Washington, DC- -it's a painfully slow process for politicians and FAA bureaucrats to accept the need, legitimacy and relative safety of those little civilian drones.   There was the initial hysteria of passenger jets crashing, mass privacy invasion because of those little drones.     The panic reaction was bolstered with thousands mistaken or deliberately false reports of sightings claiming drone misbehavior.     Thankfully as the number of drones in civilian hands increased by leaps and bounds, the bogus reports quietly subsided considerably.  Very recently progress has been made in allowing the commercial use of drones under a somewhat loosened set of rules and guidelines.    Along with the more realistic drone rules the FAA created the Part 107 licensing exemption with a written test for commercial drone pilots.   They have allowed for considerable expansion of drone use in urban areas for news gathering, filmmakin...

 courtesy of AZ Republic  Phoenix, AZ --It was in July of 2007 when cops were chasing a fleeing pickup truck through the streets of Phoenix.   Also in pursuit were two TV news choppers that were covering this breaking story. Soon the story of the day changed dramatically and tragically as the two news helicopters somehow collided in midair.   Two veteran pilots and gifted photojournalists that I knew personnaly were killed.   The financial and personal damages of that event were beyond catastrophic and heartbreaking.     Since 1960, there were 91 deaths and scores of serious injuries directly related to News helicopters alone.   Another TV news pilot/reporter I once knew was Karen Key .   She was a young and very attractive lady that gained quite a following in Phoenix.   One day she was arrested by Phoenix police for DUI.   Quickly her news director unceremoniously sent her packing.   Some of her fans t...

Los Angeles, CA —Technology has brought us unmanned, remote controlled aircraft.   These things have been around for decades. Expectedly they have been engineered for surveillance and combat by military contractors. More recently GPS advances and really great and diminutive cameras such as the GoPro has brought us an affordable civilian drone that has been thrilling photographers such as me. The vast majority of the civilian camera drones are weighing in at between one and three pounds and can be safely operated from as much as a mile away.   They can capture stunning images at much lower altitudes than helicopters without the risk of death and destruction.   There are larger and more sophisticated drones that handle the bigger cameras used by the film industry and require very solid piloting skills.   One thing for sure civilian drone operators don’t want their devices endangered or the subject of adverse police scrutiny.   I have two...