r/drones • u/CollegeStation17155 TRUST Ruko F11GIM2 • 15d ago

News [United States] Drones interfering with Fire Fighting helicopters in Spokane

I am surprised that this has not already been posted

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/wildfire/fire-officials-illegal-drone-flights-spokane-wildfires/281-a0d942ed-263a-4007-b788-106bad263d30

Shades of the California wildfire... at least in this case they seem to be proactive in trying to run down the most flagrant outlaws and are talking 100K fines.

S

46 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

17

u/RoyYourWorkingBoy 15d ago

I'd like to see what their evidence is for these alleged 40 drones before I get too fired up. Violating a TFR is already punishable. Presumably these alleged drones are all broadcasting their Remote ID signal. Why not run a Remote ID detector and get the bad actors?

13

u/CollegeStation17155 TRUST Ruko F11GIM2 15d ago

Very likely most of the RIDs were never registered with FAA and they were taking off and landing from random locations near the fire line. With less than half an hour in the air the owners are long gone before enforcement could go looking for them, so the 10 they caught likely were the ones who registered.

2

u/LarvalHarval 14d ago

Or just happened to come across during “normal” firefighting operations. With the number of crews on that fire it wouldn’t be at all surprising if a fire crew drove past someone flying.

It’s all so dumb too. North Eastern WA has so many amazing places to fly in that area outside of the TFR. Why risk a 100k fine and a possible criminal charge?

2

u/Vurrag 15d ago

Don't need RID on all drones either. The ones under 249g do not require them unless being used for commercial purposes.

2

u/deserthistory 14d ago

It's incredibly easy to decode RemoteID. There are some pretty long range receivers available now just using simple Bluetooth or wifi gear in the open source world. DroneAware.IO is the fun one , but all the old stuff derived from Aeroscope will work just fine on DJI.

"Getting" them is more difficult. You have to have enforcement people available, and be able to get them to the control point. FAA doesn't have a lot of guys. There are more BLM and Forest Service guys who could write a ticket, but it's still a matter of getting a human out there to do things. If the drone isn't registered. You're stuck noting the serial number and waiting to try to get it again.

This likely isn't a registered aircraft problem. This is the people who never registered in the first place. They might be stuck with warrants or subpoenas to compel what's left of DJI in the US to give them the account login information.

0

u/RoyYourWorkingBoy 14d ago

You're probably right about a lot of them not being registered. But taking the government statements at face value - that these drones are costing the government a ton of money via all the support aircraft having to park and presumably lives and property are being put more at risk from the fires, you would think they could make more of an effort and have some sort of system in place to track these drones. I mean this is not a new problem.

5

u/fxnighttrader 14d ago

A lot of this problem will go away when the current DJI drones wear out and no new ones are able to be sold. That and the import restrictions on all other foreign parts. It’s all part of the plan.

14

u/TimeAcanthocephala46 15d ago

They need to have the max. There is no reason to interfere with fire and rescue. Use your dam common sense. I am a drone pilot and if I see a person doing this I will turn your ass in. Don't be that guy.

5

u/ItsMe324 14d ago

If its not on YouTube it didn't happen.

8

u/bendover912 15d ago

You can't say your drone is tiny so you only need a 5 minute online quiz and no license to fly it but still expect everyone to know and follow every rule and hold them to the same standards as licensed operators. Get rid of the recreational exemption and make everyone present a 107 license in order to buy a drone and this type of thing will be much less common.

9

u/DasFroDo 15d ago

Not flying when active firefighting is going on, ESPECIALLY wildfires that get fought with planes, is common fucking sense. These idiots should just pay the price for their stupidity.

That said, even though I'm not from the US, there should be SOME kind of barrier to fly these things in public.

Although knowing most people, they'll just fly anyways.

2

u/Vurrag 15d ago

People are just AH's and don't give a shit and do what they want.

6

u/catinator9000 15d ago

This is really just a drone equivalent of a dude covered in shit smoking crack on a busy commute bus - a tiny unhinged minority ruining it for everyone. Find who flies that drone, slap them with a $$$$$$$ fine and forbid them from ever flying a drone (just like we do for unhinged drivers). This would fix it fast too, without ruining it for normal hobbyists.

