Any country with very vague/non existing laws on flying drones? I want to test my semi-autonomous flight system for midrange delivery and in Germany you can only fly with visual contact.

I hear Syria doesn't really mind a few drones flying around 😶

@Jacobgc thats great, hold my beer while I start an international political crysis

@jobylie 😂😂😂 Joking aside I like the sound on what you're working on I really do!

@Jacobgc thanks. The problem I try to solve is that I work with video editors all over europe and it is a pain in the ass to transfer those 90GB project folders. Online storage isn't a great solution either so I decided to strap some hdds to a drone. There are solar glider drones that can fly for hours at a time (I saw a video on Youtube of someone testing this) so long distance flight is possible. The "cruise controll" Software I wrote works in theory, but it needs testing and gov regulations make this work impossible. I spoke to a gov rep at an expo they had and he said there are no real plans to regulate air traffic in a practical manner just now. It is a real shame.

@jobylie I'd try and take it to somewhere remote, maybe a national park, I doubt you'd be disturbed there and you could test flight distance/time etc. But yeah it is a shame that governments aren't trying to put regulations and laws in place for drones :(

@jobylie that sounds like a really good solution to the problem though !

Fuck that sounds terrifying. Exciting and great, sure, but what if the drone flys into high powered electric cables? What if it malfunctions and flys upwards, possibly disrupting manned aerial vehicles? What if it runs out of battery or whatever and falls down on someones head from a big height?
And many many more scenarios, both that you can think of and that you possibly can't even anticipate :O so scary

@Bikonja well, yes, but in the future it will be a very useful and also normal way of transportation. And in the beginning everything is scary. That's why we test. And I planned on having a "controll center" with video feed and telemetry data allways active when a drone is in the air so it never flies alone

@jobylie oh I'm not saying it's not a great thing and shouldn't be done, I'm just saying that there's tons of things that can go wrong and potentially the ramifications of an error can be soul clenching.
Amazing to do it, I would love to try, but at the same time it's petrifying for me as there's so much that's not under my control and that I might not have considered

@jobylie
Why not just use snail mail? 🙄

@makx because it wouldn't be cool

@jobylie
I totally agree with that 😁

That sounds really interesting, however all countries surrounding Germany require you to have visual contact to the drone. Some (Belgium) don't even allow you to fly higher than 10m. So you'll have to find a workaround or travel further away to test your system.

@karmak yes, I would travel further (maybe some barely populated areas in africa where nobody gives a shit?) to test it. Once everything works there will probably be a way to register it as a plane

Argentina. I live here, though citizens can do what ever they what if the encounter a drone at their home, laws are not set.

@pilobasualdo thanks, may consider it. Also a good way to improove my spanish. Bienvenido a devrant!

@jobylie thanks!
Haha I do know you wont travel this far. But just to keep you thinking: we do have limitless farms where we test our own creations ;)

@pilobasualdo awesome deltawing you got there!

I think in Poland (where I live) you can get a drone license which is expensive (around 2.500 euro) but allows you to fly beyond eye contact. Yeah, Poland doesn't have the best laws to say the least but they do allow some commercial/long flight drone flying if you pass a course, exam and get a license

@Niteraleph thats awesome to know. Especially since poland is like a 2h drive (and not a 20h flight like argentina). 2500€ sounds expensive but I can look into geting investors excited about the project.

@jobylie Yeah, I think you should look into the topic. Obviously there's a blank prohibition on certain areas (like airport proximities) but I think you will be able to find places where you can enjoy flying. (I even think there are some maps on the web which show those areas)

@jobylie have you tried looking into the VLA regulations? You could try going for that kind of registration, though it's kind of a pain in the ass.

This is the same thing I'm trying to do for the rc plane I'm working on, though I suppose my project is quite bigger in size (50kg aircraft + 10kg rocket payload, to be launched upwards from 8000m, all controlled remotely, and possibly autonomous)

@endor yes I looked at that. Might be the only possible way to solve the problem.
Your project sounds awesome. What are you using the rocket for? Will you launch micro satelites?

@Bikonja the aerospace sector leaves very little to random chance. There are plenty of systems in a plane that protect it (and the people on the ground) from all sorts of catastrophic events.
Typically, for small rc aircraft, the suggested safety mechanisms are either a parachute or self-destruction (yes, seriously) such that no large chunks of aircraft are left behind, minimizing any damage on the ground.
These safeties have to be designed along with the aircraft from the very beginning, and must be in place and thoroughly tested before the aircraft even starts moving for the first time

@endor exactly, that's what I'm talking about, you literally need a self-destruct and/or parachute which also needs to carefully be thought out so as not to cause more damage, you also need to make sure that you will actually be able to trigger those safety mechanisms, etc... You have to have contingencies for contingencies in systems that think of all edge cases...
I love it, but it's still scary

@jobylie look up Skyward Experimental Rocketry :D I'm working on the Cyrano project.

Our first mission is just a testbed for future ones, and the rocket we're going to be launching is only 1.5m tall.
But the underlying idea is pretty much what you said: carry rockets higher in the atmosphere and launch them from there, saving fuel and weight in the process because the rocket doesn't need to accelerate through most of the thick atmosphere

@endor sounds awesome. I love space, especially private space travel projects. Good luck!

@jobylie thank you!

I just had to think about, what if you let two drones fly together, each with an electronic eye watching each other. "Eye contact" - ☑