It’s human nature. Can curb corruption, but it will always be there.
That’s akin to asking for world peace, which the only way that happens is if we’re attacked by aliens and we’re forced to team up lol.
Maybe, but the consequences of us not coming up with a sustainable solution for ourselves poses the same risk as an “alien invasion”. In fact I’d say the invasion we are suffering from is the persistent belief that our current ideas do not need to change. The change is coming, it’s up to us if we want to participate in that change and become the architects of that change.
Banning something, or making it illegal is a consequence of government or law finding the risks to the community to be in excess of the benefits it provides (sadly not always what is morally acceptable). The benefits, risks or operations of UAV/drones are still poorly understood.
I think the first step is to identify the risk. Then the consequence and severity of that risk and it’s likelihood.
A good starting point to identify the risk is to understand who is operating the aircraft/UAV/Drone and why:
- a trained and proficient operator (Airline or GA Pilot, UAV licenced operator etc)
- an inexperienced or poor operator (Consumer drone, unlicensed manned and unmanned aircraft)
- a malicious operator (Intentional misuse to cause harm)
Item 1) should be regulated through licensing and training and should be largely exempt from limitations unless their use poses risks that cannot be mitigated or justified (who can justify a airliner crashing into a building?). Item 2) Should be limited by MTOW mass, to keep the consequence and severity of impact low, and further use GPS to limit flight areas to further reduce risks of sharing airspace with manned aircraft 3) Needs to be actively addressed as soon as a threat is identified by various departments, as this is NOT just an airspace issue, as constraints can be easily intentionally circumvented.
For which “user group” do you pose banning of drones would be justified in 2020? Also how would such a ban be enforced?
I remember the tour guide in the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart telling me about how the first cars made by them were chased out of the towns by angry villagers with pitchforks, because they thought the cars were possessed, in that they ran on magic and made noises from hell. Now some 130 years later they banned Diesel cars, the most sold type of Mercedes in Germany, from the City of Stuttgart. Given the environmental cost of cars, maybe the people with pitchforks were right after all? 
I’d say the “quad” cat is out of the bag and can’t be put back in. They are here to stay and won’t be banned.
It’s up to us “in the industry” to show how it can be done, lets just include some foresight and also include it’s impact on the environmental balance sheet, so our offspring don’t have to pay for the transgressions of their forefathers.
Sorry, what? Firstly, I don’t live in your fantasy police state, secondly have you ever heard of civil liberties and the fundamental human right to privacy? Are you saying that we should all submit to transponders on our private cars with full realtime surveillance by the government and our exact movements and personal information published and disseminated by other private citizens on public websites? Driving a car isn’t a privilege, it’s my right to as part of my fundamental rights of liberty and freedom. It’s whatever government’s job to apply the minimal interference necessary to preserve order and minimise chaos and injury or death. Which, btw, driving causes in vast numbers despite licensing and regulation.
You clearly just want to pontificate and spread nonsense rather than actually have a sensible informed discussion, so I’ll leave you to it.
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Maybe under your laws or viewpoint. But not under ours
https://driversed.com/driving-information/the-driving-privilege/driving-is-a-privilege-not-a-right.aspx
When the discussion turns to personal attacks rather than presenting a viewpoint, then it is no longer a discussion. The facts are, nobody here has any fundamental right to fly drones in public either. Abuse the privilege and it will be taken away or tightly regulated by the lawmakers elected to represent the general public in making laws to deal with those who refuse to follow rules of conduct.
Ugh. That link proves little of the argument that driving is a privilege.
Government cannot give what is not theirs to give.
A government “of the people, by the people for the people” only has the rights we give it…not the other way around.
I think that @ChrisOlson is correct on this one.
Just like roads, the airspace is owned by the government, either you like it or not , this is a fact. In order to exercise the privilege to operate within these, the government delivers a licence to anyone that has been qualified to operate a vehicle in the airspace.
All licenced pilot must respect the rules, otherwise they might lose their privilege to fly. On important rule is the airspace and particularly the airspace under 500 feet AGL on rural and 1000 feet AGL in urban that is considered a no fly zone, except for takeoff and landing. This airspace is where most commercial drone operators are planning to exploit under certain privileges, in respect of the actual and the future rules.
