Holiday Shopping For Drones? 5 Things You Need To First Know

Holiday Shopping For Drones?

FAA’s New Drone Registration Proposals

The Christmas shopping season is upon us and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is speculating that one of the hottest items for well-to-do shoppers will be drones. They are speculating that up to a million drones could be sold in the coming weeks – a development that complicates matters for an agency seeking to regulate the public airspace.

As such, the registration of drones has become a fairly urgent item of business for the FAA, and on November 23 it released its recommendations around a drone registration system. Online business news publication Quartz studied the report and summarized the findings.

1) First and foremost, it’s important to note that it’s not the drone itself which needs to be registered, it’s the operator. One person can own multiple drones and only have to register once. “After completing the registration, pilots will get a number that they can use for all the drones they fly—they just need to complete the registration before they fly a drone for the first time,” reports Quartz.

If a drone weighs over 250 grams then it needs to be registered, the logic being that any drone under that weight which falls out of the sky is unlikely to hurt anyone.

Currently the fine for flying an unregistered drone stands at a whopping $25 000, which the FAA has acknowledged is perhaps slightly too steep, yet it has not come out and specifically indicated that it is contemplating a lower fee.

2) The FAA recommends that drones only be flown by people over the age of 13 and that everyone in the US who wants to fly a drone needs to be registered. For foreign drone operators, the agency is ‘still requiring them to register, but with an expedited application process.’

3) At this point there is no test envisaged for people to gain a license, yet there is an acknowledgement that gaining a license to operate a drone should also entail some sort of educational element, in order to make sure that people are aware of the risks and the dangers involved in flying an unmanned craft.

Take a look at this educational site, entitled ‘’Know Before You Fly.’’

4) The act of registering a drone will be done through a website and registration will be free. Furthermore, drone owners will have to provide a name and address, but not be required to give any other details unless they wanted to, and that this database will be kept secret, “recommending that it not ever be available through the Freedom of Information Act.”

Tech blog ArsTechnica reports that the registration process is unlikely to involve more than 3 steps, as “”Any registration steps more burdensome than these three simple steps may jeopardize the likelihood of widespread adoption,” the task force said in its final report, dated November 21.”

5) Details have still not been established on who will be building the website and on when it will be up and running and come into law. There was also no comment yet on what would be required for drones which are already operating in US airspace.

By Jeremy Daniel

Gilad David Maayan
What is SASE (Secure Access Service Edge)? SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is a term coined by Gartner to refer to a new architecture for networking and security that combines both functions into a single, ...
Richard Duffy
Overcoming IT Infrastructure Disaster (Updated: 03.24.2023) One of the least considered benefits of cloud computing in the average small or mid-sized business manager’s mind is the aspect of disaster recovery. Part of the reason for ...
Gary Bernstein
WordPress Website Security You've spent time, effort, and money building your website, so don't let it become outdated and run-down by not taking proper care of it. Here are tips on WordPress Website security, speed, ...
Get Smarter
Higher Education A big challenge for professionals of all ages is time. Balancing the responsibilities of work and life leave little time for self-improvement in the form of education. But ongoing education is more than ...
Drew Firment
Stop Focusing on Cloud Adoption and Start Focusing on Cloud Maturity For the past several years, most organizations have made it their priority to shift much of their applications and data from on-premises to the ...
Patrick Melampy
Cloud On-Ramp and Protecting Performance The expansion of remote work and the massive growth in usage of cloud-based applications have stressed existing infrastructure and put a keen focus on the performance of everyone’s network environment ...
10 Leading Open Source Business Intelligence Tools
Open Source Business Intelligence Tools It’s impossible to take the right business decisions without having insightful information to back up the decision-making process. Open Source Business Intelligence Tools make it easier to have our raw ...
Gilad David Maayan
What Is Cloud Deployment? Cloud deployment is the process of deploying and managing applications, services, and infrastructure in a cloud computing environment. Cloud deployment provides scalability, reliability and accessibility over the internet, and it allows ...
David Fletcher Blown Image
The Report.png
Growing Up.png
Viral Infection Wearabletech

PLURALSITE

Pluralsight provides online courses on popular programming languages and developer tools. Other courses cover fields such as IT security best practices, server infrastructure, and virtualization. 

(ISC)²

(ISC)² provides IT training, certifications, and exams that run online, on your premises, or in classrooms. Self-study resources are available. You can also train groups of 10 or more of your employees.

CYBRARY

CYBRARY Open source Cyber Security learning. The world's largest cyber security community. Cybrary provides free IT training certificates. Courses for beginners, intermediates, and advanced users are available.