Drones and other stuff
Illegally parked drone: US$ 700. Face of Angela Merkel: Priceless.
On September 15th last year, a miniature quadcopter disturbing a campaign event of Chancellor Angela Merkel in the city of Dresden in Eastern Germany attracted attention worldwide. A small local branch of the Pirate Party of Germany sent the “drone” to protest against Merkel’s politics and the increasing surveillance.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEprc8MAFEw&rel=0&w=500]
Now, six months later, the pilot of the miniature “drone” was fined approximately US$ 700 for not contacting the tower of the local airport before starting the toy. It is obvious, that the reasoning of the penalty is far-fetched, because it is just impossible to endanger aircrafts with a “Parrot AR.drone” some six miles away from the airport.
The Pirate Party of Germany started a donation campaign for the “illegally parked drone” and collected the money for the penalty in just a few days. This year, with three more elections in the region to come, there is already some more action planned by the pirates of Dresden-Neustadt.
If you like this kind of spectacular political action, you can support the local pirates by donating some money:
Bank account
Piratenpartei Dresden-Neustadt
IBAN: DE92 8306 5408 0004 7357 73
BIC: GENODEF1SLR (Deutsche Skatbank)
Reference: Donation from <name>, <address>
This is actually no “spectacular political action,” but irresponsibility! This “drone” (actually a cheap quadcopter) could lead to serious injuries when it comes in contact with the audience. If you plan to repeat this, you compromise the health of the people visiting a normal political event.
In addition, this shows the Pirate Party’s understanding of democracy: You don’t listen to other people speaking, but disturb the pre-election parties instead. This actually is quite sad.
The penalty is definitly right; and I hope you don’t make the mistake to repeat this absurd action.
The drone is only a danger to the audience if it falls down, and the same can be said for any surveillance drone out there.
The only law, restriction or ordnance they could find to penalise the drone pilot was failure to contact air traffic control. Granted, so close to ground level, you have a whole heap of other problems should it ever pose a real danger to air traffic. I strongly suspect a passenger jet flying ten meters above the audience is a greater threat to their safety than a puny quadrocopter toy. I’m guessing the only reason the fine came was vindictive authorities combing the law books trying to find something to pin it on, and this was the only thing they found.
I strongly suspect that if there was any real danger to the public, the germans would have a rule against it. Ordnung muss sein!
That means if dear Angela has a rally outside controlled airspace, it’s probably not a bad idea to hold a drone rally.