GUTC comment of Texas Equusearch ruling

The appellate court ruling on Texas Equusearch

Before I get started I want everyone to understand that I am not an attorney and GUTC is not offering legal advice. I am outlining the situation as I see it. Friday the ruling came down that the cease and desist was not valid because the FAA did not issue the order properly. They sent an e-mail. The court stated that Texas Equusearch and Gene Robinson could use UAS for search and rescue as long as they followed the current guidelines issued by the FAA.

What are the current FAA guidelines?

In order for Texas Equusearch to be compliant with the current FAA guidelines Texas Equusearch and Gene Robinson would have to fly a FAA certified UAS airframe. Now that might lead you to believe that he must fly a Puma, Raven or Scan Eagle but the Colorado Mesa County Sheriff’s Department has received multiple COAs for their Tremble UX5 flying wing designed UAS. So does Gene Robinson have to abandon his Spectra flying wing UAS and adopt the UX5? When the FAA approved the LiveSky tethered quad-rotor they opened the door for every other tethered quad-rotor with the same capability to operate as a tethered device up to 149 feet. They might have to go to court but the judge is going allow it. This will be the same for Gene Robinson’s Spectra, if they authorize the UX5 they are going to have to authorize Gene’s Spectra or get sued. What is amazing is that Gene has been using the Spectra before any of the FAA restrictions and he probably has more flight time logged that any other UAS that has been FAA certified.

All of the law suits

I was feeling sorry for Brendan Schulman, I was thinking this one little law suit would open up the whole commercial unmanned industry, multiple billions of dollars of business and he would just get his little retainer from Texas Equusearch and Gene Robinson but now I am seeing that there is a winnable law suit for requiring a UAS pilot to be contracted by a government entity, another for requiring an FAA certified UAS, another for restricting commercial use on private property, another for restricting commercial authorized commercial use when authorized over public property, another for limiting commercial UAS operations for government entities to only high priced UAS systems used by the military, another to get authorization for jobs typically performed by manned aircraft where a pilot is making the decision on which technology to be used….etc.

So I no longer think Brendan needs my sympathy.