AIN Blog: Drone Wars, The FAA Strikes Back
The agency is attempting to stave off disaster by having owners of larger R/C aircraft and drones register them. The odds are stacked against it.
While this remote control helicopter just skirted under the FAA's weight limit for mandatory registration, hundreds of thousands more registration-eligible R/C aircraft and drones will be sold this holiday season. Photo: Curt Epstein
While this remote control helicopter just skirted under the FAA's weight limit for mandatory registration, hundreds of thousands more registration-eligible R/C aircraft and drones will be sold this holiday season. Photo: Curt Epstein
Curt Epstein
Senior Editor
About the author

A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined AIN in 2007, Curt came to the publication from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to AIN sister publication Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s  Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.

Before joining AIN, Curt worked with Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.

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