8 ms·

It’s a 30 minute class and probably a no brainer for most people. Sometimes you have to take these for a fishing licenses or to ride a Jet Ski without a license

by wil421 5y ago

It’s a 30 minute class and probably a no brainer for most people. Sometimes you have to take these for a fishing licenses or to ride a Jet Ski without a license. Hunter education courses are usually mandatory. In Florida you have to take certification course if you plan to Shark fish.

prawn 5y ago
You have to watch a video and answer basic questions before they give you a permit for Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park too. I have done that a couple of times, as well as Australia's simple drone test, and they're both no-brainers.
- airhead969 5y ago
  Let's say you're in America rather than Australia, because context matters. If it happens a few people cannot operate domestic lawnmowers correctly and chase crowds down with them out of acts of terrorism because they slip a gasket, should we have licenses, certifications, and tracking of all lawnmowers? Is that a "no-brainer" too? Maybe we should think first before trying to regulate or educate ourselves out of every edge-case risk.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    This is ridiculous because the default use for a lawnmower is solely your own yard, and it doesn't fly. Most literally power down if they leave your hand. And the reality is that drone testing and licensing isn't based on hypothetical risks, but real world incidents which have disrupted public safety and caused injuries. So if you have sources for lawnmowers threatening the public safety and injuring anyone outside the owners' household, let me know.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - airhead969 5y ago
      Lawnmowers have aren't shopping carts. They don't know the boundaries of a yard. You haven't seen "The Lawnmower Man?" Carry or swing a running lawnmower upside down through a dense crowd, and it will injure many people.
      - BobbyJo 5y ago
        I think the idea with drones is that it's much easier to cause great harm to a great number of people accidentally. A lawn mower has very obvious risks: a spinning blade. A drone has many non-obvious risks: scaring wildlife, power lines, planes, restricted airspace, falling out of the sky onto people, etc.
  - snypher 5y ago
    This particular analogy in the US lead to a whole variety of safety measures, eg you can't mow with a riding mower in reverse without holding down a override switch, and there still dozens of children a year being reversed over by an inattentive operator.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Unless things have changed recently that's a California only thing. My coworkers were recently pontificating about how "not for sale in California" is practically a marketable feature on anything with a blade or engine after one of them suffered the misfortune of buying one.
      - snypher 5y ago
        The blade brake on a walk behind was mandated in 1982 at a federal level by the CPSC. Riding mowers were mandated by ansi 2003 standard, including everyone's favourite 'operator presence control's aka the seat safety switch. Most everything safety can be disabled if you really want, but anyone pontificating about CA compliant emissions on small power equipment can go sit with the coal-rollers as far as im concerned. Edit: to stay on topic, if people start getting frequently maimed by drones then I'd expect to see some crazy CPSC action like an altitude safety switch or something...
  - verelo 5y ago
    I’m curious why this context matters?
    - airhead969 5y ago
      Because most former British colonies tend to welcome education and regulation with open arms as a panacea instead of with suspicion of onerous, unnecessary drudgery and expense.
      - marcinzm 5y ago
        Which matters in terms of a non emotion based discussion on an international forum why exactly?
  - prawn 5y ago
    "No-brainer" is purely my describing it as a simple test. If you have an issue with the licensing itself, that might be better as a top level comment.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    The air is a public thoroughfare. We have a long and established history of licensing for activity that require public cooperation on publicly shared resources: driving, boating, hunting, fishing, radio operation, etc.
  - peteyPete 5y ago
    I hear you, but this is apples and peanuts, not even oranges. There's little risk you're going to accidentally launch your mower into a car, building, a person. It stays on the ground. A small mistake or moment of inattention, or mower failure won't cause it to drop from hundreds of feet down onto who ever is below. There's also awareness of where you can and cannot operate drones and people should know this. You are after all occupying air space. If drones could only fly up 30 feet it would be a different story but they can go quite far. People fly them over protected airspace, crash them in random places... Last thing you want is people flying them over airports, over busy streets or highways where they can crash into planes, get sucked in to engines, crash into cars and cause accidents, etc etc... They're not asking people to take hundreds of hours of flight to get certified, just a short awareness course for those who have no common sense... You don't need to blow a gasket to have a drone accident. It's not like drones are crash proof and all aware of airspace restrictions. Just don't want to have accidents in places that can affect others or have people fly them into places that will automatically trigger an emergency responses and disrupt operations and waste time and money... Like a drone over an airport where they'll dispatch security to take down the drone and interrupt all flights taking off or landing. Thats a LOT of money for one person's ignorance or stupidity. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2190096-drones-are-causing-airport-chaos-why-cant-we-stop-them/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2190096-drones-are-caus... I'm all for freedom as long as your 10 minutes of good times don't cost others a ton of money and the reality is there's a ton that can go wrong even with no intent on doing anything wrong.
