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New FAA drone rule is a giant middle finger to aviation hobbyists:
More than 34,000 people have deluged the Federal Aviation Administration with comments over a proposed regulation that would require almost every drone in the sky to broadcast its location over the Internet at all times. The comments are overwhelmingly negative, with thousands of hobbyists warning that the rules would impose huge new costs on those who simply wanted to continue flying model airplanes, home-built drones, or other personally owned devices.
"These regulations could kill a hobby I love," wrote Virginian Irby Allen Jr. in a comment last week. "RC aviation has brought my family together and if these regulations are enacted we will no longer be able to fly nor be able to afford the hobby."
The new regulations probably wouldn't kill the hobby of flying radio-controlled airplanes outright, but it could do a lot of damage. Owners of existing drones and model airplanes would face new restrictions on when and where they could be used. The regulations could effectively destroy the market for kit aircraft and custom-designed drones by shifting large financial and paperwork burdens on the shoulders of consumers.
"I think it's going to be harmful to the community and harmful to the growth of the UAS industry," said Greg Reverdiau, co-founder of the Pilot Institute, in a Friday phone interview. He wrote a point-by-point critique of the FAA proposal that has circulated widely among aviation hobbyists.
The new rules are largely designed to address safety and security concerns raised by law enforcement agencies. They worry that drones flying too close to an airport could disrupt operations or even cause a crash. They also worry about terrorists using drones to deliver payloads to heavily populated areas.
To address these concerns, the new FAA rule would require all new drones weighing more than 0.55 pounds to connect over the Internet to one of several location-tracking databases (still to be developed by private vendors) and provide real-time updates on their location. That would enable the FAA or law enforcement agencies to see, at a glance, which registered drones are in any particular area.
But critics say the rules impose massive costs on thousands of law-abiding Americans who have been quietly flying model airplanes, quad-copters, and other small unmanned aircraft for years—and in many cases decades.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 02 2020, @06:14PM
I believe the year was 1982 when 14 year old me had the means, opportunity, and idea to fire a large model rocket from a friend's backyard situated underneath the glidepath for commercial air traffic into our local airport. In fact, we did fire several model rockets in that general area, intersecting the commercial traffic airspace, but it was a smaller airport with infrequent flights, and we never timed a launch to actually hit a 727... but we definitely could have, and even the cheap off-the-shelf Estes kits from the local hobby store could loft sufficient mass to do some really expensive damage to the turbine blades - on takeoff they might even put the safety of the people on-board at risk.
In other words, if they're just starting to worry, they're about 50 years late to the party.
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