Not sure if anyone will ever read it, or anyone cares, but I commented here. If you haven't done so yet I encourage you to do so too:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FAA-2014-0396-0001
To whom it may concern,
I am writing in response to the FAA's Interpretive rule for model aircraft. The proposed regulations are concerning to me as a hobbyist, photographer, and engineer interested in developing new technology. The specifics of the rule portray the FAA to be ignorant of the hobby and acting out of retribution for the Piker V Huerta ruling. The proposal does little to improve the safety of air travel. Instead, it threatens to destroy a past time, stifle innovation, and squash entrepreneurship.
I have been involved in model aviation for nearly 20 years, and an AMA member for most of them. I grew up following the technological advances in this hobby and attribute much of my professional success as an engineer to skills and interests cultivated in this hobby. I worked summers in high school teaching kids model aviation and rocketry. I believe this hobby gave me a lot and can do the same for others, which is why I feel strongly about protecting it.
To many, including myself, the technology side of hobby is more exciting than actually flying. The advancements in electronic flight controllers, first person video, and new battery technology has given birth to a new era of innovators and hobbyists. The FAA's ban on video goggles is silly and misinformed. FPV flying has the potential to be a more accurate and safe way to fly model air craft than the conventional 'line of sight' method. Safe flight has nothing to do with FPV and everything to do with pilots acting responsibly and with care.
I also take objection to the FAA's strict ban on commercial flights under the guise of public safety. If a model aircraft pilot is paid to take aerial photographs of a location, how does that make it less safe than if if he or she were not paid? Why can professionally sponsored pilots not be paid, as they have been for years, for demonstrating their skills at controlled events? Do hobby and toy companies need a COA to test their products?
There needs to be a distinction between small hobby grade UAV for commercial use and large UAV used by our government. The two are not the same and should not be treated as such. A size or weight class exemption would be appropriate for small UAV commercial use. UAVs have the potential to do great good and improve the safety of our airspace by doing things that would normally put a human operator in danger. The United States should strive to be a leader in this technology.
I suggest that the FAA work with hobbyists and entrepreneurs to develop common sense guidelines that preserves our country's safe airspace while protecting the rights of the model aviation community and encouraging growth of commercial UAV. I believe that the previous FAA advisory to model aircraft is appropriate:
1) Stay below 400 feet
2) Do not fly beyond line of slight range with the ground pilot
3) Stay away from developed areas
I would further suggest that size or weight classes be setup so there can be a distinction between small UAV and larger aircraft. Hobby grade UAV, be it used for commercial or recreational use, do not pose the same risk as aircraft that are orders of magnitude bigger. The FAA should recognize this and know which is appropriate to regulate.
By working with the community, the FAA can ensure that our country remains a leader in both air safety and emerging technology. I hope the FAA will revise their rule making based on feedback from the public.
Comments
I read the regulations in more detail now. When you design a ruling, the objective is to exclude methods of operations that are dangerous and that it specifies what safe operation means. An example rule: "when driving a vehicle you shouldn't engage in activities not critical to the safe operation of the vehicle (putting on lipstick, using your phone, etc.. ). The driver must at all times watch the road and check mirrors to maintain situational awareness."
In that context, this FAA interpretation basically assumes that the only true safe method for operating a model vehicle is by direct line-of-sight. The concern of the use of FPV is that it limits the field of view, so you wouldn't be able to determine direction and distance of full-scale traffic.
I flew a good couple of times already and I do not remember that I take my eyes of the model at any point in time, ever. A split second of diversion or loss of concentration could change the attitude of the model and you'd lose precious milliseconds trying to determine what it's doing and probably crash it.
To figure out what's going on, I rely on hearing and call-outs from others.
If the current regular operation already doesn't allow us to scan the sky, then there isn't that much difference between FPV and direct LOS operation to begin with, which makes this FAA interpretation even worse and where it demonstrates they don't properly understand model piloting from an operational perspective.
That makes this ruling very ineffective.
A point to make: If there would be a substantial difference in ability to safely and effectively pilot a model in LOS or FPV, we'd be having a very heated debate about this now... how flying through a camera is inherently unsafe vs. LOS flight. I think it's rather the opposite: it's (cognitively) more difficult to operate a vehicle remotely than it is looking through goggles (assuming there are no people or objects left/right/behind.
Also, I don't think it was ever tested or considered that perhaps in FPV you have better abilities to scan the sky versus operations from the ground. At the ground you have occlusions like buildings and trees. It should be possible to conduct an experiment where you measure the time between full situational awareness of an FPV and LOS pilot after they detect full-scale. Do they know what that plane is doing, is it coming towards you, where is it exactly, should I land? Sounds like a great experiment that a club could execute some time and provide some feedback on their findings.
So a poll: Do you scan the sky as a LOS pilot if you hear full-scale?
I agree with all you posted, I was just making the correction of a farmer can actually own airspace above his property or he would never be able to erect any type of structure (Windmill, Wind turbine, Tower, Flag Pole etc).
The law was adapted once air flight was invented, it used to be the land owner owned everything below and to the heavens. But that was over a hundred years ago.
I had to go through several steps to get wind turbines, several neighbors have runways and one is a public airport, even though he is the only one that uses it.
Shaun, Farmer Brown can actually own up to 300ft and often right up to 400ft with the proper paperwork or I wouldn't be able to have cellular towers, windmills or wind turbines on my farm.
Mathew, I think we suffer a difference in philosophy here. I believe that an overbearing, centralized government solution to any community problem will be the least effective way to solve the problem and will have as many, if not more negative consequences as self-regulation. Humans tend to be meddlesome by nature and centralized power gives people the mechanism to meddle.