- FlyMoreRockets 5y ago
  Flying lawn mowers have existed for decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWfqVWC2KI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWfqVWC2KI
syshum 5y ago
One big difference here, is that for these other recreational activities the license is only required if you doing them on public lands, however on private land you do not need a hunting license, or fishing license at all From what I understand these FAA rules apply even if i am operating a drone in my back yard.
- bigdubs 5y ago
  It follows because you may be taking off from private land but you're operating in federal airspace (all airspace is federal in the US)
  - _hyn3 5y ago
    All airspace? Not even airspace above, say, 500 feet? Am I literally walking through federal airspace right now? The U.S. Constitution is pretty explicit about physical space that is allocated to the federal government and the reasons (post offices and post roads, military installations, and that's about it), so laying claim to every square inch of "air" above that land seems to be quite a stretch.
    - sithadmin 5y ago
      Yes, all airspace. If you're out walking, driving, or erecting a structure, you're entitled to its usage provided you're not creating an air navigation hazard. The general understanding is that you're entitled to airspace on your property, and to a limited extent on the property of others, insofar as the usage of that airspace is necessary to use the land itself. Flying anything is not, from a legal and regulatory perspective, understood to be a usage related to the land itself. This issue has been settled for quite some time in US law. The main grey areas that exist are debates over what sorts of exceptions should be made for reasonable use of UAV/drones at low altitudes.
      - cameronh90 5y ago
        I've always wondered about the edge conditions. Would flying a drone indoors require permission from FAA? What about a daredevil jump on a motorcycle?
macksd 5y ago
And such measures can be pretty useless and only amount to rent-seeking. I did hunter education in Colorado with the Makhaira group. Some students were unable to hit an 8.5x11 sheet of paper with a .22 bolt-action rifle at a distance of 5 yards (which is absolutely pathetic for someone who thinks they can hit a deer at even 100 yards with a hunting rifle). These individuals were granted their credentials because they failed this exercise while not breaking any of the gun safety rules (I'm not sure how you can say that you can fire a gun safely when you're that inaccurate, but that's my point).
- _jal 5y ago
  Licensing is only tangentially about competence. The point is to have a revokable permission.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    How many people continue to drive a car after having their license revoked? When they do, they are capable of far greater damage than a revoked drove license. People that have to respect for the law are not going to follow the law. How many criminals carry weapons even though there are laws? The point of laws are to give guidance to know what is/isn't allowed, and to allow for punishiment when broken.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - ampdepolymerase 5y ago
    Selective enforcement of rules and legal discretion ought to be banned through constitutional amendment.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> And such measures can be pretty useless and only amount to rent-seeking. I did hunter education in Colorado with the Makhaira group. Some students were unable to hit an 8.5x11 sheet of paper with a .22 bolt-action rifle at a distance of 5 yards (which is absolutely pathetic for someone who thinks they can hit a deer at even 100 yards with a hunting rifle). These individuals were granted their credentials because they failed this exercise while not breaking any of the gun safety rules Gun safety is the point, not marksmanship. In this case the point is safe drone use. There have been incidents of people flying drones in controlled airspace around airports, which is dangerous. The FAA doesn't give a shit about some dude and his drone, they care about the safety of the general public. A simple course like this will cut down on the number of people doing things that endanger others.
madcow2011 5y ago
I didn't know about the shark fishing one. That's neat. Does that include tourists that hire a charter, or is it for the charter captains themselves?
- wil421 5y ago
  Looked it up and it’s only for shore based shark fishing because you’re taking the shark out of the water.[1] In some states the Captain’s fishing license will cover everyone on board for most types of fishing (including sharks) in state waters, except certain Tuna IIRC based on federal laws/permits. [1] https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/FLFFWCC/bulletins/24db3d1 https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/FLFFWCC/bulletins/2...

