16 News Agencies file brief with NTSB

The Yahoo article mentions a pilot's license!

The FAA alleged that Pirker -- based in Hong Kong and known among drone enthusiasts worldwide as Trappy -- operated his five-pound (2.25 kilogram) Styrofoam flying wing recklessly and without a proper pilot's license.

What's this about a pilot's license needed to fly a RC model flying machine?
 
Flying Cephlopod said:
The Yahoo article mentions a pilot's license!

The FAA alleged that Pirker -- based in Hong Kong and known among drone enthusiasts worldwide as Trappy -- operated his five-pound (2.25 kilogram) Styrofoam flying wing recklessly and without a proper pilot's license.

What's this about a pilot's license needed to fly a RC model flying machine?

Here's the NTSB decision. Read it and you can see what the actual allegations were.

http://02b954f.netsolhost.com/docs/2110 ... cision.pdf

I think that hobby use will be basically OK as long as we abide by VLOS and a couple of other restrictions. COmmercial use will absolutely see tighter restrictions.
 
I think the thing people are forgetting is that even with new laws (which will take 1-2 years to be put in place) it will be nearly impossible to enforce the laws. Obviously they will not assign tail numbers to quadcopters (not that anyone is going to put them on anyways). Without tail numbers it will be impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that video of any quadcopter was being flown by a particular person since they obviously won't be in the video at the time the infraction occurred. Simple possession of quadcopter video will never be illegal. I've arrested 6 illegal immigrants at once and couldn't even get ICE to respond or be willing to charge for the immigration violations as they didn't have the manpower and people think the FAA, who is even less staffed, will respond and conduct an investigation just for an altitude violation? Unless someone causes and issue with an actual aircraft, I highly doubt enforcement will happen anyways.
 
Let's see, FAA, without any real enforceable rules is currently aggressively pursuing people they find on the Internet. So it's your thought that once they actually have enforceable rules that they will not really go after anyone??

The real difference will be that there will actually be enforceable rules and once you do get caught it is far more likely that you will pay dearly. And I doubt they will be looking for every person who buts an altitude restriction by 1 foot, but if folks post about how they were up at 4,000 feet and above the clouds, that might be an operator they try to locate.

Remember, they do not have to come looking, all they need to do is search YouTube since we are all too eager to provide abundant evidence of how we fly.
 

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