Spotted a drone tonight.

[ajwakeboarder]

Here's an article i found about someone flying a "drone" near an airport. Notice the altitudes the FAA claimed the "drone" reached.
http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/07/03/ ... t-airport/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[The Annoyed Man]

Help me understand. When did a remote control helicopter or quad-whatever become a drone? I know some agencies have them but don't a lot of people own then too? I've seen some cool footage by private owners filming local areas. I know the word "drone" spikes concerns of government and law enforcement spying, but couldn't the OP's posting simply be some amateur a remote control hobby?

I live close to a small airport and on 2 occasions I saw one of those homemade jobs (used to call them experimental craft) where the wings are "backwards" - small wing in front, larger in back. My neighbor got some footage with his IPad and showed me later. He was all worked up about a drone flying over our neighborhood. I saw the exact same thing on the exact same day and even saw the little bubble cockpit, but his mind was made up that it was a drone.

THANK YOU! I recently saw an article about a "drone" nearly hitting and aircraft. In the article the pilot (ex military) actually stated it was a fully painted model of an F4 Phantom! Key word here is "MODEL" and yet the media jumped on the "it flies and it's remote controlled so it must be a drone" bandwagon.

Gimme a break!

FYI, for those of you too young to remember the F4 look it up. As fighter jets go It does have a pretty distinctive appearance.

So why is an RC hobbyist's widget NOT a drone? What IS a "drone?" Usage seems to be "it flies, it doesn't have a pilot on board, and seems somehow 'more' than an "RC" model."

I suspect coming up with a name that has a definition that really captures what the widget is is part of the reason the Air Force officially calls them "unmanned air vehicles". This modern generation of "drones" - including the quadcopters as well as the globalhawk-types -- are so much more advanced in capability over the old "drones" that to me "drone" doesn't seem the right word for them. A lot of old F-4s (and Century series fighter jets) became aerial unmanned targets - called "drones," at least colloquially -- with the addition of some radio and steering gears, but they were much more akin to a hobbyists' RC than to something like the Predator. The QF-4 and its cousins had just enough remote control to take off, fly to a target area, and get shot down. Quadcopters like this one seem much more capable than that, making them more than a "drone."

Not trying to be facetious, but it's kind of like the SCOTUS definition of pornography. You can't really define it, but you know it when you see it.

Pretty much all aviation falls into one of two categories: piloted, and remotely piloted (also known as UAVs, for "Unmanned Aerial Vehicle"). Categories like private, commercial, military, recreational, etc., are all subcategories of those two, and fixed wing and rotary wing are further subsets of those. Mind you, I am NOT talking about legal definitions here, just taxonomic conventions that make sense. Any discussion of "what constitutes a drone" has to take some kind of mutually understood and accepted taxonomy into account or else it is meaningless.

Here is my version of the taxonomy, and how it influences my thinking on the subject:

Military UAVs fall into two primary categories:

1. intelligence gathering (observation, photographic, and signals intelligence), and
2. weapons platforms.
3. Sometimes, the same aircraft can perform both functions... i.e. Predators armed with Hellfires. The public.... and possibly the military too, for all I know.... tends to classify all military UAVs as "drones". But "drone" has a much older definition than modern UAVs.
4. "Drone" used to describe either towed or remotely piloted target aircraft, used in aerial and antiaircraft gunnery training. Nevertheless, popular media have incorporated modern UAVs in the definition of drones, so for better or for worse, the name has stuck.

Military UAVs are used for both strategic and tactical purposes, as well as for the above mentioned training, whereas civilian UAVs are almost always used for very localized reasons.

UAVs in civilian hands fall into two fundamental categories:

1. UAVs in which the flying is the point.....like 99.999% of RC aircraft.
2. UAVs in which the aircraft is used as a platform for something else.....like filming or photographing things from the air.

UAVs in category (a) can be either fixed wing or rotary wing. In category (b) rotary wing aircraft almost certainly outnumber fixed wing, simply because it is a better platform for photographic or video recording anything on the ground. Please note that "law enforcement use" is included in the "civilian" category.

