Drone News: DJI Ban for EVERYONE, Philly Pilot Back in Court, WingtraOne LiDAR, and Air Aware FRIA

Welcome to your weekly UAS news update, we have 4 stories for you
this week: New bill to ban DJI for all users, Philly Drone Life
goes back to court, WingtraOne gets LiDAR, and Air Aware gets
FRIA locations! Please help fight the drone ban here:
https://droneadvocacyalliance.com/?vvsrc=%2Fcampaigns%2F111611%2Frespond





First up this week is a new bill from the US House Of
Representatives called the “Countering CCP Drones Act” or H.R.
2864. The bill would revoke all FCC authorizations for existing
and future DJI drones. For those who don’t know, the FCC issues
approvals for anything that transmits radio frequencies. The
revocation of DJI’s approvals would mean no drones could transmit
radio frequencies. This would affect ALL users of DJI drones,
including those who fly for recreation or fly for non-critical
infrastructure. Please reach out to your representative and let
them know this is unacceptable and will destroy the UAS industry.
We’ll keep you updated if we see any developments on this.
https://droneadvocacyalliance.com/?vvsrc=%2Fcampaigns%2F111611%2Frespond
Second up this week is trouble for Philly Drone Life, a YouTuber
known for being fined by the FAA for flying dangerously. A
complaint filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania states
the YouTuber, Michael DiCiurcio, has been “warned, counseled, and
educated” 3 times by the FAA. The complaint goes on to state that
DiCiurcio continues to knowingly violate regulations and lists 26
incident flights between December 29th, 2019 and August 4th, 2020
and the violations for each flight. The complaint assigns a value
of $1,501 per violation of each Federal Aviation Regulation,
totaling $182,004 in fines. Violations included acting as an
airman without an airman certificate, careless and reckless
operations, operating without a strobe light at night, operating
beyond visual line of sight, operating over a human beings, and
operating within controlled airspace without airspace approval.
The court seeks the total fine amount along with a permanent
injunction on operating drones not in full compliance with Part
107 or 44809. This would mean that if DiCiurcio were to violate
Part 107 or 44809, a warrant could be issued for his arrest.
We’ll keep you updated if we see any more about this case.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/united-states-files-lawsuit-against-philadelphia-resident-alleging-violations-faa
Third this week is Wingtra, who has released a LiDAR unit for the
WingtraOne Gen II. This unit has a vertical accuracy of 3cm from
200’ and the capability to map up to 890 acres in a single
flight, this is a game changer for those mapping and LiDAR firms
who do large areas. The LiDAR payload comes in at about $6000
according to the head of sales at Wingtra. Pretty cool new
payload, I wonder if Jared will be getting one…
https://dronexl.co/2024/02/12/aerial-mapping-wingtra-lidar-drone/
Last up this week is Air Aware! You guys asked, and we heard your
requests! We were able to get FRIA Maps added into the app so you
can see where to fly with your older drones or your foamy without
RID! We’re excited to continue to add features to Air Aware, so
be sure to leave a comment if you have some suggestions!
https://www.aloft.ai/blog/new-in-air-aware-b4ufly-fria-data-layers/