BY DEVIN COLDEWEY
Hear that buzz? It’s the sound of drones sweeping the nation — literally. Increasingly cheap and easy to fly, quadcopters and other flying contraptions are introducing thousands to the joy of flight — and have drawn the attention of the FAA, which has for years been mulling how best to regulate such craft.
But the hobby of recreational flying goes back way before the first drones appeared on the market. Back, in fact, to before the FAA was even established. Are these old-school flyers in the model aircraft community worried that regulations will encroach on their fun? Not really.
“It’s an interesting subject, but I’m not concerned,” said Thomas Randall, President of Washington’s Mount Rainier Remote Control Society, in a phone interview with NBC News.
“I’ve been flying RC models since ’71, and before that control line,” he said, referring to wired fliers that predated radio control. “This hobby’s been around for years. There’s always going to be the guys who say ‘the government’s taking over’ and this and that, but let’s apply some common sense here.”
“We’ve been operating under our own safety guidelines for decades,” said Rich Hanson, director of government affairs at the Academy of Model Aeronautics. “We were very much entrenched in the community when the FAA came on board.”
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The government will step in, if you honestly believe they won\\\’t then you have already ignored Public Law 112–95 Section 336 which outlines what a model aircraft is, and how it can be operated.