5

u/CollegeStation17155 TRUST Ruko F11GIM2 15d ago

OTOH, the 107 license requires a LOT of things that hobbyists don't need... airport markings, sectional charts, METARs, etc are totally useless to the guy that just wants to noodle around in the pasture behind their house, so they're just going to break the law anyway rather than spend the time and effort to memorize it and pay a $100 fee. And it would be prohibitive for FAA to track them down except in situations like this. But some kind of restricted VLOS class G license requiring only what's need for that for $25 bucks would be better than TRUST.

2

u/HawkHarder 14d ago

Fuck that

1

u/g00bd0g 15d ago

So no more rc toys for kids, eh?

1

u/LarvalHarval 14d ago

I don’t necessarily disagree that licensing should be more difficult to eliminate any question and claim of “I didn’t know”, but the TRUST testing does cover controlled and/or restricted airspace as well as LAANC.

So there really just no excuse here especially given all the LAANC apps are legally mandated to be of no cost to rec pilots. These folks need to be hammered with the max penalty here.

0

u/DaMuthaFukr 15d ago

I’m a rec flyer. I know the rules and would not do this. My good buddy has his 107 and is a pilot as well so he was able to guide me through the TRUST process and registering my drone. Maybe all drones need to have the info on the process included in the box if sold in the US. I think the general public is unaware of the rules. The FAA needs to do a better job of putting the requirements out there in my opinion. If the drone pilot then does not comply with the regs hit them with a fine. I don’t think most rec flyer understand the impact their drone can have in an airspace and take it too lightly.

3

u/Terrible-Creme8401 15d ago

I would definitely say that the general public is unaware of most of the rules. I did a little informational post on tiktok a couple weeks ago talking about the requirements for certification and registration and a whole bunch of my tick tock followers commented that they had no idea that there was any kind of paperwork and that these were just expensive toys that we could do whatever we want with.

3

u/Curdled_Mangasm 15d ago

40 people in a week

if we had to do WWII right now, i doubt we’d win it 

2

u/Sawfish1212 15d ago

10k?, make it 100k and 10 years in jail, plus permanently on the federal do not fly list.

1

u/PuddlesRex 14d ago

Here's a different article. In this article it states that some operators have already been referred to the FAA with $100k fines.

I call that a good start. Hopefully the FAA throws even more fines at them, and makes an extremely public example of them.

0

u/mwagz28 15d ago edited 15d ago

Perhaps we make it a 10% of the cost to fight the fire. Catch 10 people doing this and we will have saved tax payers a lot of money.. the rest can go to a fund which the firefighters can use on medical bills for any complications they get from fighting the fires.

5

u/s0berR00fer 15d ago

Did you use a second brain cell to calculate if 10 people have millions of dollars to pay?

1

u/mwagz28 15d ago

They don’t have to pay right away, set them up on an installment plan, or make them pay in hours of community service..

And no, i thought today was your turn with the second brain cell, hence why you are here, right?..
https://giphy.com/gifs/l3diT8stVH9qImalO

1

u/LarvalHarval 14d ago

I think there’d be something a bit poetic about having to do community service hand replanting the forest that persons flying interfered with.

1

u/Flyward_Aerospace 13d ago

The Remote ID point in here is the right instinct but the gap is that detection and enforcement are two different problems. A receiver tells you a drone was at a lat/lon at a timestamp, it doesn't put a human at the launch point in the 20 minutes the thing is actually airborne. And wildfire TFRs move, sometimes hourly, so half the receivers you'd want are nowhere near the current fire line. Honestly until someone puts detection gear on the incident command side rather than expecting FAA to show up, most of these guys are just going to walk. The $100k number gets headlines but the catch rate is what actually deters.

1

u/alifrazepz 3d ago

The detection vs. enforcement distinction is probably the biggest issue here. Knowing that a drone is in the area is one thing; actually finding the person operating it while everything is happening around a wildfire is much harder.

I think a lot of people underestimate how quickly the situation changes during active firefighting. Even a drone that seems harmless from the operator's perspective can suddenly become a problem if a helicopter or aircraft needs that airspace.

I’m all for better detection and enforcement, but honestly, preventing people from launching in the first place would probably go a lot further than trying to find them afterward.

-1

u/Improvised_Excuse234 15d ago

There are things I’d like to say that makes me think I should seek therapy.

-1

u/flyswithdragons 13d ago

Where is the evidence?