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FAA Release NEW rules for UAS Operations

For those who fly in areas that have no cell service the addition of any hardware will be useless. So I suspect people in those remote areas will continue to fly as they do now.
I wouldnt be surprised if 5g tech made those places fewer and fewer. its not so much about customers in those areas as its about coverage....ultimately. think about it this way. If drones are seen to present a clear and present concern to the NAS I can easily see the govt paying a provider for towers especially along the coast and borders without cell customers.
 
I wouldnt be surprised if 5g tech made those places fewer and fewer. its not so much about customers in those areas as its about coverage....ultimately. think about it this way. If drones are seen to present a clear and present concern to the NAS I can easily see the govt paying a provider for towers especially along the coast and borders without cell customers.
Maybe but the rub here is 5G requires a lot more towers that are closer together. Building that infrastructure won't happen over night and it definitely won't happen in time for the FAA deadline. There are people living in my area with no coverage so the only thing the telcoms have been able to do for them is provide range boosters in their house to get 4G. There are a lot of dead zones in Michigan. Personally, I like that, especially when trying to get away from it all. That and driving on seasonal roads that the vehicle GPS warns that there is no road or data where I'm at.

In the United States we're pretty full of ourselves but with all of the dead and data less zones I've personally experienced, that and school kids with no WiFi, having to drive to find a public school bus to use as a hot spot to be able to connect to school, it's just pathetic and embarrassing. We're more like a 3rd world country than most people would like to believe.

So tell me again how the FAA thinks this will work and in 2 years? Not as planned that's for sure. Give me a break.
 
Is remote ID a requirement when operating outside of the following airspace?


  • Class A, B, and C airspace;
  • Class E airspace at or above 10,000 feet msl, excluding airspace at and below 2,500 feet agl;
  • Within 30 nautical miles of a Class B primary airport (the Mode C veil);
  • Above the ceiling and within the lateral boundaries of Class B or Class C airspace up to 10,000 feet;


If so General aviation doesn’t even have an ADSB out requirement to operate outside of that airspace. The FAA can’t or won’t enforce nearly any regulations in the GA community. Not much chance of them enforcing any of this
 
I’m very, VERY happy with this. Free online currency training rather than sitting for another $150 test. Bring it on.

Not worried at all about Remote ID. There will be plenty of tiny modules available by the time it is an enforceable rule. I don’t seem to be able to locate ANY requirements for this signal to be received, only that you are broadcasting....so, a cheap little transmitter, as long as it’s broadcasting, will suffice. Of course, in 2.5 years, they may define this requirement. Plus, in 2.5 years I'll most likely be replacing my working drones anyway.
What'll you take for that hat, Fred? I agree on the 150, I already gave them that twice, and have to drive a fer piece to test.

Add-on modules will not be a slam dunk. They'll have to go through a (not yet specified) approval process. Also bear in mind the FCC will be involved. Owners adding (approved) modules to existing craft must stay within LOS, whereas newly designed craft with RID do not.

Seems many folks believe RID must be connected to Wi-Fi , cell signals, or ANYTHING. Not true, all the RID must do, is simply transmit. Happy New Year to the Lackey family and to all of you!
 
Have they defined the range of transmission as of yet? I have seen mention of Bluetooth, but that is a joke. You can barely keep a BT speaker connected at 30 feet.

The only reason it needs to transmit is so the delivery drones will know you are there. A manned aircraft will be traveling too fast for it to have any effect on safety.
 
My question when they say RID must transmit, does this mean all the time or only when it's polled as in when law enforcement wants it? If it's the latter, then it doesn't need to be polled when in the air. Ideally the FAA would want it all the time but I still don't see that working.
 
Add-on modules will not be a slam dunk. They'll have to go through a (not yet specified) approval process. Also bear in mind the FCC will be involved. Owners adding (approved) modules to existing craft must stay within LOS, whereas newly designed craft with RID do not.

Are you sure that newly designed drones won't have to stay LOS? I know the new RID rule specifically states that drones with RID modules must stay LOS, and it doesn't seem to say the same for new drones. I didn't get super far into reading the full rule but I didn't see where is specifically said new drones didn't have to stay LOS. The LOS rule is defined in other FAA rules and unless this rule specifically changes that it still seems like it would apply to drones in general.

Seems many folks believe RID must be connected to Wi-Fi , cell signals, or ANYTHING. Not true, all the RID must do, is simply transmit. Happy New Year to the Lackey family and to all of you!

