So you're saying that even though the roofing guy has every last skill he needs to in order to fly a plastic toy multirotor a couple dozen feet in the air to help reduce the risks and costs in his business, you're suggesting that he constantly arrange for a third party with a pilot's license to show up and bill him to do that exact same three minute task. You're so busy calling someone else a moron that you can't see how transparently you're trying to set up rent-seeking protection for pilots who will expect each of those visits (to where the roofing guy is already traveling anyway!) to fetch him hundreds of dollars. At which point the roofer would be better off hiring day labor to do a multi-man ladder setup for each sales pitch, which completely defeats the purpose of using readily available technology to speed business and make a given single person more productive. I suppose you're also going to suggest that he hire a full-time FCC-approved HAM to follow him around and make sure he's using his mobile phone, truck CB, and any other emitting devices according to regs, right? I mean, there are plenty of professionals skilled in the use of radio communication devices, so it's crazy for the roofer to even OWN a cell phone when he could hire a professional with a HAM license to do all his on site communications, right? And YOU'RE the one saying that someone else is like a "creationist?"

Do you have any idea how ridiculous it is (of course you do) to make thousands of contractors run out and spend hundreds or thousands a week to bring in hired pilots to fly 4-pound plastic toy RC copters 30 feet off the ground for them? Do you understand how absurd that is, or how absurd you come across for suggesting that's better than them doing it for themselves? Of course you do, and you're just trolling. Why, is the question. You must be a licensed pilot who's worried about losing some old-school AP business, huh?

You mean, like those guys who video themselves on motorcycles weaving through traffic at 120mph, compared to professional drivers? Or (more topically) the guys who fly RC machines beyond LOS in the clouds or around national monuments or through moving traffic 10' off the ground, or who (like Pirker) buzz pedestrians, buzz police cars, etc., all to stir up YouTube traffic for fun? Compared to, say, a farmer who wants to look for crop damage, a local volunteer who wants to support LEOs in a rural search and rescue, or a tower maintenance climber who wants to reduce his chances of dying in the course of pursuing very dangerous work (compared to, say, un-paid people who BASE jump off of structures, frequently killing themselves)?

Recreational jackasses do dangerous stuff all the time. Almost every example of someone flying an RC machine in a stupid manner is an example of a (usually noob) hobbyist being clueless, not a working person with their business on the line being carefully about what they're doing.

If the rules had been more lax back when congress passed a law saying the FAA needed to make it so, you'd see a country (just like countries all around the world who aren't paralyzed by the need to spend years hand-wringing over thousands of new regulations every year) where the average person would already have seen their local landscapers, construction contractors, S&R teams, artists, realtors, and farmers making regular use of this incredibly useful technology. Instead, we get what we have now - uninformed fools who can't make the distinction between a quad for bridge inspection and a predator drone. Who think that someone with an ultra-wide angle lens mounted on a tiny sensor is going to be able to read their bank web site password while stealthily hovering outside their kitchen window, but haven't thought about what someone on the ground with a $100 spotting scope can see while leaning over a fence.

Every year the administration breaks the law by deliberately dragging this process out past their legal deadlines, they're making it harder, not easier, to make this all work sensibly. The administration should be out showing off these business opportunities - which require no poorly assigned tax dollars, unlike the billions that have been poured into failed warm-and-fuzzy initiatives like bankrupt solar companies, which the administration has repeatedly fallen all over themselves to quickly finance, and to exempt, with lighting speed, from any number of the sort of regulatory burdens they're just shrugging about in this sector.

No, you didn't make that point hard to find, you just failed to make it relevant to the question.

OK then, talk about that, instead.

Two guys standing right next to each other, each flying their 4-pound micro quad up to the top of the same 25' chimney to see if there's raccoon damage to the metal mesh at the top. They each do the same pre-flight checks, operate according to exactly the same safety standards, control people in the area the same way, handle their identical rigs in the same way, complete their 30' flights in a minute and a half, and land right back at their feet. One of them has been offered $20, and other is doing it out of interest. Can you tell which one it is, and therefore which one should be fined $10,000?

Which didn't stop you from also carefully avoiding any attempt to point out which of the facts mentioned is wrong or ranty - just another lazy bit of ad hominem, showing you prefer to deliberately avoid talking about the actual matter at hand. Thanks for being predictable, at least.

So I'm a little foggy, here. Are you saying that the roofing guy who wants to send a 4-pound quad with a GoPro a couple dozen feet in the air to inspect some gutters and shingles before he risks his neck climbing a 30 foot ladder ... should have a PPL? But that a recreational RC operator who wants to participate in weekend races involving 200mph turbine-powered machines weighing over 100 pounds is fine, because that's much safer? Just trying to understand the rationale here.

