Fuck the balloon police

Stamets@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 852 points –
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1.). Yes you do it’s called a pilots license.

2.). It’s called the FAA and they will find you quick

Violate some air spaces and the military will be coming for you faster than the FAA will.

Yeah, this. FAA does give a fuck. A lot of people fly drones extremely illegally but they're too small for the FAA to notice or bother with, and most of them can't get to real dangerous heights anyway. But try flying near an airport and you'll find out real quick.

I still haven't figured out if people just aren't aware that it's illegal or if they're just too brazen. I think it's the former but not really sure.

from me all the FPV pilots I know don't have the license, because it's very difficult to do because they are almost all the same things that a real airplane pilot needs to know,

Also I have seen FPV 6S drones at maximum speed even in densely populated areas always exceeding the legal limit of 120m if they had a license

First of all, the "licensing" is kinda tough, but I wouldn't call it "very difficult". You could learn it all in a few days.

Secondly, you don't need the "license" unless you're flying commercially. Flying as a hobby has like a page of material to read and like a 5 question test with a few rules to follow, so that's far from an excuse.

Thirdly, FPV has probably the hardest rules because you literally can't see the sky so they require you have someone with you to call stuff to you... Which no one fucking does, so FPV is by far the worst offenders.

Also I have seen FPV 6S drones at maximum speed even in densely populated areas always exceeding the legal limit of 120m if they had a license

This type of shit is why the FAA is forcing regulations across the board, including towards manufacturers, to have tracking on who's flying what and from where, which is going to start butchering the hobbyist communities. This is fucking brain dead and dangerous and people that do this shit are asking for accidents and the reason why we can't have nice things.

I'm not in the US, I don't know how FAA operates. In my socially ridiculous country it's called ENAC and the difficulty is similar to that of a car license in terms of the level of knowledge required, and it's an infinite bureaucratic stress like any non-mainstream license, only those who do it for work do it.

The FAA are an American organisation that only has jurisdiction in the USA, so no they won't unless you do it in the USA.

Though that last paragraph does apply in many places outside the US. Sometimes it's even the US military responding outside of the US (I mean I assume they protect the airspace around their bases, but I guess I'm not really sure what kind of jurisdiction they'd have just because they have a military base).