Recreational drone now illegal in most of Canada...
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Good catch. Thank you. Love some of the replies.
Here's mine:
@MarcGarneau There are so many reckless embellishments in the writing of this story it's embarrassing for a minister to quote it.
Maybe DJI would send a P3S to the honorable Minister of Transportation, Marc Garneau, so that he could actually see how much fun we have with ours - oh hold it.... he would have to actually find a place to fly first, away from people, airports, helipads, buildings....
I spent 30 minutes driving outside of Edmonton to fly yesterday - and even then I had a really tough time finding a suitable spot that had some things that might be worth taking pictures / videos of.
Did you make ABSOLUTELY SURE that there were no Snow Rabbits in that field?
The Minister is heading into this with a knee-jerk reaction. A "possible incident" seems a reason to curtail them entirely. "Possible incidents" could have banned the automobile too.
Some of the USA news is getting into the "What-if incidents" part now: Fears Grow of Terror in U.S. With Weaponized Civilian Drones
So putting C4 in drones flying into aircraft are warnings by the military? Police wanting to weaponize drones too and will likley lead to others copying it too: Connecticut considering weaponizing drones
These lawmakers are the ones who will decide that our drones are implements of war or terrorism and will ban them outright.
Fly 'em while you still can.
Some of the USA news is getting into the "What-if incidents" part now: Fears Grow of Terror in U.S. With Weaponized Civilian Drones
So putting C4 in drones flying into aircraft are warnings by the military? Police wanting to weaponize drones too and will likley lead to others copying it too: Connecticut considering weaponizing drones
These lawmakers are the ones who will decide that our drones are implements of war or terrorism and will ban them outright.
Fly 'em while you still can.
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Did you make ABSOLUTELY SURE that there were no Snow Rabbits in that field?
Shhhhhhhhh! I weaponized mine and that was what I was hunting for!
(edit: expecting a knock on the front door any moment now for that last comment....)
The transport minister "ex astronaut, should be retired guy" supposedly has the power to put the new laws in place in the interm until the new "official and probably even more restrictive" legislation's are put into place in June. He say's he can do this if he feels air traffic is in imminent danger. He's also really fond of the word "Catastrophic". Someone must have bought him a dictionary for Xmas...
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Also has trouble sleeping.
Know what keeps me from sleeping? A transport minister that is so intently focussed on drone use that he seems entirely distracted from being concerned about the lack of any reliable means of detecting impaired driving by marijuana use.
In a little over a year, NORTH AMERICA'S BUSIEST HIGHWAY will continue carrying over half a MILLION vehicles annually and 60% of truck traffic between the US and Canada, with no known legal or reliable way to test drivers for impairment.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not raising or interested in the topic of the legalization of marijuana. I'm simply concerned that our aging, out of touch transport minister may have the wrong focus.
I'm just waiting to see if he introduces some interm laws for birds... They are the ones smacking into all the commercial aircraft. Wonder how you can fine a bird? Get on it Marc, those birds are a lethal menace! Heck, I even saw a songbird spying on me through my living room window!
I am in the middle of my courses and now I can't fly anywhere. One of the requirements to get a commercial license is 100 hours of experience. So how is anyone supposed to get this now?
The previous guidelines for under 2 kg were reasonable. It is unfair to ground all drones over 125 grams.
The previous guidelines for under 2 kg were reasonable. It is unfair to ground all drones over 125 grams.
This is so BS. People spent thousands of dollars, including me, investing in the new technology of drones and the government literally makes it almost impossible to fly without breaking the law. I find this really unfair. Not only is the government shutting down our drones, they are shutting down the evolution in the field of technological advancement. Good job government. We might as well just become a primitive no technology nation. So BS. >:-(
OMG! XD! GET ON THOSE BIRDS MARC. THEY ARE A THREAT TO SOCIETY. YOU BETTER HURRY UP! THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!
okay you can't fly higher than 90 meters but you can't be within 75 mete
okay... you can't fly higher than 90 meters but you have to be at least 150 meters away from just about everything... how does that make sense?
In the period of 2011 to 2014 when hobby drone flying was a very small minority sport and a lot of flying is from lakes where large flocks of birds are known to gather - talk about using figures selectively to back up your argument
This legislation has come about because a lot of people have decided that the rules just don't apply to them and flown their new toys just how they please in a manner that has endangered Joe Public - the fact we haven't had a fatality/serious injury isn't down to good flying, it's down to good luck - that luck can't last forever!
As with everything, it's the minority that ruin it for the minority - if everyone was sensible about how they drove their cars - there would be no need for speed limits. If people could be trusted to leave their p[hones in their pockets when driving a car there'd be no need for laws banning them doing that! Same for drink driving - if nobody had ever thought 'hey, I can get away with this' we'd have no drink drive laws anywhere in the world. Most people (in the UK anyway) thought those laws (and a host of others) were stupid unnecessary interruptions to their lives by nosy, restrictive governments but 50 years or more down the line and we all take them for granted.
