t took just 20 minutes for a model drone to locate a missing elderly Wisconsin man, a feat that helicopters, search dogs, and volunteers couldn't accomplish in three days.
Just don't tell that to the Federal Aviation Administration, whose regulatory wings are already flapping about model drones.
This weekend's discovery of the 82-year-old man in an area of crops and woods comes amid a legal tussle between flight regulators and model drone operators—the latest of which coincidentally involves search-and-rescue missions.
Citing FAA rules implemented in 2007 barring the commercial use of small, unmanned drones, regulators in February grounded a volunteer-staffed Texas search-and-rescue outfit—which was not associated with the Wisconsin man's discovery. EquuSearch, which uses five-pound drones to find missing persons, just resumed operations after a courthouse victory of sorts Friday against US flight regulators.