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...
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Note there is an exception to the 500ft rule, to take off and land, and there is no rule that says you must take off and land at an airport.. IE its perfectly legal to take off and land on your own property or property you have permission to use in most of the U.S. I routinely take off and land on a dirt road on someone's private property.
Also the way the rules are written the aircraft has right of way over the Drone at all times. Even if the airplane is doing something illegal it still has right of way over the drone, as absurd as it sounds if some one does a buzz job over a known drone flying field and hits a drone the drone was at fault. You must watch for and avoid full size aircraft at all times. If the only way to avoid hitting a full sized aircraft is to crash your $150K big camera ship with stereo RED cameras on it, you are required to do so.
Most aircraft could withstand an impact with a Solo or DJI sized drone and survive, I'm not so sure about a helicopter. To my mind the biggest risk for a Drone->Full size fatality is a helicopter, they can go anywhere, land anywhere and the rotor system is somewhat fragile.
Reminds me of this summer when I witnessed a UAV operating legally having to take evasive manoevers to dodge a CC-130 flying extremely low over a small town, outside of the airbase's controlled airspace about 10 miles away.
500 feet from or 500 feet above ?
@Jeff, how to you calculate 500 feet from as a pilot ?
The incident does point out, however, that there needs to be some way to provide visual warning to a small aircraft that a particular area is being used for drone exercises. Rather than go through the BS of registration that the FAA is now screwing around with, they should be registering locations where high drone activity takes place so they can be marked on VFR charts.
We had few other close-up when glider entered closed airspace, also we almost launched model rocket to plane (it was instructional flight) which tried to land at closed aerodrome... We have huge problem that most light aviation pilots don't look at notams...
I'm referencing this document: http://www.ans.lt/static/aviation_data/agl/enroute/enr2-1.pdf
"1.2.5.Except when necessary for take-off or landing, or except by permission from the CAA, a VFR flight shall not be flown: a) over the congested areas of cities, towns or settlements or over an openair assembly of persons at a height less than 1 000 FT above the highest obstacle within a radius of 600 M from the aircraft; b) elsewhere than as specified in 1.2.5 a), at a height less than 500 FT above the ground or water, or 500 FT above the highest obstacle within a radius of 150 M from the aircraft;" He was breaking our country rules
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