4 COVER STORY
THE SUNDAY EAST VALLEY TRIBUNE | APRIL 17, 2016
some evil toy that’s going to kill people or substantially invade their privacy. “The biggest detractors are pilots,” Huebl adds. “For them, this is about protecting their turf, because drones are going to take a lot of pilots’ jobs away. That much about drones,” he says, “is absolutely true.”
Learning to fly
Employee Andrew tests out the DJI Phantom 3 at Drones Plus in Chandler. [David Jolkovski/Tribune]
DRONES from page 1
designate fly zones in more parks. “The fixed wing guys really don’t like the drone guys,” says Flite Factory owner Dustin Pennington, who’s brought his own set of drones to fly today. “The parks we’re allowed to fly in are neutral areas, so one form doesn’t have seniority over the other. But for some reason, the fixed-wing guys think they should have the parks all to themselves. I think it’s just because they’ve been around longer.”
Drones have their detractors RC flyers are not the only group down on drone enthusiasts, however. They’re also not too well-liked by helicopter pilots, airport managers or the Federal Aviation Administration, which has for the past few years been scrambling to establish rules for what it classifies as Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). So far, the FAA’s ability to regulate the machines has been consistently outpaced by the advances in technology and the uses people are discovering for them. “The FAA originally made the UAS rules for the RC flyers, which were mostly just push-prop gliders that had a range of a mile or two,” says Bill Mar, owner of a computer parts store. He’s also one of the original organizers of the Greater Phoenix Area Drone User Group (PHXDUG.org), the Chandlerbased chapter of the Drone User Group Network. The international association has grown to over 15,000 members since starting up just four years ago. The Chandler group alone now has roughly 270 members. “The technology changed with the popularity of drones,” Mar says. “Suddenly you had radio controllers with a much
greater range – and the ability to control the things from all over. Then they added cameras to them, which was when everybody got scared. “Nobody was ever really scared of the RC planes. But when they heard about these little things flying around with a camera, that’s when the public and the media started to freak out about privacy issues. And it didn’t help when we started seeing killer drones in movies!” Not to mention drones outfitted with chainsaws or any number of potentially lethal attachments and other fantasies illustrated by amateur hobbyists on YouTube.
More available, more affordable Today’s drones are more affordable. Cheap, disposable versions can be had for as little as $39, although a halfdecent one will cost you at least $250 and a top-of-the-line model can run as much as $12,000. They’re more popular than ever, too: over 400,000 drones have been registered with the FAA to date. But the machines are also feared and disdained by more people than ever. Enthusiasts say this is largely the result of overblown media reporting on the phenomenon and the general perception (perhaps not so overblown) that drones are increasingly populating our skies. “We’ve been suffering from drone hysteria ever since the news media became aware of these things,” says Paul Huebl, a longtime private investigator in Phoenix, who’s become a major proponent of using drones in the private-eye field. “Legislators and those on city councils all over the place are now trying to ban them, because they think drones are
Before Josh Lambeth could become registered to use his drone in his commercial photography business, he first had to become a registered pilot. “I actually had to learn how to fly a real airplane in order to fly these commercially,” says the Spokane, Washingtonborn photographer. He studied at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California, and worked for about a decade as a cinematographer. He discovered drones about four years ago. He now runs a local aerial photography and videography business in Phoenix called Birds Eye Productions, which makes heavy use of four state-ofthe-art drones – as well as a small team of humans – to capture aerial shots for commercials, real estate videos, land surveying and film work. Did learning how to fly help him to pilot a drone? “Nope,” Lambeth says, with a laugh. “Learning the air space rules was useful, although I could have learned that on the ground. Honestly, I think requiring drone operators to get a full-scale pilot’s license is just a way for the FAA to make money off of this. “And the regulations state that I have to maintain a current pilot’s license, which means that I have to keep flying. But it was something I wanted to do
eventually anyway, and I’m able to write off the flights as a business expense. So that’s cool,” he adds.
How commercial use differs Flying drones commercially is a step up from flying as a hobby. It places the operator into a different category, with greater operational restrictions. Under current laws, both hobbyists and commercial users must keep drones flying below 400 feet and avoid flying within five miles of an airport to avoid interfering with actual manned airplanes. Commercial drone pilots must also avoid flying within 500 feet of other people or structures unless they first secure a permit. They must also notify airport managers whenever they’re using the drone. Understandably, many commercial operators are annoyed by the regulations, particularly since hobbyist or recreational drone users––who are actually more likely to try something reckless, as they have less to lose by breaking the rules––don’t have to jump through nearly as many hoops to get started flying. Still, most commercial flyers endure the hassle of the permitting process (some call the FAA’s continuing efforts to regulate the craft a case of “criminalizing innovation”) for the rewards that wait on the other side. The job-seeking website Indeed.com lists starting pay for new commercial drone pilots at around $45,000, and CNN Money says operators with just a little experience can easily earn as much as $100,000 per year. “I took a huge chance on this,” says Pennington, who adds that his wife was not originally on board with his opening up a drone store in Mesa. “I sold our house, which we had quite a See DRONES on page 5
Chris Lambeth controls the camera movements on the drone that Josh Lambeth is flying during a demonstration for the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers in Tempe’s Daley Park. [Ethan Fichtner/Tribune]