I’d been wondering about this. We just bought one (small one, for a hundred bucks at Fry’s), and we certainly have no plans for it to go out of line of sight, or the neighborhood, but I need to look up whether it needs to be registered, legally.
7 thoughts on “Easing Drone Restrictions”
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Pretty sure you don’t need to do anything Fed-wise as long as you’re not receiving any compensation (and staying under 400 feet). California though? No idea.
Just don’t get to enamored of your fancy drone technology, and beware of the planet’s indigenous inhabitants however primitive they might seem.
Cute ren faire drone clip
I have a DJI Tello. I read the regs at the time and it didn’t need to be registered.
Doodle Labs homepage shows flying drones and says “Licensed-band frequencies for international and government applications”, “4K video streaming from 10 km away,” mentions mesh networking, and shows industrial applications and military convoys. They make quite a lot of neat stuff.
I haven’t read the regulations but are they as bad as Canada?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDZAGJh8N-M
I fly a DJI Spark, which is a pretty small drone. The regulations on whether to register or not have changed multiple times since I got it. I have registered it, however. The main reason for doing that was that some of the state parks here in Utah ask you to have FAA registration in order to fly. I guess the current rule is if it weighs more 250 grams, you should register it. Some of my buddies with drones bigger than mine haven’t bothered.
This is pretty cool, though, for people who live closer to airports than I do. It used to be that the FAA would tell you to call the tower of the airport, which I guess became a big hassle for ATC people. Now you can (in theory) get approval in real-time through your app, where before you were not really supposed to fly. This hasn’t been an issue for me, as I haven’t wanted to fly close enough to an airport to be in restricted airspace. But I might want to someday, and this will be convenient. I already use AirMap anyway to check my airspace (it seems more reliable than the DJI app).
This is one of those situations where a little bit of licensing and regulation seems like a good thing, and the FAA has had a pretty light touch. Even a little drone like mine could be a serious risk to an aircraft, so anything they can do to make it easier to communicate who’s flying where seems like a good idea. On the other side of the issue, I’ve had at least one incident where a helicopter flew near an area where I was flying, and seemed to be below the legal limit (should always be 500′ above the surface or any structure/person/whatever.) I was below 200′ that time, following the rules carefully, so I assume I wouldn’t have been at fault if the helicopter pilot was breaking the rules, but it seems like if there was some way the pilot could be aware a drone was flying in the area he might take extra care to follow the rules.
Of course the government wants you to register your drone. So in a “national emergency” they can take it away from you.