hierophant wrote:
On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 22:43:50 -0000, wrote:

In rec.aviation.piloting hierophant wrote:
On Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:59:01 -0400, vaughn wrote:

"hierophant" wrote in message
...
My concern is that this certification will lead to the
temporarypermanent closing of airspace ala Nevada. Imagine if
general air over cities, coastlines, borders and the potential impact
of smaller airfields.

Agree. The drone folks would love to simplify and cheapen things for themselves
by 1) grabbing airspace and 2) by forcing the owners of all other planes to
install transponder equipment so that drones can cheaply "see" them. When a
drone is able to "see and avoid" just like a human pilot, then no special
airspace will be necessary. That is the standard we should insist on. Until
then, we should hold their feet to the fire. Video "see & avoid" technology is
coming, and may someday be cheap enough to go in any well-equipped airplane. ..

Vaughn

I had not thought about the see-avoid issue; this might give drones
freer realm in general airspace. Which is better? See-avoid drones
competing for any of our airspace or limited airspace for blind
drones?

A pickle.

Not really.

Drones have very limited utility in the US as a whole so I highly doubt
there will ever be many of them flying in general airspace other than
near the borders.

For testing and such the military already has restricted areas and MOAs
suitable for that.

And if a drone could ever see and avoid as well as the average 172 pilot,
there wouldn't be any realistic reason they couldn't fly with everything
else.

However, that is a big "if".

In the meantime, I wouldn't find a "mode C veil" along the boarder
objectionable.

Jim, there limited utility is being sought by major cities such as LA,
NYC, Atlanta and Chicago by local police.

Yeah, I know.

There will always be the techno-nerds that want the latest technology with
no regard to whether or not that technology is applicable to the problem
at hand.

UAVs (especially the armed ones) are very good for military type surveillance
but not really that good, if usefull at all, for civilian surveillance in
some place like LA.

UAVs will not replace a helicopter with a spot light and an officer in the
air telling the cops on the ground the perp is running south down the alley
toward 1st street.

What would the cops do with a UAV in this instance, fire a missle at the perp?

Also these things are not cheap and with todays budgets likely, even if
UAVs were approved for cop use, it would come down to either the UAV or
the helicopter, and the cops aren't going to give up their helicopters.

About the only realistic domestic use for UAVs is things like pipline
patrol, and that would hardly be a problem for GA.


--
Jim Pennino

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