In the current 24-hour news cycle you may have heard about Governor Deal vetoing the campus carry law. Or you heard about Senator Ted Cruz suspending his bid for the Republican nomination. Or maybe you heard the sad news that a Navy SEAL was killed in action in Iraq?
Buried behind all those stories are two stories about drones (unmanned air vehicles) in Georgia.
Our local Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Governor Deal vetoed drone regulations for Georgia. He has opted to wait until the Federal Aviation Administration has set up guidelines at the national level. If anybody at the FAA is watching, we are counting on you to be brilliant in crafting rules that will allow for all sorts of savvy commercial uses of UAVs while making it clear what constitutes being mean or stupid or just plain unlawful. Reminder to our local UAV flyers — be sure to fly nice. Tough regulations are often a reaction to somebody doing something ill-considered that hurts somebody else. We want to prove that the UAV community is made of smart, courteous, professional operators who can police themselves.
The other local UAV story comes from public radio WABE reporting on commercial use of UAVs in metro Atlanta. If your house has been attacked in a thunderstorm by trees in your yard, you can guess why having a drone take pictures of your roof can be an aid to your insurance company. And of course, television and movie crews are using flying camera to wondrous effect. Got to be ready for the aerial shot of the zombie horde stampede! (Those of you who watch NBC Nightly News, I am pretty sure Miguel Almaguer’s camera crew uses a UAV, as they seem to regard getting the most cinematic shots of natural disasters as a personal challenge.)