Timothy Clemans's Posts (5)

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Los Angeles has the following law for parks: "No person shall land, release, take off or fly any balloon, except children toy balloons not inflated with any flammable material, helicopter, parakite, hang glider, aircraft or powered models thereof, except in areas specifically set aside therefor." http://www.laparks.org/venice/pdf/lamc63.pdf A compliant by the US Navy led to the seizure of a drone and citation under this law. It's important to note this operator attracted attention after he flew over a police parking lot and city attorneys advised police no laws were broken. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-civilian-drone-hollywood-lot-20140801-story.html

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Seattle's Komo News did an excellent piece about a drone buzzing the Space Needle this week. The video is at http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Police-investigate-drone-strike-on-Space-Needle-268518072.html?tab=video&c=y I was impressed at how tame it came out. The police in particular made it clear that policing drones is not a priority and that the operator had no interest of harm. I'm pleased at how well Seattle police are handling this unlike the NYPD helicopter fiasco. An interesting piece of the story is that the operator is an out of town employee of Amazon.com. 

I was surprised that Komo didn't mention anything about the possibility of the drone hitting tourism helicopters buzzing the needle. Komo's own helicopter crashed this year next to the Space Needle. I wonder if the DJI should be painted yellow with labels saying "Don't fly over 400FT"

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Another false near miss

I saw this at http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregorymcneal/2014/07/17/alleged-near-collision-between-drone-and-helicopter-caught-on-video-but-questions-linger/ and had to mention it here because it was video taped.

I would love to see law enforcement say "if you create a false near miss we're going to arrest you for reckless endangerment."


http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Near-Collision-Between-Drone-And-Helicopter-Rattles-Pilots-267400371.html

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