I Joined PARCAP

Thanks, Michael. PARCAP is now officially open to accept memberships thanks to the urgent and dedicated efforts of Ryan Rowe, Shaun Stanton and Gary Haynes who've set up the web site, handled the Paypal accounting, and filed the appropriate corporate papers -- and, ok, a little help from me.

Now it's up to the forum members, initially those in the USA because, as you can tell, more and more States are discussing legislation that will impact our ability to fly unmanned aircraft for professional (and by that I mean for business and non-business reasons) as well as for recreational purposes. But we certainly welcome non-USA members too!

So may I appeal to those forum members based in the USA with corporations who intend to fly for business purposes when the FAA permits such activity, to join as corporate members as soon as convenient.
Please also consider joining as an individual member if not a corporate member.

Gary, Shaun, Ryan and I have been putting our own money into getting PARCAP off the ground (in every sense of the phrase) -- that's how strongly we feel about the issues.

We urgently need to deal with the various State legislators and the media, educating both to what copters are all about otherwise the incessant drumbeat of negative stories in the media may well start to prejudice the FAA and other States contemplating legislation.

The states that are attempting to regulate unmanned aircraft are shown on http://parcap.org/regulations/ -- although we just found out that New Jersey has some legislation in committee and we're trying to find the actual Bill.

I spent 25 minutes last week talking with three NBC producers about the JFK/"drone" incident. The main story angle they wanted to pursue was more whether it was within the realms of possibility that it was a recreational pilot's aircraft that was at 1,700 feet (and the answer of course was, "yes, it could be -- it's just a dollar problem to build an aircraft capable of that kind of flight.")

PARCAPs first priority is to get the truth out there about the unmanned aircraft we fly. Yes. We will try and get the word "drone" back into its semantic box where it means military surveillance and weaponized unmanned aircraft. It may be a wasted effort but we will not know until we try. The FAA, Transport Canada, Britain's Civil Aviation Authority, the International Civi Aviation Organization and the Academy of Model Aeronautics all use "unmanned aircraft" (UA) and "unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) -- the latter including the ground station and other supporting systems.

Also, please spread the word on the other forums: multirotorforums, diydrones, mikrokopter.us, mikrokopter.de.

Remember also that "drone" in the minds of the legislators also includes fixed wing aircraft with cameras on them -- so if anyone is into flying those and is registered on fixed wing forums, please post a brief message there.

There is a PARCAP mission statement at http://parcap.org/about/mission-statement/
and some definitions at http://parcap.org/about/what-is-an-rc-aircraft/

We're currently working on PARCAP's official position regarding various State legislatures.

I've spent most of the past week work on research and writing PARCAP's testimony for the Oregon Senate Committee on Judciary, and I'll be traveling down to Salem, Oregon tomorrow and hope to testify at the public hearing on Wednesday morning. It is video streamed and the audio is archived on the Oregon State Legislature web site. See http://www.leg.state.or.us/listn/listeninfo.htm (the hearing room is 343).

I'll also be posting details of my written testimony after it has been presented to the Committee. I don't know whether I will have ten minutes, five minutes or one minute or oral testimony, but I'll have versions of my oral testimony for all of those.

I also do not know who else will be testifying, but I'm hoping that someone from UAVSI will be there. I do know that the Academy of Model Aeronautics will have some folks from the Salem Chapter there.

So....if you can see you way to joining PARCAP, please do so.

As the late (and extremely heroic) Todd Beamer said in a totally different context (which in no way do I equate to the current situation beyond the fact that the sentiment of his last known words are appropriate):

"Are you guys ready? Let's roll!"​

Andy.

 

Thanks for the kind words for Gary, Shaun, and Ryan, and "even" the kind word (singular) for me too.

Right now, as I mentioned, the goal is to get the word out about PARCAP's existence and to encourage others to join. The way things are shaping up thus far, assuming the FAA meets its 2015 deadline, my concern is that individual States will have enacted law that is more restrictive than the FAA's regulations.

So please call, coerce, and cajole other UA pilots to join PARCAP so we can present a voice of reason.

Thanks
Andy.