FAA finally sets rules for piloting small drones
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That’s not a gray area with the FCC at all. As a pilot, I have to consider the weight of the freaking engine oil in my aircraft. Paint, decals, etc are part of the aircraft. The total weight, as flown, at the time the engine is started, is what matters.
The FARs are not ambiguous about pretty much anything, because the stakes are just too high. It’s one portion of the United States Code that is actually pretty easy to read and understand.
Edit to nitpick myself: It is takeoff weight that matters. For a drone, that’s the same as the time the engine starts, generally. For an airplane, the two may be several minutes apart and fuel weight changes over that time, which is explicitly accounted for, in flight-planning for weight/balance and fuel requirements.
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Actually, no. The term “aircraft” is firmly defined in the FARs. The FARs are not some special thing. They are just the titles under the United States Code that pertain to aviation.
And yes, weight at time of flight is what matters, period, by explicit definition in the rest of the FARs, and doesn’t need to be “implied,” anyway, as written. How can you possibly read that cited sentence any other way?
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You’d be surprised at how far away you can see a fairly low-powered LED.
Navigation lights aren’t flashlights or headlight equivalents. They’re the colored lights you see on the sides of aircraft or watercraft that let OTHER aircraft know your aircraft’s orientation, for collision avoidance purposes.
I do, however, question the utility of such lights on a tiny drone, where, from 3 miles away, they’re going to look like a single point of yellow light (red plus green equals yellow), to me, flying at several times the drone’s speed, with tons of other likely light noise near the ground making it further indistinguishable from or completely drowned out by said noise (traffic lights, cars, homes, etc).
On a larger drone? Sure. The nav light thing really should be based on size, not mass, IMO. Put a strobe on them, like any other plane, for basic collision avoidance. Nav lights are gonna be useless.
Edit to add:
I suppose, with proper reflector design, the lights would be directional enough to be discernable from each other, but that doesn't fix the problem of sighting them against ground light noise. Nor does it really help you in any meaningful way, anyway, unless the lights change color depending on the direction the drone is actually moving, since they can move in any direction at any time. You'd need a bunch of them around the perimeter of the drone or, otherwise, artificially restrict them to only be able to move up, down, and "forward," with respect to the orientation of the nav lights, for this to be a viable aid to anyone, anywhere. The more I think about it, the more useless nav lights on small drones sound, and the more useful a simple anti-collision strobe is about all that they should have required, under a certain size.
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I will of course admit to not having read plenty of parts of the FARs that apply to ATPs because I am not an ATP (yet...some day, maybe). BUT, at least in smaller planes, you bet your caboose I’m having as accurate as possible information before I, as pilot in command, decide if we’re even leaving the ramp, because it matters a whole lot more, the smaller the plane is, since each person or item is a bigger proportion of the overall weight.
But even that’s not gonna be perfect, either. I’m not gonna weigh each passenger, obviously. I will, instead, use the weight on their license plus or minus a decent estimate based on how they physically appear. Baggage is absolutely going on a scale if I’m flying you, though, especially if it goes in a more rearward compartment.
One thing the FARs do say, though, in all cases, is that it is the pilot in command’s ultimate authority (even though various operations are explicitly allowed to be offloaded). So, in that regard, it’s de jure unambiguous, but that really only helps when pointing the finger after the fact, rather than actually preventing the situations altogether.
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I wonder if they’ll combine this information with what’s already being fed through the ADS-B data.
If you’re equipped with ADS-B IN, like on a G1000 or something, that’d make it visible to you, anyway, since the ground station would be relaying that data.
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If you prefer gas-powered, it’s still takeoff weight that matters. So you’d need to only fill it up to just under the limit. Filling it to over the limit would be a violation.
This is a viable strategy in a real airplane, too, when you’re slightly overweight, but don’t need full tanks to reach your destination plus required reserves. You can literally drain fuel from the tanks to remove weight to put you inside the envelope for the particular category you need the plane to fly in.
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Well yeah. Per the FARs, I'm not permitted below 500 feet AGL in a sparse area, anyway, or 2000 feet AGL in most wilderness areas, so we should already be well-separated, out away from an airport.
But people fly drones into controlled airspace on a daily basis, and MAN I'd sure appreciate TCAS alerting me to some asshat's drone over the numbers that the tower hasn't spotted (situation I've been in before). Some of these things are small and light-colored, making them hard to spot til they buzz by your left wing.
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I get ya, for sure. Just wishing.
Seems like a missed opportunity, since anything operating within controlled airspace would surely be able to reach a tower, whether it be from the drone itself or relayed from the controller.
Edit to add:
And I'm sure, once drones are compliant with this regulation, a tower would likely monitor for them and alert pilots in their airspace anyway. I mean they alert you to birds, if they notice them. It's just that anything at all that reduces the workload on ATC and pilots is generally a good thing. There's already enough to think about when behind the yolk.
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Yeah. This is where I'm coming from in my thinking on the subject. Sure, it's great for law enforcement and POSSIBLY catching someone AFTER the fact, unless they start actively monitoring for them and actively enforcing the regs. And, uh....WHO, exactly, is going to do that, and with WHAT funding?
The only reason I wouldn't want the data fed into ADS-B, though, on further thought, is that we're talking about something that is accessible to a huge portion of the public, and that system is super-vulnerable to someone spoofing data. It's not much of a leap to imagine that some bad actor might be able to inject ghosts or wreak other havoc on that system.
And, also, someone who intends to actively break the rules is probably going to do one of two things:
1) Disable the transmitter.
2) Modify it to emit a false ID, false position data, or any other spoof attack that would render it fairly useless for the intended purpose.
I feel like this will increase costs marginally, but do VERY little in the way of actually making the skies any safer.
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I'm told some DPEs like to throw situations like this at you on check rides at all levels, even if only as thought exercises. Something like you do your precheck, get in the plane, and he suddenly says "hey, my buddy Frank, who weighs 300lbs, wants to ride along, too. Is that ok?" And then you have to recalculate your whole flight. And then, after you do that, he says "oh yeah, Frank has a 50lb suitcase. We good?"
Thankfully, I have not encountered a DPE that sadistic, yet.
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