UAS are so dangerous, there’s going to be one serious incident every 1.87 million YEARS.
A study done by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in 2016 studied bird strikes where damage or fatalities occurred. I highly recommend you read the study linked above, but the takeaway is this:
“Our analysis has been based on actual bird strikes, not near misses or simple sightings. We find in general that small UAS under 2kg pose a negligible risk to the safety of the national airspace. We estimate that 6.12×10−6 collisions will cause damage to an aircraft for every 100,000 hours of 2kg UAS flight time. Or to put it another way, one damaging incident will occur no more than every 1.87 million years of 2kg UAS flight time. We further estimate that 6.12×10−8 collisions that cause an injury or fatality to passengers on board an aircraft will occur every 100,000 hours of 2kg UAS flight time, or once every 187 million years of operation. This appears to be an acceptable risk to the airspace. “
The claim of “safety” with regard to the Radio Identification requirement in the FAA’s recent NPRM is backed by nothing more than hot air. There’s been no evidence that a risk analysis has been done. In fact, the only evidence favoring these new rules is from the Commercial Drone Association:
“We understand why model aircraft proponents want to remain exempt, as they have been flying safely for decades. However, times have changed, and hobbyists are no longer flying alone,” said Lisa Ellman, Co-executive Director, Commercial Drone Alliance.“
The CDA has no real interest in safety, they want to ensure that “their” airspace isn’t cluttered with us dangerous recreational model aircraft flyers.
Yes, we’ve been “flying safely for decades”. EIGHT DECADES. Over 80 years with nothing but a small handful of documented fatalities. Read the study above to see the number of deaths & property damage were caused by birds. Maybe the FAA should concern themselves with tagging every bird they can get their hands on. THAT is where the real danger lies.
Protest on February 29th at FAA HQ!
The UFDA Crew is putting together a public protest at FAA HQ on 2/29/2020! If you can, make sure you go!
Do NOT bring any model aircraft or drones! The entire area is a no-fly zone and you’ll just get your ass in deep trouble!
More information on the protest can be found here: http://www.helpsaveourhobby.com/.
FAA Denies Comment Period Extension
Because of course they did! They don’t want to give people any more time to realize what they’re doing than they absolutely have to.
More information can be found here: http://amablog.modelaircraft.org/amagov/2020/01/28/faa-denies-request-for-remote-id-nprm-extension/.
Please make sure you send your comments in to the FAA! Don’t use boilerplate text – it will be discounted. You need to draft your own comments! This is very important!
Work in progress!
It looks a little (hell, a LOT) bare around here, so please have patience as I update the site with new content.
Please check out the About page for information on how this site came to be and what it’s for!
I’ve updated the Information Resources page with some initial links to get folks started. If you know of a related source of information or an unlisted organization that model aviators belong to, please let me know in the comments below! I’ll get them added to the page asap.
