Let's see! Effective immediately, if you have a drone (you know, one of those weird helicopter gadgets that Amazon wants to use to drop packages on your head), you need to register yourself (not your drone) with the FAA.
They want to make sure they can find you if you do drop something on someone's head. Why the FAA is concerned with this is a mystery, although drones do fly in the US airspace, so I suppose that is why.
The original thinking was that some drone pilots are silly enough to fly the things up into the path of a real people-carrying airplane. So far, there have been a few spotted by pilots (not to mention White House guards who found one on their lawn). No accidents have happened yet.
Drones Popularity
I have flown model aircraft for over fifty years now, and have only had one accident where I lost control of a radio controlled model I was flying on the Virginia Tech drill field (probably not a smart move, but it was fun up to that point).
I am a member of the Academy of Model Aeronautics, and have been for most of those fifty years. Part of being in the AMA is learning about safety, and how to make sure what we do is not going to harm other folks. My membership comes with insurance against accidents, and when my model crashed, it hit a car and put a hole in the hood. Fortunately, no one was injured (except for my wallet). My insurance paid for the repairs to the car, and I was fine, just very shaken by the whole event. I made sure nothing else I ever flew on that drill field was bigger than a rubber band powered model, or one tethered to me by steel wires (called control-line models) after that!
I had a huge amount of fun flying these things, taught myself a lot about aeronautical engineering, which started me on my path to becoming one for real! I almost got a PhD in Aerospace Engineering before Computer Science pulled me in another direction!
The point is that I was a serious, responsible flyer, not just some kid out for adventure. I wanted to know what made things fly, and that was important to me then, as it is even to this day. I did not fly just to see what I could get away with, and, sadly, many folks flying these drones are not serious at all, and care less about the potential for harm they might cause. So drones, especially drones carrying cameras, are amazingly popular these days, with all kinds of folks.
I have a good friend who flies a drone commercially. His drone is huge, and can carry a studio quality movie camera. He uses this to film real-estate, golf courses, anything someone wants an aerial view of. He flies responsibly. So do lots of folks.
Why Did the FAA get involved?
Because a few folks do not fly responsibly, and suddenly these things are dangerous and must be "registered".
Sounds innocent enough. The idea is to make each drone above a certain weight (which is 250 grams, BTW) carry a registration number that links it to the evil pilot who flies the thing. That number has to be accessible while the drone is flying, although it cannot be read from the ground, it has to crash first and be grabbed by some authority smart enough to look for the number on a piece of paper buried somewhere on the craft.
The FAA studied this problem intensely, and came up with the determination that a drone weighing more than 250 grams poses a serious threat, not to other airplanes, but to PEOPLE! I guess that is the real reason pilots (like me) have to be licensed by the FAA to fly aircraft which are registered by the FAA in our airspace! Because they might hurt PEOPLE if they fall on their heads.
I never knew that was the whole reason we even have an FAA. To keep people from being hit in the head by flying objects!
Well, I have a beef with another flying object, and I want the FAA to register these evil "pilots"
Basketball!
When I was first getting into jogging, back when I was a young Lieutenant in the USAF, I started running on a track at the base gym. That track went around a basketball court frequented by many folks playing that evil game by the same name.
On occasion, those "pilots" would hurl a flying object (that basketball thing) from "pilot" to "pilot" through the airspace over that court. Everything was fine as long as the aerial vehicle (that basketball) landed in the hands of another "pilot". The problem was that those "pilots" were often not that good. Every once in a while, the innocent aircraft (basketball) would not land safely, and might fly outside of the court!
On one of my jogging days, I was into the pattern, run along a side of the court to the banked corner. Hit the corner just the right way and turn 90 degrees and head off on the next straight. Mindless activity and once I got into it, I could run for miles in that silly rectangular circuit.
Bang!
Only one day, as I was running and not thinking about much, I was struck in the head by a flying object that was not registered, had no FAA number, and no way for me to locate the offending "pilot". I was hit hard enough that I crashed into the wall and fell to the ground in a heap. Fortunately, I was not injured, but where was the FAA when I needed them?
I do not recall one of those "pilots" even coming over to see if I was hurt. (BTW, those "pilots" probably were real pilots in the USAF. There were many of them in the Gym that day!)
My Solution
If the FAA thinks that any object flying through our airspace that weighs over 250 grams needs to be registered, then fine! Register all of them, not just a few drones! An NBA Official basketball weighs about 22 ounces, or 624 grams. That is WAY over their definition of "dangerous". We better register all pilots flying one of those things, right away, before someone gets hurt!
I also want all NBA players to take flying lessons on the proper take-off and especially landing skills needed to properly "fly" those dangerous objects!
Is it just me, or are we getting a little carried away with this "danger" thing?
Oh yeah, just to paraphrase some other group: "Drones do not kill people, people kill people!". (Before you run off yelling about me being an idiot equating drones and guns, I do have my own ideas on gun control. Maybe licensing them is not really much different than licensing car drivers. But remember: lots of people still get hurt by those licensed drivers, of course).
There, I have ended this rant. I need to go off and register myself so I can fly the new drone I got for Christmas from my sister!
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