So it looks like PhillyDroneLife the camera drone pilot who was originally landed with $182,000 of fines by the FAA back in 2020 has now been banned from flying drones in the US by a federal judge in Philadelphia for continuing to flout the rules. I guess this was done to make an example of him and as a lesson / warning to other UAV pilots. It's a bit of a controversial topic with people arguing from both sides, but I guess the lesson here is be careful what you post online and don't continue to rebuke and goad the FAA after you have already been warned.

It sounds like the ruling was today and I don't see the details publicised anywhere else (yet), but Sean covered the story in his video linked to below...



And below is the original interview Sean did with PhillyDroneLife about the mammoth fines back in August 2022...



If you want to see the type of flying being done that attracted the attention of the FAA, they are currently all still up on the PhillyDroneLife YouTube channel at the link below...

https://www.youtube.com/@PhillyDroneLife/videos

Looks like he is going to have to learn to fly “fixed wing”….
Wouldn’t stop me from flying FPV, I just wouldn’t post anything online .. I would suggest some “rip -n-dips..”
I guess he isn’t gonna continue to study for his 107..

Cause and effect.

He took the piss in a major way and basically ignored the law. I guess he was trying to get money out of YT and failed, or is severely mentally damaged in some way. I don't know, but the guy seemed a bit of a nut. No common sense at all and so much attention whoring.

Being a persistent a-hole only works out if you’re morbidly rich. Or, if you're perceived as being morbidly rich.
The law comes down hard on the rest of us - Gotta remember that !

(29-Apr-2024, 11:00 PM)Rob Axel Wrote: Looks like he is going to have to learn to fly  “fixed wing”….
 Wouldn’t stop me from flying FPV, I just wouldn’t post anything online .. I would suggest some “rip -n-dips..”
  I guess he isn’t gonna continue to study for his 107..

He won’t be able to fly fixed wing either, it’s still a “drone”.

There’s even a possibility that he won’t be able to legally fly a Tinywhoop in his own home, he needed to ask what the definition of drone was and if it was only in FAA regulated airspace, but he was being made an example of so if he’d asked that, it’s quiet possible he’d have been sent down.

Sounds like the judge went above and beyond his remit here and it wasn’t the FAA who asked for it.

The guy is still a twat though, you don’t go poking sleeping bears.

… I can’t speak about him personally .. didn’t watch his vids… only saw the result of his actions..
Kinda like loosing your driving privileges…it won’t stop you from driving.. but you will no longer be able to earn a income from it…

I can't believe he was earning that much income from his shenanigans TBH. A lot of people in the hobby quite rightly shunned what he was doing, and his YouTube channel had only amassed 12.5K subscribers even with it having been running for over 5 years with almost 550 posted videos.

On the very same day as his original trial a couple of months back he published a video showing him flying BVLOS around a church and then pretending to crash into it to try and create some additional drama for his video. Not a particularly sensible move when you are fighting a serious court case on the exact same subject.

He was reportedly offered legal representation but refused any help and decided to represent himself with no real legal understanding of the situation he was in.

How to dig your own grave.

(30-Apr-2024, 10:04 AM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: How to dig your own grave.

Well, can someone please replace the topsoil and we can all move on..........................

Moral of the story: Don't post a video of you murdering someone. It will come back to bite you.

I much rather be the tree that fell down in the forest when no one is around. 

Do you know why you never hear about the perfect murder??? Everyone kept their mouth shut!

(30-Apr-2024, 09:33 PM)Rob Axel Wrote: Do you know why you never hear about the perfect murder???   Everyone kept their mouth shut!

No but there are a lot of unsolved ones though.

The thing is, I know of a handful of videos from some well known influencers where they ripped up the airspace in half a dozen US cities including stuff that definitely bent or broke a few rules. All are (AFAIK) Part 107 qualified, so is that the get out of jail card? I saw a video Ken Heron put out a while back about legally flying in any city, but believe a lot of that was basically using Part 107 and presumably doing risk assessments before flying, similar to how people get away with it over here.

Was at a bando, (not flying) a few weeks back and two police turned up and the guy I was with produced a risk assessment and his flyer/operator id and the cops basically left saying it looked like everything was in order. They had been told someone was stealing cable, but said they had better things to do than deal with drone pilots. Nice enough encounter, but I got the feeling that busting rogue drone pilots is about as low a priority as it gets. They seemed more unhappy that they had to traipse half a mile across a brownfield site to get to us (and then walk half a mile back). One of them mentioned in passing that some dumb ass was flying a mini over the police station a couple of weeks before. I told him he was free to bust them because they are a plague within the UK community. We all know who they are.

So how much was Philly earning from his shenanigans then?

We had the Police turn up where we were flying once, I think they were more annoyed that they had been sent on a 2 hour wild goose chase by ATC then they were us.

(01-May-2024, 11:12 AM)IanS Wrote: So how much was Philly earning from his shenanigans then?

We had the Police turn up where we were flying once, I think they were more annoyed that they had been sent on a 2 hour wild goose chase by ATC then they were us.

You can get some estimated YouTube earning figures from the following link...

https://socialblade.com/youtube/c/philly...fe/monthly

So not much revenue from YouTube by the looks of things. I don't believe he has a Patreon account, so it's not really clear where he got the money from for the latest drone gear he always seemed to be showing off, and he was reportedly always complaining about not having two dimes to rub together.

I guess none of it really matters anymore.

Oh he’ll be spending other peoples money then.