Hi Barbara
I don't think you're "putting your foot in it" but you are making assumptions that everyone's needs, abilities and allowed operations are the same as your own.
Like you, I read various posts here and in other places about other people's operations or watch videos on YouTube and I do at times shake my head in wonder. When I comment however I generally address the technical and safety aspect and pay only passing comment to the regulations. It's not my job to be the "drone police", there are far too many of them already and when you preach at people they instantly turn off to your entire message. You *are* right that there is a lack of responsibility in some quarters of the hobby. Generally speaking those people are not going to abide by the rules regardless of what they say or how many there are so why bother? Remember, you only hear from the minority. The vast majority of responsible, law abiding operators never post. In other cases people have legitimate reasons for pushing the envelope.
My case in point, I mentioned above that I had pushed a spark to the limit of line of sight until the connection began to degrade, why? I am the owner of a small R.P.A. business here in Australia, I hold an RePL and AROC (Remote Pilots Licence and Aeronautical Radio Operators Certificate) my company holds a ReOC (Remote Operators Certificate) which entitles the C.A.S.A. approved Chief Pilot (me *sigh*) to authorise our pilots for operations outside of the generally approved Standard Operating Conditions under some circumstances with appropriate safeguards in place after an exhaustive Job Safety Analysis and Threat and Error Management is put in place.
I bought 4 Sparks for the business, you are right for many people they are simply the ultimate in portability or a "selfie drone" but they are also much more. They are incredibly robust, have a 12MP camera more than capable of mapping or doing aerial mosaics of small areas and fly in places other R.P.A. cannot. I recently flew one into the cabin of a beached and partially submerged Trimaran, but the main reason I bought them is for close up inspection of antennas and towers, when you need to fly within 10cm of guy wires, masts etc the possibility of a loss must always be accepted regardless of how good you are. Better a $600 Spark than a $2500 Dollar P4P V2.0 and secondly they are for training of my pilots (also the responsibility of the Chief Pilot). You don't teach someone to drive in a Ferrari but you still need something that drives basically the same way.
As you mentioned the Spark has a reputation for reduced range, this is not because it is "WiFi" as you put it. The Spark by and large operates on the same 2.4 and 5.8Ghz band as any other DJI product. The difference it in the "modulation method" or how the stream of both video and control is overlaid on the carrier and in how much power output is used, technical stuff we don't need to go in to. Enough to say you're right, they don't do long range particularly well.
As I use them for training of my pilots, as I make my pilots fly them in all modes and as they can attain in excess of 50km/h it doesn't take very long for a distracted novice to fly it out of range and my liability insurance has to cover the ramifications and there are a few ambiguities in it's RTH operation I needed solid answers to. Answer? In my case go to a non populated area over the ocean and find out .. worse case scenario is a distant and expensive "plop gurgle". I can live with that better than someone losing an eye from an out of range out of control Spark. The results of these tests then help me formulate conditions which are placed in the companies "Operations and procedures manuals" which direct the pilots in how they must operate.
I've never done this with the larger R.P.A. as their specifications are such they they are way and above the required abilities and so were not in question. The Spark was another matter. So yes, while obviously in the minority there are still valid reasons why people choose to "push the envelope".
Slightly diverging onto your other comments (this post is too long already sorry all) The U.K. incidents are fairly obviously manufactured by parties with an agenda to push and the new laws you face in Canada are the result of (like us) living in a "nanny state" and having your legislation drafted by people with no personal experience in the subject and more interested in addressing the perception than the reality. There's no getting around it, the sub 400FT airspace that was worthless 3 to 4 years ago has suddenly become worth Billion$ to big business and we all know that Big Business never use their sway on Government to have legislation passed to their advantage because Multi National conglomerates share so well right? If they can remove a large percentage of traffic from that airspace under ANY justification they will.
Fly and ride safe (still riding here at 54)
Regards
Ari
