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Comment by matheweis | Hacker News Reader

I am not a pilot (although the right $$ would have me there in a an instant... wishful thinking), but I have been flying various remote control aircraft (including so-called "drones", now) for nearly 20 years.

A sensible system seems like it would be three tiered:

Very small stuff would remain unregulated - obviously there is no concern with things like the CX-10, right? I can't imagine a "drone" of anything near that size causing any size of full-scale aircraft problems.

Mid-tier stuff would be a world like Amateur Radio - modernized to be online or something as you've suggested. You are free to participate in the big boy's airspace within the rules, but some education and proof-of-knowledge about those rules is required.

... and of course large things should not be any different than a full-sized aircraft, with the same regulations.

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Also, about the proposed registration, they fully acknowledged during the press conference that the trouble is tracking down the owners. You aren't going to be able to read the markings on a Phantom at any useful distance when you're trying to track down a violator.

I'd propose instead a requirement for ADS-B for the mid and large classes below... Micro ~100g transponders exist, fully integrate with the existing aviation infrastructure, etc. [1] ... and most importantly would enable identification of the UAV, which is apparently the most pressing concern at the moment.

Do the pilots here see any problems with this?

[1] http://www.sagetechcorp.com/unmanned-solutions/unmanned-solu...

I think it's a great idea. If anything the FAA (and the curmudgeon pilots) may have seriously underestimated the utility of ADS-B.

Also, thanks for the link to the low power transponder. Some paraglider friends of mine might like to see those adapted for ultralight use.

> Some paraglider friends of mine might like to see those adapted for ultralight use.

They might be better looking into FLARM, which is specifically designed for low-weight applications

https://flarm.com/

ADS-B is competent in its own space, but is really just a clever hack on top of all sorts of Big Aeroplane Regulations and it carries a lot of financial and weight penalties as a result.

Thanks for the info, I hadn't heard of it and it looks pretty interesting. I would note though, in case you missed it, that ADS-B transponder I linked is only 100 grams, vs 250+ for the powercore unit.

I'm not sure about all the associated regulations, but my point was there's not any technological holdouts preventing the integration of medium to large UAVs into the existing infrastructure.

Why bother with transponders when most new transmitter/receiver technologies already have unique MAC-address-like fields, precisely for the purpose of identification?

I guess its for the 'flew dangerously and then got away with it' case, where some followup/law enforcement would be required to nab the perps, and not so much for the 'lets find out who is flying this thing right now and where they are located' ..

For the situations where a drone is flying autonomously or out of range of a transmitter; You could still use ADS-B type transponders to track it and avoid it.

FWIW, 100g is over 30% of the all-up weight of two of my quadcopters. I think very carefully about tens of grams of additional weight for better GPS or FPV antennas...

Sure, which is why I suggested this only for the mid-to-large "classes". I have flown several myself, all the way from the CX-10 (< 12g), to a custom 800 size (> 3kg range). The high end of that could handle an extra 100g without much fuss. The high end of that is also what the airlines are most worried about.

Granted there is some grey area in the 300-500 size copters, where they are large enough to possibly cause some minor damage to an aircraft, but small enough that the weight of an additional TX would pose an issue.

The registration being proposed by the DOT/FAA isn't going to help with these either; they are quite simply too small for any "tail numbers" to be visible at any distance that matters.

How about requiring a POV (persistence of vision) display on such a drone? At a cost of few additional LEDs (or even not, if you reuse onboard ones) and some CPU cycles you could have the drone flash its serial number in a way visible on cameras as the drone moves around.

That's still a large amount of weight to carry on a device.

There are 250 class quadcopters that are built for First Person View racing. Races are won and lost because of the difference in a few grams of extra weight.

Any extra weight you add to a device reduces the flight time of the battery.

I think that quadcopters used for FPV racing generally don't appear in the areas where drone identification would be a need.

I agree, but others may not... White House lawn anyone?

Because of those others we have this problem in the first place.

> Mid-tier stuff would be a world like Amateur Radio - modernized to be online or something as you've suggested.

I generally agree with you, but I want to vent out about that amateur radio bit. Going on-line is something that makes it meaningless. Doing radio over real radio waves is playing with the limits physics throws at you. Doing it over the Internet is just throwing logs under your own feet because Skype isn't cool enough. It's like going outside vs. playing a video game in which your character goes outside.

What I meant to suggest was that mid tier applications should be regulated like amateur radio; strict rules about what takes place, but anything goes within those confines.

By online I meant the testing process could be done online.

Ah, I see :). Thanks for clarifying.

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