Drones may soon be required to be registered.

<p>So getting to fly your own drone and getting cool arial photos and video may be getting a little more complicated. Looks like the Federal Government is about to pass legislation to require those drones to be registered.<br>

<a href="http://time.com/4077341/drone-registration/">LINK</a> <a href="http://fortune.com/2015/10/16/drones-register-department-of-transportation/">LINK</a></p>

<p>I wonder if the regulation will include traditional RC planes, gliders, helicopters and jets. </p>

<p>There is much discussion about this, of course, in the RC community. I hesitate to comment without some more concrete information, but it appears - based on several stories so far - that they're talking about requiring every RC machine (whether a multi-rotor "drone," a model helicopter, or a fixed-wing model made from balsa wood and glue) to carry an FAA tail number, and to require every operator (recreational hobbyist or otherwise) to get federal paperwork involved. <br /><br />This is going to be an interesting challenge, considering how many such devices are torn apart and rebuilt from parts on a continual basis. Obviously this will do absolutely nothing to stop people who don't care about the law from doing something dangerous. It will do absolutely nothing to stop willfully ignorant people from being ignorant. It will in no way physically control machines ... not that that really matters, as a thousand other daily activities are actually far more dangerous to the public, compared to people taking landscape photos with a 3-pound plastic quadcopter. <br /><br />We'll see. One thing this certainly won't be is a "law," since we're not talking about the legislature, here. We're talking about regulatory action from the executive branch. It looks like they're getting around the ACTUAL law (passed by congress, and ignored by the administration) that requires the FAA to get off its rear end and pass some sensible rules while leaving recreational users alone ... and this new maneuver is going to be handled by the Department of Transportation directly. They already have their own police, and a framework to use local law enforcement to act on behalf of the feds. Hopefully congress will step in, here, and remind the administration that the willful bypassing of an actual law isn't going to be ignored.</p>

<p>From a discussion with a member of a local RC club I recently had, new drones could start to come with GPS no fly zones built into them. I did see this article. <a href="http://www.gizmag.com/dji-firmware-drones-white-house/35890/">LINK</a>. It wouldn't be hard to put airports and many other restricted zones into firmware.</p>

<p>Will the FAA start doing drone aircraft accident investigations? Maybe.</p>

<p>It is not the first time the government has enacted legislation to get a handle on technology. When Citizen Band radio came out people were required to get a CB License to use their CB radios. Of course that went away after there were millions of people using them, most who didn't bother with the requirement and the FCC did not have the resources to go after them all. We now have FRS radios (no license required), GMS (requires a license) and Marine Mobile Radio. Amateur Radio also requires operators to pass an FCC test to get a call sign. The Amateur Radio Service is very protective of their allotted frequencies, they do not want Amateur Radio to turn into another CB service and they are self policing with Official Observers who monitor the bands for good operating practice and transmission signal compliance. Amateur Radio has also become very involved with public service, local emergency management and strives to be a resource the government can call upon in times of national disaster.</p>

<p>The local RC club here also encourages good operating practice of remote aircraft. Who knows if eventually there will different classifications for RC aircraft, from toy to amateur/hobby to commercial as the quad-copters/multi-copter are fairly new and the government is playing catch up. The word drone does have a military connotation to it.</p>

<p>Is your kids Radio Shack toy helicopter really a drone? It may take a while until this all gets sorted out and common sense prevails.</p>

 

<p>Hmmm... It will be interesting to see how the FAA works drones into the Air Traffic Control system. It's not a new process, integrating new technology into existing regulatory systems that didn't anticipate the future. I remember reading about the era when "horseless carriages" first appeared on our streets and scared the crap out of both horses and riders. There were some local ordinances that required that automobiles be preceded by a person on foot, carrying a lantern to alert unsuspecting citizens. We know how well that sorted out in time, right?</p>

