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posted by takyon on Tuesday December 15 2015, @12:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the days-are-numbered dept.

The FAA has released its final rules for drone registration requirements. Every small unmanned aircraft used for hobby and recreational purposes must be registered (you can begin registering on December 21st). This includes traditional radio controlled models in addition to autonomous and semi-autonomous drones. "Small" means 0.55 to 55 lbs.

takyon: Registration costs $5 per operator, but the fee will be waived for the first 30 days to encourage early registration:

Anyone 13 and older can register themselves as an operator; younger children can operate drones under adult supervision with proper registration.

This is only one of the elements of FAA's drone-related rulemaking. The agency is also tackling a set of comprehensive rules for recreational drone fliers and another one for commercial drone operators, such as Google or Amazon.

For now, the FAA's guidance for fliers of store-bought and homemade drones remains the same: Keep your drones under 55 pounds; fly them within your line of sight and below 400 feet; stay at least 5 miles away from an airport; avoid flying near stadiums or crowded places; and take some drone classes or join a club for extra safety.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:11AM (#276447)

    Drone swarms.

    Instead of one big 10 lb drone - twenty 0.54 lb drones that can be controlled as one big swarm and can carry cargo suspended between them all.

    Maybe they can even pull a Voltron and join together in midflight to form one giant drone.

  • (Score: 2) by gman003 on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:16AM

    by gman003 (4155) on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:16AM (#276449)

    Any "payload" is counted as part of the drone's mass. I'm not sure if they'd classify a bunch of drones lashed together as a single drone, or just divide the mass of the shared payload among all the drones, but either way you'll be going over the limit.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:29AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:29AM (#276454)

      So make the drones less than 0.54 lb with more of them. Thirty 0.4 lb drones gets you a 4 lb payload that is still under the limit.

      • (Score: 2) by gman003 on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:44AM

        by gman003 (4155) on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:44AM (#276463)

        There is no way that's more cost-effective than buying a single 12-pound drone and paying the damn $5 fee.

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:46AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @01:46AM (#276465)

          Depends on your goals. Paying the fee isn't just paying the fee. Its getting put into a database, a database that will be made available to god knows who.

          I'm sure more businesses won't have a problem with it because they are already licensed for all kinds of other things. But private owners have all kinds of reasons not to want to be in a database.