A few days ago I was watching the local news. I live south of Raleigh, North Carolina, and NC state university is just north of us and along the route to my dads workplace. So I'm in the kitchen scrounging for food and head the familiar sound of a flying wing pushing through the air. I wandered back in to see why a model was flying in my living room, and saw that the news was featuring "one of 5 drones allowed to fly in North Carolina". Apparently, NC state owns one of the 5 "drones" allowed to fly in my state. I was enraged, Why had I not been informed my hobby was illegal? How could my state do this? Where was I going to convince the family to move? I had the number of the state legislature halfway dialed into my phone and was preparing the angry speech I was going to give in my head when the anchor mentioned the oh so unimportant to them footnote that hobbyists could still fly LOS. Needless to say I calmed down, but I needed a little time.
North Carolina State Universities "drone".
I have several problems with how the media and our hobby mix now days. First, they need to stop calling them "drones". My main problem is that the term is just outright wrong. A drone carries armament and is flown by the military. Not to mention, Drone sounds very threatening. How would you feel if a "drone is flying" compared to a "model airplane is flying" over your house? Second, People who are uneducated in an area should not report on that area! News channels have a weatherman for weather, a sportscaster for sports, Fact checkers, consultants, analysts, and everthing else. Why cant the hire a UAS expert? Or even an unpaid intern? I'd do that job for o pay if it made out hobby look better! The same goes for full size aviation. When the 777 crashed in San Fransico, My news channel showed a Cessna 172 in their anamation. How could that not be caught? its a disgrace! As if that were not enough, A while back, I cannot remember how long, an airline flight somewhere south of us had a Near miss with a UAS. In the animation, they showed an airbus A320 flying and an F-4 PHANTOM JET FIGHTER LOADED WITH BOMBS AND MISSLES as the drone! not only that, they showed it pass so close that the wing went through the cockpit of the A320. Plus, the F-4 was half the size of the jet! How could common sense not catch that? Come on news guys, its like youre trying to make us look bad!
In case you did not know what an F-4 looked like
We as pilots can do several things to help our images in the eyes of the publics.
1. Educate them ourselves. We know how good of a job the media does, so its up to us. If youre flying FPV, give goggle rides to bystanders, Buddy box if youre able, and explain what verything does. Another concern with the public that I've noticed is that they think that "drones" can be used to spy on them and can get into their house. If you are flying a multirotor, fly in close to them. Not too close, but close enough to show that they would hear the model before it could cause a problem, or even get in their home. Even something as small as a nano qx will prove the point, and may even work better, since it will show how loud even small copters are.
2. Show how close you have to be to distinguish faces with an FPV camera. The public will be suprised how close it is, and if you demonstrate how loud these copters are, they will see they pose no threat.
3. Friends dont let friends fly DJI. I know I will offend some of you with this, but I think it is true. DJI is about the worst platform I can think of to fly. Whenever I get the chance, I try to discourage buyers from going DJI. They are nothing but ramped up versions of the crappy helicopters people buy their kids. The left stick is spring loaded to come back to center for Gods sake! 1500 dollars and you cant even get the transmitter right? Not to mention DJI is completely and totally irresponsible when it comes to their marketing. No, you cannot get it and fly it with no experience, as they will have you think.
Friends don't let friends fly DJI
4. Dont be the guy who gets drunk and crashes a multirotor on the White House lawn. There are so many things wrong with this that I could not possibly go into them all here. But please practice good flying habits. Dont be the guy who does something stupid!. Full scale pilots follw the 12 hours from bottle to throttle rule, and models are no differnt. It is amazing to see the difference just a little bit of Alcohol can do to your flying. Be smart. If you would drive your car after doing something, dont fly a model after doing it.
Don't be this guy....
In all, just please be smart, and it is up to us to educate the public about our great hobby. Please, please write kind emails or call and politely point out when a media agency has made an error with regards to our hobby. Odds are they will not make a point of correcting the error on screen, but maybe next time they will not make the same mistake.
Instead of trying to educate your entire community one goggle ride at a time and channeling your righteous indignation at your local media why don't you partner with them to help educate the public? Educating the public is what your local media 's mission is.
Just today I was in a meeting with management from about 10 local newspapers and the topic of drones came up. Yes they used the D word, and I didn't "correct" them but that is off topic. Anyway one paper said that a pilot in their community took a picture of a new ball field and the paper was very happy to print the picture with the pilot's name on the byline. Everyone in the room thought that was a pretty good idea. The result: local media gets unique content and the public gets to see a positive use of a "drone".
You should offer to take some photos or videos for your local media. When they see how awesome and useful drones are they probably won't portray them in a completely negative light. The next time they do a national story on drones they might even use the correct graphic!
This comment is far to long already, so what are your thoughts?
TLDR: offer to take some video or pictures for your local media, they would probably love you, and your aircraft for it.
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Most of the so-called news outlets are just mouthpieces for whomever will give them the most money for their point of view. The big problem is that most of the public hasn't discovered this yet.
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I see so many similarities between FPV and Vaping it isn't even funny. They are both hot button issues that the media spins to get more views and get more money, they don't care about the truth just the numbers they can pull in.
If you want people to hear the truth and see what is actually going on you have to tell them yourself and explain that the media isn't in the business of reporting the truth, they are in the business of selling viewers.
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