Public Safety Drone News

North Carolina drone pilot Michael Jones received a cease and desist letter in 2019 from the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors (NCBEES). He had been put on notice in 2018 there was a potential issue. The letter stated he had been “previously notified that the North Carolina Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors had initiated …

Before you read this I need to make sure you understand my goal here is to provide advice, guidance, experience, and opinions to public safety pilots to help them fly safely and to reduce unnecessary and avoidable personal liability for aviation activities. I sent out an email to my list subscribers about DJI Pulls the Plug on Your Big Drone …

May 24, 2021 – See my update at the bottom of this post. My condolences to your investment in DJI products costing tens of thousands of dollars. The plug has been officially pulled by DJI on a number of products. This has been a problem brewing for at least a year. My advice was to avoid the expensive products and …

I was just working on uploading items to my aviation store at RareAviation.com and came across this image in one of my historical documents of a drone from 1947. The US Army Air Force was conducting testing on making a B-17 Fly Fortress a pilotless drone and as a demonstration, they flew the thing right at the U.S. Capitol. Judging …

Getting Real Results from Public Safety Drone Operations I recently learned about the Hype Cycle. It certainly seems to fit to what many early adopters have experienced in public safety drone operations. According to the Hype Cycle hypothesis, the advent of new technology is followed by a steep uptick that eventually crests in a “peak of inflated expectations” only to …

I recently wrote a post about FLIR clearly saying thermal cameras can’t see through foliage. See this post. My research for that post led to a developing drone artificial intelligence (AI) solution to effectively see through trees with current thermal cameras to find people below tree canopies. I had the pleasure of tracking down the principal investigator developing this technology …

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today selected five host airports to evaluate technologies and systems that could detect and mitigate potential safety risks posed by unmanned aircraft. The effort is part of the agency’s Airport Unmanned Aircraft Systems Detection and Mitigation Research Program. The FAA selected the following airports: Atlantic City International Airport in Atlantic City, New Jersey Syracuse Hancock …

Drones have been around for many decades, but this latest drone is truly out of this world. The NASA Ingenuity drone is currently tucked away on the bottom of the Perseverence rover that recently landed on Mars. When this drone takes flight, it will be limited to a bit less flight time than we have to deal with. The total …

This is one of the most open and honest messages you will see from a thermal camera manufacturer. FLIR says, “Finding a hiker lost in the woods is a challenging mission—if the person is lost in densely forested terrain, then sunlight is largely blocked by trees and other vegetation, and the ground reflects very little light. Because of this, thermal …

Just announced. The new rules for flight over people has a new effective date of March 16, 2021 from March 1, 2021. “The Agency has decided to delay until March 16, 2021, the effective date of the final rule, Operation of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Over People (RIN 2120-AK85), including the amendments to §§ 107.61, 107.63, 107.65, 107.73, and 107.74.” …