While you are right that many people still incorrectly think that RID is requiring some sort of network, I think saying that RID just has to simply transmit gives the wrong impression. The RID has to transmit in a manner that passed FAA approved compliance rules and be able to be received personal electronics on the ground. It is clear from what I have read of the rules that the FAA intended the "personal electronics" to be phones, tablets, etc (even when out of cell coverage), whether that is the only type of device that will be allowed to meet FAA compliance rules is an unknown question. If RID must be able to be received by some sort of typical smart device, that limits it to WIFI (BT just isn't practical IMHO). In that case, the phone receiving the RID will have to connect to a wifi hotspot that the drone is also connected/providing and get the RID info some how. Other than 2.4ghz and 5ghz wifi bands, the only other unlicensed band I think is 900mhz. Theoretically, a company could design a "personal electronic" device that receives RID on 900Mhz, but I don't know if the FAA would approve that method of RID if not very many people have that type of device.

Assuming WIFI broadcast, how people/an app know which wifi hotspot is a drone or how to find the RID data (id, location, etc) after they connect to it is a real big question. For instance on the Yuneec drones the the CGO3 camera or the MK video transmitter is a WIFI hotspot. Theoretically FW could be developed (not going to happen) that would make it so people could connect to that wifi hotspot and get to a webpage with the RID info. But how someone would know to do that for a random drone they see in the park isn't clear. Maybe some sort of "captured portal" setup, but I don't know.

I honestly think that the FAA realized that RID with a network requirement wouldn't work (because of all the comments), and then tried to simplify the system without thinking it through how their simplification would actually work. That is why they don't list specifics on how to do it and they will just give their stamp of compliance when somebody comes up with a way that meets what they want.
 
We have this system operational since December 29 in Europe and mainly in France where it is now mandatory. You just need to add a box on the drone. This box transmits information (like yours) every three seconds from take-off to landing.
It transmits in 2.4 Ghz Wi-Fi on a channel dedicated to all the beacons which is channel 6, ie 2.437 Ghz.
You have to turn on the beacon, wait for it to capture the sats and then turn on the drone which will look for the free channel to make the connection.
This order of connection is very important to prevent the beacon from disturbing the drone during transmission.
I had to buy a beacon for the Evo and which will also be used for the H520 since with us, they are of the same weight class.
My Mavic 2 Pro did not need a beacon since DJI integrated it into its drones which have the Occusyncrome 2.
The beacon that I have is only 15 grams battery included and is not too disabling.
20201212_142429.jpg
 
We have this system operational since December 29 in Europe and mainly in France where it is now mandatory. You just need to add a box on the drone. This box transmits information (like yours) every three seconds from take-off to landing.
It transmits in 2.4 Ghz Wi-Fi on a channel dedicated to all the beacons which is channel 6, ie 2.437 Ghz.
You have to turn on the beacon, wait for it to capture the sats and then turn on the drone which will look for the free channel to make the connection.
This order of connection is very important to prevent the beacon from disturbing the drone during transmission.
I had to buy a beacon for the Evo and which will also be used for the H520 since with us, they are of the same weight class.
My Mavic 2 Pro did not need a beacon since DJI integrated it into its drones which have the Occusyncrome 2.
The beacon that I have is only 15 grams battery included and is not too disabling.
View attachment 24188

Do you have a brand name or website for these beacons? Or any info on how the beacon's data accessed by other people ? The start up order makes since but I wonder if the Zigbee radios in the Yuneec drones could still hop on to a frequency near channel 6 under the wrong set of circumstances. Also I wonder how it does with other 2.4Ghz radios (Spektrum, FAAST, etc). I would have to do more research.

Dylan
 
There is no point in giving links, these beacons are made for Europe and, for other countries outside Europe, either that the transmission mode will not be the same, or the transmission channel will not be on the same frequency (not modifiable).
 
There is no point in giving links, these beacons are made for Europe and, for other countries outside Europe, either that the transmission mode will not be the same, or the transmission channel will not be on the same frequency (not modifiable).
Can you give some specifications about the communication protocol? It should be publicly available, just point it, please.
 
There is no point in giving links, these beacons are made for Europe and, for other countries outside Europe, either that the transmission mode will not be the same, or the transmission channel will not be on the same frequency (not modifiable).


I understand we wouldn't want to buy a European beacon, I just want to understand how the system works to know how we might end up doing it. Does the beacon meet some sort of universal specification? How do people receive the RID data? If it is an app, how does that work? Are there multiple beacon manufacturers? If so, do they all use the same app?

I googled it a bit and it looks like Zigbees generally don't frequency hop during normally operation. They find an unused channel at power up and use it. How our system determines an unused channel or if Yuneec took extra steps make them hop on a momentary loss of radio signal I don't know. I'm not sure if during power up our drone's zigbee radio could choose a channel that overlaps with WIFI channel 6 during the 3 seconds in between beacon transmissions. It does seem likely that even if the drone and the beacon frequencies overlap, the drone could probably deal with the small amount of data being sent by the beacon at 3 second intervals. The Zigbee radios have 15 possible channels and WIFI channel 6 overlaps with ~7-9 of them.

