I work in Public Safety and am a member of our Emergency Management drone program. We recently hosted a concert and the promoter had a drone team that filmed and live streamed the concert. They used a DJI Inspire 2 and filmed the whole concert except when landing for battery changes.
Unfortunately I was not given access to this team to coordinate air space and to get their flight plans. The area of the concert was on the beach and hazards were the large crowd, a tourism helicopter that offers short duration flights that vary in length depending on the price. This helicopter flies along the beach and passes by the concert area every 10 to 20 minutes at approximately 150 to 200 ft AGL.
I was kind of shocked when I saw that they took off from next to the stage and then flew over the crowd to reach their different filming points. I was more shocked when some of their filming was conducted at 150 to 200 ft AGL directly over the 10 to 15,000 people. I was horrified and then angry when they did not spot the tourism helicopter on several occasions and they came within 100 to 200 feet from a collision. I was just plain annoyed when I launched our drone during intermission to conduct a test flight for interference and to test our thermal camera's ability to see people in the water and I was called by our PD to land due to the drone film crew freaking out that I was in their air space.
I asked through an intermediary if they had a waiver for flight over people and did not receive an answer. I saw that the Inspire 2 did not have a parachute and as we know it would not be compliant with any new rules on flight over people. This went on for 3 nights straight and I never did hear back about any waiver. They cut down on the flight over people but did not entirely stop. I also requested that they contact the tourism helicopter and come up with a game plan for air space deconfliction. This did not happen either. I did not push the issue as far as I wanted due to the sense that I might not be backed as this event brought in a lot of money.
I just have bad interactions with almost every drone pilot I encounter. From people I know not registering, not taking TRUST, flying commercially without a 107 and just making sure that drones always have a bad name and are flown unsafely and in this case unprofessionally.
This is more of a vent to get this off of my chest as from my time on these forums, most are extremely professional. It did take every ounce of constraint for me to not call the FSDO.
On a positive note, we had an air show two days in a row, and at least no drones were spotted breaking the TFR, but PD put out announcements that anyone caught flying would be arrested and have their drone confiscated.
Unfortunately I was not given access to this team to coordinate air space and to get their flight plans. The area of the concert was on the beach and hazards were the large crowd, a tourism helicopter that offers short duration flights that vary in length depending on the price. This helicopter flies along the beach and passes by the concert area every 10 to 20 minutes at approximately 150 to 200 ft AGL.
I was kind of shocked when I saw that they took off from next to the stage and then flew over the crowd to reach their different filming points. I was more shocked when some of their filming was conducted at 150 to 200 ft AGL directly over the 10 to 15,000 people. I was horrified and then angry when they did not spot the tourism helicopter on several occasions and they came within 100 to 200 feet from a collision. I was just plain annoyed when I launched our drone during intermission to conduct a test flight for interference and to test our thermal camera's ability to see people in the water and I was called by our PD to land due to the drone film crew freaking out that I was in their air space.
I asked through an intermediary if they had a waiver for flight over people and did not receive an answer. I saw that the Inspire 2 did not have a parachute and as we know it would not be compliant with any new rules on flight over people. This went on for 3 nights straight and I never did hear back about any waiver. They cut down on the flight over people but did not entirely stop. I also requested that they contact the tourism helicopter and come up with a game plan for air space deconfliction. This did not happen either. I did not push the issue as far as I wanted due to the sense that I might not be backed as this event brought in a lot of money.
I just have bad interactions with almost every drone pilot I encounter. From people I know not registering, not taking TRUST, flying commercially without a 107 and just making sure that drones always have a bad name and are flown unsafely and in this case unprofessionally.
This is more of a vent to get this off of my chest as from my time on these forums, most are extremely professional. It did take every ounce of constraint for me to not call the FSDO.
On a positive note, we had an air show two days in a row, and at least no drones were spotted breaking the TFR, but PD put out announcements that anyone caught flying would be arrested and have their drone confiscated.
