Excellent summary of proposed FAA drone rules (NPRM)

This is the most comprehensive summary I've found. Not all good news for sure, but it could be worse. A couple things are really problematic for many (or most) of us. This was just released by the FAA on Feb 16th and starts a 60 day comment period.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/faa-proposed-commercial-drone-rules

...Tiger

I was actually pretty happy with most of it, but I assumed it was going to be a disaster.

To me, no night flying and only line of sight fpv already wrecks the fun. But... Don't worry! It will be a total disaster before they're done with it.

...Tiger

I also thought they were going to create a disaster with their rules so this is not so bad. I read somewhere that the night flying thing may not be so much because you can't see your vehicle but that you may not see obstacles. The line of sight FPV rule does not seem to really mean that much unless you wanted to fly long range, which seems to be what their greatest fear is.

We'll have to see what the costs are for their pilot qualification tests and vehicle registration.

The N number registration is pretty cheap and simple, the test is what I hope is something reasonable.

I understand each model will require it's own number. Is that correct? Do you know the cost per number?

I think it was $20 and took about a week, I just did two aircraft last month. Getting the right form was kind of a pain, but I can help you with all of it, and you can do a custom number like N123GP

Was that $20 each or for both? Have you heard anything about the pilot training requirements or their costs?

I didn't actually pay, but saw some of the fees, here is a link:

http://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/aircraft_certification/aircraft_registry/register_aircraft/

I thought it was $10 to register and $10 to hold an N number for you, but this page says only $5.

Have not heard anything about the new training stuff as of yet.

Are the numbers you ordered for your work helicopters, or for your personal models? I read somewhere that the number requirement rule probably won't take affect until 2016-2017.

They were for my job, COA required it ASAP.

Are COAs going away with the newly proposed rules?

I would doubt it, because I think a COA would kick in when you wanted to do more than what the general UAS rules would allow, like night operations, dropping things from the air, more than 55 lbs airframe weight, etc. Our biggest interest in using UAS over a fire would be at night at 2,500 AGL. would need a lot of stuff to do that.

@Pelagic Pilot - Good point. Do you think getting COAs will be easier now with the newly proposed rule changes?

I would think the requirements will be easier, but the process time with 10,000 people wanting a COA vs none now, will be a time challenge.

Have you flown that big helicopter for a fire? Or at night?

Not as of yet, and we don't have a COA for anything at night. I never applied for that on the first try.

Do you think you'll be using that helicopter against daytime fires this season?

I would like to, but the FAA knowledge exam is huge and difficult and none of it applies to RC in any way. I wish the rules would get here that changes all that because when they do all the testing will become a complete waste of time.