"Drone Buzzes President Barack Obama's Motorcade in Hawaii"
Some guy, who received a drone for Christmas happens to be flying when Obama drives by, and the media goes WILD. But they ignore the hundreds of cars on the same highway that are a much higher risk to the president. It's going to be a big uphill struggle to get the society to overcome their fear of drones when the media panics like this.
Imagine what the FAA would do if this toy had crashed into the presidents motorcade?
Comments
Media says.. end of story.
Hahaha
Media hype, clearly. True journalism is a very difficult thing to find these days.
+1 Patrick Duffy - add to that: Number of bona-fide photos of drones reported by in-air human pilots = 0
I keep promoting the perspective that 'drone madness' will burn itself out as the news story outlets finally find no one is listening. Unfortunately reason, common sense, fact, and all the efforts of safe responsible hobby fliers are the victims. We will chained with a pointless registration system that has the potential for harassment by semi-literate law enforcement. Granted (it is a stretch) that the registration system will/could include the commercial use of drones once the FAA gets around to doing what Congress tasked them with initially - figuring out how to integrate sUAS into the NAS.
My comments have shifted from trying to discuss this from an aeronautical perspective to one of consumer product perspective. FAA notwithstanding, the self-created fear is that the general public will make the skies black with millions of drones. (insert you favorite apocalyptic imagery here)
The CPSC should be the one informing the public of the correct use of the products. They are now hammering on the hoverboard (balance is a better name) manufacturers and the fires in houses that are occurring due to battery ignitions. Funny that we hobby fliers have known about the risks of those batteries for years.
-=Doug
@F1P, number of automobile deaths > 30,000 per year. Number of drone-related deaths = 0. Let's panic over the drones.
Nothing new. "Drones are very dangerous, drone assault Obama, they kill us all, blablabla" is favorite theme of media .
DC has had the 15 mile no fly zone around Regan airport for a while with additional special rules for 30 miles around Regan. Back in July, you could fly as long as you were 15 miles outside of DC. This has now been changed to 30 miles outside of DC with no exceptions for model aircraft parks.
As of July 4th, FAA was interpreting as no drones within 15 miles. Outside of the 15 miles was okay under 400ft and way from other airports: http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/local/dc/2015/12/28/dc-drone-ban-30...
As of September, FAA changed the interpretation to 30 miles. They did this somewhat quietly. I was not aware of this change until they shut down the clubs this week: https://www.faa.gov/uas/no_drone_zone/dc/ Apparently AMA clubs were assuming that they were automatically included in the exclusions.
As of December 23th, FAA sent out notices to all parks and grounded all flights: http://www.flyfreestate.com/grounded/ There were also local news reports: http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/local/dc/2015/12/28/dc-drone-ban-30...
The news report states that police will be enforcing the ban. I read personal reports on a forum stating that policy were actually at one park turning people away. I can't find the link, but I believe that the date was the 26th.
@Matthew
How does your local AMA get away with that? MR's pose no more of a threat than a foamy to D.C. 30 miles away; they are both "drones".
If it comes down to forcing individuals to fly under some club banner at an "authorized" field, I'm definitely done with this hobby.
@Matthew,
Move down here to Ft Lauderdale, FL.
Our AMA sanctioned flying field is directly under the Ft Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport west end glide path and they even allow us to fly multicopters at the field.
Regards,
TCIII AVD
When it shows up on national news, it's a panic.
@DG At least you are allowed to fly. I was greeted with a "No Drones" signs at the local AMA club this week because I am within 30 miles of DC. I should have taken my holiday break in Cancun instead.
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