Unblinking eyes in city skies
Drone pilot says flying before you're ready is risky
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Monday, March 21, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Utter the word 'drone' a decade ago and people might think you were referring to Star Wars. But the number of small unmanned flying machines - the non-Star Wars variety - is now growing exponentially and gaining somewhat of a reputation.
A drone humming over the crowd gathered for the fireworks display at last year's Long John Jamboree should have set off major alarm bells, according to one avid flier.
Jay Bulckaert, the Artless Collective cinematographer who also runs Aerials North - a city film company specializing in drone-mounted camera work - said he doesn't know who was flying the drone over the crowd in March 2015 - but whoever it was took some serious risks at the expense of the crowd.
The tiny aircraft could have easily lost control and flown into the path of a landing plane or could have tumbled out of the sky onto the people below, he said.
"I don't know what it would do to a kid if it hit them," Bulckaert said, while tinkering with his collection of drones on Wednesday. "There really is a ... ton of stuff you actually need to know to fly these things. The amount of damage a drone could do, it could bring down a 747."
Bulckaert said drones have been making news all over the world as they become easier to obtain. Police in Tokyo have a drone carrying a large fly-swatter-like net used to catch other "rogue drones." Dutch police have been training eagles to catch drones as they are being used increasingly for illegal purposes. Last year, Amazon.com announced it was looking at using drones to deliver items customers have purchased online.
Drones can start at $100 for a basic learner model to millions for a top-line military drone.
Bulckaert said most examples on the market are designed to be "taken out of the box and flown by a kid" while more expensive rigs are large and complicated machines costing $30,000 or more. Government departments worldwide are scrambling to enact regulations regarding drones, said Bulckaert, and Transport Canada is among them. He said not knowing those regulations could have serious consequences. If people cause an accident with their drones, they could face criminal charges and if they were to harm someone in the process, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment and fines up to $100,000.
"You have to be extremely cautious," he said.
In order to be allowed to fly the drones he uses for his film work Bulckaert said he spent a week earning a Special Flight Operating Certificate (SFOC) before spending another week at a drone-flying course in British Columbia.
"There's all of these things you have to be aware of when you put a drone in the air," he said.
Radio towers, electrical cables and cell phones can all throw off the signal but sometimes drones crash for no apparent reason, said Bulckaert.
Bulckaert said while attending the flight school in B.C. he was shown videos of what can go wrong when people don't know what they're doing.
"(They) showed us a video of a guy out in the middle of nowhere and he was landing his drone with the controller in one hand and the drone (in the other). He grabbed it and hit the controls and it cut his wrist. You could see the tendons and the arteries."
In another scenario, Bulckaert said, a horrific accident occurred when a father and son in the U.S. were flying a larger drone with foot-long propellers.
"They didn't really know what they were doing," he said. "He flew it right into his son and cut his own son's head off right in front of him."
Bulckaert said he's used his drones in several photoshoots for city contracts. He said he also shot all the aerial footage in a Yellowknife-shot feature film, The Sun at Midnight, which was filmed last summer. A number of drone projects loom on the horizon but filming isn't all he has in mind. In a month, he will have acquired a new, bigger drone - the $8,000 infrared-armed Inspire. He's begun talking with the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) to discuss the possibility of helping in forest fire detection, he said.
"You are actually not legally allowed to fly a drone over top of a forest fire. So this is where there would have to be some sort of exception made in conjunction with the GNWT.
"We started talking to ENR last summer. I wouldn't want to be sounding like there is a contract in case there is not but there has been interest in talking to us about it so we'll see how that goes."
Responding by e-mail, ENR spokesperson Judy McLinton stated Bulckaert has requested a meeting to discuss the services his company could provide.
"A meeting ... with forest management staff and Jay is being set up in the next couple of weeks," she added.