<p>Anyway, here's a lighter look at the subject:</p>

<p>http://www.gocomics.com/theothercoast</p>

<p>It's a start... Would like to see transponders (the technology is there) on board drones so they can be seen and identified via air traffic controllers.</p>

<p>Mark: The largest seller of both commercial and smaller hobby multirotors, DJI, has been including "geofencing" (GPS-based flight location and altitude limitations) in their software for some time now. You're already prevented from flying near airports or in other no-fly zones. Of course, this drives commercial operators crazy when they have FAA (and local ATC) permission to do something like shoot some pre-arranged low-altitude aerials of something like a construction project at or right near an airport. <br /><br />And, accident investigations? There really haven't been any accidents that involve real aircraft. The FAA has investigated some reckless operators, but most of what people think about - say, some guy shooting video at a public event and crashing into a tree that causes his machine to fall and hit somebody - are just simple cases of reckless endangerment, no different than dropping something out a window onto somebody's head. It's local cops and existing laws that deal with that just fine.<br /><br />The vast majority of RC operators - especially the small business types - are just like the Amateur Radio people you mention. They're very cautious, courteous, thoughtful people who don't want the government to step in and make things harder for everybody.<br /><br />As for classifications: congress passed a law (the same one that the administration has essentially ignored) which required the FAA to make this stuff clear earlier this year. They had years to work on it, and have been completely dragging their feet. Their deadline has passed, and here we see the administration using the DoT to simply get around the law's requirements. One of those requirements was that new regs leave the recreational operators alone. But if the administration uses DoT instead of FAA to unilaterally trot out new rules, then the legislatively mandated distinctions between things like commercial and recreational use (regardless of the size of the machine) are moot, because that law was about the FAA's responsibility, and didn't contemplate the DoT muscling in.</p>

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<p>Is your kids Radio Shack toy helicopter really a drone?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>According to the administration right now, yes, it is. More to the point, it's not about "drone," it's about unmanned aerial systems of any kind. So that includes the $30 toy helicopter, the $3,000,000 military device, and the 30-year-old, two-foot balsa wood and paper model of a Cessna. Yes, it will take time to sort out ... but congress gave the administration years to do it, and they've simply decided they didn't like the law, so they're ignoring it and doing what they'd prefer instead.</p>

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<p>Obviously this will do absolutely nothing to stop people who don't care about the law from doing something dangerous.</p>

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<p>This is a specious argument. By this logic, we would have no laws at all because there are people that don't care about the law. Why have laws against murder? There are people who are going to murder anyway and the law against murder won't stop people who don't care about the law. It's a fallacious argument.</p>

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<p>This is a specious argument.</p>

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<p>No, it's not. It's an observation of reality. Car registrations don't, for example, stop new teen drivers from being distracted, unskilled, or willing to take risks that aren't seen in more experienced drivers. A teen with his first multirotor is likewise not going to be any smarter because of the paperwork and the fee that's collected. The point is that feel-good, media-oriented regulations explicitly put in place to get around executive compliance with a very clear existing law will do <em>nothing</em> to prevent the sort of fantasy mayhem that we find people wringing their hands about. Unless you're talking about confiscation and prior restraint, such rules apply only to the people who respect them, as usual. This will have no impact on the malicious, delusional, or incurably stupid people who are always the problem.<br /><br />You're deliberately confusing behavior with objects. The law against murder is a law against an act, not against the car the murderer might use to run someone down, or the baseball bat one might use to beat them. We already HAVE federal laws in place that make interfering with aviation a serious federal felony. It doesn't matter if the person involved is using a hang-glider, model rockets, weather balloons, toy helicopters, grandpa's balsa RC model Cessna, or a kite. <em>The law is already there</em>, just like the ones against murder. Making little Johnny pay a fee so he can use his toy helicopter won't make him MORE liable for violating the space around an airport - that's already very, very illegal.</p>

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<p>You're deliberately confusing behavior with objects.</p>

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<p>I don't think so. I think I'm recognizing that acts utilize objects and both are significant in terms of our regulatory policies. </p>

