The drone community is going to kill drone use

...and more bad press for drones: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...act-recovers-drone-stuck-on-115000-volt-line/

A drone stuck in a power line over Lake Union’s Mallard Cove for nearly a week came down Saturday, at a cost of nearly $35,000to Seattle City Light.
The drone had become a nuisance to the houseboat tenants in Mallard Cove because of a loud buzzing it created hanging off the 115,000-volt transmission line — and it also decreased the efficiency of the line, said Seattle City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen.
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Government regulation, the enduring fantasy.

Government regulation, the enduring fantasy.

Darren Levine said:
I'm only a few flights in on my phantom 3, and loving every second of it. Being the diligent fellow that i am, i read over the manual several times, looked at all the tutorials, advice, suggestions, etc.. of the phantom/drone community to get my novice flying self ready to fly

In doing so, i joined the DJI forum.

Wow.

The FAA regulations cannot, i repeat CANNOT come soon enough. Granted there are many well minded flyers who fly responsibly and within the rules, but it's the wingnuts showing off their illegal, unsafe shots which will lead to harsher regulations or even the end of public drone use.

Excuses, entitlement, justifications(but it's pretty!), etc.. etc... Some of these folks seem decent enough, but tell them that they were irresponsible/illegal/ignorant and they just flip the 'i have the right to do what i want with my drone' switch.


Good lord i just needed to get that off my chest in here, the sane forum
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Gee, I dunno. Have regulations eliminated self justifiying, entitled and ignorant driving ,wing nuts, illegal and unsafe driving when it comes to automobile operation? A typical year in the U.S. brings 40,000 ( give or take) deaths on roadways...

There are ways to increase safety and regulate through other means, but I suspect the FAA's agenda will be far more focused on collecting taxes from the typical and small commercial user, all the while limiting airspace except for it's privileged friends and interests. Already CNN (among others) is being green-lighted for drone implementation. They and the other captive/court media will be given preferential treatment, all the while many will be shut out of drone use for anything other than backyard entertainment. Do you really think RT.com will be given the treatment CNN is receiving?

It's the same old, same old story. Any new technology that helps to free the individual , the newcomer to the market place, stirs the alarm bells of the powers that be. The genie has got to be put back in the box. Regulation is the weapon of choice.

Crossbows, repeating rifles, cryptography, the Internet, small scale energy production (solar) bitcoins and drones are the genies of past and present. I for one am not optimistic about the use of drones for production or other small business uses. I'd love to be proven wrong- really I'd love to ....however the track record is tried and true. Disruptive technology must be not allowed to operate for the benefit of the commoner- well unless the govt. can get it's cut. It will be a hoop that many if not most will not be able to jump through.

... And Drones are certainly and wonderfully disruptive. :-)
 
P13 said:
Some very good points, the media are making drone hysteria to sell copy and as click bait for stories they publish, this week a UK newspaper, the Daily Mail, which seems to have a vendetta on drones, ran a story saying you can buy a zoom equipped drone for £30 and that burglars were using them to check out security systems and then rob houses, which is utter BS.

I've been looking into commercial insurance, there's only a couple of insurers offering this and they don't appear willing to sell just third party liability insurance (which is all you need legally), they insist on covering the copter rig too, but the excess works out about 50% of the price of the drone I wish to use, that's a really poor deal. The insurance itself is 20 times more expensive than the insurance a hobbyist can buy. With this in mind I understand why there are people that won't even bother going legit.
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Bingo. Nail, meet hammer. Totally agree. Drone hysteria, coming to a country near you.
 
Last night I could count at least 4 flying around the fireworks in Austin. All of them were flying over the large crowds at Auditorium Shores and the First St. bridge. Owners/operators are only making it worse on themselves for the future.

I'm waiting for Johnny law to get signal hijackers or jammers to be able to confiscate them from the air.
 
I find them to sound extremely annoying and intrusive. I recommend that they be flown only at model RC club flying fields and on/over your own property or where you have permission of the land owner to fly. I personally fly mine only on my friends 300 acre farm.
 
I've hired two drone operators to shoot the final, drive away into the sunset shot for my feature. First operator had a 1080p camera. The shot was great but not up to par with my 4K footage, so I hired someone with a 4k Phantom. The shot was going well until... well, you just have to see it...


This clip was corrupted when we recovered the drone, which now had a detached wiring harness. Found a service online that repaired the clip for $20.
 
Mark Williams said:
I find them to sound extremely annoying and intrusive. I recommend that they be flown only at model RC club flying fields and on/over your own property or where you have permission of the land owner to fly. I personally fly mine only on my friends 300 acre farm.
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300 acres? where I come from we call that a good start. I can fly over 1.5 miles on my property in a straight line. :)

None of my neighbors have even heard my P3, let alone seen it...
 
Mark Williams said:
I find them to sound extremely annoying and intrusive. I recommend that they be flown only at model RC club flying fields and on/over your own property or where you have permission of the land owner to fly. I personally fly mine only on my friends 300 acre farm.
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Meh. How intrusive or annoying a drone is depends HEAVILY on the area. A drone is going to be noticeable at a remote mountain lake... at a rock concert, not so much.

Unfortunately, getting useful footage with these things generally requires that they be out in the world in some way. There's not a lot of interesting footage to be had at an RC flying field... unless you're doing a documentary on model RC flying.

Personally, I find moving a huge production with cameras and tripods and actors and directors into an area to be FAR more intrusive and annoying than a Phantom flying around. I also find a lot of peoples' kids (and a lot of people too!) more annoying than a drone. I, of course, tolerate these things as a necessary part of living in a society with other people. Not sure why drones should be any different.

You have a lot of rights... "not being annoyed" isn't one of them.
 
Used by professionals on a set then there would be minimal impact on the general public. Used by the masses as they are being marketed then there are many potential problems.
 
Like I said, there are PLENTY of other things that are both noisier and more intrusive than a drone. Such is life while sharing this planet with others.
 
jbregar said:
Like I said, there are PLENTY of other things that are both noisier and more intrusive than a drone. Such is life while sharing this planet with others.
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Absolutely true, but...you're missing the bigger point. It's not the buzzing that's the issue since real helicopters make a lot more noise, it's that to most people it's non essential buzzing. That DJI Phantom3 is not flying a critically injured person to the hospital or tracking down a violent criminal. The jackhammer down the block is much louder, but since I'll need to drive on that street and use the water from the line they're fixing I'm not really going to get too annoyed. Such is life while sharing this planet. However, if my neighbor took up recreational jackhammering as a hobby, then yeah I'd be annoyed after a while. Add in the natural tendency to not like being spied on (i know, nobody's spying but average people still get that feeling regardless), and you can see why people start to dislike drones.
Remember those little motorcycles that were like a foot tall that you could ride around on from like ten years ago? They were really popular and now they're gone due mostly to being regulated away. People started to get annoyed by them and there was a little bit of a safety concern so then the laws (many of which were already on the books) started to make it not so much fun to ride with constantly getting ticketed by the cops. So many tickets and laws and the makers couldn't even sell them anymore. That could easily happen with personal remote control multi rotors.
Of course, I'm not saying I want that to happen but if drone pilots keep pulling crap like preventing firefighters from flying over wild fires it's looking more and more likely that it will happen.
 
I have to say... as a gun owner... this whole craze reflects very poorly on gun owners.

As a gun owner and a drone flyer, this makes me sad.
 
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