ydqa 32

John Dickow: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to another episode of your drone questions answered. I'm John Dicka with the drone launch Academy here to find the answer to your drone questions that you submit. And today this question is what are TFRs or temporary flight restrictions? today I have with me David Young, founder of drone.

Launch Academy. so David, let's just kind of dive into it. It's, it's not just what are temporary flight restrictions, but, everything else about it. Why would one be imposed? When do they go up? How do you find out more about them? take it

David Young: away. Sure. So typically called TFRs, temporary flight restrictions.

they're important for drone pilots to know because technically a drone is an aircraft as far as the FAA is concerned. And so if they throw up a TFR, temporary flight restriction. That means no aircraft is supposed to fly through them. So you consider it like restricted airspace, and you can get a lot of trouble if you do fly through one.

So I'll just start off by giving you an example that just happened recently. I think this was nine days ago. So right now we're filming on a Monday. This was not last Saturday, but the Saturday before, it's college football season. Ohio State [00:01:00] University is playing Maryland, I think, right? And high State University, I don't know.

It holds close to imagine somewhere around 100, 000 people. any large sporting event, the FAA will have a TFR go up for, there's a large gathering of people. So think like, you know, Super Bowl, stuff like that, but even large, large college games. It's 100, 000 people in one place. So we'll put a TFR at it, temporary flight restriction.

I believe it goes three miles around the stadium. and it's for an hour before the game starts to an hour after No drones, no aircraft, for regular manned aviation. That TFR has a certain ceiling. I don't know how it's like three or 5, 000 feet, something like that. So if you're high enough, you can go over it, right?

They don't fly in drones or low flying planes around it for security concerns. Well. 28 year old guy bought a drone at Best Buy the night before the day before on Friday, got his drone out, said he, quote, wanted to see how far he could fly it, and flew it straight for the stadium, got over the stadium.

Well, you know, there's. Police and security personnel there. And they like detected that a drone was about to fly over the stadium. and so they [00:02:00] like cleared the stadium, not all the people, but they cleared all the players from the field. They shut the game down for a while. The guy like hovered around for like three minutes.

I think he realized what was going on. I was like, Oh crap, I need to come back. And so he says he lost signal. I don't know if that's true or not, but, he comes back and flies back. Well, they track the drone. Back to where this guy is in this parking lot, like the counterterrorism team that was at the stadium, tracked him down, arrested him.

And now this guy faces, I have them listed here. So he faces charges, five criminal charges. He got arrested. He faces unsafe operation of an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner, two counts of an aircraft operation without a license. Cause he did not have his trust certificate or his part one Oh seven certificate, which.

If you're flying recreational, you need that trust certificate. If you're flying commercially, you need to partner seven. the next count was inducing a panic by committing an offense with reckless disregard and then disorderly conduct in a physically offensive condition. I don't know exactly what that last one means.

It seems like they're throwing the book out for [00:03:00] this, but It can be taken fairly, very seriously. if you're flying a drone into a TFR, especially where there's large groups of people, some people said this is overreaction. You think about it, if you're a bad person and you want to hurt a lot of people, as you've seen in like some of the Ukraine stuff, and now some of the stuff that's going on in Israel, you can throw it, you know, a explosive device on one of these things and drop it.

Pretty easily, it seems with what they're doing over there. So, they're not taking any chances. just start off TFRs are taken very seriously by law enforcement FAA. Now, what is a TFR? It's a temporary flight restriction. Common sense says you cannot fly a drone or an aircraft into that area, for whatever.

Specified time that is right. And your question was, how do you know that they exist? Well, a TFR is a type of, it's called notum. They're issued by the FAA. Notum is N O T A M, which is just shorthand for notice to airmen. is what they call, pilots now, I guess, technically drone pilots, drone operators, commercial aircraft, anybody who's flying stuff, right?

So you can look for all NOTAMs [00:04:00] on the FAA's website. but you can also an easier thing for drone pilots to do is you can check for NOTAMs. and TFR. So a TFR is a type of notum. It will say in the notum, Hey, there is a temporary flight restriction around this location.

Here's the bounds, like the altitude and the width. and here's the time it's active from this time until this time. So you can think about sporting events, but also if a president or vice president is coming and landing at an airport or going to be in a certain area, right, they'll often issue a notum on a TFR for that area again for safety concerns.

I don't want Drones aircraft flying low or flying close. another time that they're frequently issued are for wildfires and for like hurricane restoration. So there's a wildfire in area. It's very tempting for drone pilots back. Oh, I'm going to pop my drone up and take a look at these fires. Well, the problem is what happens when there are wildfires?

How do they put wildfires out? Well, they get, you know, giant. Tanker, jets that dump tons of water on it and they come really low. But if there's a drone anywhere in the area, they have to abort their runs and it really [00:05:00] messes it up. So I know a lot of public safety personnel get really frustrated drone pilots who fly around wildfires and that technically violates a TFR.

