I have been a Amatuer Radio operator for some decades now and full well understand how NON ELECTED (FCC) bureaucrats operate in our government
So in 2010 and 2011 there were quite a few very severe DRONE vs Emergency services incidents* my ears perked up and I bet myself the DOT / FAA was going to get a call from Congress to "DO SOMETHING"....just like school shootings...the knee jerk was going to be ineffective and absolutely pure pandering
True to my insider experience the US Congress DEMANDED the DOT FAA "do something" and they did
Same time US Congress made a carve out for Hobby Airplane use....
I have read every word written on this subject since November 2011
When the DOT/FAA made their final New Rule Making I was actually impressed at the lengths they went to argue against honoring the Congressional carve out...their citations of LAW and Mandates make sense....from a what we are chartered to do POV.....They are chartered to Protect the National Air Space and wee given BROAD powers to do so......The congressional carve out for Recreational Hobby focused Aero Flight contradicts the DOT/FAA Charter
Lawyers are pretty well educated and savvy to write fairly concisely
* most notably a severe fire in southern California where NEWS Drones were invading the event airspace that required the Local air control to suspend all AERO flight operations in the area for over 48 hours....causing loss of property and life..... fact is you want to check
This was NOT the first incident but it did gain Press and Thus Congress attention....History and facts...the 112Th congress TOLD DOT/FAA "FIX THIS NOW!!!!!!!!"
DOT/FAA as a non elected entity may NOT make ruling withOUT public input... I was there and in 2012 WE Control Line respondents were less than 1/3rd for the total 4700 respondents.... MOST were lawyers for entities like AMAZON and TARGET who have a BIG DOG in this HUNT
and quite frankly as a slogged through the 4700 comments trying desperately to see a good Brett Buck ( his is exceptional BTW) well written and thoughtful comment.... well I was disappointed
and my disappointment was NOT displaced...we failed to make OUR case..... so here we are 7 years later and scratching our asses wondering what the hell.....
I did comment on that, but, that effort was a dead end. Drones were ALWAYS going to be regulated, that was an immutable truth, because of exactly the sort of incidents you note.
The real problem actually started with RC FPV, those predated the widespread appearance of quadcopter drones. I think this was a little later than the time frame you mention, but the public *hates* drone misuse, and within months of drones becoming a "thing", there were national commercials where people were being threatened by swarms of delivery drones.
This is a problem for us because of how the AMA has dealt with the situation. They figured the Special Rule for Model Aircraft would protect them, and therefore, they could chase the drone crowd - more specifically, the drone advertiser crowd. They, being the only established CBO, could offer protection under the Special Rule, everyone does whatever they feel like as long as they stick their AMA number on it. This was an utterly delusional notion, but they stuck to it like glue, to the point of sticking a quadcopter on our 2019 official AMA sticker.
This all started to fall apart and the plan became obviously unworkable in about 2015 - to anyone but the AMA Government Relations Team, (Hanson and Budreau) - and they started emitting desperate pleas for assistance ("write your congressman!") to try to save their vision. Most of this was laughable and completely unsupportable. I was (as stated here) unwilling to participate in the level of falsehood they requested. Since then, everything has proceeded along entirely predictable lines.
The AMA has used their supposed "influence" to sidle up to the FAA. As of yesterday afternoon, I intepret their comments on the topic of flying site LOAs as them having teamed up with the FAA to ensure that only AMA-affiliated actions will be considered, no matter if the relevant ATC and the site operators are perfectly compliant and agreeable. They are cancelling, for instance, the existing agreements - in our case, with the Napa Regional Airport FAA reps, which took about 10 minutes to achieve - with their own registration plan, in which the FAA in Washington will direct the ATCs to follow a form letter that the FAA/Washington and the AMA has already negotiated "on our behalf". Doesn't matter what you are doing, that everyone understood perfectly well that there was no issue.
Note also that in this latest, there is a strong-arm tactic. The "survey" they want you to fill out is not a survey. It's an application for a LOA, despite the fact that it is referred to repeatedly as a "survey" or "questionnaire". They are taking the information from the "survey", forwarding it to the FAA, the FAA will generate the LOA, send it to the local ATC, you get *nothing* aside from what the AMA and FAA have negotiated - note the past tense. It took quite a while for me to gain this admission, they said 4 different misleading or contradictory things about it before they actually told the truth. Of course you don't have to do it, the general public can do the same process. But the AMA had worked it so that they are first in line, so an individual sites *might be shut down for many months or years* awaiting all the AMA agreements to be made.
You might be tempted to say, as they did, that this is an example of the AMA working on your behalf. OK, CL-only site operators, fill out the survey. Where is the check box for putting "CL-Only, no UAS operation permitted"? Oh, there isn't one? Even though all concerned recognize that CL is "not a UAS" because, by law, it does not use a "ground control station"? And is therefore, by all agreement and black-letter law, *is not subject to FAA regulation*?
What do you suppose the pre-negotiated, already extant, secret AMA/FAA LOA is going to say about CL? Jack-sh*t, that's what.
One belated note- I think they have finally grasped the stupidity of their baseline plan, and now I have statements from the AMA that "drones/Amazon is trying to steal your right to fly!!!!!!" Nitwits, that ship sailed as soon as "drones were our future", 5 years ago.
Brett