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drone police ban?

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I do agree with the OP, I think we should have a sticky with the general rules and link the official links (if possible) with the official rules and mod should refer to that sticky.
That way we avoid having interpretations that can be misleading one way or another.
 
Thumbswayup I'm for it .
Lately it seems to be getting worse , sometimes I wonder where people get their info. I'm more of a casual observer here , I've been here a while and I read nearly every intelligent post , and see lots of false information being disseminated . One of the biggest debates is the FAA reg. process for hobbyist intentions.

This should be given some thought , & maybe some iron-clad factual guidance per legalities , requirements, expectations & rules , as a sticky.
 
Sorry Stratos !
I didn't mean to closely resemble some of your remarks, you obviously hit "post reply" as I was still composing my reply.
 
The rules are simple and easy to find . I really don't see why people have a hard time understanding them .

Getting Started

Must ALWAYS yield right of way to manned aircraft
Must keep the aircraft in sight (visual line-of-sight)
UAS must be under 55 lbs.
Must follow community-based safety guidelines
Must notify airport and air traffic control tower before flying within 5 miles of an airport

The "Must follow community-based safety guidelines" refers to the long standing RC community (AMA) guidelines . Under 400' , don't fly over people etc ...
 
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The rules are simple and easy to find . I really don't see why people have a hard time understanding them .

Getting Started

Must ALWAYS yield right of way to manned aircraft
Must keep the aircraft in sight (visual line-of-sight)
UAS must be under 55 lbs.
Must follow community-based safety guidelines
Must notify airport and air traffic control tower before flying within 5 miles of an airport

The "Must follow community-based safety guidelines" refers to the long standing RC community (AMA) guidelines . Under 400' , don't fly over people etc ...
I also like the idea of one place to go that is accurate. There is some interpretation that naturally can vary....like if the AMA is the community based guidelines to use, or your local community and park rules. Just to point out the potential misunderstandings, the AMA 400' you quoted applies only within 3 mi. of an airport. See how easy it is to get it misinterpreted?
 
I did make and effort to start a post of these rules. I started a thread in the Mavic Pro Help Forum called "FAA Rules and Regulations Posted Here". Could be a good starting point?
 
Strafes post is really good. I think maybe a sticky of it if these forums allow that.
 
I think we should stop banning things that we find uncomfortable. The mods already put things back to civil discourse where appropriate.

When I was young it was always, "well I guess it's a free country..." Now everyone jumps to "there should be a law against that." You do you. Let others have their say. Laws are always up for interpretation and this is a forum for discussion.
 
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I half meant this as a joke but when so many threads are ruined with the senseless bickering about what is legal and what isn't by a bunch of ill informed judgemental people who's only real purpose on here is criticize others something should be done. Take a look at all the posts by some of the self appointed drone police. I did. all you have to do is click their alias then click on the number next to the word messages. All you will see are posts harping on people about how they fly and where they fly when the laws they quote saying these folks are wrong aren't even right. Sorry for the soap box and yes, I agree we shouldn't ban things we find uncomfortable but maybe after several warnings they will desist from this annoying behavior. Why should a vocal few ruin the forums? If not, its ok....the ignore feature works too :)
 
Thumbswayup I'm for it .
Lately it seems to be getting worse , sometimes I wonder where people get their info. I'm more of a casual observer here , I've been here a while and I read nearly every intelligent post , and see lots of false information being disseminated . One of the biggest debates is the FAA reg. process for hobbyist intentions.

This should be given some thought , & maybe some iron-clad factual guidance per legalities , requirements, expectations & rules , as a sticky.

So he other day I got into an argument in another forum with a nazi drone police, the underlying bottom line was:

a) he has never own a drone and doesnt understood what can or can the drones do
b) he was a commercial / recreational pilot . - they dont want drones to put their live on risk (fair enough!) and as weird as it might sound also dont want to have less people hiring (tourist). Flying drones is a cheap an convenient for tourist to avoid paying high fees on a tourist flights to take pictures and videos.
c) There is also a sense of ownership of airspace.
e) His biggest concern was also privacy, so I told him if his passenger could take pictures onboard his aircraft, and he said yes. Well I told them, im pretty sure you dont fly 10 metter above anyones backyard and your passenger wont take pictures of them. So as long as privacy is taken into account air photography shouldnt be cause of concerns if its not doint it maliciously
 
This forum has a serious lack of sticky threads.

I agree about the regulations and I think we needs Stickies on.

"USA Rules and Regulations"

"What To Do If Your Drone Is Lost"

"DJI GO4 Settings"

"Proper Way To Update Your Firmware"

"Gimbal Care"

I think if we had these 5 stickies and the Mods left them open for a month and then cleaned them up and locked them. We could eliminate half of the redundant questions and arguments.

