Dangerous close-up with aircraft flying bellow 500 ft. He did few low passes over frozen lake. Nearest airport or airfield is 20 km away.
I think biggest problems with integrating drones into public airspace will be with small aviation. They don't want to buy expensive ADS-B equipment or similar things. Also other problem is paragliders and hot air balloons who don't even have radios...
Comments
@Jeff Heinen I do agree with you we need and already have good regulations. It also is nice to see the perspective of someone who flies like yourself. I agree with you 100% right up the mandatory training part. Not because I am against people getting training, I am against it when it post no real statistically measurable risk. Someone did do the math on the odds of a collision. It is 1 in 38,000,000 currently just for one plain drone collision. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wJ3SblqOFA We will probably never even see more than one or two collisions in our lifetime let alone enough (5000 or 10000) to cause serious damage or death. Would have to sell a lot more dons and they will all need to be a lot higher and in the air a lot longer to even make a dent in 1 in 38,000,000.
My feeling on regulations is we should work big too small and I feel like the FAA is spending a disproportionate amount of time on something that isn’t even a problem yet and most likely will never be statistically speaking for a few 100 years. I have googled plane and helicopter accident statistics and can’t find a top 10 that even includes bird strikes. I still don’t see drones as anything other than media hype and overreaction.
By no regulation, I do mean none. No operator training or certification. No registration numbers. NADA. But stay within the weight, passenger, commercial, and airspace limits or you are in trouble.
The fact that the FAA is attempting the type of power grab they are engaged in is criminal. Admittedly, drones are not manned aircraft. Still, a limit closer to 100 lbs with a line-of-site requirement, along with airspace restrictions and possibly anti-collision strobes for larger drones, should be sufficient. The 'registration' crap is just flat wrong.
Beyond that, it seems to me that the problem is a local matter. Don't want ATV's driving down your beach? Don't bother the Coast Guard, go to your county or city government. Ditto Drone usage.
Most of this is just another Federal power grab.
@David Drysdale note that I said drones would likely cause more damage. I didn't say there was a greater risk in hitting one. That's not to say that as drones become more prevalent they won't pose a greater risk. Put more of anything into the sky, and the likelihood of those things running into each other obviously increases. We need regulations to ensure that flight operations are safe. The 400' max altitude is a good rule IMHO. It will greatly reduce the chances of a collision. It's also a good idea not to fly drones near airports, unless you are coordinating with ATC and your drone is visible on radar. My main fear is that a lot of people are buying drones and have no awareness of the airspace system and how airplanes operate. Airplane pilots have to have hours of training and are evaluated on their knowledge and skill. No such requirements exist for drone pilots. I would be in favor of some sort of mandatory training and certification requirements for commercial drone operators, and operators of drones larger than some pre-determined size/weight. And I say this as a drone operator and a commercial pilot.
@Jeff Heinen, Thanks for the reply. Birds moving out of the way never occurred to me but 10,000 bird strikes is a lot that didn't get out of the way. Last time I looked drone strikes were 1 in the last 10 years. I would also think 15 pound drones would be less the 1% of what are in the sky. I would say 99% are phantom sized and under or around one pound. Mabey I am wrong but I just don't by statistically speaking drones play any real risk to plains. I would bet on the scale of thing pilots should worry about drones would be so close to 0% on the list to not even make it. I am still convinced but open to contradicting evidence it is all just media and political hype.
You guys need to lighten up. English is a difficult and idiosyncratic language. I (and, I suspect, all of you that are being so rude) are fortunate enough to have learned it from birth. Many people who have good ideas to present to the world are not so lucky. I, for one, prefer to hear those ideas even if the English used to present them is not text-book perfect. To all of you struggling to express yourselves in a your second (or maybe third or even fourth) language, I ask that you not allow the belittling comments of an insensitive minority of Language Nazi's to discourage you..
pump the breaks
@David Drysdale - birds usually try to get out of your way. Except eagles. They know who owns the sky and they don't move. Have had a near miss with one before. I do think drones pose the potential for more damage, especially given that some of them can weigh several pounds and are made of hard materials. I would rather hit a one pound squishy seagull than a 15 pound metal and plastic drone.
I have been flying on skis for the last 30 years, and the real scarry stuff is not in the air, its on the ground...Landing on ice with no directionnal control whatsoever, get stuck on a water patch (slushing) on a lake a hundred mile from civilisation, smashing skis on snow bank and having a snowmobile trying get chopped in my propeller are sweet memories...all that fun without even getting into airspace !!
By the way in Canada an aerodrome is any area of land or water used for aircraft operation, regardless of facilities, so by definition frozen lakes and rivesr are aerodromes. The rest is based upon the most important piece of equipment in an airplane.. Pilot's Judgement.... The same apply to a Drone Pilot....
Be Happy and Fly Freely
@Jeff Heinen Do you worry about colliding with drones more the birds? I am always surprised to see pilots worried about drone collision when there are something like 10,000 bid collisions a year in US/Canada per one causality or something around that number. I get the impression (not from you just people in general) people think that if a drone and plane ever collide it will equal instant explosion.
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