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<p>The law against murder is a law against an act, not against the car the murderer might use to run someone down</p>

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<p>Vehicular homicide is a crime that, in general, involves the death of an individual other than the driver as a result of either criminally negligent or murderous operation of a vehicle. Statutes defining such crimes TIE the act with the object. </p>

<p>>>> The vast majority of RC operators - especially the small business types - are just like the Amateur Radio people you mention. They're very cautious, courteous, thoughtful people who don't want the government to step in and make things harder for everybody.</p>

<p>They're not "just like." Amateur Radio operators are licensed and have passed a difficult test establishing a wide breadth of technical proficiency as well as knowledge of FCC rules/regulations/penalties. It takes a lot of time. Ditto with commercial radio operators. Speaking from experience with both an advanced amateur radio license and a First Class commercial operator's license (expired).</p>

<p>Since the FCC strictly regulates public air waves, I see no reason why the FAA should not do the same with public air space.</p>

<p>Brad: I'm referring to their attitude and their interest in how everyone using that technology conducts themselves, in the interest in preserving the ability to use the technology themselves. It's the same sort of self-interest, and the people who are involved in the activity with that level of seriousness are very vocal about the behavior of people who don't play by the rules.</p>

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<p>I see no reason why the FAA should not do the same with public air space</p>

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<p>It already does. That's the point. The FAA already has jurisdiction, and the current law is that the FAA was required - after years of public input and research - to put into place a commerce- and recreation-friendly framework to incorporate unmanned systems into the airspace, and to define under which circumstances doing so was not necessary. A feature of that law was the explicit exemption from ANY further federal involvement of recreational users. The administration has chosen to ignore that law, and the political appointee running the agency chose to blow off the legally required deadline for action.<br /><br />The administration (in an "executive action" to avoid compliance with a plainly written law) is skipping over the FAA's mandate and doing and end-around through the DoT. As if your kid's toy helicopter is a form of transportation in keeping with the DoT's charter. It would be funny if it weren't such a grand example of the administration's disregard for the separation of powers. This isn't just some hair-splitting, here. This is willful law-breaking - certainly in spirit, and likely in letter. <br /><br />Imagine that congress passed a law requiring the FCC to establish new standards for use of a particular piece of spectrum by this day in 2017 - and that the use of the spectrum had to provide for (I'm making this up) special near-field exemptions for IoT devices (or whatever). And that the people at the top of the FCC food chain simply decided that they didn't like congress's law because they opposed, philosophically, the notion of providing for IoT devices. And so they simply ignored the law, and didn't do what congress required them to do. And then the administration, in order to avoid having to comply with the IoT requirement, started allowing the Department Of The Interior to issue new rules about the use of antennas on US soil and structures. Or the Department Of Transportation to issue new RF rules because, you know, some radios are mounted on vehicles. See how this works?</p>

<p>Matt, what you are not taking into account is that drone operators are not licensed and do not have to pass any kind of licensing test to demonstrate technical proficiency or awareness of FAA rules. Because of that, and their ease of use, the bar to the world of drone operation is essentially zero. At least with RC controlled planes there's a level of technical difficulty that dissuades the casual operator.</p>

<p>My neighbor across the street who may not any common sense with respect to flying or consequences can have a system delivered to his house by tomorrow, flying within an hour or so, and attempt to photograph emergency LifeFlight and other helicopters, interfere with California's air tanker wildfire suppression operations, commercial airlines, and on and on. These events have happened often enough to cause alarm. Are we waiting for a drone to be sucked into an engine at a critical time before action is taken?</p>

<p>Licensing raises the bar and is a good thing. Transponders would be next on my list.</p>

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<p>Matt, what you are not taking into account is that drone operators are not licensed and do not have to pass any kind of licensing test to demonstrate technical proficiency or awareness of FAA rules.</p>

