Judge Napolitano whinges about cameras so on an so forth. Why be paranoid, when that was the fact of life forever, most places. Everyone knew everyone’s business.

As a note, this notes, and all like will live forever and ever, you might think about that when you post your photos.

Remember: I fly my own private “drone” for the joy of flying. I paid for it out of my own pocket and I take threats of having it shot down rather seriously.

Talking seriously about randomly shooting down drones is akin to talking seriously about randomly keying cars. Either one is destruction of someone’s property.

wearyman on September 11, 2012 at 3:39 PM

My husband flies remote controlled helicopters. Flying it over the neighbor’s yard seems extremely rude to me.

If you were to park your car in someone’s lawn, you could probably expect it to get keyed eventually.

Stuff like this is way more vulnerable. Yeah they’ll be a lot harder to spot, but everything from duck guns to directed EMP to even an *ahem* appropriately-equipped, commercially available RC helicopter could knock them down.

I would venture that you might even be able to hit these things with a homemade rail gun, which are not all that hard to build. What’s their flight ceiling?

I know that most of you firearms “authorities” have never heard of the goose gun, as is expected.

Talking seriously about randomly shooting down drones is akin to talking seriously about randomly keying cars. Either one is destruction of someone’s property.

wearyman on September 11, 2012 at 3:39 PM

If you happen to be “randomly” flying it over someone’s property you takes your chances that it might “randomly” get shot down I guess, hmmmm?

Remember: I fly my own private “drone” for the joy of flying. I paid for it out of my own pocket and I take threats of having it shot down rather seriously.

Talking seriously about randomly shooting down drones is akin to talking seriously about randomly keying cars. Either one is destruction of someone’s property.

wearyman on September 11, 2012 at 3:39 PM

I live in my own private “home” for the joy of living. I paid for it out of my own pocket and I take threats of having it compromised rather seriously.

Talking seriously about imagined rights to spy or otherwise compromise my security or property is destruction of my rights.

If you think this is OK, you’ve got to be kidding, too!

Touche??

PS – Skeet shooting is NOT random.

Remember: I fly my own private “drone” for the joy of flying. I paid for it out of my own pocket and I take threats of having it shot down rather seriously.

Good. Then as a techno-geek, make note of this:
The effective range of a shotgun blast is in the neighborhood of 100 feet.
If you are flying over people’s homes, backyards, swing sets, swimming pools etc at a height under 100 feet with a camera you are engaging in an invasion of privacy.
Not to mention endangering others with the potential crash of your RC plane.
Defensive destruction of your toy is a reasonable response to that.
So get your ‘joy of flying’ away from private homes.

BTW – I suspect you already do that. But your reaction to the shotgun reference was outside the lines.

You say drone, I say skeet shooting
You say red-light camera, I say paintball gun.

Sounds like good clean fun to me!

(Are you really trying to engage me in a serious discussion on this?)

landlines on September 11, 2012 at 3:30 PM

That depends I guess. if you are just joking around, then ok. but if you are serious, then yes, a serious discussion should follow.

Remember: I fly my own private “drone” for the joy of flying. I paid for it out of my own pocket and I take threats of having it shot down rather seriously.

Talking seriously about randomly shooting down drones is akin to talking seriously about randomly keying cars. Either one is destruction of someone’s property.

wearyman on September 11, 2012 at 3:10 PM

So what’s wrong if I choose to fly BB-shaped aircraft over my own house?? Some of them may be rocket propelled. Sometimes I might experiment with flying stones.

My falcon also might retrieve small buzzing objects from my airspace.

(Are you really trying to engage me in a serious discussion on this?)

landlines on September 11, 2012 at 3:03 PM

You ARE aware that randomly firing a gun up into the air is illegal, right? And that you do NOT own the airspace over your house and that ANYONE has the right to fly ANY aircraft over your house, no need of a warrant, right?

Because if you are, those are remarkably irresponsible things you are saying.

OhioCoastie on September 11, 2012 at 2:09 PM

Drones are FREE SKEET!!!

(Don’t need high tech countermeasures…)

how absurd is it that Boxer and perhaps more than a few others in the Senate want to use it for EPA enforcement?

Not from their micro-managing every aspect of our lives point of view. It’d be absurd if they DIDN’T desire to use it for that, and may other, purposes.

I am also a “drone” pilot. I pilot a “drone” I built myself.

(This is my old plane, which I recently crashed during a high speed low altitude maneuver. I have since replaced it with a similar model.)

Frankly, I think most of the privacy stuff is overblown. All but the most high-tech military drones have little more than a 760P camera on them. The camera you see on my plane is a 480 line NTSC CCD camera. VERY low rez. Good for piloting and seeing the pretty view, but not so great in the detail department. Also, as I recently discovered, getting low enough to make out detail with these kinds of cameras means that you risk a crash.

I am a member of a growing international community of private FPV pilots who fly our “drones” (I keep using quotes because I really dislike the term “drone” and the emotional connotations it brings with it.) purely for the joy of flying. It’s hard to explain the experience of flying a model plane from the perspective of the pilots seat, without leaving the ground.

The below video was not my creation, but was the creation of a member of the FPV flying community. It is filmed entirely from a home-made FPV airplane (or “Drone”) and does a good job of capturing the emotional aspect of FPV.

Enjoy flying through the clouds

I think it is important for us as Americans to ensure that the skies are always open and free for private citizens to fly in, and not closed off for only moneyed and big government interests.

Right now things are open. However if the big money players have their way, private citizens will be restricted to very tiny areas and the sky will be closed to us. This is wrong and un-American. We should support private “drone” pilots and all work towards allowing the skies to be open and free for anyone who wants to fly in them.