FAA Approves Drones for Movie Making

All those shoots will have to be permitted by the city and maybe they will have a system where they notify the FAA and they can put up a TFR around that area, or at least a NOTAM or something. At least it is being regulated. Most of the real commercial work being done with drones for motion picture image acquisition is below 500 feet from my personal experience. The operator SHOULD be easily able to hear any approaching airplane traffic from quite a distance and bring the copter down.
 
Approval will include a letter of authorization, specifying what the operator needs to do to operate in the NAS. That might be a notam, notification to ATC, having spotters, etc.
 
If you hit one of these with your plane, chances are you were flying somewhere you shouldn't have been flying. You would probably also smash into a boom, a few buildings, and some set pieces. You are aware that model aircraft have been flying around for decades, right?

No they do not have transponders or ADS-B. For the flying they will be doing, there is no need for them and it is impossible.
 
Money talks,the movie industry usually gets what they want,not too worried yet,unless they are filming around the local airport.
 
The article cites "closed sets" which doesn't sound like navigable airspace at all. Pick your battles, gentlemen.
 
Hmmm, as a small-time drone enthusiast who flies and films responsibly, I'm not sure about this. I fear that they may regulate it just enough to make it difficult and expensive for small operators and businesses to comply. How about allowing commercial use without a permit under certain common-sense circumstances? As it is now, a farmer flying a drone, in visual range, to check on his own field may have legal issues:

http://www.stltoday.com/business/lo...cle_960d7fcd-92a5-5559-b3eb-c9adddf0d509.html
 
F01LA said:
Hmmm, as a small-time drone enthusiast who flies and films responsibly, I'm not sure about this. I fear that they may regulate it just enough to make it difficult and expensive for small operators and businesses to comply. How about allowing commercial use without a permit under certain common-sense circumstances? As it is now, a farmer flying a drone, in visual range, to check on his own field may have legal issues.
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This is exactly what a lot of the hobby and smaller industry groups are pushing for. I can take pictures of your house for free, no problem, no regulation, no permits, not nothing. Just flying my hobby aircraft. But if I want to charge you $$ to take pictures of your house, that is all of a sudden a threat to the NAS? Right.

If I use my drone to look at my corn husks, that's ok. But if I charge $100 to look at a corn husk, airplanes fall out of the sky. Uh huh.

Common sense lacks all around.
 
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Yep. But it's even worse than that. The way things currently are, I'm not allowed to fly a drone over my own corn because that's a commercial use. Read the above article. Also look at this one:

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/local/legal-issues-facing-uavs-on-the-farm/nhQrH/

Any farmer using drones in any commercial capacity is breaking the law and risking fines, said Peggy Hall, a specialist for agricultural and resource law at Ohio State University Extension.
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Insanity.
 
Has anyone ever actually explained what statute or regulation would be violated by unapproved commercial drone use?
 
Again we have a situation where people whining about money precipitated an event where we have failed to prepare for the future accordingly to the technology that was being developed, trying to maintain the past into the future which is impossible. NextGen should have happened a decade ago, but we've been to busy spending money on wars and maintaining the standards of the financial elite to bother investing the required resources to have it available when the developing future demanded the need. All that whining, hand wringing and money saving has brought is to a point where we have an untenable situation that will cost people lives. Once again, valuing money over life is what is cutting our own throats. Today it's just GA and airspace safety, in 20 years it will be water.
 
I agree that flying R/C aircraft around, even for commercial purposes, should be permitted.

However, operators shouldn't be able to shirk the responsibility to see and avoid. This means no autonomous flight outside of visual range, no autonomous flight without the ability to take manual control, and no FPV without a spotter.

Many of the recent enthusiasts in this technology conveniently ignore the fact that certified aircraft (small airplanes, helicopters) and other flying things (skydivers, powered parachutes, ultralights) can safely and legally operate at any altitude, and can land nearly anywhere. The think they can, instead of see-and-avoid, maintain separation solely by not flying near airports and staying below _____ feet.

They're wrong, and they're (often willfully) ignorant.

A quick look at YouTube, or any other UAS/RC community, and this obvious.
 
The FAA interpretation that was published in the Federal Register seems a little more substantive. After discussing the scope of the non-commercial exemption of Public Law 112 - 95 Section 336, they conclude in Section IV of the interpretation that drones that don't fall within the exemption are subject to 14 CFR Part 91.

http://www.faa.gov/uas/media/model_aircraft_spec_rule.pdf

Public Law 112 - 95 can be found here:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-112publ95/content-detail.html

Text:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-112publ95/html/PLAW-112publ95.htm
 
bqmassey said:
I agree that flying R/C aircraft around, even for commercial purposes, should be permitted.

However, operators shouldn't be able to shirk the responsibility to see and avoid. This means no autonomous flight outside of visual range, no autonomous flight without the ability to take manual control, and no FPV without a spotter.

Many of the recent enthusiasts in this technology conveniently ignore the fact that certified aircraft (small airplanes, helicopters) and other flying things (skydivers, powered parachutes, ultralights) can safely and legally operate at any altitude, and can land nearly anywhere. The think they can, instead of see-and-avoid, maintain separation solely by not flying near airports and staying below _____ feet.

They're wrong, and they're (often willfully) ignorant.

