On 25/01/2015 4:04 a.m., Larry Dighera wrote:

My personal experience encountering an unresponsive Predator at 8,500', 12
o'clock and five miles while operating on a flight plan en route from KLAS to
KSBA is what galvanized my opinion of drone operations within the NAS. There
was no chase aircraft observing the drone (required), and the operator failed
to answer repeated radio calls from Joshua Approach Control, causing me to
divert my flight path to avoid the unresponsive drone. This nonchalant
attitude of drone operators is the heart of the UAS issue, and the arrogance of
the drone manufacturers is amazing, not to mention the apathy of airline
passengers.


Is there any chance we can stop calling them pilots?
They appear to be operators

At some point, as you said, they will all get a wake up call, and the true
hazard UAS' pose will be undeniably revealed in the grizzly results.


Is there any possibility that some form of complaint could be made that,
when the inevitable happens, those 'lawmakers' could be imprisoned and
this new system explained to the sluggards ?

We lost a lot of local ATC here and as a result had a couple of midairs
and a number of close calls.