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<p>Yes, exactly as the recently passed law requires. People who want to learn and recreationally enjoy the technology are protected by law from any further FAA UAS rule making. That's what makes this craven maneuver through the DoT so reprehensible. The law's recreational exemption does NOT exempt hobbyists from complying with the laws that everyone already has to follow with respect to controlled airspace regardless of what they're putting in the air ... a multirotor, a fixed-wing RC plane (which a total noob very much CAN get in the air in under an hour), an ultralight, etc.<br /><br />Those noobs are required to stay under 400' just like everyone else. They don't need transponders any more than hang-gliders do. Do you really think that someone operating a 3-pound quadcopter five feet above someone's second-story chimney for a look at the masonry needs a transponder to alert traffic at 1000+ feet? Or a flight plan? Really?</p>

 

<p>magically duplicated post removed!</p>

<p>I don't know if Airsoft regulations have been effective or remains controversial in the U.S.; its misuse can be as dangerous as RC things but I haven't heard much about it. </p>

I am frankly confused. I thought the FAA comes under the DOT. If the FAA or the head of DOT has not complied with rule making required by an act of Congress, I would expect the agency to be up before a committee in response to the community of recreational users. I admit I do not know what proposals have been floated to deal with the apparent increase in these craft and the potential for mishaps.

 

Sounds like analogous in a small way to when CB operators were coming in on my home wiring hi fi some years ago. RFI and I tried but could not insulate against it by myself. Minor complaint, but somehow the spectrum issue got resolved. Or the receivers got shielded. Something changed anyway.. Pretty sure it was by regulation. not just by transmitter operator altruism. Whatever comes out I got a feeling some committee will be on top of it. If they have time.

<p>Yes, Gerry, the FAA is sub-piece of the DoT. But the legislation that required the FAA to do their job by August past of this year was - as most bills are - very specific. It tasked <em>that agency</em> with the job. The fact that they didn't actually <em>do</em> that is a subject of much consternation in congress, but as you can imagine, it could take years of hearings and inter-branch suits before the courts could find the FAA at fault for failing follow the law, and then ... what? They'd be forced to eventually do what the law required? That would take forever, in court. The current administration and the agency's appointed director (Huerta) will be long gone by the time that comes around. <br /><br />In the meantime, it looks like the administration is coming at it with their own spin from outside the bounds of the law that congress passed. They can deploy the DoT's existing regulatory machinery and argue that a 3-pound plastic model is the same as a bass boat or a moped. Hopefully congress will rightfully grouse about the separation of powers issue, but you know how such things would drag out. </p>

<p>Both the FAA and the DOT are part of the executive branch of government, (FAA is part of DOT) so there is no separation of powers issue. The legislative branch, Congress, passed a statute that instructed the FAA to promulgate rules for the use of RC aircraft/drones and like many government agencies do all over the country, the FAA has apparently missed the deadline. I suspect that whatever the DOT proper does will just be an interim or stopgap solution until the FAA gets around to acting and implementing the new rules. Or the DOT could release rules under the auspices of the FAA and we would not know who wrote the rules. (Although the rulemaking process normally includes public hearings and comment periods for proposed rules. Maybe that is what the announcement Monday will cover.) I suspect the proposed rules will try to accomplish two things--establish clear limits and guidelines on where and when and how these things can be flown, so as not to interfere with manned aircraft and objects and living things on the ground. And secondarily, a registration system so that the people who break the rules can be tracked down and dealt with. The FAA is pretty strict regulating pilots and manned flight and typically does not tolerate rulebreakers very well.</p>

 

<p>Limiting drones around airports and having height restrictions seem reasonable. But typically, government over-regulates so expect heavy-handed rules that will become draconian. </p>

