Originally Posted by franklin_m

I agree. Larger and faster airplanes take more airspace, and present considerably more risk to people on the ground. The total energy of these heavy and fast objects is significant. Consider that a 77lb LTMA-1 approved by AMA can travel at up to 200 MPH (293 ft/sec). AMA requires an engine auto cutoff 2 seconds after loss of signal. Assuming it works, that still means this heavy fast out of control object will travel just under 600 feet before the engine even shuts down, and likely quite a bit further before it crashes. That is a significant amount of total energy, life threatening energy.

So, in the interest of safety of the traveling public, this AMA member supports a 400' AGL maximum everywhere, no flight inside 5nm from a towered airport w/o explicit permission, nothing under class B at all, and a 55lb weight limit w/o exceptions, no flight over people, and no flight within lateral confines of military training routes during published hours of operation. I also think we should bring the speeds down, but don't have a good way to enforce that, so I'd be inclined to leave them alone for now. That's easy to articulate, easy to enforce, and keeps drones in any form below the vast majority of manned aircraft.