okay so most of the time when you do something stupid you learn from it and then you move forward being more wise and less prone to repeat that stupidity right and then there are some people who may need a couple of times for something to really sink in for them to understand that what I'm doing is wrong and I won't do it again but then there are those who will just never learn no matter what so the consent judgment against Philly drone life was released today from the United States district court and it's a doozy
so let's talk about how you go about screwing around and finding out with the FAA hi everyone welcome back to the channel and for those of you here for the very first time my name is Russ and this is 51 drones and we're talking about Philly drone life now many of you probably have heard of him if you're interested in drones or you've been following any of that news for the past 6 years because that's how long it's been going on but uh Philly drone life is a YouTube channel run by a gentleman named Mikey
and he did some bad things and he is finally paying the price for it now since 2019 Philly drone life or Mikey as many people know him has been operating a drone in a multitude of unsafe and illegal ways and according to this judgment the United States alleges that during certain flights Mikey improperly operated a drone inside of controlled airspace he was flying near the Philadelphia Airport over people and over cars and at least one instance probably more he lost control of a drone causing it to fly uncontrolled over Philadelphia now you should know when
you get caught or you get reported to uh the FAA doing something that you shouldn't be doing their very first order of business is to locate you and they're going to inform you of your wrongdoing they're going to let you know that what you're doing is unsafe and or illegal and their primary goal with any early interactions is to inform they want people to learn because let's face it there is so much to learn when it comes to anything related to Aviation and that includes flying drones that's actually like more towards drones because there's so
much that people don't know about them now they regularly give people the benefit of the doubt they really want to make sure that people are educated about these things and they did that with Mikey several times so what did Mikey do well he just kept doing the things that they told him he should not and could not be doing he purposely and egregiously ignored what they warned him not to do so the next step after education is enforcement so in 2024 they were basically left no choice and they handed down a penalty 123 penalties in
fact at a cost of $1,500 for each of them so his total fee added up to $182,400 ft he flew recklessly and the worst part is he filmed it all and he posted it on his YouTube channel now another thing to note he did all of this without having a part 107 remote pilot certificate or what most people refer to as a drone like Li it's technically not a license but he did not have his part 107 now do I think that they would have been easier on him if he did have his part 107
no I don't think so because that would be even worse knowing the rules and then still breaking them which effectively he did I guess because he was informed of the rules he was educated and told that what he was doing was wrong although I think he knew what he was doing was wrong in the first place but they came to him and said look this is really bad and you need to stop doing it and he's like okay and then he just kept doing it Mikey was doing all of these things with his drones for
views that's it and then when people watched because it was kind of entertaining sometimes that just motivated him to continue to break the law on his videos Mikey plays a character and the goal of his channel was to entertain put smiles on people's faces and just be kind of a Goofy character but his desire to continue to feed the monster has now cost him pretty much everything his channel and his Hobby and his source of Revenue now part of the terms of the recently announced consent judgment calls for Mikey to agree that he will one
never operate in any manner any drone of any type size model nor will he ever seek any type of certification or license to operate any type or form of a drone for the rest of his life Mikey can never ever fly a drone and if he gets caught he's going to prison number two he was forced to take down his YouTube channel known as Philly drone life and no longer operate or resurrect his content or any part in any form he lost his YouTube channel and that's already been done number three he has to abandon
his drones and other items that he surrendered to the FAA in the spring of 2024 that's right he had to give them all of his drones and all of his related gear so many people supported Mikey when he first informed his viewers of his financial troubles they cried foul and said the FAA was just being a big bully and handing down egregious fines for a guy just trying to have fun and make a few bucks but they were only listening and seeing Mikey's side of the story and they didn't know the details of why it
got to be as high and as serious as it did now I will say this I don't think Mikey is a bad guy I actually think he's pretty nice and he genuinely likes to make people laugh but at the same time he pulled some pretty stupid stunts pushing the limits without regard to the law and I think he does deserve everything that he got if you ask me I think he got off pretty good with this deal no fines no prison time that's a win it could have been so much worse so word to the
wise if you do something illegal with a drone whether it be intentional or by accident because let's face it there's a lot of rules out there there's a lot of places you shouldn't be flying there's a lot of things you shouldn't be doing with your drone and most people don't understand it but if you do those things and you get caught by the FAA or somebody reports you and they come to your door or they send an email or a phone call or whatever my advice is to quit doing those things and if you don't
we could be reading about you in the news one day I used to feel a little bit bad for Mikey because it genuinely did hurt him you could see it when he would do interviews he'd go on other YouTube channels or on his own YouTube channel and you know he would talk about that fine that was handed down and and I felt kind of sorry for him right because he honestly was just trying to have fun but then after I learned like dude how many times were you contacted and how many times did you just
keep doing it like I think I watched a video of him one day like I don't know if it was on a live stream or whatever but you know he's complaining about his fine is saying he's just a simple guy he's just trying to you know have a little fun make some money and then the very next day he did a drone video again and he was doing something very very illegal like dude like you had so many chances so I quit feeling sorry for him and I'm just like you know what this guy needs
to pay for what he's doing and he needs to be made an example of because that's the type of behavior that makes it bad for the rest of us like the reason that the government and the people hate drones so much is because of things like that and so people like that need to be like they need to answer to what they've done so yeah I don't know this this will be very interesting you guys but I want to know in the comments I want you to I want to know your opinion like what do
you think about Mikey's penalties do you think it was too harsh or is it appropriate for what he did so let me know that'll be fun to watch so hit that like button as you leave the video today I do appreciate that that really helps the video move and then watch this video next to see another controversial topic about drones have a great day everyone and as always fly safe and fly smart a [Music]