It's highly regulated now, but it wasn't so for many years. In fact much of the regulation was developed by industry and the latest of it - S-LSA - is a collaboratively-developed ASTM (i.e. industry body) standard.
You point to the rare exception rather than the general rule to make your case here. "safe" is not a binary condition of safe and unsafe either. It's all in the acceptance of risk levels. In the case of, say, the Ford Pinto, the risk accepted by Ford was not acceptable to the public, but only after a huge beat-up by vested interests. The actual cost-benefit of the extra safety was probably much more than the public would be prepared to pay, had they known the real costs. Unfortunately, the costs for some of this "safety" is diffuse and in many cases, opportunity cost, which cannot be quantified at all.
As always, be careful what you wish for...
Hi Mathew,
Don't get me wrong, in some ways the FAA is between a rock and a hard place, by all accounts they have been given a very unenviable if not downright impossible task.
But we are not the drunken teens, RC planes have been around for 60 years and model planes have been around since before the first piloted planes.
And a substantial portion of the people participating in it have been doing so for the last 30 or 40 years (me over 50).
This whole giant brouhaha over drones IS very recent, but almost none of it has anything substantial to do with the actual realities of what is happening, but is driven by media and political madness driven by events and "drones" that actually have nothing to do with us.
Unfortunately we are now tarred by association with the word "Drone".
Our model and RC model airplanes got by fine for decades without the FAA feeling compelled to stomp it into oblivion.
And they have very little factual excuse for doing so now.
Sure the easy access to easy to fly quadcopters has temporarily gotten people involved because it is the latest fad and they are flying with out sufficient training, common sense and safety.
But in no other endeavor has this sort of thing managed to elicit such a hysterical response.
Prior to this model airplanes had a very good safety record, but things still went wrong and people periodically got hurt and even occasionally killed.
It is not reasonable to think that any endeavor can be without risk, the normal response is to minimize the risk to an acceptable level.
Unfortunately, for this particular endeavor the considered acceptable risk appears to be zero and the only way you can have zero risk is by disallowing the activity entirely.
Which appears to be the course the FAA is taking.
Interestingly, not at all one they follow in their normal day job of dealing with piloted aircraft where risk is simply a realistic consideration that is managed in a reasonable fashion.
So yes, I stand behind Draconian, they have applied an unachievable zero risk mandate to our hobby and in the process of enforcing it are going to remove basically all of the freedom we have had until this point and destroy it entirely.
Our American Congress passed a law telling them precisely what not to do and the first thing the FAA has done is to reinterpret what the Congress did into completely nullifying what they actually told them to do.
It is the FAA who is showing a complete disregard for the law, not us.
@ Mathew Krawczun Invasion of privacy is invasion of privacy no matter how you sugar coat it. Just because someone has a license doesn't make it legal over someone that doesn't.
@Gary McCray
maybe my problem is I don't see what they're doing as "Draconian enforcement of their own current whims". sure its not perfect but is not that bad either. besides has you ever thought to ask maybe the problem isn't them its us?
I mean you said it yourself the FAA is used to interacting with "elite and specialized group of people" we are kind of the drunken teens crashing the pasty expecting everything to go our way. most of us are flying experimental aircraft and what rules we do have most of us don't follow already (looking at you blacksheep).
don't get me wrong I love Drones and have high hope for what they can do but we haven't really given the FAA a reason to trust us as a whole. as much the FAA has to change we have to change more if you want UAVs to be treated with respect.
@ Guy Compton
it matters because the only thing the FAA cares about is if the person behind the controls knows what they're doing and how to use the airspace right. the people making rules about using drones to spy on people are not the FAA.
@Andrew Rabbitt
you can't dismiss Mechanical/structural-related failure because the reason its so low in commercial fight is because the regulations on how well the aircraft is built and how often they're serviced is highly regulated by law to keep it low.
you seem to be stuck on this idea that for profit businesses do what's right when that's not backed up by reality. just look at GM knowing selling cars that they knew were unsafe for years. so doing anything for profit must always be more regulated then something done as a hobby.
The real problem is the FAA is being tasked with doing something really major in an area they have no familiarity with at all.
Not drones per-se, but dealing with the general public.
They deal with a very elite and specialized group of people, private and commercial pilots, planes and transport.
But that is not quadcopters and the general public - not even close.
They haven't got a clue, they are trying to apply their existing model to a field that is completely unlike anything they have ever done.
And they are doing so with no concession to reality whatsoever, charging ahead like a blind bull.
They are using all their government clout to create a completely unsupportable ****storm that will leave everybody (themselves included) a lot worse off than when they started.
I actually think that the current 2811 "responses" they have received are quite a lot, I think they are a lot more used to a couple dozen at most.
The fact that they have only reviewed 251 of them so far certainly seems to indicate that this is unfamiliar territory for them.
And although we may show 55,000 members, you have to consider that that is pretty much everybody who has ever signed on here, so maybe we actually have somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 actual active members and it looks like about half of those are not American so realistically 5000 to 10,000 people who are qualified to "respond".
And that's a pretty generous guesstimate.
I would actually have thought that the AMA might have stirred up a little more action, but the reality is the AMA has difficulty reaching out to it's members in a timely manner, there main vehicle being a monthly magazine printed a month or so in advance.
Basically by the time they tell the members about it it will be too late.
Only a small fraction of them are active on line at the AMA web site.
I wish I thought that the FAA would pay any attention to what the "responses" are saying, but I don't.
So far they have shown no capacity at all to pay any attention to anybody including the law Congress passed or their own ridiculous reinterpretation of "voluntary" suggestions into absolute laws.
In fact they have shown no respect at all for the same legal system they are trying to exploit in their own Draconian enforcement of their own current whims.
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