by wil421 5y ago

prawn 5y ago

You have to watch a video and answer basic questions before they give you a permit for Fiery Furnace in Arches National Park too. I have done that a couple of times, as well as Australia's simple drone test, and they're both no-brainers.

airhead969 5y ago
Let's say you're in America rather than Australia, because context matters. If it happens a few people cannot operate domestic lawnmowers correctly and chase crowds down with them out of acts of terrorism because they slip a gasket, should we have licenses, certifications, and tracking of all lawnmowers? Is that a "no-brainer" too? Maybe we should think first before trying to regulate or educate ourselves out of every edge-case risk.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  This is ridiculous because the default use for a lawnmower is solely your own yard, and it doesn't fly. Most literally power down if they leave your hand. And the reality is that drone testing and licensing isn't based on hypothetical risks, but real world incidents which have disrupted public safety and caused injuries. So if you have sources for lawnmowers threatening the public safety and injuring anyone outside the owners' household, let me know.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - airhead969 5y ago
    Lawnmowers have aren't shopping carts. They don't know the boundaries of a yard. You haven't seen "The Lawnmower Man?" Carry or swing a running lawnmower upside down through a dense crowd, and it will injure many people.
    - BobbyJo 5y ago
      I think the idea with drones is that it's much easier to cause great harm to a great number of people accidentally. A lawn mower has very obvious risks: a spinning blade. A drone has many non-obvious risks: scaring wildlife, power lines, planes, restricted airspace, falling out of the sky onto people, etc.
- snypher 5y ago
  This particular analogy in the US lead to a whole variety of safety measures, eg you can't mow with a riding mower in reverse without holding down a override switch, and there still dozens of children a year being reversed over by an inattentive operator.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Unless things have changed recently that's a California only thing. My coworkers were recently pontificating about how "not for sale in California" is practically a marketable feature on anything with a blade or engine after one of them suffered the misfortune of buying one.
    - snypher 5y ago
      The blade brake on a walk behind was mandated in 1982 at a federal level by the CPSC. Riding mowers were mandated by ansi 2003 standard, including everyone's favourite 'operator presence control's aka the seat safety switch. Most everything safety can be disabled if you really want, but anyone pontificating about CA compliant emissions on small power equipment can go sit with the coal-rollers as far as im concerned. Edit: to stay on topic, if people start getting frequently maimed by drones then I'd expect to see some crazy CPSC action like an altitude safety switch or something...
- verelo 5y ago
  I’m curious why this context matters?
  - airhead969 5y ago
    Because most former British colonies tend to welcome education and regulation with open arms as a panacea instead of with suspicion of onerous, unnecessary drudgery and expense.
    - marcinzm 5y ago
      Which matters in terms of a non emotion based discussion on an international forum why exactly?
- prawn 5y ago
  "No-brainer" is purely my describing it as a simple test. If you have an issue with the licensing itself, that might be better as a top level comment.
- kube-system 5y ago
  The air is a public thoroughfare. We have a long and established history of licensing for activity that require public cooperation on publicly shared resources: driving, boating, hunting, fishing, radio operation, etc.
- peteyPete 5y ago
  I hear you, but this is apples and peanuts, not even oranges. There's little risk you're going to accidentally launch your mower into a car, building, a person. It stays on the ground. A small mistake or moment of inattention, or mower failure won't cause it to drop from hundreds of feet down onto who ever is below. There's also awareness of where you can and cannot operate drones and people should know this. You are after all occupying air space. If drones could only fly up 30 feet it would be a different story but they can go quite far. People fly them over protected airspace, crash them in random places... Last thing you want is people flying them over airports, over busy streets or highways where they can crash into planes, get sucked in to engines, crash into cars and cause accidents, etc etc... They're not asking people to take hundreds of hours of flight to get certified, just a short awareness course for those who have no common sense... You don't need to blow a gasket to have a drone accident. It's not like drones are crash proof and all aware of airspace restrictions. Just don't want to have accidents in places that can affect others or have people fly them into places that will automatically trigger an emergency responses and disrupt operations and waste time and money... Like a drone over an airport where they'll dispatch security to take down the drone and interrupt all flights taking off or landing. Thats a LOT of money for one person's ignorance or stupidity. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2190096-drones-are-causing-airport-chaos-why-cant-we-stop-them/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2190096-drones-are-caus... I'm all for freedom as long as your 10 minutes of good times don't cost others a ton of money and the reality is there's a ton that can go wrong even with no intent on doing anything wrong.
FlyMoreRockets 5y ago
Flying lawn mowers have existed for decades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWfqVWC2KI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWfqVWC2KI

