The good part that I am hearing at the meetings I have attended with the FAA on quads and other RC aircraft has been good. They have a FIRM line drawn between us doing it at a proper field flying model aircraft. They want nothing more then to just leave us alone. The problem they have is the FPV guys and the quads flying around airports and other populated areas. The issue is the FAA has no power other than to charge some one civilly. They are trying to get cities and others to make no fly zones for city limits by going through city council. This would give local law enforcement the power they need to make some one land and do something about people flying in unsafe areas doing unsafe things.
The scary part in all this is people that know nothing about what we do are making the rules.I had a look at a rough draft for my area and after reading it had a long talk with the guys who wrote it and educated them on the AMA and AMA fields. They are looking now into changing it to basically say flying will be allowed at AMA sanctioned fields within the city limits but everything else will be banned.
I think we need to all keep an eye out on our local government and not so much the FAA on this issue.
Bottom line is something needs to be done. We almost hit a qaud at night on patrol in one of our helicopters. We also had to call ground units on another occasion to come make a guy land that was flying a 40% extra within 1 mile from an international airport. Even after us flying around him he continued to fly. Another one was a huge octocopter flying over our gasperilla parade downtown over huge crowds very low. He was even going eye level with the guys on the boats. Legally their is nothing any one can do right now until new rules come out. I know no one likes new rules but we need some to be able to stop people doing reckless things.
If done right it will protect our hobby because right now its only a matter of time before something bad happens. Please keep in mind the focus here is on people doing unsafe things not on us and that's straight from the FAA guy I talked too in the meeting.