Continuing the discussion from Need help in ground station to rocket model communication:
Are they like Canada's where they'll fine you for a fart in a fan factory?
The regulatins in the "good west" were forced into beeing ~ 2014, when the EU decided they need the airspace < 150m for their drone-wargames - same story as in US+Canada (where that "great" regualations originate). Didn't turn out that the "good western drones" stand a chance against "bad putin drones" and "crappy china drones" though 
1 Like
May be operator error. For all the safety regs here in Canada, now they're including hobby RC planes and such who have a virtually perfect safety record since the hobby is very good about exercising common sense regarding where to fly, such as at model aerodromes.
The only significant, reportable incident in Canada, even under all the regs, was when the York Regional Police Department took it upon themselves to practice their police droning - get this - without permission at Buttonville Airport just outside Toronto, Ontario.
It's a smaller airport, private planes and such; nevertheless, the "pilot" of the York Police drone, without authorization, flew beyond visual line of sight, failed to maintain adequate communications with his spotter, failed to yield to other aircraft and their drone was hit by a Cessna as it was approaching the runway to land (since the Cessna pilot couldn't see it - it was under the nose of the cockpit). Cessna pilot completely not at fault. You can't make this stuff up!
Don Joyce (respected member of Canada's responsible drone community) explains (plus you can see the damage):
https://youtu.be/GCvf-N6q64o?feature=shared
Don't fall for the propaganda. There never were security issues neither with rc planes nor "drones". These were "invented" when the "good guys" decided to take over lower airspace. I participated in EU stakeholder "meetings" at that time - the "good gues" said plain face they wanted to be bribed. The "good guys" incidentally included a romanian MEP who's "family" was associated with a drone-company-funding scandal at that time ... well, you'll find it in the internet archive from 2016 if you are interested in the details.
You're preaching to the choir, friend. I agree with you. I saw two colleagues build their career off my initial work in the field since they are friends with the decision makers and I am just a scrub. I built three tele operated "robots" to task for the company as prototypes and met nothing but endless questions related to things that simply weren't pertinent to my stated use cases for each machine (including a hexacopter on their insistence of joining the drone bandwagon).
The company opted with a particular vendor of a particular brand of drones instead, which to date have failed to return on the time/price/opportunity cost investment relative to their revised operational goals. They did have a flyaway though (with no damage to persons or property). And those colleagues did pad their CVs and get the significant increase in salary.
The video I linked to before; however, isn't propaganda. It actually happened. I linked it because it's almost comically ironic (no injuries, just property damage) that the same class of government agencies, for all their game-rigging and gladhanding, were the ones to fail despite the impositions on regular, responsible hobbyists.
They also managed to shut down someone's epic Christmas lights display since the music was broadcast for passers by on a low powered (church radio), open FM frequency (91.5MHz or something like that) and the authorities thought it too close (3 miles or so) to another smaller airport (who weren't the complainant and reportedly weren't even aware of the broadcast since they are far off that frequency for their air traffic).
I split this interesting discussion out to a dedicated topic since it was quite tangential to subject of the original topic.
Carry on.
2 Likes
Grave consequences with frequency conflict. You can't just hope it doesn't happen.
I think times have changed to the point that we can't rely on this type of behavior anymore. Once upon a time model airplanes were expensive and you only flew them if you were into flying and probably wanted to protect your investment.
Nowadays stupid people can get rich by doing stupid things that get people hurt and posting the videos online. As long as that's a thing that society tolerates then we're going to have to lock down the dangerous toys.
Fair point. Sometimes I forget that I'm in the business of people acting without thinking things through or simply being careless. Not all the time, life happens, but certainly much of the time.
... and no regulation whatever could prevent stupid people doing stupid things - just look at car traffic. Problem is, as the "green" got more influnce so did the "regulations-are-imortant-even-when-you-do-not-see-the-greater-good-of-it" fraction. Might be, that these 2 fractions are in deed one fraction. What we are seeing now in "the golden west" is a decline in innovation. Obedience has never sprouted great minds.
The word you're looking for is "faction"
That is correct. Nothing can ever eliminate it completely. But it is a logical fallacy to think that means that no regulation or rule is good. It really depends on the situation. But I think the number of people hurt in YouTube stunts is directly reduced by the fact that there are penalties for that sort of thing.
That's not driven by regulation. That's caused by the decline in education and the rise in anti-intellectualism. Which was itself in part driven by people who didn't understand why there should be regulations stopping them from doing stupid things that hurt other people. Things like starting a bank and then betting everyone's money on the riskiest investments.
1 Like
lol ... definitly 