Raging Rotors: The FAA, FPV, and You!
As of June 25th, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has released their interpretation of special aircraft and first person view (FPV) flight. Above you can see a few of their guidelines, and you can see more on what is or isn’t considered hobby/recreational flight by Reading More…
There are a few major-ish things on this document that bears mentioning:
- By these guidelines, multirotor (or any hobby aircraft for that matter) cannot be used for commercial based services (Sorry, Amazon).
- In line with that, as the image shows at the top of the article, hobby aircraft cannot be flown outside of physical line of sight. On top of that, this would also apply to the wearing of FPV goggle sets while flying. Others can use the goggles, but pilots are not allowed. Base station style screen displays are fine, as they do not block field of vision.
- Below is the separation between what is considered hobby/recreation flying, and what isn’t. It is pretty clear, and just also strengthens point 1.
In a quick response, the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA, the organization in charge of model aviation), have posted a letter pretty much saying ‘Nice interpretation, but we’re gonna say NO.’
It’s a very hot topic, and of course things are likely going to be fought, changed, debated, changed, forgotten, debated, debated again, and then changed, etc.
To see the full briefing from the FAA click here, and the AMA response can be found via This Link.
Feel free to add your two cents in the Comments.
Until next time, Stay Shiny and Keep Flyin’!