The problem then becomes, of course, "who is photographing/video recording what and/or whom, and for what reasons"? Ancillary to that is the fact that the courts have sometimes taken a dim view of a citizen's right to privacy. Plus, NOBODY likes a snoop....except the snoop himself.

In any case, since UAVs which do not look like a fixed wing aircraft tend to be used for aerial observation, people equate them with military "drones", and they get resentful of being observed without either a warrant, or permission.

[KD5NRH]

Texas State law: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/83 ... 00912F.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Looks like, under this, my kite-and-GoPro shots of my oldest daughter flying a kite at mom's place are in violation since plenty of them show the neighbor's place on the other side of the back fence line. Of course, if he cares about his cows' privacy, maybe 5-strand barbed wire isn't the best barrier.

For that matter, I don't see an exception that would cover the camera-equipped model rockets unless you happen to own the thousands of acres needed to not have anyone else's property visible in shots from altitudes easily reachable even without going beyond D motors.

[Ânthony]

I don't want to end up like this guy
http://q13fox.com/2014/06/12/video-woma ... z36W24Bbe2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
She accuses him of being a creeper when a GoPro is SO wide angle you cant even see whether the few people on the beach are male or female.

It's a good thing it's so low resolution otherwise she might have cracked the lens.

[VoiceofReason]

I don't want to end up like this guy
http://q13fox.com/2014/06/12/video-woma ... z36W24Bbe2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
She accuses him of being a creeper when a GoPro is SO wide angle you cant even see whether the few people on the beach are male or female.

It's a good thing it's so low resolution otherwise she might have cracked the lens.

She seems to be engaging in a little self delusion.

[VoiceofReason]

I ran across an article on the web that got me to thinking about the possibilities of the UAV or “drone”.

If one is to believe what he/she sees on TV (Nat Geo, Discovery, etc.) most military units have them and soon most law enforcement will.

We have the technology now for a ground based computer to fly one or more UAV’s. If the technology is steered right, in the future if a plane or person is reported missing an alert could be sent out to launch the entities’ UAV’s in the area with its data link set on a specific channel. A special computer could set them up in one or more search grids and fly patterns. The only limit would be how many could be in the air.

Imagine for a moment if you will a line of 150 UAVs flying 500ft apart.

They found a couple of bones that were Steve Fossett’s. Who is to say he didn’t survive the crash and lived a few days? If a lost hunter or hiker looked up and saw this formation coming they would probably look like angels. They would be angels to a lost child.

People complain about them without stopping to think, they could be life savers if used properly.

[cb1000rider]

Inner ring of the Bravo airspace @ DFW starts at 0 feet (ground level).

In terms of red and green on specific orientation, remember that a quad copter can fly in any axis. So it might have been flying "backwards" in that respect if the lights were on the wrong side. In terms of a "hobbiest" - the alternating colors are simply there to keep the aircraft orientation obvious for the RC pilot. Of course, a quad copter may or may be being flow line-of-site and certainly there are GPS capable units that are of reasonable cost. The "front" of a quad copter is usually simply where you setup the camera or orient the controls.

So you could see it at an estimated distance of 1/2 mile. That means most pilots could see it at that distance too. Birds probably cause bigger problems and are more erratic in flight. If it was really at 2500' feet, that's not a great altitude to be at that close to DFW...

The center of the bravo won't have a lot of traffic that isn't landing / takeoff vectored. If that thing is in a victor airway (landing/takeoff highway) or runway pattern vector then it is a problem.

However - as yourself this:
Can you fly an RC plane at the park if you live within the Bravo? There isn't much difference here. Would you call the police if someone was flying an RC plane?

[Dragonfighter]

KADS is Delta but its 4nm SFC/25 ring sits right under KDFW's 25/110 tier. So anywhere from the surface to 11,000 ft is controlled. So the question is whether the drone qualifies as an aircraft which I doubt given a quad's weight class. As a model (under 55#) it is supposed to be operated under 400' in controlled airspace and away from airports and runways. Within 3 miles of an airport, the airport operator or ASO should be notified.

I'd bet they had clearance. I'd hate to have one pop up when low and slow on a short final though.

