Public Safety Drone Crash Highlights

In this week’s column, Public Safety Drone Crash Highlights – spectacular fails, and how you can avoid them.

The following is one of a biweekly series on public safety drone issues by Steve Rhode, Chief Pilot with the Wake Forest Fire Department and the North Carolina Public Safety Drone Academy, and founder of Public Safety Flight, a website dedicated to information about the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), UAVs, aircraft, and drones in public safety. (Not to be contrued as legal advice: please see details at the FAA government site.  Opinions are the author’s.)

Public Safety Drone Crash Highlights: Why Those Pesky Rules Exist.

On a windy afternoon a few weeks ago, a call came in about some people lost on a raft on a small lake.

Public safety staff jumped into action and launched their UAS to get out over the lake to find the missing people on the raft.

Not to spoil the surprise but the COA agency making the flight wound up losing the aircraft and now has to…