Mark The Droner
Captain
Flight distance : 2917 ft
United States
Offline
|
These threads have come up quite a few times over the years, and nobody has ever come up with any hard facts regarding VLOS. In other words, no conclusion has ever been made in any of these threads over the years. Obviously it's complicated since the pilots participating in the thread are from various countries. I am from the USA, so I'm seeing this from the FAA's perspective. Opinions don't count. Where is the hard evidence? Where are the facts?
I have looked a number of times and I have never found an FAA definition for VLOS. That is, until now. This morning I searched for key words "VLOS" and "definition" within the faa.gov site specifically but not the faa.gov/uas area of the site specifically. For the first time ever, I am seeing a definition which seems to be legit and seems to make sense. This was apparently published in February 2017.
Visual Line of Sight (VLOS). Means that any flightcrew member (i.e., remote PIC, the person manipulating the controls, and visual observer, if used) is capable of seeing the aircraft with vision unaided by any device other than corrective lenses, spectacles or contact lenses in order to know the UA’s location, determine the UA’s attitude, altitude, and direction of flight, observe the airspace for other air traffic or hazards, and determine that the UA does not endanger the life or property of another.
Clearly, this is a document from the faa site, but it's not in the faa.gov/uas area of the site which is probably one reason it's so hard to find. Click on the below link and see the url.
https://tinyurl.com/ya3fl2u2
So the next question is, who is fsims? I've never heard of it. So I googled it. I found these documents, both from the FAA site:
https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/8900.1.pdf
https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/ ... /2007/inFO07019.pdf
...so it appears to me that the document's origin and its definition for VLOS are legitimate.
So, reading the definition, the key words seem to be attitude, altitude, and direction. Note that the word "orientation" is missing.
Of the three words above, the word that might be more important in terms of distance, is the word attitude. Attitude is the tilt of the AC. For example, if the AC is moving away from the UAS pilot and making a bank turn to the right, the right side will tilt down, and the left side will tilt up. Can the UAS pilot see this attitude? If the answer is yes, great. But if it's a tiny dot in the distance, can the pilot see this attitude? I would say no. Probably not.
So there's the argument that a tiny dot doesn't qualify for VLOS in the USA.
|
|