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FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

reuters.com

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Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#191

Post by jessaustin »

jamiek88 wrote: post #175
souprock wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying above 400 feet is only a problem because aircraft can fly down at 500 feet. Do we really want aircraft at only 500 feet? I wouldn't want even a typical general aviation aircraft going over my house at that height. Make it an Airbus 380 and it might be entertaining. The solution is to raise the height for normal aircraft. That makes room for drones. We could give the drones from 500 to 1900 feet, putting normal…

Aircraft have to land and takeoff.

Obviously the same (or probably even larger) airport exceptions that current regulations include would still exist if the floor were raised.

Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#192

Post by jessaustin »

recursive wrote: post #165
mike_d wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful there tough guy, drones receive the same protections as aircraft. A threat against one is punishable under 18 U.S. Code § 32. "Whoever willfully imparts or conveys any threat [against an aircraft] shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."

I hereby threaten to shoot any drones in my backyard with a garden hose. Come and get me.

Heck, one could promise to spray any aircraft above the backyard with the water. It wouldn't harm commercial traffic, even if it could reach.

Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#193

Post by ohazi »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #152
on_and_off wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am always stunned that many (most/all) of these high tech gadgets lack a LOT of safety features. I would pay extra for a drone with such safeguards. just the prospect of less chances of ruining it would be enough. Similarly, eskates often have a regenerative battery charging while braking which is a great idea. but it also cannot handle charging while already full. So if you go down a slope while the board is full,…

Teslas turn off regenerative breaking if you charge too far, but the car tells you that pretty prominently: however, the car handles very differently without Regen brakes.

I guess that's easier and cheaper than adding a circuit to keep regenerative braking on, but dump the energy into a big resistor...

Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#194

Post by emcq »

grumple wrote: post #145
8note wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you keep the propellers from cutting people up? Does the parachute also tangle up the prop?

They aren’t sharp. Doesn’t seem like a realistic concern tbh.

I used to work for a drone company. I made sure to go watch the mechanical testing for prop safety. One of the test objects was a chicken leg, and the prop cut through more than 2mm of bone. The props can do some serious damage!

I don't know what, if any, approaches are implemented but one solution is that you can design a safety feature in the motor control to turn off the motor if it detects blockage.

Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#195

Post by dghlsakjg »

souprock wrote: post #131
chrisdalke wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not why the FAA is regulating it, and these regulations won't stop that. They're regulating because people are flying recklessly above 400ft, above roadways, and in restricted airspace.

Flying above 400 feet is only a problem because aircraft can fly down at 500 feet. Do we really want aircraft at only 500 feet? I wouldn't want even a typical general aviation aircraft going over my house at that height. Make it an Airbus 380 and it might be entertaining. The solution is to raise the height for normal aircraft. That makes room for drones. We could give the drones from 500 to 1900 feet, putting normal…

There already are restrictions about how low and where you can fly a 'real' airplane. There is even a regulation that would keep an airplane from flying over your house at 500 ft. under most circumstances. The reality is that most pilots don't want to be 500ft above terrain unless they are VERY close to the runway

There are also plenty of good reasons to be under 2,000 ft. The most general is that all training and approach for VFR ops at airports is done at 1,000 ft. by default.

Airspace and altitudes are pretty complex, for a more involved example: A VFR flight departing North from Boeing field in Seattle HAS to stay below 1800 ft but above the highest parts of the city at ~750 ft. Because the air-space above 1800 belongs to jets on instrument approach to Sea-tac. In other words, to get out of that airfield you have to fly underneath the 747s. Seattle is just one example, there's weird airspace like this that balances the needs of different users just about everywhere.

Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#196

Post by jessaustin »

leetcrew wrote: post #89
jakear wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d pay good money for a shotgun-like device that had power enough to take down the drones foreigners like to fly meters from my face videotaping me as I walk down the beach, but not powerful enough to be dangerous to use in such contexts.

hard to see how this could be legal. you don't get to destroy other people's stuff just because they are annoying you with it. even if what they are doing is not quite legal, you would probably end up on the wrong side of the law yourself.

If the "foreigners" are visitors to USA, they would face real difficulty getting the law interested in this sort of case. Perhaps other nations are more welcoming to obnoxious tech dudes?

Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#197

Post by sokoloff »

mike_d wrote: post #95
chrisdalke wrote: post #3

The final rule looks to be a big win for everyone who was protesting the original proposed rule: "The final Remote ID rule eliminates the requirement that drones be connected to the internet to transmit location data; the final rule requires drones to broadcasts remote ID messages via radio frequency broadcast." This is great because RF broadcast-based Remote ID is much simpler and cost-effective to integrate into ex…

It is extremely hypocritical in any form. At the same time that the FAA is asking hobbyists to broadcast identification, they are modifying the rules to allow the rich and famous to change their identifiers at will preventing any sort of public accountability. https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/equipadsb/privacy/

I’m a little surprised to see a “if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide” stance for private transport.

What is the argument why their vehicles should be trackable?

Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#198

Post by sokoloff »

heavyset_go wrote: post #162
bluescrn wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to spy on somebody, you don’t use a noisy buzzing drone right outside a window, or hovering in an otherwise empty sky. Even something as crude as a smartphone on a stick could be more covert. Surprised that even tech enthusiasts are often so fearful of drones while not worried about the hundreds of cameras already filming their activities in most public places.

> Surprised that even tech enthusiasts are often so fearful of drones while not worried about the hundreds of cameras already filming their activities in most public places. The cameras are also in neighborhoods, and if you have neighbors, you probably have several cameras pointing at your property, too. Ring cameras are everywhere, and since they upload to the cloud, their recordings are one request to Amazon away f…

What you can film from your doorbell camera location is of much less concern to me than what you can film hovering outside my window.

Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#199

Post by leetcrew »

ohazi wrote: post #193
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teslas turn off regenerative breaking if you charge too far, but the car tells you that pretty prominently: however, the car handles very differently without Regen brakes.

I guess that's easier and cheaper than adding a circuit to keep regenerative braking on, but dump the energy into a big resistor...

that would be an unnecessarily complicated way of reimplementing friction brakes.

Re: FAA issuing new rules to allow drones to fly over people and at night

#200

Post by dheera »

on_and_off wrote: post #128
rkagerer wrote: post #78

Even though I don't fly over people, I retrofitted a parachute onto my DJI drone just in case. It automatically deploys if the drone loses power or control. It doesn't impact flight characteristics or battery life by much. I feel like a basic safety like this would be a prudent and more effective measure for overhead flights than self-transmitting "license plates" (which I agree are at least better than the silly int…

I am always stunned that many (most/all) of these high tech gadgets lack a LOT of safety features. I would pay extra for a drone with such safeguards. just the prospect of less chances of ruining it would be enough. Similarly, eskates often have a regenerative battery charging while braking which is a great idea. but it also cannot handle charging while already full. So if you go down a slope while the board is full,…

> I am always stunned that many (most/all) of these high tech gadgets lack a LOT of safety features.

Exactly. I would also expect a drone to have triple redundundancy of all sensors but they seem to have only one copy of each.

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