Vertical ownership above property boundaries ?

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  • amboy49

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    A friend of mine who lives in a rural area said he observed a drone hovering over his house and property for several minutes. He knows of none of his distant adjacent land owners that would be doing this but it is logical it is a neighbor since he’s not in a subdivision.

    He commented he thought some #3 goose loads from one of his 12 gauges might solve the problem but wasn’t sure what the legal ramifications might be for taking the drone down. Even though he indicated he would apply the three S rule (shoot, shovel, and shut up) he was afraid he still might run afoul of the authorities.

    Do we own the airspace vertically above our own property ? If so, how far up ? Infinity ? Would right to privacy be a factor. Could the drone owner be cited for “trespassing ?”

    Before my friend resorts to violence ( and after consulting an attorney or law enforcement ) I’m wondering what options he may have. Anyone experienced this issue before ?
     

    mom45

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    Found this in doing a google search about laws for flying drones.

    The drone's presence is at best a nuisance, and at worst, might damage people or property, or interfere with your principle mission. ... In other words, it's illegal to shoot down any aircraft in the U.S., including a drone, according to federal law.Feb 13, 2018
     

    Cameramonkey

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    Per the FAA its 500' AGL in urban areas, 365' in rural areas. At least as far as aircraft. That's a good place to start.
     

    GMediC

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    landowner owns at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land.

    BUT

    As has been said, the FAA has taken on the regulation of drones so shooting it will be considered illegal.

    Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
     

    darkkevin

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    Often times it just realtors taking Ariel photos of nearby properties for sale or comparison properties to valuate the one they’re trying to sell
     

    maxwelhse

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    This has been brought up about a bazillion times both on this forum and other places and this is still the most practical advice I've ever seen on the topic:

    Some drones are cheap. Some drones are expensive. They both react they same when you smash them together in mid air. Accidentally.

    You can go to jail for shooting a drone down, but no one seems to have any interest in prosecuting crappy drone pilots. Seems like $69 well spent if it's an actual problem.

    https://www.amazon.com/SNAPTAIN-Wid...s=drone&qid=1592791870&sr=8-5#customerReviews

    However... I'll also put it out there that I have recently learned of drones being used for all sorts of valid agricultural uses, such as monitoring the health and condition of crops via various sensor maps they're able to record by flying patterns over the fields (this technology is actually really amazing). I have no idea if that's even a remote possibility in your area, but if so, it's entirely possible that someone with a legitimate use was simply either lost or testing things out before going about their more pressing business somewhere else. If this was a one time thing, I wouldn't worry about it.
     

    mom45

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    I believe our county government has drones. I'm not sure what they use them for, but I do know the Planning Commission, Emergency Management and maybe the Surveyor's office have access to them.
     

    WanderingSol07

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    The Ag uses are very cool. I dealt with such a developer, he was demonstrating his software to a class at Purdue and I had to get it running on Purdue computers. His drone would take pictures of a field from around 100' up. His software would stitch all the photos together and then analyze them based on color and type of crop and tell you how healthy your fields are and GPS coordinates of the problem areas. His software could run on a laptop so he could go out, visit and scan a field, download the photos to his laptop and usually by the time he could drive back to the farmer's house the software would have done all the work and a presentation would be ready to go. Three of my Sys Admins are farmers and they were quite impressed.
     

    MnemonicMonkey

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    Mom45 got it right. FAA regulates drones, thus they are classified as aircraft. Shooting down an aircraft is a felony as you might imagine.

    I saw an article the other day from Pennsylvania where someone's drone took a rifle round to the battery pack and was able to return home. Footage of the shooter was streamed, recorded and turned over to authorities.

    Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk
     

    NKBJ

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    Is it possible to apply corrective punishment by taking them to court for violating your privacy?
    If the cost of self-defense were to be onerous enough then perhaps their unacceptable behavior could be modified.
    Like rubbing the puppy's nose in the piddle.
     

    HoughMade

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    Mom45 got it right. FAA regulates drones, thus they are classified as aircraft. Shooting down an aircraft is a felony as you might imagine.

    I saw an article the other day from Pennsylvania where someone's drone took a rifle round to the battery pack and was able to return home. Footage of the shooter was streamed, recorded and turned over to authorities.

    Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

    Beyond the specific FAA regulations, just because something someone else owns is in an area you own doesn't automatically mean you can legally destroy it.
     

    bwframe

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    As folks who prepare for various negative scenarios, it would make sense to pursue means and methods to effectively combat attacks via drone.

    Obviously you cannot just blast any drone out of the sky, but it might pay to to be up on technologies to effectively take an attacking drone down.

    Federal law or not, we might have to battle drones without rule of law. Might pay to be prepared?

    What if you resided in CHOPS or CHAZ or whatever the cool kid anarchists call it now? Would you be legit to take down a spying drone then?



    Side note - Wonder if there is any footage of kamikaze drone piloting to fight off spy drones?
     
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    NKBJ

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    What about radio frequencies jamming? How hard is that? If the droid is on top of you then you're the closest radiating signal. The inverse square law should apply. Workable?
     

    maxwelhse

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    What about radio frequencies jamming? How hard is that? If the droid is on top of you then you're the closest radiating signal. The inverse square law should apply. Workable?

    Just as illegal as shooting it, you're just dealing with the FCC instead of the FAA then.

    I'm telling you guys, Phylo has it as "right" as it gets on this topic if you feel you have to take some sort of action. I'd likely start with using a drone to document and follow another one before I risked getting so close as to have an accidental collision.

    The interesting part of all of these things, at least as far as I've ever read up on them, is I have never seen anyone in a situation that actually needed action. People complain about them flying over there property a few times and then I never hear anything about it again. So either those people did whatever they thought they had to do and kept their mouths shut or whatever entity was flying the drone wasn't actually trying to stake out their compound for some nefarious reason and simply moved on after the first few encounters. However... I've seen plenty of accounts of people shooting down drones getting in trouble.

    If you are actually being attacked by anything, then defend yourself as you feel is appropriate. The neighbor kid, or the county, or a seed vendor, flying a drone above your property for 10 minutes twice a year isn't really what I would call an attack. If you're really concerned about it, follow the freaking thing back to where it came from and confront the operator. They don't fly forever or for all that far away from home.
     

    mmpsteve

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    I fly a drone, and there's a lot of misconceptions about them. The main thing to realize is that most drones only have a 1x lens, so they really can't zoom in on you to catch you with no pants on. I did have one neighbor express concern that I was focusing on his place, but that was not the case. Just flying slow to get some good film of my area. That particular neighbor is also a little bat**** crazy and is probably paranoid about his 'special' tomato crop, which I could give a **** about. The legal ceiling for drones is 400 feet, so it's not like we can climb to 1000 feet to avoid being seen.

    They are becoming pretty commonplace for realty, insurance, and Ag purposes, and are quite a useful tool.

    .
     

    Kozaturf

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    Mom45 got it right. FAA regulates drones, thus they are classified as aircraft. Shooting down an aircraft is a felony as you might imagine.

    I saw an article the other day from Pennsylvania where someone's drone took a rifle round to the battery pack and was able to return home. Footage of the shooter was streamed, recorded and turned over to authorities.

    Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

    There was a guy in Kentucky a couple of years ago that claimed the neighbor was using a done to creep on his daughter and her friends out sunbathing. Dude decides to do some skeet shooting with said done and then proudly calls local PD to get the pilot busted. Heard he ended up with an impounded shotgun, fine for discharging in the city limits and a court date for shooting down aircraft.
     

    maxwelhse

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    There was a guy in Kentucky a couple of years ago that claimed the neighbor was using a done to creep on his daughter and her friends out sunbathing. Dude decides to do some skeet shooting with said done and then proudly calls local PD to get the pilot busted. Heard he ended up with an impounded shotgun, fine for discharging in the city limits and a court date for shooting down aircraft.

    Yep, this guy:

    [video=youtube;oeiaFfCUCkY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeiaFfCUCkY[/video]

    The "we don't know if it's ISIS" comment is my personal favorite.
     

    tbhausen

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    Don’t worry, all you folks that don’t mind seeing drones shot down (or involved in “unfortunate” midair collisions), nearly all of which are operated for completely lawful recreational and business purposes (anyone see a parallel with how guns are mostly used, yet so many want them taken away???)... Soon enough, FAA will institute Remote ID, killing off much of the hobby, and then you can just worry about shooting down all the Amazon and UPS drones flying over your neighborhood, instead.
     
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