Interesting article about drone use

I thought this was a good article, especially the use of drones around airports. In the Manchester airport reference the 5 mile radius covers a fairly large residential area that has alot of triple deckers.

I know this has been discussed but are inspectors using drones considered a commercial application?

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20141214/NEWS07/141219541

I just did some investigating on drones myself and I had to go to the gov.ca website for all the up to date info. In your case you can try the FAA site and it should have the most recent info. Interesting gizmos.

I use one…but not around any airports. There is no reason to even get up that high. People who do are doing it purposely and for their own entertainment. They will ruin it for the rest of us. Mine goes up for less than 15 mins, which is all I need for my photos. I make sure I have plenty of room and don’t allow my clients near it. I use it before they even get there. People get like kids with that sort of thing and lose perspective. Every client asks, can I try it? To which I always respond: I don’t mean to be negative, but NO!

My cousin uses a commercial drone in which I was interested. When I mentioned this to him on Saturday, he said the makers of the commercial drones are moving toward FAA exemptions. Trimble apparently has already (recently) received an exemption from the FAA.

He pointed me to this new bulletin: http://www.trimble.com/news/release.aspx?id=121014a

He also said that most home inspectors will not be using Trimble products due to their limited use of drones (only a few minutes per day at most). Really only practical where they can eliminate significant labor hours. None the less it appears the FAA is willing to work with some commercial drones. These units typically I would guess work in large more rural areas though versus high density urban areas.