Nige,
All valid counter arguments - but could that not be said for all walks of life -
- Your nutters will still shout at CC for their Wine not being chilled perfectly and start drunken brawls on planes threatening to kill everyone with a bomb.
- Execs will still cause a massive disturbance in the cabin just before a departure because her nuts were in a bag not a bowl.
- Pilots still drink and attempt to fly aircraft.
All of those are nutters and pose serious threats to Aircraft safety in one of the most regulated industries in the world alongside medicines / injectables. The fact is, no amount of regulation is bullet proof and will not stop the moronic baffoons. But regulation, clear guidelines and legislation help keep it to a minimum.
The videos on YouTube as you quite rightly state, are astounding. Prosecutions are now starting to occur, but the problem is, the FAA / CAA still do not seem have one stance on it The guy that slams a Drone into a building about 600ft up in NY got away with it, no prosecution - that is a serious threat to not only helicopters but people on the ground too - Countless acts of breaches in the UK as well have gone without prosecution. Educating people will help, but will not stop all. Regulating to an extent will help, but not stop all. A major issue is the lack of education. For example, I can go and buy a quad over the counter, no questions ask, which has a climb rate of something like 20m/s. If you don't know what you are doing, 3-4 seconds held down, you have got some serious Alt and may be out of range - if its not a correctly configured unit or TX/RX issues occur, that will keep climbing, leaving the person on the ground in a bit of bother and potential traffic even more so. I'd like to see compulsory trainning of some sort, but how that is regulated is difficult.
Another thing worth noting - although it is somewhat irrelevent - but most drones / Quads/ UAS are light plastic composites so people simply don't think about it causing damage to an aircraft. The majority are not metal framed (You are getting into the serious stuff here) - It would be interesting to see GE / RR etc + Government / FAA / CAA do an ingestion test of a well known (For example, DJI Phantom) into one of these engines - as an educational video and from a safety perspective. I think if people saw that, they would be shocked at the damage it would do - I'd say it would be on par with a Canadian goose going through it, seeing as the materials are not as fragile as organic matter.
My point is,
- if a terrorist blows up a plane, we don't stop flying do we?
- If a person is killed in a car crash, we don't stop driving?
There is no blanket way to stop these people without destroying it for the majority. All we can do, is do our best, be it the FAA / CAA , Hobby pilots and the courts to come up with a way of allowing responsible pilots to fly whilst punishing those that commit offenses. Carpeting the issue of drones and drone pilots in general as negative is not the right answer. If the London paper's artical on how "Pilotless planes are safer" are anything to go by, you'd better invest in a FPV kit and a drone to practice on for when you have to fix the computers mess remotely from a hangar