<p>Bob: the separation of powers issue comes from the legislative branch passing a law that says one thing, and the executive branch deliberately, purposefully blowing it off and doing something else. Asserting that the executive branch operates above the law. It's isn't just about the missed deadline, it's about the law's explicit instructions to the FAA to leave their hands off of recreational users. The administration doesn't feel like complying with that law, so they're ignoring it and doing what they think is politically expedient instead.<br /><br />As for establishing the clear limits? It's already been done (stay under 400', don't operate within 5 miles of an airport without making prior arrangements with ATC, etc, and people have already been fined for ignoring those rules). There's no need for redundant rules to tell people with RC aircraft they're not allowed to operate over an airport ... NOBODY gets to do that (with their hot air balloons, ultralights, model rockets, or anything else). It's been that way forever.<br /><br />And yes, Alan, those do seem like reasonable restrictions. Which is why <em>they're already in place. </em>Getting some kid to spend his allowance to register his remote control toy with the federal government will have no impact on the guy who wants to post witless anonymous daredevil drone flying videos on YouTube, to say nothing of somebody who actually wants to cause harm. There isn't a single form of trouble those people can cause that isn't already prosecutable under existing, very serious laws. And the largest manufacturers (by FAR) of these devices already serialize them and collect connected names and online IDs from users (there's no updating firmware, and in many cases no getting them to fly at all without doing so). The number of people who are willing and able to build these devices from low-level parts are going to grow rapidly - these are the people who recognize how silly it is to register a flying machine that, next week, will have been completely dismantled and turned into something else, and will again every week thereafter.<br /><br />The reason we haven't seen prosecutions for serious accidents involving these devices isn't for lack of yet more regulatory mechanisms in place, it's because despite literally <em>millions</em> of people people operating them across <em>hundreds of millions</em> of hours in the air, there haven't <em>been</em> any accidents of the type everyone's media-fueled-panicking about. Anywhere. In the entire world. A recent review of the FAA's blithely casual report on the reported number of "near misses" in controlled air space essentially completely debunked it, at least in terms of how it's been breathless regurgitated in the media.</p>

<p>You guys are reacting to the details of a set of documents that haven't been made available yet. If the regulations require registration of recreational use drones that are capable of being operated without line of sight, that's entirely within the FAA's instructions under the statute, which only exempts noncommercial use in line of sight of the operator. That's also the sort of detail that always gets left out of news reports, which are written by people who are not experts in either the subject matter or the law.</p>

<p>As expected, the announcement was eye-rollingly opaque, and the officials working on their new program couldn't answer a raft of very simple questions from the attending press. It looks, though, like it will target recreational users of not just so-called "drones" but <em>anything</em> that "flies in the air space" - so, indeed, hobbyists with a garage full of hand-built models will have to retro-actively pay fees and register their models or face targeting from the DoT, who said they would indeed be targeting people who don't comply. Long-time hobbyists, many of whom have dozens of models they've been flying for 60 years, aren't going to be thrilled about their new relationship with the DoT police. <br /><br />Despite the lack of details, or of any recourse through the federal rule-making process, they expect to have this in place very shortly. Asked how, they said they would be treating it like an emergency. Which is odd, since people have been flying things like this in the air space for decades, and we've had no accidents involving other aircraft. Emergency? Where was their sense of urgency in mustering that sort of hustle to meet their legally mandated August deadline? Right - they didn't like the law, so that isn't urgent. In fact, they're just going to pretend it doesn't exist.</p>

Actually it looks like the rules have not yet been adopted and they're working on it with input from industry etc.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/10/19/source-require-registration-drones-help-track-operators-who-flout-

safety-rules/7co4uDrxvXmyu5u1znQ5dN/story.html

 

This is what happens when you read alarmist reports on events that haven't actually happened yet.

<p>This reminds me of the FCC license I paid for my hand-held walkie talkies I used while hiking. I think it was for 8 years. It's lapsed but I haven't re-filed. Most people just bought these thigns and used them and never got a license because it was just stupid and unenforceable. So we'll have another law on the books that won't be enforced. The government will hire all these enforcers who will retired from the government with a good pension. Hey, that's good for them.</p>