Rob
 
All members who join this forum agree to the terms provided to you at registration. One of those you agree to is rule #15 - Community Guidelines
While we always promote safe flying and discourage members from unsafe and/or reckless flying we are not the FAA or the drone police, nor should we be. There are many different regulations in many different lands across the globe and we couldn't possibly enforce them all. We will leave that to the proper authorities in their respective countries. Even in the USA the rules are constantly changing in many municipalities and the FAA site is the only place to get the correct information if you live in the US, if you can decipher it, as that is also changing as we move forward in the drone times we live in.

So please, read the rules here in the link I posted so you can better understand them. Please, do not try to memberate others, use the report button when you see a rule violation.
 
We could eliminate half of the redundant questions and arguments.

Probably not, since people tend to post their questions without searching for previous posts or reading stickies. It would, though, probably eliminate a lot of duplicate replies by being able just to point to the sticky in a reply.
 
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The rules are simple and easy to find

Agreed, as long as "the rules" are those for a single country - the USA. Not every country makes them easy to find, nor are they simple everywhere.

I really don't see why people have a hard time understanding them

I don't think the problem is understanding the words so much as interpreting them and figuring out if and how they're going to be applied to oneself in a given situation. Reasonable people (here, for example) disagree about whether these "guidelines" published by a regulatory agency can be enforced as regulations.

If you get arrested because a law enforcement officer thinks you've committed a violation by flying at a greater altitude than 400 feet or out of visual line-of-sight, you're going to incur significant cost and inconvenience. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not sure there's clear case law here. Even if you find a sympathetic judge (let's say, in Maine where you were on vacation from Arizona) who finds in your favor, that doesn't mean you'll avoid paying for your transportation back there months later when your hearing is. As much as some people seem to think cops simply love when people argue their pet theories about why some rule doesn't apply to them, such arguments nearly always just make things worse.

That's in some countries. In others, the legal system is very different and you're not going to have a presumption of innocence. There may be notaries or other judicial officials involved whose very role involves expressing their personal opinion of what the law is and what it means.
 
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Agreed, as long as "the rules" are those for a single country - the USA. Not every country makes them easy to find, nor are they simple everywhere.



I don't think the problem is understanding the words so much as interpreting them and figuring out if and how they're going to be applied to oneself in a given situation. Reasonable people (here, for example) disagree about whether these "guidelines" published by a regulatory agency can be enforced as regulations.

If you get arrested because a law enforcement officer thinks you've committed a violation by flying at a greater altitude than 400 feet or out of visual line-of-sight, you're going to incur significant cost and inconvenience. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm not sure there's clear case law here. Even if you find a sympathetic judge (let's say, in Maine where you were on vacation from Arizona) who finds in your favor, that doesn't mean you'll avoid paying for your transportation back there months later when your hearing is. As much as some people seem to think cops simply love when people argue their pet theories about why some rule doesn't apply to them, such arguments nearly always just make things worse.

That's in some countries. In others, the legal system is very different and you're not going to have a presumption of innocence. There may be notaries or other judicial officials involved whose very role involves expressing their personal opinion of what the law is and what it means.
Police in the USA will not be arresting anyone over drone use unless what you are doing applies to regular laws. The police are not trained to do the job of FAA agents... they have been informed to deter, detect, immediately investigate, and, as appropriate, pursue enforcement actions to stop unauthorized or unsafe UAS operations. The NTSB would probably be the governing body for FAA violations.

SOURCE: https://www.faa.gov/uas/resources/law_enforcement/media/FAA_UAS-PO_LEA_Guidance.pdf
 
Police in the USA will not be arresting anyone over drone use unless what you are doing applies to regular laws. The police are not trained to do the job of FAA agents... they have been informed to deter, detect, immediately investigate, and, as appropriate, pursue enforcement actions to stop unauthorized or unsafe UAS operations. The NTSB would probably be the governing body for FAA violations.

SOURCE: https://www.faa.gov/uas/resources/law_enforcement/media/FAA_UAS-PO_LEA_Guidance.pdf

Perhaps it's not appropriate for them to arrest drone flyers, but they've certainly already done it. Perhaps FAA personnel do arrest people, but for the most part they're not on patrol in parks, on city streets, or most of the other places where local law enforcement operates. I agree local police aren't trained to do what FAA officials do. That's actually central to the point I was trying to make.

"Arrest" doesn't mean the same thing as "charge" or "lock up", but people have been charged by local law enforcement in the US. I'm completely certain that I didn't specify that local police would be enforcing or interpreting laws and rules correctly. In fact, I wrote about by belief that officers go by what they think the rules are, even if they're wrong.

When I was a kid my dad was Chief Appellate Defense Counsel for the US Air Force. He later went on to become Chief Judge of the USAF First Circuit Court. He started off in the JAG, so was a prosecutor for much of his career. I once asked about something police had been reported as having done that struck me as wrong: "Dad, they can't do that, can they?" His response: "Of course they can. They have guns." His point was that there's a big difference between being able to do something, especially if you carry a badge of authority, and whether that thing is proper to do.
 
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