Despite Hurdles, Drones Are Taking Off

Despite Hurdles, Drones Are Taking Off posted: 09/11/2015

by Andy Marken

I take up a compass heading of 65 degrees out of New York, keep correcting the heading every 100 miles. - Charles Lindberg

With units selling for $80 to $30,000 plus, there are a lot of drones available and a lot that fall (pun intended) between idiot toys and military armament.

This year, sales are projected to be about 4.3M units with an estimated value of about $1.7B, which represents a 167 percent sales increase in two years.

Businesses across the board are coming up with new ideas on how they can use the devices every day to save time, money and do things that keep folks out of danger.

The only problems are wading through the morass of government regulation, FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) and stupid people.

Every other day, there's a story about drones--drones interfering with pilots or emergency personnel; drones peeping; drones causing fear and paranoia from above; drones disrupting sporting/public/family events by crashing and drone hunters (something like skeet).

The market is so big, has so much potential and so much sticky stuff that legal pros have become specialists drone lawyers.

If you have a problem, call propellers friends -- especially if you want to get your Section 333 Exemption. It's a crapload of paperwork that takes a couple of months to get approved. You can also call them if you have a little problem like:

- Kids who fly their drones over NYC's George Washington Bridge

- School teachers who crash drones at the US Open

- The youngster who developed gun-firing drones

- Hundreds of pilot close encounter reports

- White House Down drones

- Public incidents, personal injury

To help drones reach their full potential of practical use, organizations like the Small UAV Coalition (http://www.smalluavcoalition.org) have emerged.

The Coalition's goal is to work with government agencies to develop reasonable legislation and governance, streamline application permits and educate/train people for personal and professional drone usage.

Their rush to fill the gap is logical because we all know there will be a helluva' backlash from illegal drone usage and that a major catastrophe could set the industry back years.

Of course, when a soon-to-be automated auto features the ravenous things in an ad it doesn't help much.

Run - With a direct rip-off from Alfred Hitchcock's epic classic of The Birds, the folks who are encouraging you to ride an autonomous car (soon) decided it would be great to show the power of their vehicle by avoiding another robotic technology, drones. Kinda' cute, unless you've seen something like Transformers too.

Since there's no uniform global or national approach to the legal use of drones the manufacturers and professional users are doing their darndest.

The potential - for sales and especially applications - are outta sight:

- Agriculture/farming services/spraying

- Mapping/topography/geospatial

- First responder services - police, fire, medical

- Utilities - pipeline, powerline inspection

- Construction management/supervision

- Scientific research

- Package delivery (Yes Amazon Prime Air but DHL is already doing it.)

What do they all have - sorta' in common?

Hot Stuff - DJi captured the world's attention by showing the benefits of drones by flying one of their vehicles extremely close to Icelands erupting B r arbunga volcano and over the Holuhraun lava field it created last year. The footage was spectacular and would have been impossible with other aerial filmmaking tools.

Right! Video.

That's probably why the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) spent more than $4M over the past two years lobbying to make it easier for filmmakers to use small drones for film-making.

And drone filmwork isn't just for the big film, news people anymore.

Movie Greats - One of the first eagerly anticipated uses of drones was in the film industry - Tellywood and Indies. Low-cost drones combined with 4K cameras seem to have been made solely for filmmakers to capture images and scenes that were previously extremely expensive to execute and often dangerous.

High-end digital cameras and CGI (computer-generated imagery effects have slashed the cost of film production.

It's one of the reasons people like Jeff Foster, Co-Founder of the Drone Coalition (http://dronecoalition.net) developed strong relationships with DJI (the Chinese-based drone manufacturer that is currently the world leader with about 45 percent marketshare) and other drone manufacturers.

He also gets to test all the new compact 4K cameras that can be used with drones like GoPro's new Hero and Blackmagic's latest Micro Cinema.

Foster, and other serious professionals, carried out an educational/informational program at NAB (National Association of Broadcasters). They are also very involved in other industry conferences/conventions to ensure drones are used properly in the film/video industry.

Peripherally associated with the film industry, David Helmly Jr. is another who is focused professionally and personally on getting drones off the ground (another pun intended). He's a senior at Embry Riddle University in Daytona, working on his commercial pilot license and degree in Aeronautical Sciences. He's also an avid weekend drone warrior, flying a range of DJI drones, and has assisted in numerous DJI/Adobe events.

His goal is teaching newcomers the art and skill of safe flying, focusing on planned flight plans and shared skies. The licensed private pilot thinks of safety first for airline and small craft pilots as well as instances of emergency aircraft.

Sometimes people have to use common sense and there are t

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