A quick look at YouTube, or any other UAS/RC community, and this obvious.
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Pretty much sums up my thoughts too. I get several requests a week from the AMA and various RC clubs I am (or have been a part of) to "petition the FAA to not hinder forward progress" yada yada yada. I tell them I'll be happy to take Bob Violets letter, put my name at the top and send it AGAIN :)
 
The way I understand it these motion picture companies just got a permit (actually an exemption) from the FAA to do what they have already been doing for years.
 
bbridges51 said:
Just found this:
http://www.modbee.com/2014/09/24/3556444_faa-expected-to-approve-drones.html?sp=/99/1526/&rh=1

So, if we can expect more drones in the skies, just who is going to separate them from us? Will these things have transponders or ADSB out? Will Flight Following warn me that one is coming my way?
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Who is going to separate all you TV addled pilots from me on my paraglider? I don't have adsb out and flight following hasn't a clue as to my existence. Get off the TV man there is plenty of non emitting things out there to run into.
 
Before a technology appears that's over 10 times cheaper than ADS-B and much cheaper than Flarm, the two sides of pilots and drone operators will be whining about each other.

A good start would be drone beacons that don't publish their coordinates, but just a radial signal from which you could deduct it's distance from you. Most probably something in the range of 500-30 meters. Plus a cheap receiver to get and display those signals on a plane, may be via a mobile/tablet gadget.

Until then it will be see and avoid, which in practice is unrealistic. A multicopter operator on the ground usually looks only directly up at the drone with a very narrow peripheral vision. It's very hard to keep track of the sky when manually flying one. For plane pilots, it's impossible on the other hand to spot those small drones.

Legislative limitations would hold either. With cost of high- and fast-flying drones, some with autopilots, coming down below $100 soon there will be millions of people flying them. The availability will be just as simple as buying any toy. None of these buyers, many soon small kids, will know any legislative limitations.

So basically both sides are doomed for the next 10 years ;)
 
ClimbnSink said:
Who is going to separate all you TV addled pilots from me on my paraglider? I don't have adsb out and flight following hasn't a clue as to my existence. Get off the TV man there is plenty of non emitting things out there to run into.
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You will be required a transponder of sorts, or be restricted to G airspace.
 
yhuubert said:
Before a technology appears that's over 10 times cheaper than ADS-B and much cheaper than Flarm, the two sides of pilots and drone operators will be whining about each other.

A good start would be drone beacons that don't publish their coordinates, but just a radial signal from which you could deduct it's distance from you. Most probably something in the range of 500-30 meters. Plus a cheap receiver to get and display those signals on a plane, may be via a mobile/tablet gadget.

Until then it will be see and avoid, which in practice is unrealistic. A multicopter operator on the ground usually looks only directly up at the drone with a very narrow peripheral vision. It's very hard to keep track of the sky when manually flying one. For plane pilots, it's impossible on the other hand to spot those small drones.

Legislative limitations would hold either. With cost of high- and fast-flying drones, some with autopilots, coming down below $100 soon there will be millions of people flying them. The availability will be just as simple as buying any toy. None of these buyers, many soon small kids, will know any legislative limitations.

So basically both sides are doomed for the next 10 years ;)
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30-500M does not cut it for collision avoidance. What drones will end up being required is a TCAS type system to autonomously avoid traffic.
 
Henning said:
30-500M does not cut it for collision avoidance. What drones will end up being required is a TCAS type system to autonomously avoid traffic.
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I bet a bottle of cognac that toy drones under $100-200 will never be required to have a TCAS type of system. Neither will those kind of systems reach a price point that would make them viable. Dreams are one thing, reality is another.

30-500 meters is better than nothing. Yes, I know how fast we fly our planes and how many seconds that is. But I don't believe more can be achieved by a reasonably priced ($5-25) beacon.

Just thinking aloud what might be reasonable price/performance and keep it rational.
 
Best thing for toy avoidance would be for the manufacturers to get scared of worse being regulated and voluntarily govern the altitude attainable.
 
On the other hand the helicopter industry is asleep at the wheel, they should have(from a self interested point of view) set up an anti-drone front group years ago and started handing out money to lawmakers and writing doom and gloom articles about drone danger...
 
Yes, the one the UAS and RC people must be afraid of is the collision between a UAS out taking pictures or whatever and a medevac helicopter coming into an airport with an accident case on board. Next worst would be getting sucked into an airliner engine on approach. Of course, causing a crash with the local college football team would be pretty bad, too.
I wonder if the laser guys will go to drones?
 
yhuubert said:
Until then it will be see and avoid, which in practice is unrealistic. A multicopter operator on the ground usually looks only directly up at the drone with a very narrow peripheral vision. It's very hard to keep track of the sky when manually flying one. For plane pilots, it's impossible on the other hand to spot those small drones.
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I think you forget that RC copter operators can hear the noisy planes coming from about 3 miles away. Unless you are FPV they are not alot of fun much above 40 meters. They are more fun at about 20 feet AGL. If you are taking video anything above 40 meters and things become small. I was noting in one of the fancy real estate books we got, unless they rented a cherry picker, it was obvious they were shot from a RC Multi copter.
 
Heh, a thread just started on a Yachty board about the guest on a neighboring yacht was operating a little quad copter in the marina hovering over the sun decks of other yachts. :lol: I may start marketing a 12ga line throwing gun with a noise suppressing barrel and loads with rock salt BBs. :D
 
Parachute flare would probably do the trick. They have expiration dates on them you know
 
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