Drones

The Sunbeam Television Miami Fox affiliate’s 7Skyforce helicopter was forced to avoid a drone that got too close to it while hovering over the scene of a car that had crashed into a Southwest Miami-Dade gym. Law enforcement has started an investigation into the incident.

The FAA on Monday said its long-awaited rules for the drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, will address security concerns by requiring remote identification technology in most cases to enable their identification from the ground. Previously, small drone operations over people were limited to operations over people who were directly participating in the operation, located under a covered structure, or inside a stationary vehicle — unless operators had obtained a waiver from the FAA.

A good working relationship between the media and the FAA should serve both parties well as specifications are developed. There’s no question that both groups are committed to and concerned for aviation safety. “Given the news media’s support of the overall adoption of a remote ID regime, it is highly likely that the parties will be able to come to accommodations in the final rules,” says attorney M. Anne Swanson.

Near-field measurements eliminate special FAA waivers, reduce impact of signal reflections on measurements for broadcasters seeking to verify antenna radiation characteristics.

The Part 107 rules for unmanned aircraft require pilots flying drones for commercial purposes to renew their certification every two years. But the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the closing of the bulk of the private contractor centers in the United States where drone pilots can go for testing and renewal.

DJI, the world’s largest drone maker and a major supplier to TV news in the U.S., has been roiled by an IPO that never came to pass, an internal fraud scandal, a damaging trade war between the U.S. and China and now the coronavirus crisis threatening its essential U.S. market.

The country’s top transportation regulator on Thursday proposed tracking nearly every drone in U.S. airspace, a rule that would pave the way for companies like Google and Amazon to deploy commercial drones across the U.S. The rule, the culmination of years of work by the Federal Aviation Administration, will create a system that allows law enforcement and the government to track drones throughout the sky, distinguishing between licensed aircraft vehicles and those that are suspicious or potentially threatening.

Alphabet Inc’s Wing Aviation unit on Tuesday got the OK to start delivering goods by drone in Virginia later this year, making the sister unit of search engine Google the first company to get U.S. air carrier certification, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

U.S. TV broadcasters have been flying drones with FAA permission since August 2016. By the end of 2017, 45% of U.S. TV stations already owned drones, and another 9% were planning to buy them, according to RTNDA Executive Director Dan Shelley.

The Federal Aviation Administration has been busy these last few weeks, promulgating a bunch of different rules that have some consequences — short-term and long-term — for drone journalists.

The FAA has issued a new set of rules requiring all unmanned aircraft systems (or drones) to display official registration numbers on the outside of the aircraft. Previously, registered drone’s unique identifier could be stored inside the device in an easily accessible area such as in the battery compartment so long as it was “readable and legible upon close visual inspection.”

The 10,000th flight occurred on Jan. 30, part of an assignment for a news report for WPMI Mobile, Ala. The drone was commanded by Robby Hughes from Sinclair’s WEAR Pensacola, Fla., with visual observer Jan Czernik stationed in Mobile.

WAVY, Nexstar’s NBC affiliate in Portsmouth, Va., is in the fortunate position of having its own news helicopter on the premises as well as a drone. But deciding when to use either is a fine art. “So we see what fits best, the drone or the helicopter, and some days, we have them both out,” said Jeff Myers, WAVY’s news operations manager and chief photographer.

When KXLY Spokane got its drone, the staff was expecting to be able to use it to cover all kinds of news stories. What the newsroom didn’t anticipate was how limited the area to fly in was going to be: there are pretty tight FAA regulations around Spokane because of two airports and a military base in the area. Like any good innovator, station executives didn’t let this setback stop them though. They used it as an opportunity to create a new franchise for the station. They weren’t really able to fly in the city, but the area all around — the beautiful scenery of the Inland Northwest — was fair game.

New proposed regulations may chill the media’s use of drones for newsgathering purposes.  They would make it a civil offense to fly a drone over private property at less than 200 feet without permission. Beyond that, a landowner could sue for per se aerial trespass — he or she wouldn’t even need to show damages from the drone passing over the property.