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Anyone into Drones?

jfields said:
That's the only thing holding me back at the moment.... Trying to figure out all of the FAA regs in my area, registry crap, and what it means with my business.....
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It's stupid, but if I was flying it for work I could carry on and fly circles around my house without coordinating with anyone. But, since I want to do it for recreation, I have to coordinate with the airport to warn pilots not to fly below the peak of my house, which 2.2 miles from Shannon Airport! If an airplane is so low that he has to worry about hitting my drone, he has bigger problems.

I'll talk you through the details next time we get together. Most of our local area is wide open to commercial flights.
 
My brother has one but now it sits in the closet. Phantom 2 or 3 I don't recall which. He mentioned the FAA being the reason he doesn't fly it anymore.
 
mjolnir01 said:
Why I respectfully disagree, gents:
TCAS has saved me from this 5 TIMES in my career! (linky)
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It's a little apples and oranges to lump all drones into the same category. A 375 lb RQ-7 functions more like an airplane flying across the battlefield than my 15 oz drone flying in my backyard. TCAS wouldn't save you from hitting the typical drone that everyone is so worried about, because most commercially available drones don't have transponders -- they aren't designed to fly in controlled airspace the way a military UAS is. The truth is, birds are a greater threat to airplanes than drones are, just due to the numbers.
 
Nihon_Ni said:
It's a little apples and oranges to lump all drones into the same category. A 375 lb RQ-7 functions more like an airplane flying across the battlefield than my 15 oz drone flying in my backyard. TCAS wouldn't save you from hitting the typical drone that everyone is so worried about, because most commercially available drones don't have transponders -- they aren't designed to fly in controlled airspace the way a military UAS is. The truth is, birds are a greater threat to airplanes than drones are, just due to the numbers.
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Totally get the apples and oranges point, and no, TCAS wouldn't help at all. Rather, my point is who's driving the thing... does he/she understand airspace? That was the fear behind the swarm of RQ-7s in theater... each one usually driven by an E-4 who's service restricts him into somewhat 2-D thinking. Geez, even my Army helo pilot friends are leery of Scan Eagles for this reason. So the same concern goes for a little quad-copter piloted by my neighbor's snot-nosed kid that could easily swap paint with a C-172 working the pattern at the local airfield. That'd be roughly comparable to taking a bird. Big sky theory is great until it stops being so big--drones aren't prolific now, but they will be very soon.

I hate to sound unsympathetic, though. It seriously sucks that you lose out on a very cool and enjoyable hobby due to lowest-common denominator regulation.
 
Believe it or not all the younger farmers around here have drones. They use them to fly over their fields to look for wet areas, dead spots, weeds etc.
 
I have the DJI phantom 3. Loved it but long hours at work including weekend obligations have prevented me from playing with it.

Fun to take on hikes, bluffs and other vistas here in SoCal. My goal this spring is to bring it to the beach and see if I can video the whale migration or capture the dolphins frolicking.

Video editing is a pain but worth it.
 
I flew mine this weekend. Had fun chasing the dog in the backyard. Hoping to bring it to Point Dume this weekend if we don't get rain both days.
 
Was looking into buying a small drone but wanted to check in here with y'all first. I need one with a high quality camera for mountain fishing trips. Want to check down and upstream before hiking in. Looking to spend $400ish. Anyone into these?
 
I don’t know the going rate of the older dji mavic drone but it’s pretty nice. They had a bunch of iterations of them, so I would think by now a used one could be had for cheap.

They have what they call a “mini 2” brand new for $449. For a nice foldable drone, I’d look into that. Dji makes some nice stuff. You would have to look into it, but I know some of them had a return to home feature and stuff like that which is pretty handy if it gets out of range. Maybe they dropped that though. I think some also had some collision avoidance stuff for trees and whatnot.

It’s been awhile, but I’ve always liked dji stuff. Even my little Tello is cool but I think dji just bought someone else’s and put their software on it for that one lol. Tello was tough to fly because it was so small but really more of a toy than anything. These new Mavics seem to border on professional side of things. Check out the website, I bet you will be impressed.

You may have to register with the faa for flying, not sure if the rules on that now either.
 
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