Drones, the newest hobby. Drones are small “robots” that you can control that fly and hover in relation to your best piloting skills. Drones also have cameras attached or a place to attach one our self. This and the fact that they aren’t loud make them the perfect thing to use when you want to scope out an area without being caught or seen.
Drones are used a lot by our military for surveillance. This should tell you enough how drones work with seeing things they shouldn’t. A lot of controversy going around about drones is the fact that if one is flying over your house or in your yard and looking into your house; by law you cannot take it down or damage the drone in anyway. There was recently a case where an 18 year old from Connecticut attached a handgun to the drone and was able to fire it from the drone, this breaking two federal aviation laws, “releasing something from a civilian aircraft’, and ‘arming a civilian aircraft.” If someone else were to do that and use it in a harmful way, then there would be almost no way of finding the culprit.
With all this in mind our government had to do something. So the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) made and passed a law that was put into effect as of December 21, 2015; stating that all drones must be registered with the FAA. Failure to do so will result in civil and criminal penalties. Civil penalties can be up to $27,500. And Criminal penalties include fines of up to $250,000 and/or imprisonment for up to three years. According to the FAA rules if the UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) is less than 0.55 pounds (250 grams) you do not have to register it. But there is slim to none that weigh 0.55 pounds or less. And definitely none that have a camera and only weigh that much. Your best bet if you don’t want to pay those fines and go to prison on a federal offense is to just pay the five dollar registration fee that will be refunded through January 20th.
So, register your drone and enjoy your flight.
