T.

Miller

, Virginia

, United States

Posted on
2020-02-26 5:19:30
“Flying is important to me because it has been a driver of innovation, and place to experience freedom. I’m an Aerospace Engineer that got through college thanks to a practical application competition, the AIAA’s Design/Build/Fly competition. I was inspired to pursue a career in aviation because of reading over old SportAviations, and the many stories of Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager, Steve Wittman, and many other innovators in aviation. A third wave of innovation is approaching for Aviation, and the FAA has been asleep at the switch for the past 18 years while the second wave of innovation has passed through its inflection point. Common sense regulations could have, and should have, been discussed and enacted in 2010… and now the FAA is rushing to get this done before it has egg on its face. These regulations restrict the freedom that the open skies grants. These regulations give the skies completely over to moneyied interests that want take away pilots’ ability to fly when/where they want without regulation (be that model pilots, drone pilots, sailplane, hang-glider, paraglider, powered parachute, etc.), while giving the skies over completely to the likes of Google/Amazon/etc so they can fill the skies with noise pollution while delivering junk. They are doing so while enriching another corporate entity that has no reason to keep from profiting off of the personal information they will be required to collect. This entire situation is of the FAA’s own making, and they are going to exacerbate the non-functionality of the two airspace systems with these new regulations. The FAA wants drones to be considered aircraft, in contradiction to previous determinations… but wants to keep 55#s and smaller aircraft as a second class airspace citizens. They launched ADS-B without thinking ahead to more crowded skies, and provided it with banded altitude resolution, improved fidelity and intelligence for different flight regimes and future uses. So they are placing a bandaid over the situation by layering over a second ID system, which will do nothing to keep “real aircraft” away from “small/pilotless aircraft”… all while technology is pushing forward and developing person-carrying drones that will blend between the two systems. I’ve been waiting 10 years for the FAA to sort this all out, before I decide to get back in to model/drone aviation. It looks like I will be waiting for a long time to come.”