syshum 5y ago

One big difference here, is that for these other recreational activities the license is only required if you doing them on public lands, however on private land you do not need a hunting license, or fishing license at all From what I understand these FAA rules apply even if i am operating a drone in my back yard.

bigdubs 5y ago
It follows because you may be taking off from private land but you're operating in federal airspace (all airspace is federal in the US)
- _hyn3 5y ago
  All airspace? Not even airspace above, say, 500 feet? Am I literally walking through federal airspace right now? The U.S. Constitution is pretty explicit about physical space that is allocated to the federal government and the reasons (post offices and post roads, military installations, and that's about it), so laying claim to every square inch of "air" above that land seems to be quite a stretch.
  - sithadmin 5y ago
    Yes, all airspace. If you're out walking, driving, or erecting a structure, you're entitled to its usage provided you're not creating an air navigation hazard. The general understanding is that you're entitled to airspace on your property, and to a limited extent on the property of others, insofar as the usage of that airspace is necessary to use the land itself. Flying anything is not, from a legal and regulatory perspective, understood to be a usage related to the land itself. This issue has been settled for quite some time in US law. The main grey areas that exist are debates over what sorts of exceptions should be made for reasonable use of UAV/drones at low altitudes.
    - cameronh90 5y ago
      I've always wondered about the edge conditions. Would flying a drone indoors require permission from FAA? What about a daredevil jump on a motorcycle?

macksd 5y ago

And such measures can be pretty useless and only amount to rent-seeking. I did hunter education in Colorado with the Makhaira group. Some students were unable to hit an 8.5x11 sheet of paper with a .22 bolt-action rifle at a distance of 5 yards (which is absolutely pathetic for someone who thinks they can hit a deer at even 100 yards with a hunting rifle). These individuals were granted their credentials because they failed this exercise while not breaking any of the gun safety rules (I'm not sure how you can say that you can fire a gun safely when you're that inaccurate, but that's my point).

_jal 5y ago
Licensing is only tangentially about competence. The point is to have a revokable permission.
- dylan604 5y ago
  How many people continue to drive a car after having their license revoked? When they do, they are capable of far greater damage than a revoked drove license. People that have to respect for the law are not going to follow the law. How many criminals carry weapons even though there are laws? The point of laws are to give guidance to know what is/isn't allowed, and to allow for punishiment when broken.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ampdepolymerase 5y ago
  Selective enforcement of rules and legal discretion ought to be banned through constitutional amendment.
phkahler 5y ago
>> And such measures can be pretty useless and only amount to rent-seeking. I did hunter education in Colorado with the Makhaira group. Some students were unable to hit an 8.5x11 sheet of paper with a .22 bolt-action rifle at a distance of 5 yards (which is absolutely pathetic for someone who thinks they can hit a deer at even 100 yards with a hunting rifle). These individuals were granted their credentials because they failed this exercise while not breaking any of the gun safety rules Gun safety is the point, not marksmanship. In this case the point is safe drone use. There have been incidents of people flying drones in controlled airspace around airports, which is dangerous. The FAA doesn't give a shit about some dude and his drone, they care about the safety of the general public. A simple course like this will cut down on the number of people doing things that endanger others.

madcow2011 5y ago

I didn't know about the shark fishing one. That's neat. Does that include tourists that hire a charter, or is it for the charter captains themselves?

wil421 5y ago
Looked it up and it’s only for shore based shark fishing because you’re taking the shark out of the water.[1] In some states the Captain’s fishing license will cover everyone on board for most types of fishing (including sharks) in state waters, except certain Tuna IIRC based on federal laws/permits. [1] https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/FLFFWCC/bulletins/24db3d1 https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/FLFFWCC/bulletins/2...