Posted on 12/24/2013 1:21:42 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
The Georgian-style estate comes with a five-bedroom house and four wood-burning fireplaces, a separate studio and a heated pool on two acres in Greenwich, Conn. But it has a $6.1 million price tag, and more than a dozen showings since October had yielded no buyer.
It was time to bring in the drone.
Controlled remotely by a hand-held console, it took off from the driveway with a loud mechanical whine and hovered around 20 feet in the air to record video of the house against a wintry landscape of snow-flecked trees. Its handler later launched it inside, where it whirred past a chandelier and framed oil paintings before soaring up to the 30-foot ceiling for a panoramic view.
Within days, the footage shot by the drone was being edited into a slick video for Halstead Property’s website, where the drone-aided video of another offering — a $7.6 million beach house on Brush Island Road in Darien, Conn. — has been viewed more than 500,000 times....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“And here is the majestic view of your house the tactical drones will have as the government thugs kick your door in!”
The last I looked, commercial use of drones such as this was illegal.
Provided that it was done with the owner’s consent, I can’t see why it should be illegal, or why it would occur to anyone to outlaw it—but maybe I have underestimated the foresight of the nanny state.
You don’t own / control the airspace over your property. That’s the FAA’s bailiwick.
Hobbyists can fly drones, but commercial operation is currently very limited by the FAA.
Here’s an article I found on the subject:
The NY Times is overplaying the word “drones”. This is nothing more than an R/C helicopter with an onboard video cam. Big deal. R/C aircraft have been in operation for over 70 years.
They’re a lot more sophisticated these days. And the quadrotors (and up) are a lot easier to fly.
Nevertheless, the FAA *does* limit commercial use of R/C aircraft, which is what this article is about.
If you go to the link here you can see the featured house.
http://www.halstead.com/properTV?video=03538D497C
Down in the lower right corner, there is a button that says, “View from above.” There are a lot of cool house videos there. Also, there are a couple vids of the copter in action.
I can almost hear the robotic voice from that thing.
“By your command!”
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