Drones

[glatt]

I got a drone for Christmas. It's technically a drone because it flies and is remote controlled and has a camera. But I consider it a toy because the transmitter only reaches 100 feet. Once it's out of range, it lands, (often in a tree.)

I'm not sure what regulations apply to me, but I think all the drone regulations do. And I read some FAA rule about proximity to airports, and I'm just within the 5 mile no-fly zone of my local airport. I understand the reasoning for that rule, but it's kind of ridiculous that it's against the law for me to walk down the street to the softball field and fly this thing around at a 50 foot elevation, but I can get a super long string and fly a kite at hundreds of feet from the same field and nobody will blink an eye.

Not sure what the point of my post is, other than to point out all the confusion about the rules and how some of them are ridiculous. If you make ridiculous rules, people will get used to ignoring the rules, and they may ignore rules that aren't so ridiculous.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by glatt

I got a drone for Christmas. It's technically a drone because it flies and is remote controlled and has a camera. But I consider it a toy because the transmitter only reaches 100 feet. Once it's out of range, it lands, (often in a tree.)

I'm not sure what regulations apply to me, but I think all the drone regulations do. And I read some FAA rule about proximity to airports, and I'm just within the 5 mile no-fly zone of my local airport. I understand the reasoning for that rule, but it's kind of ridiculous that it's against the law for me to walk down the street to the softball field and fly this thing around at a 50 foot elevation, but I can get a super long string and fly a kite at hundreds of feet from the same field and nobody will blink an eye.

Not sure what the point of my post is, other than to point out all the confusion about the rules and how some of them are ridiculous. If you make ridiculous rules, people will get used to ignoring the rules, and they may ignore rules that aren't so ridiculous.

Turns out I really was confused. I knew about the 5 mile rule, but didn't realize Reagan National has a special 15 mile rule.

The FAA just announced that all owners will be required to register their drones. That prompted me to really try ti figure out where I'm allowed to fly near me. So I made the following map.

Now, this map is not complete, because I didn't factor in two other things I know about, which is that you can't fly a drone within THREE Miles of a scheduled sporting event starting 1 hour beforehand and going 1 hour afterwards. (My reading of the rule is that this includes school sports.) And the second thing is that national parks don't allow drones in their airspace. I'm sure there are other rules too. Like can you fly one over a nuke plant? Probably not.

So here's what I've come up with so far.

[glatt]

https://www.mapbox.com/drone/no-fly/ tries to assemble a map of drone no-fly zones, but it is crowd sourced, so I'm not sure how accurate it is.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That stripe from Chicago southwest through Jolliet, then west, is curious.