Drones To Be Certificated For GA?

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.