I've been flying models since the early nineties and in that time (right up until this year) the laws have changed very little because they haven't needed to - everybody learned to fly at a club where the older, more experienced pilots taught the 'new guys' who then went on to educate the next generation of fliers. Eevrybody was bound by the club rules, everybody flew with public liability insurance etc - Flying was never a cheap hobby and there was a steep learning curve that benefited heavily from instruction and guidance. We bought planes from model shops who were knowledgeable and passionate about flying - most of them were heavily involved with local flying clubs. We flew responsibly, even with cameras attached to fixed wing and helis without interference from the law makers as they new our club organisation was liaising with the aviation authorities to ensure standards were met.
Nowadays, you can buy a drone from a shop on-line and be in the air within a couple of hours. No need to read the manual, no need to understand anything about the rules - just push a button and go as high as you possibly can whilst filming it to share on Youtube and Facebook.
The race to the bottom fueled by stupidity and the constant need for likes and shares by moronic individuals who seem to think that they have to do something even crazier than the last person to become the latest internet sensation is what is ruining this hobby for all of us.
AMA magazine this month has an article on the difficulties they are facing with Congress over drones and are walking their hallways now over impending legislation. I got the impression they were happier without drones due to all the negative publicity surrounding them in the news almost daily, and maybe why some AMA fields are anti-drone as well.
How it all evolves Sept. 2017 with the new FAA rules will be interesting.
How it all evolves Sept. 2017 with the new FAA rules will be interesting.
my guess is that only a very small percentage of drone pilots have joined the AMA so they are kinda bound to look after their own member's interests first. Any drone laws will inevitably impact the way club fliers can operate.
New technology is never welcome at flying clubs - it was the same with remote control gear when everybody flew control line, it was the same with helicopters (there's a lot of clubs in the UK that still don't like them) and now it's drones. Our local club is quite forward looking, we have fixed wings and drones up in the air at the same time but we are all reasonably experienced flyers and we try to fly carefully (for the most part
) but out of al;l the local drone flyers only about half a dozen have bothered to pay the £50 joining fee (including BMFA membership) which includes insurance and 365 days a year access to our flying filed Sadly, it's not going to get any easier - we were talking about his today and we wondered whether the governments left things alone for a couple of years just to see if the hobby died as quickly as it became popular. It didn't and now they have to act before somebody gets hurt.
I think you're right on that. I can see the AMA Community Based Rules getting lumped into some "For everyone" set of rules by the FAA and maybe why the AMA is in Washington now.
Presently having two sets now that often conflict with one another is too gray at times, like night flights that are okay with the AMA Community Based Rule set, but not so with the 107 part. Same goes for Hobbyist and Commercial claims of flight and rules as well.
the simple option is for drone flyers to join the AMA/MAAC - and get them to lobby on your behalf as they have to listen to their members. As a bonus you get public liability insurance for wherever you fly as long as you abide by their rules/guidelines (please note it is NOT just for club field flying) so you represent yourselves as responsible pilots willing to accept rules decided by a large organisation. This kind of representation is what gets people listening not the odd letter here and there from Facebook groups and forums. Opposition needs to be organised and looking at it from the outside, the AMA/MAAC seem to be your best choice.
In the period of 2011 to 2014 when hobby drone flying was a very small minority sport and a lot of flying is from lakes where large flocks of birds are known to gather - talk about using figures selectively to back up your argument
It was certainly not my intent to "gather selective figures", but I understand your interpretation.
It's regrettable that I don't have the time to permit endless research to obtain more current and reliable statistics, complete with reference to sources, and to that end I will admit that these numbers may be skewed by the more recent explosion in popularity of consumer aircraft. I simply can't afford the investment in research due primarily to the vast amounts of it available.
I think the numbers of "drone sightings" by pilots is skewed too, primarily because they are not required to verify these sightings, but I'm in no more of a position to quote stats on that either.
But at the same time I don't think that it's arguable that by historical comparison, Minister Garneau's approach is heavy handed at best, and restrictive to the point of near-ban by a singular decision at worst. Had this been comparable at the turn of the century, those confounded noise-making motorized carriages that are upsetting our horses would be banished to the history books as well.
In any case, it's no secret that an airplane crash is a devastating event. Yes, lets protect against that. But I've yet to understand how staying 75m away from an animal or an etc should be considered acceptable. And why flying 100' lower than the rest of the continent is required or beneficial.
By this argument, would you not consider that if his approach to this were comparable, would he not be making driving virtually impossible or entirely impractical for the vast majority people, by virtue of the argument that this is the best way to avoid an accident?
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