Meeting with pesticide board and use of Drones

JOCCO

Well-known Member
First I do some stuff with the state pesticide board here is what came up and is on the docket. An out fit is asking for a policy on the use of un manned drones for possibly delivering pesticides, spraying!! (No I am not on mars or in a nut ward) Now I am not heavily opposed as bigger out fits spray with computer gps on tractors. One question that came up is FAA policy on this. ( to be researched) My thoughts that I was going to present are this. IF it should come to fruit: Must have a pesticide license along with any license needed for a drone AND THAT PERSON MUST BE ON SITE AT THE FIELD BEING SPRAYED. Also insurance and notification of neighbors would be discussed as such a policy is in effect for arial spraying anyway. If any of you have any thoughts or this has come up in your state I would appreciate your impute. I believe we are going to see more of this.
 
Happens that I'm studying the manual to renew my certification right now. Would it be legal under federal law if it was for the use of Restricted Use Pesticides? That would be the starting point for any discussion. General Use Pesticides might be a starting place where federal law wouldn't prevent it,but I would think a state board would want to look in to the RUP issue before even discussing it.
 
may want to have them register with fieldwatch, formerly drift watch. it has locations of registered apiaries (beehives) and any spray applicator needs to check to see if there are hives in the area, they will need to notify the beekeepr in advance when and what is being sprayed so they can protect the hives as necessary. heres a link
driftwatch
 
Kind of hard to get your mind around isn't it? What kind of unmanned drone can carry a tank full of chemicals and has booms, etc...

I think we have to remember that old adage...just because we can doesn't mean we should.
 
I think they're just using a concentrate without the carrier to hover right in and spray individual plants.
 
RR yes lots of federal and legal questions need to be answered. My issue is unmanned and nearest operator miles away.
 
Debris removal/cleanup for when one crashes even though it shouldn't be an issue with a small drone but we all know that once it is proven feasible it will become bigger. Another would be hours. Daylight only or 24 hours. On a premarket gps setup they could probably go at night. I assume we are talking about spot spraying at this time.
 
I was just Googling the subject looking for pictures. I don't know if they are real and I cannot get a sense of scale....but they had tanks and booms on some of these stupid things.

I heard a funny noise the other day and realized the idiot...er...guy across the lane was out flying a drone. He took that thing right up above the trees and then over the neighbor to the north. Second time I have seen him do that. This guy couldn't afford a lawn mower for two years. Funny, he never flies it down this way.
 
I don't think flying them miles away is even legal. In an ag application,the operator has to be within sight of it at all times.
 
Additionally, the operators need to be certified not only for the pesticide, but also certified as an aerial applicator.

Other countries such as as Japan currently allow pesticide application by drones.

Larry
 
Crop dusting with drones? Hmm. I thought that the maximum altitude for a drone is 400'. And as someone else mentioned, one huge drone to be able to crop dust. That would be interesting to see. Pilots generally are great control as they head way up, turn, dive down. Imagine somebody making a mistake, a family is at their summer pool and gets crop dusted. Anyway, its going to be interesting. One more job taken over by a robot and the unemployed guy...

Mark
 
Anybody on this forum remember the movie "Runaway" with Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons?
In this movie, they had robots that pulled weeds and picked the bugs off of the plants.
Looking into my crystal ball, I see the day where we have flying drones that spray individual weeds or pull them out of the ground.
You heard it here first. (And if I'm wrong, you never heard me say it at all....)
 
I'm a private pilot, and have been mixed up with the regulations on smaller drones previously, and we knew there would be larger drones coming along as the technology improved.

The short answer is there is no answer right now. The technology has outpaced regulatory oversight. Mainly this is because the FAA has become a behemoth of inaction. Much of the blame for the 9/11 disaster fell on the FAA, and where there was some common sense prior to that, the 'guy in the office' of the FAA now follows the regulatory book with a magnifying glass and an attitude.

First thing to cover is that a recreational drone has weight and distance limits. It's very small, something like 50Lbs, must be in line of sight of the operator, no higher than 400 feet, not operated near or around any public or private airports, etc.

Note that this is for [u:badd20aa4a]rereational[/u:badd20aa4a] use. Applying any kind of chemical from the drone would fall under commercial use, no matter if it was done for profit or as the owner/operator of the drone doing his own work. It is still commercial ops. There are no regs, and no outline right now for any regs on comm ops of drones. The rec regulations state 'no carriage of hazardous materials'. The FAA definition of a hazard more than likely would include anything that isn't water.

Personal experience. I fly a lot in TX, NM, sometimes in CO, LA, and AR. I've seen drones from my plane twice, but I'm absolutely sure that I've been around them more than that, just that I haven't detected them. There are several people facing criminal penalties right now for interfering with aviation using a drone. One guy was caught because he posted his drone pics on youtube, and it showed him flying right through the approach of Dallas Love field.

While there are likely benefits to be had from aerial spraying of crops while the pilot stays on the ground, I suspect it will be a long and tortured process to get it regulated. If one were to go out tomorrow and started spraying with an unmanned air vehicle, there is no law to stop it, and in what we call our 'permissive' society(something which is not specifically banned, is afforded the oppty to do that thing), I guess it could be said that there's "no law against it". And that would be true. However, the FAA would declare it an illegal UAV, and would be subject to the administrative laws for the Fed Air Regs which in some cases include serious fines, and even prison(but that's pretty rare).
 
I see them evolving to spot spray. There are programs now where you fly a pattern over your field every week with the drone, and get back a big picture of the field and color charts of where the crop is good, bad, where issues are that should be looked at. It's baby steps now, once the near infrared cameras get more common it will hit the big time.

Then the little drone with the fancy camera will pull in a spray plan to the big drone with concentrated herbicide, and hit the weed spots.

Actually will cut down on the amount of spray used. Very specific spraying where the weeds are.

Or insect problems. Same deal.

Going to take some paperwork to get from here to there tho.

Drones are not caught up on regulation yet. Hobby drones fall under the radio controlled regulations more or less. Commercial use of drones has not been well thought out or licensed yet.

My state wants to start using drones to Inspect bridges, and they are running into the same issues. Can they even fly in a city, and then within 5 miles of an airport, and so on.

Paul
 
I think a drone that could even carry 2 qts of material would be a really slick tool for treating things such as fruit trees and large garden plots. Definately an area where tech is evolving faster than the government can move. There is a group locally that has permission to fly a big drone (Hermes?) doing research work with crop imaging/scouting.
 
Google a Yamaha drone. I think is a 250cc engine and carries 140lbs. Something like 60000. But is 125000 with everything. I am sure somebody is spraying with one today.
 

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