I don’t fully understand why drone operators follow these laws. Or any “no-fly” rules in general. Around an airport, it seems like common sense to not fly. Can’t someone just…buy/build a drone and fly is surreptitiously?
$150 will build you a 7" with a reasonably long flying time, a bit more and you can do some pretty impressive things. You still need a controller but those can be had for cheap as well. The main issue would be hiding it for pickup until after the event.
You’re talking about bargain bin analog FPV drones? Most people can’t operate them and even for an experienced operator it’s far from the best tool for the job of filming armed thugs..I mean ICE..
You’d need a digital system with a gimbal, and the DJI O4 Pro alone will run you $200+. For dual lenses with different zoom levels and feed switching it’s getting pretty expensive very fast.
FPV is a skill you can learn though and for filming armed thugs I actually can't think of a better tool because it allows you to fly the drone out of LOS so you can do it from a relatively safe position while still getting footage that matters.
For extra protection you could even abandon the drone and record the video directly on your headset.
Technically true I guess, but learning to fly a recent DJI drone takes about ten minutes. You're not so much flying it, as telling it what you want and letting it fly itself. And the controller has a built-in tutorial with a simulator.
True, but DJI drones are comparably well behaved (and boring) compared to a homebrew FPV. Even there you have various stabilization modes, including alt-hold, pos-hold and so on. In full acro mode they're a handful, that's for sure, but you don't have to fly like that, just fly in stabilized until you get the hang of that and want to live more dangerously.
You don't have to fly in acro mode lol. The common hobbyist drone firmwares have full support for even things like autonomous GPS missions. You also don't need expensive gimbal stabilized cameras; you're not making a cinematic film, so you can just hot glue a 360 camera to the bottom and deal with the slight oscillations.
What if you're already flying when they enter your vicinity. It's pretty easy to do in a city. Also they may not announce themselves until you're already violating or even after when they charge you
One more line of bullshit they can shamelessly trot out after they summarily execute someone. "The suspect approached the members of our protected class with a gun and a phone. Our brave and heroic gravy seals had a reasonable belief that the phone was being used to control a drone that had been following them all day, obstructing federal law enforcement from being able to operate in secret. The subject didn't obey the lawful order to shoot himself with his own gun, so our brave agents were forced to shoot him ten times in the back and send his family a bill for the bullets. We fully stand behind their actions helping keep us all safe from the woke"
(who am I kidding, even my fake statement is too coherent for this clown car of fascists)
Do not attribute to fascists/tin pot governments any concern over law/rulemaking with judicious consideration for minimizing blast radius or logistical/legal concerns for the populace. At this point, they are hardcore speed running the delegitinazation of the U.S. state in just about every practical sense.
Woah woah woah, let's not encourage domestic terrorism here! Because they'll bring criminal charges and that's also what they'll call you so you better not get caught.
