Comment Re:*sigh* (Score 1) 115
I live near an airport and planes pass on approach. I'm interested in quadcopters, I might even graduate to planes someday. The planes that fly over my home are a good ways up, certainly not so close as to cause issues with noise, if I go closer to the airport the planes are still a fair ways up but common sense says yeah I might be interfering if I got stupid.
Where I'm puzzled is just how these "drones" are getting that close to the planes. The quad would have to be a mere dot in the sky to interfere, why would I be flying that high? Quads at least are battery powered, by the time I got far enough up to cause issues I'd be worried about battery and what exactly would I be seeing other than a postage stamp map below me? FPV of a plane going by? Are people simply flying these up high to come close to planes? 2-4K feet? Really? Are there YouTube vids? You know someone would be posting if they did this. Multiple reports in one area back to back seem to make at least that one pretty obvious.
The FAA wants legislation, that much is clear. They've talked about possible interference for awhile, now the possibility has skyrocketed? No reports of collision though right? Certainly not lots of them. Is that simply luck? So is this pilots being paranoid now that the idea of interference has been introduced to them? They seem to provide a great deal of detail about these vehicles despite passing them at high speed. How many of these reports have been validated? Anyone arrested? Is the FAA perhaps trying to make this claim in order to push legislation?
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm skeptical. Dulles airport I'm familiar with, same with National. National you can get VERY close to planes coming in at a nearby park - that is heavily patrolled by police. Dulles is surrounded by trees and while some of the runways parallel major roads they aren't exactly the sort where you could stop and fly something - unless you did it from the Air and Space parking lot like an idiot. Perhaps there's backroad access closer to Dulles but the high level of detail for something passed at a few hundred MPH, the heights involved for a battery powered device, and my familiarity with the area leave me wondering. Am I really that out of touch about the drone community near my hometown?