Now the problem, anyone can fly a ‘‘toy’’ without a licence, and get into an airspace that , under the present legislation , they dont have the privilege to use. So either you educate people or you control the device, both ways are quite hard to implement.
You’re going to discard hundreds of years of fight against government oppression and the inalienable right to civil liberty and privacy, not to mention the fundamental tenets of your constitution, by pointing to a pep talk to 16 year olds on ‘driversed.com’? Seriously?
The government doesn’t own anything. A government is a system for… governing. The airspace is owned by the public, and in the US up to a certain altitude it’s owned by the land owner although that’s somewhat ambiguous recently. The government is responsible for implementing the necessary and minimal rules within the public space to ensure that chaos, anarchy and mass death is best avoided, in the public interest, so it has the mandate of control. It does not own anything (with the possible exception of airspace around airports and public institutions), and it does not grant us the ‘privilege’ of flying in their air. It is the public air, and it is our right in a free and libertarian society to use that space, as long as we follow rules of the public interest. Civil liberty is entrenched in the US constitution - it calls itself the ‘land of the free’ for gods sake.
If I don’t act against the public interest and follow the established set of rules (laws), who the f*** are you to tell me what I can and can’t do in a free society? This is astonishing, coming from a country that renamed chips ‘freedom fries’. Are you against the second amendment? You don’t agree that it’s an inalienable ‘right’ to bear arms that have caused more death and mayhem than any other class of objects in history? No, it’s actually a privilege? This just makes me sad, and despair, and very thankful I live where I do. And this community just depresses me these days so I’m out of here. Bye.
I dont make much difference between Public and Government, because for me it is not really important who owns and who govern, as long as the rules are making sense , and theses rules gave me the privilege to enjoy flying all kinds of planes for long enough that I can can qualify myself as an old pilot now
I think this discussion has now gone completely overboard. Because government actually does own things on behalf of the people it represents. Such as millions of acres of federally owned public land, public infrastructure, military hardware, etc… I don’t think you’ll have much luck walking onto a piece of federally owned land, drive four stakes in the ground and declare it yours because you paid the taxes to buy it and government owns nothing. That’s just not the way society works.
This is where this discussion is becoming totally warped. Now we’re trying to compare constitutional rights vs flying drones. The last time I read the documents there was nothing in the constitution or ammendments giving anybody the right to fly drones in public. Or drive cars in public. The people which the government respresents demand that there be rules and regulations for safe operation of these vehicles. If people can’t obey society’s rules, the people demand that the people who refuse to follow them have their privileges revoked, be fined, or maybe put in jail and prosecuted to the full extent of the law for their actions.
The public perception of drones, amoung the general population that do not fly them, is generally negative. The drone industry using marketing to put them into the hands of irresponsible people is the root cause. So if you take your drone out and do this with it you’re going to get your wings clipped. Because the general public demands it. And they’ll use their representation in government to get it done:
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Mark Twain once said:
“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
What government can exist without people? None! What the government owns is public property, so technically “ours”.
The “privilege” is given to ourselves! 
Fictitious man made entities (mostly existing only as ideas on paper) have no authority unless people voluntarily give them jurisdiction. We live in a state of mob rule, dictated by “popular” ideas and regulation that we have adopted without examination or understanding.
Civil and Corporate law are two distinct branches that cannot be considered as one “public rules”. Further courts have the ability to set aside government “regulation”. None of these are the same as human rights. The lack of definition is clouding the discussion.
I encourage you to read up about the natural person and legal or corporate person, the right to travel, the difference between Civil Law and Corporate Statutes, Acts and Regulations and how they come about, and how the residual slavery laws around owning “persons” still applies to the corporate taxable entities who are also “persons”. (Which is you if you’re registered as a corporate person with a birth certificate under maritime law - Berth Certificate stems from declaring goods (inc. slaves) delivered on arrival in a harbour as collateral aka debtors of trade. Note certificates are only issued when your tax “debtor” status changes - birth, marriage and death) This is “overboard” indeed!