You can get yourself a lot of trouble. So wildfires, same thing with hurricanes, right? If power's out, they're doing search and rescue operations or they're trying to do other things. They often issue a TFR and, you know, some people are allowed to fly in those, so like utility companies and, you know, FEMA, stuff like that.

If you're approved personnel, if you work for the fire department, they have. their own drones in the air and their own helicopters, but they're all coordinating with each other. So, if you're not a part of that team, then you need to, to keep your drone, on the ground. So that's sort of what TFR is.

you know why you would issue one, into the question of. Where you can find out about that. I mentioned the FAA's website, but an easier way to do it is there's an app called a loft, there's probably other apps that are similar to it. air map, I know was one, there are some others out there, but I, I like a loft the best.

They, integrate with a lot of that stuff to where you can see any notams or TFRs. Right on their map there. So if you want to fly your drone somewhere, you just pull that up. You touch on the [00:06:00] map where you want to fly and it'll tell you everything you need to worry about. It'll tell you if you're in controlled airspace, if you are in controlled airspace, it'll allow you to request access to fly in that controlled airspace.

it'll tell you if there's a TFR, so you can kind of make a good. Go no go decision. If you're operating a drone, with that app. And so I use that for all my flights. I would highly recommend it. It's free to use for, you know, just your regular everyday drone pilot. you can get the paid plans if you're going to have like a team or do a lot of stuff on there commercially.

But I highly recommend checking that out. you know, if you are planning on flying somewhere, so that way you don't end up getting into a big mess, with, you know, police chasing you down. I'd say that's obviously, I don't think that guy thought that was going to happen. You know, you don't think I'm going to put my drone up and fly around.

but it's just maybe a good wake up call for everybody else Now, granted, I will say he hasn't been convicted of all those. Crimes, I'll be curious to see which one of those stick around and what his final kind of, punishment is, if you will, but, either way, I wouldn't want to even have to be facing those potential, charges.

John Dickow: the [00:07:00] repercussions are incredibly serious. And just, if you're a beginner drone pilot. that'd be terrible. You're just trying something out and, uh, you, you're, you're a criminal in a matter of, seconds. And so you mentioned this, a loft app and that's.

Awesome. That's a great idea to have that on hand and always check that. Any idea of how soon in advance a TFR might be issued or

David Young: is it just immediately you think after? Yeah, that's a good thing. I mean, they can go up pretty quickly depending on the nature of it. So for instance, if it's a, if it's a sporting event, those are known in advance, right?

So first off, just, if you know, there's a sporting event, just think there's a good likelihood that I'm not allowed to fly my drone there. So just stay away. Or if you're close to a sporting event, just like an airport, if you're near an airport, you just want to double check how close am I to that controlled airspace?

Am I in it? Am I outside of it? Just check. if there's a wildfire that just pops up, that TFR may go up pretty quickly once they know that that's happening, you could know about it far in advance if it's like a scheduled thing, like a presidential visit or a sporting event.

but it might pop up last minute if it's more of a, an emergency type of situation.

John Dickow: All the more reason to have that [00:08:00] aloft app and, uh, and check before you fly. Yeah.

David Young: And then another thing, you know, two of his things could have been avoided, right? his, counts for operating without a license. If you're just flying recreationally, technically you have to have this thing called the trust.

It's the recreational UAS safety test, horrible acronym. Um, I did not come up with it. Drone launch was represented at the FAA meeting where they were talking about, some of the providers and, you know, potential stuff for the trust and how that would function. We, they wanted like private sector input.

So I flew to DC and we were meeting with them talking about that stuff and we threw out a couple of acronym recommendations. None of those got accepted. They went apparently with trust, which is pretty great anyways, but it's free. You can take it. It takes, it takes like 20 minutes. It's impossible to fail.

You just go through, learn some information. If you answer a question, you answer it wrong. It's one of those things where it's like, Oh, you got this wrong. Try again. And you just try like another answer. And so it's impossible to fail. It's free. It gives you a certificate. You might as well just go and take it.

And at least one of these things could have been avoided, right? [00:09:00] and then if you want to do commercial work, obviously get your remote pilot certificate, AKA part 107 exam knocked out. It's not that expensive. It's not, Rocket science. So just do it and avoid a lot of, a lot of other hassle.

John Dickow: Yeah. Cover your bases. And I feel like that's been a theme, an ongoing theme last a few episodes of this podcast. And you want to talk about preventing, crashing your drone and stuff. Just get to know your drone. And just like you would want to get to know your drone and the settings and the functions you want to get to know the, the rules and regulations around the drone too.

And I think this, football game example is a, Perfect example of just how serious this is. I really appreciate the answer

David Young: here. Don't fly through a TFR boys and girls. It's the main lesson.

John Dickow: Well, thank you, David. Thanks. Appreciate always having you on the podcast and, for our audience, if you have a question, we are happy to find the answer to submit us any question you might have about drones.

and you can submit that over YDQA. io. We'll see it there. Or if you're part of the drone launch connect community, go ahead and send it through there and we'll see it and we'll find the answer. In the meantime, we'll see you in the sky.