I'm filming in the California desert with YouTube's Field Day crew – and a drone.
Now, if we see any other aircraft flying near here, we are going to be grounding immediately,
because, well, that's the safe thing to do. There's a small municipal airport a few miles
away, but there's no traffic, and visibility's perfect today. But here is a rather scary
statistic: in the US, there were more than a hundred close encounters between drones
and manned aircraft every month this year. That means that the plane or helicopter was
close enough that its pilot could spot the drone visually – because, well, they don't
show on radar.
Now, given there are 30,000 passenger flights every day in the US, that's not much cause
for alarm. That's only, what, about 1 in 10,000 pilots who even see a drone, let alone get
close to one. But: there are tales of drones swooping past passenger aircraft as they're
coming in to land, just to get a good picture, and firefighting helicopters being grounded
until some jerk with a drone stops putting his YouTube hit count above actually fighting the fire.
Now, oop! -- in the UK, you need permission to operate a filming drone commercially, even
if that's just with YouTube ads. And you need special approval to operate within 50 metres
of anyone or any building that you aren't in complete control of. And yes, the vast
majority of individual drone operators are completely ignoring that, knowing that the
authorities don't have the time or the energy to chase everyone up.
In the US, though, the laws vary by state and change regularly, so I'm not even going
to try to sum them up other than to say that the Drone Dudes here are definitely following them.
I'd say the world's about a year or two away from the first actual collision. If it's with
a big aircraft, then the drone'll take out one engine and everyone'll probably be fine.
But if it's a small, civil aircraft, or something like a paraglider: well.
Either way, that's when the law will actually start to catch up, and when there'll be more
people arrested for what Britain calls “airprox violations” than the drunken fool who crashed
his drone on the White House lawn this year.
All right. Take her up!
And if you want to know why I'm here, with all these weird lines in the desert around
me: then check out my Field Day, out in California City.
Man that is going to look awesome.
A-OK? (Cutting.)
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