Generally; Law is an agreement of accepted behaviour between people, hence a court of peers being a jury, or a three judge court. Statute/Act/Regulation; an attempt to streamline behaviour of people to ensure their function within a system. Natural law or physics do not need to observe any of these. They are man made ideologies and constructs with no regard of physical reality (or what we as individuals believe we “observe” as reality).
Although, in general I advocate the precepts of the “rights of liberty and freedom” I cannot regard them as prevalent in our world. In this day and age, of over regulation and feigned human rights, “freedom” has become nothing more than a expression economic capability. ie What things can we AFFORD to do. This is not the same as “what are we ALLOWED to do”. For example: Apple’s lawyers are much cheaper than paying taxes, so who’s public interests is the government (lobby) really looking after? Likewise, the “freedom” to vote is but a fallacy to entertain the public whilst the politicians do as they please, and not as they promise. 
This is all a consequence of the illusion and fallacious belief, in the irrationational concept of “owner-ship”.
This unnatural fictitious construct is the basis for all greed, war, unfair trade, enslavement and subsequent authority, over things we do not have any rights over. Mine means by definition it is NOT yours! Our language is full of idiosyncrasies that perpetuate the primal, animalistic illusion of ownership: my land, my house, my thing, my idea, my government, my country, my language, my religion, my child, my parents, my butcher, baker and candlestick maker. Even our ideas have become the subject of ownership, polluted with the notion that the “rights” of individuals can exist in exclusion of the shared rights of the group. The unconscionable redistribution of fake capitalist wealth amongst the few using fiat currency, is a classic example, and the apex of the injustice that persecutes mankind from the malicious idea of ownership. One capitalist bathes in food whilst children starve.
The “reality” is that we are all but travelers that abide here on earth for a period, we come with no-thing at birth and leave with no-thing in death. Accordingly, we should only concern ourselves with being good stewards of this place and matter we borrow for just a time, and leave it in a better state than we found it, for the next generation of travellers. The rest is all just make believe. 
Hence: lets be a part of the process of making regulations for the use of drones, and not, by our silence give in to the powers that be, have those freedoms we can still enjoy banned. (I just managed to make it on topic again…phew!)
Regards,
Sam
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No-one has mentioned (or I missed it) that DJI actually has got systems in place that stop you taking off around airports and warn you when you are flying in various classes of airspace. When push comes to shove this system can easily get ahead of the need for regulation of small drones, I would think. And with the increased capability of devices as small as a DJI Spark, I think concerns may be overstated. We may be limited to very small personal drones though. Is this drone fad also not peaking?
Yes GoPro has this implemented in their Karma drone too. It only gives a warning when taking off in restricted airspace, but won’t let you fly in no fly zones such as airports and you can’t fly over Disney World, for example.
BUT there’s a helicopter tour on I-4 and International Drive here in Central Florida that has helis taking off non-stop into the evening and I can fly my Karma over it if desired, no restrictions at all. There has to be some idiot that has flown near there already. Every country will need to build a thorough universal database for everyone to use.
And then there are open source projects such as this. You can’t enforce the no-fly zones when you have access to the code. Will open software become illegal to fly?
no lol this is not a fad, drones are exploding and won’t slow down… this is why I believe they will be heavily regulated just like manned aircraft
I think we will all be travelling to work on drones eventually…
Well I meant consumer drones only.
There are some indications that the consumer drone sector is cooling. I think that you will be able to do a lot with 250g drones though, and this weight limit is where things are headed in many European countries.
This is true and quite effective for a normal user. It’s currently easy to intentionally circumvent however, either by using the dev mode in DJI Assistant, using an old firmware, or downgrading to one, or disconnecting/shielding the GPS and flying FPV in “Atti” mode. It’s fairly easy to navigate from a paper map without GPS using FPV, especially with the Mavic etc with 7km video range.
DJI, and nearly any other manufacturer still needs to be able to fly the aircraft upon GPS failure, and since using them in houses or buildings is becoming more popular, it’s very unlikely that flight will be restricted to only with GPS lock.
All control and regulation of this kind are secondary risk mitigation strategies.
