The Superior Express -

With more sightings of mysterious drones flying around rural areas across Nebraska and now into Kansas in the dark, Matt Waite, director of the drone journalism lab located within the University of Nebraska College of Journalism and Mass Communications, has been answering a lot of inquiries about them. What follows is some guidance for your own local coverage.

He said, “There is a legitimate mystery here. Multiple people in multiple places have reported seeing multiple large drones Ð estimated at six-foot wingspans - flying in formation in a grid pattern after dark. This is not typical, and the operators are not known.

“But every blinking light in the sky is not a mystery drone. People have reported airplanes, planets, satellites and other airborne sightings as drones to law enforcement. Not every report is news.” The Nebraska State Patrol has asked people to report drone sightings to law enforcement as follows:

Report any clusters of four or more drones.

Report the location, general direction of travel and movement of the drones.

Lighting configuration, number of lights, color, any patterns to the lights. Estimated size of the drones. Is it a fixed wing? Multirotor? What sound did it make?

Did it fly straight, side to side, up and down, in a grid pattern, over an area? How long did it fly like that? How long were they in the air?

The patrol is also asking for people to look for potential control vehicles, like SUVs or vans, possibly with an antenna.

When talking about drones Waite said to remember thousands of Nebraskans own drones. Many of them do not know it’s against FAA regulations to fly at night without a waiver. A small drone bobbing and fluttering around a neighborhood at night for about 20 minutes is not the same thing as a formation of drones flying grids over large areas.

He noted it is a violation of FAA regulations to fly at night without approval from the FAA. Getting night approval is common, so it’s not necessarily true that whoever is flying at night is doing so in violation of the rules.

It is a violation of FAA regulations for drones to fly beyond the line of sight of the operator. Exceptions to this rule are possible, but exceedingly rare, and have so far only been granted for daytime operation in very controlled environments. So if a company had permission from the FAA to do beyond line of sight operations, it would be news in the drone world. So Waite said it is clear whoever is doing this is doing so in violation of FAA regulations.

It is a violation of federal law to shoot a drone. A drone is a federally regulated aircraft, so shooting one violates the law that makes shooting an aircraft a felony punishable by up to five years in federal prison.

There are no FAA regulations about privacy or private property. The FAA asserts jurisdiction over all airspace, right down to the grass in our back yard. FAA regulations require drone pilots not to fly over people’s heads or in a reckless manner, but flight over private property is not part of federal aviation regulations.

Waite said, “Eyewitness descriptions of distance and altitude are extremely suspect in the daylight. At night, any descriptions of altitude and distance should be taken with massive amounts of skepticism and are almost certainly wrong.”