Black Sheep...

If you want to say something that doesent fit anywhere else!
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby falco peregrinus » 27 May 2014, 11:23

Thanks popschief. There's certainly some heavy reading there. I've quickly flicked through the first few pages, and it certainly seems like something I need to understand.

The hurdle I'm having is that my total lack of experience in aeronautics means that I don't know what I am looking for or where to look that might unearth what I need. (Legislation I am familiar with and comfortable with, so of course my first port of call was to read the relevant legislation and Regulations.)

My only interest in drones is as a photographic tool. And the quadcopter I'm planning on buying is a Phantom 2, but I'll be putting a GoPro on it when I get it. The FlySafe system that you were talking about that is now in the Phantom firmware seems to be overkill for Australia. As far as I've been able to establish from an examination of the legislative Regulations, Australia has a flat 400' restriction for 3 nautical miles (5.6 kms) from the aerodrome (whatever their legal definition of an aerodrome is - does it include the airstrips that are marked in GeoScience GIS data but which aren't even used often enough to look any different from the surrounding paddocks in Google Earth?), whereas FlySafe has a bowl-shaped height limit starting some 2.4 kms away from the airport, with a 0' height limit for those first 2.4 kms. So the FlySafe restrictions are far more strict than Australia's Regulations require. But fortunately the FlySafe restrictions only know about the big international airports in Australia, thank goodness. Though it is a nuisance - a number of places I would love to video from the air are blocked by FlySafe, even though they are legal by the Regulations.

Anyway, thanks for your help. I don't know yet if that document answers all my questions, but the quick glance I took at it suggests that it will be of at least some help.

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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby Burgerman » 27 May 2014, 12:54

There are tons on systems that don't have FlySafe in... Like mine. http://www.dji.com/product/naza-m-v2



http://www.dji.com/fly-safe/category-mc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoXAMRQoIAA vid

Don't want any of this in mine... I fly at an airfield! But its only for the ready to fly ones. These are bought by everything from experts to kids... They don't want to bring down a jumbo jet. Neither do I.

I have flown to 2000 feet high quad-copter, or more, 6k feet with my FPV glider. And 4 miles away.
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby popschief » 27 May 2014, 18:10

falco peregrinus wrote:Though it is a nuisance - a number of places I would love to video from the air are blocked by FlySafe, even though they are legal by the Regulations.


The "flysafe" function in the Phantom can be disabled and is merely an attempted band-aid by DJI to keep their copters from being outlawed by the politicians. Flying machines are still perceived by most as dangerous so adding more traffic to high traffic areas is unwise and certainly unsafe. As you wisely observe the local grass aerodrome would not be considered a high traffic area but if the rulemakers get their paws on the topic they will legislate all of us into criminals. People get shot and they blame the guns. If a big plane falls from the heavens with a load of souls they'll blame the toy plane. Then we will be forced to register and be trained and inform them of our intentions and receive official permission. Best not give them the ammo.
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby popschief » 27 May 2014, 18:39

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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby Burgerman » 27 May 2014, 20:23

I have one here that I fly in the house for practice, and we "combat" them in the pub! Its about 10 grammes and you can land it on the back of your hand. Technology will keep getting cheaper, these things and OTHER things will become so common in the end that nobody will care.
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby falco peregrinus » 28 May 2014, 15:12

Let the legislation begin ! !

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/busines ... 6932306565


Sounds like the Regulations may be worded as loosely as they are (ie, "aerodrome", without defining what they mean by the term, unlike most legislation) so that if something happens ANYWHERE where planes or helicopters land, even if it's at a hospital or some farmer's back paddock that he uses twice a year when his brother visits, they can pull the legislation out of the hat and drag somebody into court over it.

The "flysafe" function in the Phantom can be disabled


Great! (Only because it's more restrictive than the relevant CASR Regulations.) How? I assume in the Assistant software, but I played with that and didn't see it there. Thanks for all your help.

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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby falco peregrinus » 28 May 2014, 15:35

these things and OTHER things will become so common in the end that nobody will care.


Or perhaps the outcome of their becoming common will be the same as happened to TV licenses, and to 27Mhz CB radios (in Australia)?

When I was a kid, if you had a Television, you had to pay a license fee to the government, and there were vans driving around the streets with directional aerials on that could detect the emissions of a television inside the house they were driving past. Once televisions became too common to enforce the legislation, they gave up and changed the legislation to do away with TV licenses.

