Thanks for taking my comments in the spirit of constructive discussion....which is how I meant them.
First, there is "flying"....and then there is sending the bird up 600 feet or more...at night....in an urban area. The general accepted limit for all RC flying....which has been around for 4 decades or more....is, I believe, 400 feet. That is an all-world limit..to stay out of FAA airspace. In an urban environment...that is even more important. When more and more don't respect this....there WILL be massive legal ramifications.
Remember, it wasn't my intention to go 600 feet although I have a feeling I was closer to a grand. And you're right. Mistake or not, I would be guilty if I were tried on whatever existing law was broken.
Staying lower within the legal RC airspace solves one problem. Staying Under 200 feet AND in LOS flying starts to define where and what you can do in an urban environment. We all agree, there is no such thing as ZERO risk, and ANY flying of a bird subject to uncontrolled fly-aways has inherent risk, but there is a difference between flying over and within a field/park.... staying OVER unpopulated ground risking a fly-away only as out-of-control....and sending the bird WAY up and out over an densely populated environment...where you can lose control for MANY other reasons other that a fly-away (your flight is a prime example) and it is going to come down uncontrollably.
I've had more close calls while flying in parks than flying over my own house. Of course by park...I mean a playground where football and other sports are played. I can go to the most remote part of any park and once that Phantom is at 100 feet, the whole **** football team is standing around me! As far as the fly aways go, unless you are a few MILES away from highways or people, a fly away would be the same in a park or over my roof.
In town, I put her up over a field and stay there...over the field. I have had one sudden malfunction and had the bird suddenly drop....hitting the field. Things happen. Murphy's Law. You have to respect that.
This guy Murphy sounds like a "glass half empty" kind of guy!
I don't think the FAA, or ANY judge is going to sympathize that you don't have any areas within 500 miles where you can really let her go and do the crazy fun things that these things are capable of. RC fixed wing flyers solved this problem years ago by banding into clubs, communally buying a rural field away from radio interference, and flying in a controlled fashion, by club rules, safely, INSURED, within their controlled environment.
I hear ya but this is a new age. For every one person that flies on communal property, there are THOUSANDS flying in urban parks and subdivisions. The genie is out the bottle and the only way to put it back in is to make and enforce RC laws. If the law says you can only fly at 200 feet and five miles from a major highway or populated area, then that is the law and we either follow or pay.
Training, vetting, licensing, insuring, all those things are or will be on the table as we move forward. All you have to do is read this forum for a month to realize how many people are simply going out and buying a bird, NOT reading the manual or anything else of importance, and just sending the thing UP...and then wondering why it crashed. It has nothing to do with my money...or lack thereof...or your money...or lack thereof. It has to do with public safety and common sense.
Training, vetting, licensing, and insuring IS about MONEY or lack thereof. Throw that into the cost of an entry level quad and suddenly you cut out a large percentage of quad owners. So then it will be only the people that can afford and put the time in for training, licensing and insurance would be flying....those with money fly, those that lack money walk. As far as "vetting" is concerned, how much vetting do you want our government to do? What criteria would you want a person to meet before being able to "apply" to fly? Vision, hearing, mental capacity, previous arrests and/or convictions, migraines, dizzy spells, highest level of education...etc.
I am NOT advocating governmental blanket control, although I see that coming and as inevitable. The RC plane flyers have been able to co-exist WITHOUT triggering that kind of control for 40 decades by SELF-POLICING and common problem solving and THAT is what I am advocating. The more we debate the issues and set our own rules...the less likely some agency will set them for us. I Guarantee you will have more freedom under a set of flying rules set by experienced RC multi-copter flyers.
RC planes that have been flown over the last 40 years did not need policing because of the nature of that model. These dinosaurs were not "lit up" quads that you could see at 1500 feet with the naked eye. They HAD to fly low and close. And I can tell ya, it is a very, very, very, very small percentage of quad flyers that are willing to fly a $1200 quadcopter equipped with a Gopro and FPV in a 100 foot circle, 75 feet off the ground!
