P3 scrutiny from the FAA and the NTSB From Tahoe Ed

There was a huge front page story on drones in the Sacramento Bee yesterday, discussed the pro's and con's and was fairly well balanced, but did list several cases of drones invading the controlled airspace around fires. If you fly a drone around a forest or grass fire you need your *** kicked, you are putting lives in danger as that airspace is chock full of air tankers, smoke jumpers, helicopter spotters and news copters, all in communication with a controller. In California a drone invading the area around a fire will cause the grounding of those air tankers, with all kinds of ripple effects. And if they catch you (just a matter of time) just hand them your wallet. There is already a bill introduced in the Senate to address this and pass on the cost of grounding the tankers to the drone pilot, man that could ruin your whole day.
I was just in Southern California where they had a big fire a little over a week ago. They had to ground all air tankers and helicopters because some idiot was flying his drone trying to get footage. Most of us use our heads and THINK about what we're doing and the possible negative effects if we do something stupid- it's the others who push logical limits who are helping limit our freedom of flight by giving lawmakers reasons to ground us!
 
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I was just in Southern California where they had a big fire a little over a week ago. They had to ground all air tankers and helicopters because some idiot was flying his drone trying to get footage. Most of us use our heads and THINK about what we're doing and the possible negative effects if we do something stupid- it's the others who push logical limits who are helping limit our freedom of flight by giving lawmakers reasons to ground us!
Been that way from the beginning. There has always been a "that guy".

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I was just in Southern California where they had a big fire a little over a week ago. They had to ground all air tankers and helicopters because some idiot was flying his drone trying to get footage. Most of us use our heads and THINK about what we're doing and the possible negative effects if we do something stupid- it's the others who push logical limits who are helping limit our freedom of flight by giving lawmakers reasons to ground us!

To be fair, that probably wasn't anyone here:

Authorities could not figure out who was flying the drone or where it returned to. It was a fixed-wing type of plane, described as orange or red and about 4 feet wide.
 
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There was a huge front page story on drones in the Sacramento Bee yesterday, discussed the pro's and con's and was fairly well balanced, but did list several cases of drones invading the controlled airspace around fires. If you fly a drone around a forest or grass fire you need your *** kicked, you are putting lives in danger as that airspace is chock full of air tankers, smoke jumpers, helicopter spotters and news copters, all in communication with a controller. In California a drone invading the area around a fire will cause the grounding of those air tankers, with all kinds of ripple effects. And if they catch you (just a matter of time) just hand them your wallet. There is already a bill introduced in the Senate to address this and pass on the cost of grounding the tankers to the drone pilot, man that could ruin your whole day.
Another scare tactic by a Californian (You know the Government please control me state) Or wait was it the sue me state and cant remember
 
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Another scare tactic by a Californian (You know the Government please control me state) Or wait was it the sue me state and cant remember
Really dude. Get a grip. People flying over wildfires when there are air drops going on are the problem. One stupid person is costing tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars when aircraft get grounded.
 
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Maybe this is why people are complaining about lack of distance with the latest firmware update. .. maybe the faa is applying pressure to dji to limit distance. ..
 
I know that in high power rocketry they are self regulated... to get an enging higher than a g you need to be licensed by NAR or tripli... maybe this need to be done in our hobbie
... so we too can become our own worst enemy
 
Geez, they do a lot of posting over there. Their P3 section is 1693 pages long with about 20 of those added in the last 24 hours.
I'm not getting the RC Groups format. Are the P3 posts there more or less under the one thread, for every subject?

Yes, that's one thing I've always disliked about RCGroups; they generally use single threads as an entire sub-forum because discussion on ALL quads are under 'Multi-rotor talk' instead of having a product-specific or at least DJI-specific sub.

When I was following some Inspire stuff, you'd refresh the page to get 'a few' new posts, but then realize you're now four pages behind. It's exhausting. :)
 
Maybe this is why people are complaining about lack of distance with the latest firmware update. .. maybe the faa is applying pressure to dji to limit distance. ..

