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Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay
No it's not really an over reaction. Do you feel model rockets or planes gained anywhere near the popularity that drones did? While this may not outright kill the industry, it is going to have a significant impact. How could it not? This will discourage a number of existing hobbyists and certainly ones that were considering trying it out. Looking at that map, there is no where in the city to go and fly. You have to travel a ways out of the city now. And where does one go to respect this new regs and not intrude on private property?
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It's bringing the rules in line with other hobbies that also share the airspace, that have existed long before drones did. While I feel empathetic, I don't see this as an overbearing set of rules.
Not saying it won't have an impact, it most certainly will, but that's the unfortunate side of things. Those who have invested heavily into this hobby though should have seen this coming, it's been in the works and discussed in the news for a long time. If you expected more leeway than rocketry or RC aircraft, I'm not sure what basis you would be expecting that. All of them fly in in the air and give risk to aircraft and public.
Believe it or not, rocketry and RC aircraft are still huge hobbies, just not in Calgary as much as you have to travel about 40min to enjoy them. You should come out to a MAAC affiliated club field day, you'd be surprised. Granted, when the regulations came in for rocketry/RC, it was a much larger hobby over time. But I don't believe the reduction in memberships was due to the restrictive regulations, it's more so that the newer generations didn't see it as something they wanted to do. Still, both bring in new people and both are striving after learning to work with the regulations.
For high powered rocketry, we actually have even more restrictions that what drones have, and as a result, we have our own Class F airspace to use. Only have to travel 3 hours to get to it from Calgary. On the airspace map, you can see ours listed SE of Lethbridge as CYR252.