You're cherry-picking words. It's can't fly over people unless they are involved in what's going on and under control safety-wise. Exactly like you can't use a 100' construction crane "over people," but you can use a 100' camera crane over people (without hard hats!) when everyone involved is under the care of people who are controlling the set and looking out for the safety of all involved. Flying a 20-pound drone to film a car chase through a controlled set is WAY safer than using a full-scale manned helicopter to do the same thing.

Huerta, a political appointee, is 100% in charge of the agenda here. He's the one that has decided to ignore the congressional requirement on the timing of this, and the one who is tap-dancing around the the issues that people raise when addressing the oddly capricious lines being drawn.

You many think the average farmer who wants to fly a cheap quadcopter over his bean field to look for dry spots is going to be able to start from scratch and get a PPL in 60 hours (never going to happen) and that there is no opportunity cost for him beyond the amount of the check he has to write for the instruction, rentals, fuel, and tests and the time spent sitting in the classroom or the cockpit (you really think there's no time required outside of the instruction room and flight time? really?) ... we'll have to agree to disagree. I'm telling you that the entirety of the time, effort, and expense is substantially greater than 60 hours. Farmer Bob isn't going to be able to teleport from his rural kitchen to the classroom and back, either. Life isn't that simple. The FAA's own economic analysis of the proposed rules estimate that the real-life cost to the potential commercial sUAS applicant is, for example, at least double what the federal fee will be.

So, which part is a rant? Specifically?

Am I confused about who Huerta's boss is?

Am I confused about the words written in the proposed rules, and the disparate impact they would have on a scenario exactly like the one I described?

Or are you simply in ad hominem defend-the-administration mode, and carefully avoiding any actual comment on the substance of the matter because you're the one who's bitter and ranty about the reality of it?

So out of curiosity, how do you justify that distinction? What is it about the $50 that makes the pilot suddenly less safe? Specifically.

Federal regs and laws surrounding overflight of private property aren't about whether or not someone can use a camera during that flight. You're still confused about the FAA's role relative to privacy. The DoT isn't about privacy either, even though you might very well be using a 1000mm lens on a camera as you sit on the shoulder of a federal highway photographing over someone's fence into their back yard.

I'm just telling you what the actual situation is. You can decide for yourself if you think that means that a journalist flying a 4-pound plastic quadcopter with a GoPro should be able to do the same things as the hobbyist who's standing right next to him doing exactly the same thing with the same equipment in exactly the same way, or whether you think the enthusiast should be subject to the same limitations as the journalist. Think what you will. I'm pointing out that the Obama administration thinks that the journalist should be currently banned from flying at all while the guy standing next to him can carry on unmolested. And that the proposed rules, once they go into effect in a couple of years, will still make strangely arbitrary distinctions between the two uses (and users).

It doesn't matter. That's not what the rule is about. The Line-Of-Site rule is meant to make up for the fact that there is no pilot onboard the aircraft, and thus no way (if you're beyond line of site) to do the duty of seeing and avoiding other air traffic. If your UAS is a couple of kilometers away, invisible beyond something like a big tree line, you've got no idea how to quickly maneuver it if it's entering the path of, say, something like an air ambulance that's descending through 500' to land at an accident site. That's exactly the sort of scenario they're worried about: somebody like a journalist trying to get overhead shots of something like an accident scene, and sending his flying camera robot half a mile away BLOS to the location - and in comes a properly piloted traffic, S&R, or police helicopter. Or two. The journalist might be able to hear them, but if he can't even see, unaided, his own machine in the air, that's a serious hazard. Hence, LOS operations.

What? The FAA's mission has never included privacy concerns. They already regulate all of the ways you can do aerial photography (yes, including kites, if you send them high enough), and none of their rules speak to privacy, because that's not their territory, regulation-wise. You do actually understand that, right? No? Yes?

And still will be for at least a couple of years while this regulatory wagon rolls slowly down the road. Meanwhile, developed countries around the world are getting their shit together, and seeing immediate economic benefits from work in this area.

Right now, if you want to do sUAS aerial work for pay, you have to do an incredibly onerous federal dance in filing for a 333 exception, and have to have at least a Private Pilot's License. That's right, you're flying a tiny little DJI quadcopter with GoPro on it 8 or 10 meters off the ground to inspect some roofing shingles, and you need to have spent $10,000+ and hundreds of hours (including stick time in rented, fixed-wing, actual real-live airplanes flying in controlled air space!), pass physicals and a DHS background checks But if you're doing exactly the same thing for fun, none of that is necessary and you can fly right now. The guy running the roofing business, though? He'll have to wait a couple of years or become a pilot and an expert on navigating section 333's paperwork mill (and spend thousands, and still wait months for the FAA waiver allowing him to use his DJI Phantom). Thanks, Obama administration.