The primary risk reduction strategy for any risk, is consequence mitigation. If the consequence of the worst possible outcome is low then further risk mitigation becomes redundant. As I was trying to demonstrate in a previous post above, this can be done with a limitation of the aircraft mass, and for larger vehicles by limiting from what it is constructed as well.
Restricting the mass should however remain reasonable, and should probably be around the 2kg (to 7kg) mark as it is here in Australia. Even commercial operations of under 2kg platforms are allowed without licencing here since November last year. Property owners over a certain size property are allowed up to 25kg. Given that these are regional properties and have limited range, this is an acceptable and considered level of risk for the population densities where they operate in. The “reasonable” Australian rules can be found here: https://www.casa.gov.au
Also it is important I think to distinguish between the types of users, and why and how they impede other airspace users.
Malicious intentional misuse is unlikely to ever be curtailed by a hardware safety measure, and cannot only be seen as a issue for the department that deals with airspace users. Other departments that deal with criminal, mental health and product distribution need to formulate a part of the solution to curb that group of “mis”-users. I agree it’s necessary to make UAV’s and Drones a unattractive option for misuse, by imposing penalties to keep the level of misuse to a minimum.
As a secondary risk control strategy, unintentional or accidental “misuse”, for example unknowingly flying in a flight restriction area, should become a part of the manufacturers obligations, in that systems over a certain size, should be required to maintain a safe distance from other aircraft. In this case GPS would be required to be able locate the aircraft, or the pilot using a phone app that connects via BT or wifi to the aircraft, and would rely on a national database, that can be updated regularly. Similar to this from a our regulator in Australia, but with the ability to interact with the aircraft directly to impose flight resrictons: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rpasapp.casarpas.prod&hl=en
Further, as an extended option for the app, the mobile/internet based system could be used to update the current ADS-B transponder positions using data from the web. This would make nearly every DJI or similar system ADS-B aware with nothing more than a software update, and a live internet connection via the mobile the app is running on. No hardware needs to be purchased for this, provided of course the update rate and database is current and has the appropriate ADS-B coverage.
There is one further secondary regulation that needs to be introduced and that is a strict altitude limit. The good thing with all airline flights are that they are only in danger of sharing airspace with drones around the vicinity of the places airlines land and takeoff, namely airports. Otherwise they operate 95% of their time well beyond reach of 99.99% of civilian UAV’s and drones/mulitcopters at their optimal cruise altitudes. GA are more at risk, and helicopters with no minimum altitude more so, so a strict adherence for all airspace users, including drones and aviation pilots needs to be enforced, similar to speed limitations on a highway. This is also what is being proposed by most drone delivery organisations, however I think drone deliveries for non critical deliveries are a dumb idea, unless it’s life saving. That’s a story for another thread. 
Regards
Sam
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Arrrrrrrrrrrggg!!! The first confirmed hit happened right here in my town:
A first in Canada: Drone collides with passenger plane above Quebec City airport
Shit… my little test field is 10 km from airport, but now I guess they will declare the whole region a NO FLY ZONE 
I was always disgusted when I have seen YouTube videos taken from RC airplanes or drones above the clouds.
Still I wonder how can the pilots identify a drone even at a slow flight for landing. Without a camera and a video examining the recording frame by frame I find that unbelievable. Do you know if they found parts of the drone stuck in the fuselage?
I am just not convinced when I read that article in the news paper. But if that’s the truth I hope they catch the drone owner.
I’m afraid I must post some disturbing (and completely retarded) news tonight regarding where I live as well.
The local city council where I live in, in UAV “paradise” Australia, has banned the use of RC Cars, RC boats and RC planes on public reserves or parks. There’s a $5,000 fine if you do! The world has gone nuts I tell you. 
I have organised a protest flight there in the morning! 
I want to see if the fine applies to me when I launch and land a Mavic from my hand, seeing that it will not touch the public ground, I’d like to see them try wrestle jurisdiction from the Federal agency CASA that regulates airspace use, that specifically allows flight in those areas.
This will be fun!
It’s not hard to identify something flying past you at 150mph. Might sound like it’s hard, but it’s not. Remember that everyone’s vision is different and pilots’ are supposed to be among the best.