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A new civilian HALE, 12 drones for the holidays, where to fly your drone in the UK and Canada, drone near misses and hits, and a holiday video of the week.

News

Arca Space Announces New Range of High-Altitude UAVs

New Mexico-based Arca Space Corporation announced the AirStrato line of electric HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance) UAVs. These fill a gap between large, expensive military unmanned aerial vehicles and small, inexpensive civilian commercial drones. The target market is small-scale businesses and research institutions.

The Twelve Drones of Christmas

FlightBots.com picked their favorite drones for the holiday season:

1. Quadcopter Q4 Nano – A very small RTF.
2. Hubsan X4 HD – A low cost little starter drone quadcopter with HD 2MP Camera.
3. Hubsan X4 H107D FPV – An out of the box basic first person view (FPV) starter drone.
4. Blade 180 QX HD ready to fly (RTF) – A low cost starter drone for aerial photography.
5. Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Elite – Control this using your smartphone or tablet.
6. Quanum Nova – Outperforms other drone in its price range.
7. Walkera QR X350 PRO – An RTF FPV Quadcopter that generally costs less than competing products.
8. DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ – The easy to fly all-in-one consumer drone with advanced software.
9. 3DR IRIS+ – For real consumer and professional applications.
10. 3DR X8+ – A real workhorse with modular design and autonomous delivery capabilities.
11. Walkera Scout X4 – Features include the ability change from quadcopter with 4 motors to octocopter with 8 motors, real time telemetry and flight times up to 25 minutes.
12. DJI Inspire 1- Carbon fiber arms lift out of sight, 360 degree view, 4K video, 12 megapixel photos.

Where you can and can’t fly a drone

The niche hobby has turned mainstream, and that means lots of new drone pilots after the holidays. What are the rules in the UK?

TGI Friday’s Dumb Mistletoe Drone Cut Somebody’s Face Open

TGI Friday’s idea for drones carrying mistletoe inside the restaurant has already resulted in an accident. During a demonstration for the Brooklyn Daily, the pilot encouraged the reporter to let him land the drone on her hand. She flinched and the drone struck a photographer in the face.

Pilots fear private drones after Heathrow near-miss

The UK Airprox Board (UKAB) is expected to release its report on December 12 about the Heathrow Airport incident earlier this year where an Airbus A320 with passengers had a close encounter with a civilian drone.

Near-collisions between drones, airliners surge, new FAA reports show

Reports of near...