Maybe I'm not up to speed on the rules but if you're not flying for compensation, how could you be in violation of anything in this case? Would the FAA be operating by the letter of the law or the spirit of the law?
I can fully understand your point of view and how this can be (
it IS) confusing. Some of us have been playing in this sand box a long time and it can still get confusing with the grey areas and inconsistencies we see throughout the "System".
Every UAS Operator is, by default, operating in a
CIVIL (
we are excluding Public Use operations as that just muddies the water) manner. Civil can be Industrial, Search & Rescue, Volunteer efforts, Education/Instruction, and does also include Commercial (
Commercial does not strictly mean exchange of money). Just don't think of Part 107 as COMMERCIAL because it encompasses so much more. I believe the FAA allowed it to be loosely defined as Commercial Flights just because the vast majority of the uproar over Section 333 requirements was for those of us who wanted to indeed MAKE MONEY with our UAS. So they simply took the easy road and called it or allowed us to call it (
incorrectly so)
Commercial Operations.
If you do everything by the book for Part 101 (
Hobby) operations then you fit into the HOBBY box. Hobby Operations were carved out of Civil Operations mandated by the US Congress in 2012. This special section/group carries protection from any new laws/rules created by the FAA (
so long as the flight does NOT pose a significant safety threat to manned aircraft). The caveat here, and it's not been tried in court yet, is that if at any time your flight does not fit perfectly inside that nice neat box called HOBBY then it automatically defaults to Part 107. It's like playing the board game OPERATION. If your "instrument" touches any portion of the perimeter while you are operating you hear and feel the
GRRRRRRRR and you killed em LOL!
In order to be a hobby flight you have to be following the HOBBY "guidelines" to a T. One of these is that the flight is purely recreational in nature and only pertains to YOU. If you are doing the flight to create something to promote, notate, document or anything that is not hobby and to you then you've hit the perimeter of Part 101 and should hear that
GRRRRRRR sound. Welcome to Part 107 regulations.
The OP is purely doing this (
and I think it's a great thing BTW) to document safety violations of a company in order to report these violations. It's not a Commercial endeavor at all but it IS a CIVIL endeavor and would resort back to Part 107 operational regulations.
IMHO the letter of the law and the spirit of the law are one and the same here. When these "guidelines" were carved out by the FAA I think they (FAA) had an idea of what might be on the horizon and carved these rules out begrudgingly and very specifically. They did what they were told to do but they did it in a way to "allow" them to have potential for regulation more than Congress wanted. Keep in mind this mandate was designed to protect the small R/C flying clubs around the nation from being affected by new rules etc. We had an amazing safety record of decades with minimal incidents and no manned aircraft taken out of the sky. This was before GYRO stabilization and GPS positioning built into the aircraft that allows for autonomous flight controls and pure Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL). We had to learn to fly the aircraft and if we failed in that respect it simply fell out of the sky in a matter of a few moments and in field or something. Almost all R/C flights were at an R/C airstrip usually out away from people, houses, businesses, and AIRPORTS. Now the aircraft can auto takeoff, land, fly routes, RTH and land with almost (actually in some case NONE) user intervention other than your credit card, charging the battery and hitting the TAKE OFF button on the tablet. It can also have a malfunction in the Flight Controller/Navigation system and "Fly Away" autonomously for miles and miles.
I fully expect us to see a time in the not so distant future when Congress gets involved again and w/o the big deep pockets of R/C Aircraft lobbyists, that mandate from 2012 being pulled back and new regulations imposed upon hobby flights. DRONES is such a negative word in this day and time and so many people fear them and HATE them I don't see the quiet yet LARGE lobbyist support they had in 2012 being available ever again. I've gone around and spoken to groups, classes, departments and even sat down with several law makers and and I can tell you this much, we are a minority and the majority don't want drones anywhere around. The MEDIA has single handedly put several nails in the coffin of DRONES and we need to work together to improve the "image" of our industry/hobby every chance we get.
Sorry about the RANT.
