Register your drone or pay a huge fine

If a drone is on your holiday shopping list, listen up- a new federal law will require drone owners to register them with the FAA or face civil and criminal penalties. The FAA estimates that 1.6 million small unmanned aircraft will be sold this year, with half during the last three months of the year.

The only thing we can’t do for you is actually register your drone, so be sure to make your way to the FAA’s registration site before February 19. Operators will receive a unique identification number, valid for three years, that must be marked on the drone. Anyone purchasing a drone after December 21, 2015, must register before their first outdoor flight.

“We expect hundreds of thousands of model unmanned aircraft will be purchased this holiday season”, said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta.

Normal registration fee will cost $5, but in an effort to get as many people as possible to register quickly, the FAA is waiving the fee until January 20, 2016.

“We try to educate every single person that buys one tell them what the rules and regulation”, said Wren.

Owners will have to provide their name, home address and email, and their identity will be verified and payments made by credit card, the agency said.

“If it’s under 250 grams it won’t need to be registered.” said Wren.

Although no system or requirement is 100 percent effective against people intent on doing harm, registration heightens public awareness about what safe UAS operations look like.

As far as we understand, commercial drone pilots will need to have some sort of FAA-certified pilot’s license as well, and The Verge has a amusing article about how freelance photographers hoping to shoot from drones commercially are getting their pilot’s licenses in a cheap, fast way you’d never imagine: by learning to fly hot air balloons.

Drones are responsible for at least 28 recent instances in which pilots veered off course to avoid a collision, according to an analysis of FAA reports by Bard College’s Center for the Study of the Drone in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. That’s the stance the Transportation Department is taking with unmanned aircrafts more commonly referred to as drones.