When I was a teenager, 27Mhz CB radios became all the craze here, because they were legal in the US, and legal to import into Australia, and were dirt cheap - but illegal to use by the average person. Our legislation at that time restricted use of the 27Mhz band to ham radio operators, and they had to pass an exam in order to get their license. In spite of the legislation, the 27Mhz band became so cluttered with CB conversation that it was almost unusable - so the government gave up and legalised 27Mhz band use for CB while they worked on a better solution. A few years later they came up with a scheme to use higher frequencies for CB use, so that range was limited and thus more people could be on the same channel at the same time, and they legislated 27Mhz illegal again and created the new Australian CB band, with 40 channels.

With the price of quadcopters down where it is now, and sure to fall even further as production runs get bigger as the market grows, the government will face the same issues with quadcopters as they did with television licenses and CB radios. They'll have to legislate, and the legislation will have to take into account the number of people using them; and the vast bulk of those people will not be able to be informed of tight restrictions upon their use of the quadcopter. How do they do that? Make restrictions like FlySafe mandatory if the quadcopter is to be sold in this country? Difficult, because you can buy them off the internet. To make that idea work the government would have to work directly with and get full cooperation from all quadcopter manufacturers.

Personally I think the present legislation (and the accompanying Regulations) is reasonable, but it's unworkable for the masses unless, at a bare minimum, the government publishes the information we need to know in order to comply with the legislation ON THEIR WEBSITE! I can't even extract the required information out of the relevant department by email! I've tried three times, to two different sections of the department! And NOBODY there has even done me the courtesy of replying! If you don't hold a pilot's license, they don't want to know you! We're required to abide by their legislation, but they won't give us the information we need to know in order to abide by their legislation!

Gripe over. Thanks for your help, everyone.

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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby Burgerman » 28 May 2014, 15:44

When I was a kid, if you had a Television, you had to pay a license fee to the government, and there were vans driving around the streets with directional aerials on that could detect the emissions of a television inside the house they were driving past


You didn't seriously fall for that?
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby Burgerman » 28 May 2014, 15:46

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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby falco peregrinus » 28 May 2014, 15:54

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the same held for Australia. I don't recall ever hearing of anyone being caught. And if they were, it was probably because they had a TV aerial on their roof, visible from the road, and their address wasn't listed in the book of license holders in the van.

I was just a kid when the TV license legislation was revoked. It happened even before my family got their first TV.

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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby popschief » 28 May 2014, 18:31

Having a TV receiver or a CB transceiver would rarely cause an airliner to loose thrust from a power plant but an RC aircraft could. There may be a more urgent consideration by government to legislate our hobby for that reason alone. In the Los Angeles basin some guy tied a bunch of helium balloons to a lawn chair and armed with a bb gun to execute a decent ascended to 1,050 meters near the approach to LAX. The dumb s**t got lots of attention.
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby HiltonP » 30 May 2014, 16:45

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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby Burgerman » 31 May 2014, 00:18

Panic, panic panic!

These people are all retards.

You can make as much legislation as you want. Ban anything you wish. Just like gun or "bomb" laws, the only people laws or restrictions or licencing affects are those that really are not going to do any harm.

Of course if you wanted to fly a quad copter into the houses of parliament, or anywhere a group of important people were hanging out, the law doesn't stop you. Boom...

I am not that way inclined, but you cannot put the technology back in the box.

Rules - just like locks - only stop honest people.

Now, all you need to wipe out a president/queen/whatever with an exploding quadcopter, is a brain.
The technology has existed for many years. And you can do it all invisibly with no way to trace it back to where it came from. The fact that it hasn't already happened is likely because the nut jobs brains that want to bring down an airliner, or blow up a head of state, are incapable. And simply are not up to the challenge...
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby HiltonP » 24 Jun 2014, 11:19

John, for your reading pleasure..... :)

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essay ... cles.shtml
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby HiltonP » 27 Jun 2014, 09:09

And now for something completely different.....

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/ ... 60lH7FhstU
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby Burgerman » 27 Jun 2014, 11:05

No worries. I can build one that shoots it down safely by firing water into it...
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Re: Black Sheep...

Postby Burgerman » 09 Jul 2014, 09:31

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