Flying over a neighbor’s house (who happens to be a cop) at 300′ lands man with criminal trespass.
This is quite frankly, something that is terribly disturbing. We have all the great hits here.
We have potential police corruption with an officer instigating this. This is an Inspire 1, it doesn’t have the ability to “spy” at 300′. Another officer comes on site and sees them flying and arrests him.
Several local prosecutors pass on the complaint. They see it is bogus. Just before the complaint is finally dropped, the state prosecutor steps in. At the trial, earlier this year, with Covid and other issues, the drone operator is not able to get his professional witness there, and the court denies allowing him to attend via Zoom or other video conference that many other courts are allowing. Flight logs were not allowed in, showing how high the drone was.
Find out more about this case from Joshua Bardwell:
Help James Benson gain his rights back and overturn this terrible travesty of justice: https://www.gofundme.com/f/legal-defense-to-cover-wrongful-arrest
Of course, this just sounds completely like the case from Kentucky with yet another judge that was anti-justice and out to hurt drone operators by also denying pertinent evidence.
Read MoreSold By Air site: Some cool tools for your next flight.
This is more targeted for aerial photographers, but Sold by Air has a pretty cool tools page that shows information about where you plan to fly from. Airports, weather, even the sunset/sunrise. This is a great tool to get a quick rundown of the location you plan to fly from.
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A Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down FAA Rules for Registering Model Aircraft
The FAA has forced hobby UAV operators to register their aircraft for almost a year now. Today, the rule was struck down by an Appeals court that sided on John A. Taylor’s side (and the side of hobbyist flyers across the nation) that the FAA overstepped their boundaries. Section 336 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 is pretty specific that the FAA is forbidden “from promulgating any rule or regulation regarding model aircraft.”
This ruling does not affect commercial UAV pilots, only hobbyist operators.
We wait to see the FAA’s reaction and if they will challenge this ruling to Supreme Court.
Read MoreNew executive order to help businesses will hurt drone business.
The law of unintended consequences. Trump’s recent executive order to reduce regulation across the federal government is likely to cause more problems for drone use than it solves. While the order was passed to reduce regulation and help stimulate business growth, with the nascent growth of the Drone industry regulations are needed to be updated and changed to give drone pilots more ability to fly their drones for customers. Read the rest of the story on Forbes.
Tiny Whoop Race at Hobby Town in Boise.
The local Boise FPV group is putting on a a Tiny Whoop FPV Race on February 25, at 8pm. They will be following the Drone Racing MultiGP rules. Find out more information from this Event Page on Facebook.
The FAA has taken notice of the Heathrow incident, Walmart the first to comply.
Having seen the incident of the Plastic Bag sighting at Heathrow last month, the FAA stepped up efforts to control the NAS. The latest regulation calls for all plastic shopping bags to be registered and tracked to prevent terrorist floating bags as well as inadvertent bag – aircraft collisions.
The TSA suggests planning an extra 20-40 minutes to your shopping trips to account for Registration number transfer to customers. The open database of registered names, IDs, address, and the name of first born will be available shortly on the FAA website. Comments for these new regulations will go through the normal process at the FAA, pending time and money to convene regulation meetings.
Thanks to Rotor Riot for the first photos of an FAA sanctioned shopping bag.
Read MoreShooting down any aircraft, including UAVs and other RC planes, is a federal crime.
John Goglia has a piece on Forbes.com stateing that the FAA has responded to questions about the shooting down of drones. Citing 18 U.S.C. 32, the FAA has confirmed that shooting down a Drone or any other aircraft is a felony. This statue goes on further and prohibits interfering with anyone “engaged in the authorized operation of such aircraft”. This means that threatening a drone or drone operator could put a person in jail for 5 years.
While the FAA says that it is a federal crime to shoot down aircraft, they have not stated when they will start prosecuting those that are shooting down UAVs
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