[Keith B]

I have given specific instructions that all of our staff at this weekend's balloon festival in Plano be on the lookout for any UAV's. After an incident earlier this year at a balloon festival in the northeast where a UAV operator lost control and the aircraft flew into a balloon and caused substantial damage to the fabric, we do not want them anywhere near our event. These 'toys' have gotten cheap enough that people are buying them without any inkling of the law and rules set by the FAA on altitude restrictions and I will almost bet there is someone who tries to fly one around the festival.

[92f-fan]

links not withstanding

Last update I read from the FAA was that "hobby" use of ANY of the helicopters is still legal
With cameras or without.
FAA was specifically targeting commercial use
Not sure why one was ok but the other wasnt -

BTW IMO at 2500 feet you couldnt see a quad copter well enough to control it. Even if the radio worked at half a mile.

Ive jumped out of planes at 3000 and you couldn't pick out details on the ground easily till you began to fall

[cb1000rider]

BTW IMO at 2500 feet you couldnt see a quad copter well enough to control it. Even if the radio worked at half a mile.

a 1.5m quad is going to be pretty hard to see at 2500 feet, that's true. They're actually easier to see at night.
Understand that a good number of these are essentially "autonomous" - that is, you don't "control it" as you would an RC aircraft, you simply tell it where you want it to go. If you turn the radio off, they're capable of returning to home on their own. You can program them for a path that takes them out of radio range.. They come back.. When it is under radio control, you don't orient it like an RC plane or RC helicopter, you literally tell it which way to move. It's self-stabilizing. A 4-year old could fly one.

When I was in MI this summer, I saw someone flying one near our property.. Curious, I went to check it out. It as autonomous, provided video feedback (live) to a small panel where the operator was. He worked for a search and rescue group, which I assume is a group of people trained for search and rescue that get paid when the state needs them.. Flying "drones" is a lot cheaper than flying aircraft, probably nice to have if you want to what's over the next ridge without risking a pilot.

My understanding of current law is that it can snoop over my property all day long - not much I can do about it. Then again, "accidents happen"... :-)

One thing that was impressive, we had about a 15 knot cross wind. That thing came down completely straight, self-correcting for the crosswind. Literally, he walked over and picked it up out of the air.

There is a lot of pending legal action on the use of quads/drones. It's very much a gray area. Most RC pilots, even those joining organized groups like the American Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) don't know the FAA's rules... And the FAA's doesn't exactly have domain over these things just yet.. Not until a few courts rule in their favor.

The FAA apparently has said in an email that using unmanned aircraft for search and rescue is illegal. They're got sued over it. The court declined to rule on the real issue - as they said that an email rule wasn't binding and as such it wasn't an issue.

In regard to hobby use of helicopters, haven't we had RC helicopters for the last 30+ years? Probably too late to enforce that now.

In regard to the FAA, the "400 foot" rule is not regulatory. The FAA is a special brand of complicated.. They've got rules, legal interpretations of rules, internal advisories on rules, it goes on. The "400 foot" rule isn't a rule, it's a best practice and the media gets it wrong:

AC-91-57 states:
1. PURPOSE. This advisory circular outlines, and encourages voluntary compliance with, safety standards for model aircraft operators.
[4910-13]
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Federal Aviation Administration
14 CFR Part 91
Docket No. FAA-2006-25714
Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System
states:
Model aircraft should be flown below 400 feet above the surface to avoid other aircraft in flight.


My guess is that you probably can't do anything legally about a small quad in the Bravo unless it was obviously causing problems.... Although with as much "terrorism" stuff that we have going around, you could probably work a charge related to national security in there or at least get the cuffs out and have the problem taken care of.

[Keith B]

My answer is 'I thought someone yelled pull and instincts took over. Sorry.'

[cb1000rider]

Yea, that's certainly one solution.
Just be aware that some broadcast video, so make sure you get it from the blind side.. The recording may be off-site.

[cb1000rider]

Saw this today.. Might read it (at least in NJ) if you think the shotgun approach is appropriate:

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/10/03/ ... latestnews" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Keith B]

Saw this today.. Might read it (at least in NJ) if you think the shotgun approach is appropriate:

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2014/10/03/ ... latestnews" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It was a joke. Sheesh.