helimaster

Yes to the FPV drone pilots who are responsible for bringing this down upon us all.

Of course whats sad is that instead of holding those responsible accountable the right wing nut jobs are ready to play the the anti big government card. Unfortunately in this case their idiotic rhetoric won't fly because the government is only reacting to what the majority of Americans want. Be thankful it wasn't put up to a nation wide vote or FPV drones and possibly all forms of models aviation may have been banned outright. In other words it had the potential to be far worse.

First some history, The straw that broke the camel's back was first. A near miss between an FPV drone and a police helicopter, then a few months later it actually happened a drone striking a full sized Helicopter. This is what brought model aviation into the spotlight and spurred nationwide outrage towards model aviation.


If you have been flying and following this FPV sagga as long as I have been then you would know there have been hundreds of near misses with full sized commercial aircraft. According to a story in the NY Times over just the last few years alone the FAA and law enforcement nationwide have received a staggering 5 million plus complaints involving drones from parents, homeowners, commercial pilots as well business owners.

What did you think was going to happen in a post 911 America when these idiot drone pilots started buzzing national landmarks landmarks such as the statue of liberty or worse yet sky rises buildings and bridges. How about the complaints from parents who've had drones hover over the backyards recording their young children swimming in their pool and then to their horror learned that those videos were uploaded to youtube or even kidi porn sites.

Or how about all the complaints from homeowners about drones flying up to their widows and recording them in their own homes and then learning that those videos had been uploaded to youtube and porn sites as well. It's estimated that a large percentage of Voyeur videos on porn sites were recorded through peoples upstairs bedroom windows by drones


The writing was on the walls years ago. Us old timers knew better, For decades we did everything we could not to draw unnecessary negative attention to our hobby. We did this because we knew it was well within FAA authority to regulate model aviation, that is if we gave them an excuse to so, so we didn't. As such we diligently remain self policing to prevent this.


Unfortunately the dumbing down of the hobby has opened up the floodgates. No longer does building and flying require skill and resourcefulness, Nope now any right wing moron with a check book regardless of whether they've heard of bernoulli or not can terrorise their neighborhood with their SHTF RTF drone.

The end result is a new generation of "dumbed down Consumer" who are neither hobbyists nor modelers in the traditional sense. They have proven themselves to be selfish, self centered, inconsiderate and have demonstrated a complete lack of concern for the safety of others. The only thing we know for sure is that their only really interested in their own rights no one else's. The writing was on the wall and us old timers who have been flying for decades had warned them many times. But as can be expected we were called nothing but a bunch of liberal cry babies and that we needed to mind our own business.


The end result is people such as I who spent decades doing our best to fly under the radar to protect our hobby from unnecessary government regulation are now paying the price for the actions of a group or dumbed down consumers who thought their rights to fly their toys was more important than everyone else's right to privacy in their own home or the safety of millions of commercial airline passengers. As I said the writing was on the wall and people from my generation had predicted this outcome the moment we saw the first RTF drone.

The bottom line is don't blame the FCC, blame the inconsiderate FPV pilots who brought this down upon all of us .. Next time you see an FPV pilot doing something stupid I suggest you thank them accordingly.