| <steam valve open> Well, it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Lots of people are using multi-copters armed with the amazing skills provided by ignorance and a total lack of consideration for fellow human beings, property, dogs, cats and small animals. Despite a lame attempt at humor, the problem is very serious when viewed with the eyes of someone with over thirty years of experience designing, flying and, yes, crashing, all manner of model aircraft, from high performance 200 mile-per-hour carbon fiber gliders to lazy electric powered thermalling machines to high performance helicopters that can decapitate you if you are not paying attention. Not one person in the several model aircraft clubs I've been a member of or have flown in would ever think of doing some of the crap people do with these drones. Why? Because we know they are unreliable and dangerous toys. I own highly modified RC helicopters costing upwards of $8,000 and have built and flown amazing ducted fan jets that cost many times that amount. And they are ALL toys. They are built with hobby-grade parts and can fail catastrophically on the "anytime-anywhere" plan. The mass marketed multi's are even worst. They don't use the best, most expensive and most reliable battle-tested components. Something that retails for $500 is likely to have $50 to $75 in parts, whereas a high-quality aircraft built by a true model aircraft enthusiast might have propellers that cost that much. To be clear, spending $3,000 to $5,000 on these fancy looking multi's doesn't make them any safer. They are flying bricks. With a plane you can glide and hope to have a controlled crash away from people (believe me, I've crashed many over the years). With a helicopter you have auto-rotation that, when coupled with training, allows the pilot to execute a safe descent and landing. Training, that the other key element. Learning to build, fly and operate model aircraft requires time, dedication, tutoring and many hours training. It it also marked by starting-off with simple and nimble models and progressively moving up to faster, more expensive and more capable models as your skills evolve and improve. None of that exists in drone-land. And, because of this, someone goes out and buys a $1,000 rig and thinks nothing of flying it over a crowd, someone's home, over kids at the park, near full-scale aircraft, near firefighters, etc. They have no clue. They don't care. Or both. To be sure, the industry has done a great job of pushing these toys to increasing levels of capabilities and to a level where knowing how to build, maintain and fly them seems irrelevant. Point and click. And, at the same time, they've also done a great job of nurturing a disaster in the making. With the morons out there buying these things en-masse it is only a matter of time until one gets sucked into a passenger aircraft in flight and a major disaster unfolds. You guessed it! I'm not happy at all about this. Because of what I see coming: These morons (and I am including the companies who are behaving irresponsibly in that statement) are going to destroy a wonderful hobby some of us have enjoyed our entire lives. Eventually something really ugly will happen. And that will lead to the government coming down hard on all things that have to do with RC flight. The fact that some of us (lots of us!) have been flying "drones" for decades without ever making news --due to operating the aircraft responsibly, with consideration and within designated areas-- won't matter, we are are going to be thrown into the same bag as the idiots who cased the problem. <steam valve closed> Constructive note: Hey, droners.io folks, you might want to edit "Principle Broker" on your home page and change it to "Principal Broker". Not the same thing. |