Aircraft, Section C. They don't call it "safe", more like "acceptable risk.":
The Task Force recommended that the FAA should exempt from the registration requirement any small unmanned aircraft weighing 250 grams (g) or less. The 250 grams or less exclusion was based on a maximum weight. The Task Force assumed maximum weight was defined as the maximum weight possible including the aircraft, payload, and any other associated weight.
The Task Force proposed this mass by considering: The maximum free-fall kinetic energy of a small unmanned aircraft from 500 feet (ft) above ground level; research papers assessing the lethality of inert debris based on kinetic energy; and a determination of the probability that a small unmanned aircraft with potentially lethal kinetic energy would strike a person on the ground. The Task Force's recommendation assumed population density for a densely packed urban environment, as well as a conservative estimate of the percentage of people in that crowded environment who may be unprotected and susceptible to injury from a falling small unmanned aircraft. To determine the probability of an accident, the Task Force provided an estimate of the mean time between failure (MTBF) for small unmanned aircraft. Mathematically, the Task Force predicts that the likelihood of a fatal accident involving a small unmanned aircraft weighing 250g or less is 4.7 × 10 8, or less than 1 ground fatality for every 20 million flight hours of small unmanned aircraft 250g or less. The Task Force noted that the acceptable risk level for commercial air transportation is on the order of 1 × 10 9, and general aviation risk levels are on the order of 5 × 0 0.
~JB
No links (Score:1)
No info and an April 1st deadline? WTF /.
Drones Under 2kg ... (Score:2)
Since when has the US switched to metric?
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1866. The USA was after all one of the founding members of the international areement to adopt standard units.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
LInk (Score:1)
http://www.suasnews.com/2016/0... [suasnews.com]
Sizist FAA! (Score:1)
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
Congress forbids FFA regulating hobby aircraft (Score:1)
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/... [gpo.gov]
SEC. 336. SPECIAL RULE FOR MODEL AIRCRAFT.
(a) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law
relating to the incorporation of unmanned air
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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
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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
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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 ame
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You must really hate cars.
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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.
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Everyone will have their favourites. Debian-testing would be my recommendation. Mint for the gaming machine.