Quadcopters already have radio transceivers that could have a transponder function, but this toy weighs 2.6 pounds. A seagull weighs 4.2 pounds. Unless Fedzilla plans to attach transponders to every bird flying around the rules of flight need some sanity.
Not on the required frequency... if they did, they would never have passed FCC compliance (due to potential interference with the frequencies reserved for ATC!). I understand the frustration with overburdensome regulation... I share it. My primary point was that the regulations this guy broke are not new, and they are unambiguous... they’ve been around for a long time, and this guy, either willfully, or with ignorance of the law, flew his toy where he was not allowed to. As far as the ability of a 3 lb toy to create a safety hazard in comparison to a seagull? Birds DO create a hazard (especially flocks of them)... if the FAA thought they could get funding for outfitting them with transponders, they’d try! Many airports in bird-prone areas (e.g. bordering a bay, like SF) have permits to shoot birds to reduce the hazard they pose... roughly 5000 birds annually are killed at the major airports in CA. A single small one does not pose much of a hazard to a large airliner, but for smaller aircraft, it does not take much to get caught in the wrong place of a control surface to make an aircraft uncontrollable. For RC and drone aircraft, they are supposedly working on the rules to better delineate what can be done where (pretty easy to get a drone with a 12ft wing span that travels 150kts for not too much $ nowadays... this presents a much higher risk than the 2.6 lb craft here, but is currently captured under the same rules). The main thing that has been holding the rules up is apparently privacy concerns (or at least it was last year). The FAA is a dinosaur that historically has only sprung to action following a major disaster or two... the one-size fits all, conservative approach they are taking now is an attempt to prevent such a disaster until they better understand what the hell they should do.