I found this website:

Which talks about developing a drone ID standard. It is primarily long range bluetooth based which is interesting. On that website they mention the "ASTM Remote ID Specification" has been published. The details of the ASTM specification are behind a paywall, but from the general description it sounds interesting.
 
I googled too. What I understand is DJI forces all to adopt their ID. A lot of groups developed some pre-standard too. Still, nothing adopted as minimal necessity information from FAA or EASA. Or I just googling bad?

Basic idea is to use the beacon 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi channel with part of the protocol, where the connection to the remote device is not passworded. So everyone with a suitable application can see what is in the near vicinity.

In the zipped attachment some drafts from one of the groups. The next one is a presentation from DJI.
 

Attachments

  • remote ID.zip
    172.2 KB · Views: 2
  • Walter Stockwell_Stream A.pdf
    1.1 MB · Views: 1
Given the new FAA rules, I have a few questions regarding the use of my Typhoon H as a recreational flyer and I hope I can articulate my questions is such a way that can be reasonably answered.
1. The whole conversation about Category 1 - 4 flying over people has me a little confused when it talks about the degree of injury a drone can produce. Does this mean to fly where people are in proximity, the drone must have guards retrofitted around the propellers for a Typhoon H? Does it mean that the propellers must be retrofitted or modified so that they have blunt edges to minimize laceration of the skin? When I say flying in proximity to people I mean flying over the open desert where joggers, bikers or people walking their dog might be under my flight path.
2. Do I have to find a vendor who can provide a transponder device for the Typhoon H and at what cost? How will this add-on device be attached and what affect will it have on recreational flying? Will I have to replace my controller or do some kind of download to the firmware? I have not done any updates to my drone or controller since I bought it in 2017 and it flies just fine with no glitches or performance issues. This is mostly because I have read horror stories about bad updates and my attitude has been if it works, don't try to fix it.
3. What measures will I have take to prove the airworthiness of my Typhoon H if it flies normally and properly as it has prior to the new regulations? Who decides airworthiness and how?

I look to you more learned and experienced fliers for guidance here. Thank you in advance and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!


Let's get out a new role of red tape.
In fact I think I will get a triple size roll of tape just in case.
 
Let's get out a new role of red tape.
In fact I think I will get a triple size roll of tape just in case.
We have known it was coming for over a year now. It will still be many months before we will have to comply. Much more information will be forthcoming and therefore time to understand and assimilate the changes.
 
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I need to look into the free online current training. I let my part 107 expire because I wasn't using it and laziness. I wonder if it could renew my expired license online or if I will have to re-test first?.

For remote id, the specifics for the range of the device is spelled out, but the device has to be tested to be in compliance with an "FAA-accepted means of compliance". To meet that, presumably the module maker would have to demonstrate some sort of range test that the FAA likes. The rule also says "Standard Remote ID UA and Remote ID Broadcast Modules must be designed to maximize the range at which the broadcast can be received.". That requirement might mean proving that you are sending at the highest power allowed for unlicensed wifi signals along with a suitable antenna, or it could mean something else.

The only way that I can think of this RID rule could work the way that they describe is a WIFI module that acts as a hotspot, hopefully available in either 2.4ghz or 5.8ghz flavors so that people can avoid conflicting with their control signals (while probably affecting their video signals instead), and people will be able to connect their phone to that hotspot using some sort of drone id app and get your remote id info.
Your Pilots Certificate doesn't expire, only your currency. Do the online training and pass the test, you are current again.
 
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I don't think DJI will drive the standard in the United States due to trust issues with the US govt. What ever standard is adopted will be more to align with FAA compliance and will more than likely be developed domestically or in the EU. DJI, Yuneec, and others will follow suit. DJI, Yuneec, and others are more than capable technologically but I can't see the FAA being comfortable with a standard developed in China given the current climate.
 
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Maybe but the rub here is 5G requires a lot more towers that are closer together. Building that infrastructure won't happen over night and it definitely won't happen in time for the FAA deadline. There are people living in my area with no coverage so the only thing the telcoms have been able to do for them is provide range boosters in their house to get 4G. There are a lot of dead zones in Michigan. Personally, I like that, especially when trying to get away from it all. That and driving on seasonal roads that the vehicle GPS warns that there is no road or data where I'm at.

In the United States we're pretty full of ourselves but with all of the dead and data less zones I've personally experienced, that and school kids with no WiFi, having to drive to find a public school bus to use as a hot spot to be able to connect to school, it's just pathetic and embarrassing. We're more like a 3rd world country than most people would like to believe.

So tell me again how the FAA thinks this will work and in 2 years? Not as planned that's for sure. Give me a break.
Never under estimate a congress with access to your money, a govt contractor aka the military industrial complex and a complacent naive public. The FAA has rang the dinner bell....I present as exhibit A, the F 35 : )
 
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