The channel reduction had nothing to do with that. It's more about requiring licensing in some areas to use he additional frequencies that were turned off in the more recent versions of the app.
 
Yes, that's one thing I've always disliked about RCGroups; they generally use single threads as an entire sub-forum because discussion on ALL quads are under 'Multi-rotor talk' instead of having a product-specific or at least DJI-specific sub.

When I was following some Inspire stuff, you'd refresh the page to get 'a few' new posts, but then realize you're now four pages behind. It's exhausting. :)

I don't care for regroups format either. It is just one big monster thread. Very impractical for finding things and easy reading. Not good at all in my opinion. That's why I find myself pretty much exclusively on Phantom Pilots.
 
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I don't care for regroups format either. It is just one big monster thread. Very impractical for finding things and easy reading. Not good at all in my opinion. That's why I find myself pretty much exclusively on Phantom Pilots.
yes, that forum gives me headache every time I go to it
 
Awww, how cute. They have a picture of a DJI-like quadcopter when in actuality we are talking about a mysterious red or orange fixed wing vehicle with a 3-4 ft wingspan that probably belongs to scientists or emergency services, if it was a drone at all...and one with incredible range in a forest, unless some consumer drone operator is actually placing his/her body close to a wildfire, in which case Darwin will probably work his magic. They never found the operator because, assuming it was a drone at 12000 ft altitude, they were far far away because it wasn't a consumer drone at all. Not that I expect pilots to be any better at identifying drones than they were enemy aircraft kills in WWII (we ended up installing gun cameras for a reason). The true enemy is misinformation and this is a perfect example, a far bigger enemy than idiots crashing their drones into trees on Youtube.
 
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Yesterday Tahoe Ed from RC-Groups informed the P3 forum that they have been visited by the FAA and the NTSB at DJI Offices were he works.

What were they looking for?
Quote:" 333 exemptions and the license to operate in a controlled air space. We had the former but not the latter. That was an issue for our vendor. We were teathered at 8' and they had objections. I just wanted to let our users know that they are getting serious about drones. Especially about public displays." End Quote

Seeing posts I reached the 5 Miles limit or I hit 400 feet today on this site, one mite want to keep bragging rights on the low.

It seems the P3 is under scrutiny being one of the more advanced public saturated quads currently on the market.

This is similar to the Facebook deletions but is hitting closer to the more advanced forums like DJI Pilots and RC-Groups.

If you're going to post something make sure it's correct. This was about flying at comic-con, nothing more nothing less. Ed doesn't work at any office, he is a telecommuter. This is how rumors are started, please quote the complete post so thing do not get taking out of context, like your post!
 
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c

If you're going to post something make sure it's correct. This was about flying at comic-con, nothing more nothing less. Ed doesn't work at any office, he is a telecommuter. This is how rumors are started, please quote the complete post so thing do not get taking out of context, like your post!

Thanks for clearing that up. We appreciate the "rest of the story" as Paul Harvey would say.

In defense of the original poster, however, the only thing left out of the original post was that there have been several visits that happened over the last two weeks. The exact posting appears below. Nothing is mentioned about Comic-Con or any other details. About 10 pages later, he did post that he thought hobbyists had little to worry about.

"Guys, just an FYI DJI as come under some scrutiny from the FAA and the NTSB. I would be cautious when posting video with your DJI craft. I cannot say that you will be targeted but it is possible. We have been visited several times in the last two weeks. I don't want you to get in trouble."
 
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Thanks for clearing that up. We appreciate the "rest of the story" as Paul Harvey would say.

In defense of the original poster, however, the only thing left out of the original post was that there have been several visits that happened over the last two weeks. The exact posting appears below. Nothing is mentioned about Comic-Con or any other details. About 10 pages later, he did post that he thought hobbyists had little to worry about.

"Guys, just an FYI DJI as come under some scrutiny from the FAA and the NTSB. I would be cautious when posting video with your DJI craft. I cannot say that you will be targeted but it is possible. We have been visited several times in the last two weeks. I don't want you to get in trouble."

Thanks Paul

Nothing in the original post was out of context.
 

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