Video of drone flying over Elgin appears bogus

A video that’s going viral on YouTube shows what the poster purports to be a surveillance drone flying over Elgin.

In the 41-second video, published May 13, you see the low-flying “drone” emerge from the cloudy sky as it makes its way across a soccer match in progress at the Elgin Sports Complex. Perhaps it’s the wind, but it also sounds like you can hear airplane engines.

The poster, who calls himself MisterBees, assumes the “drone,” which appears to be armed, will be used as a security measure for the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago this weekend.

But the Federal Aviation Administration says it has not approved the operation of any unmanned aerial systems, which includes drones, for the summit.

If law enforcement authorities, the military, federal, state and local agencies ever wanted to use a drone, they’d have to clear it through the FAA, said Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman. So would manufacturers seeking to test them in the skies.

“Those are the only two ways you can operate those right now and either way, we’d have to approve it,” Brown said. “Nobody has come to us to operate in that area.”

Drones are operated by pilots who are not on the aircraft but on the ground or in a chaser plane. Because of that, unmanned aerial systems are limited to where they can operate.

“We have a lot of restrictions and generally don’t allow UAS’s to be flown over densely populated areas,” said Brown, who hails from DeKalb and knows the Northwest suburbs intimately.

Other hints the video might be bogus? In a darkened, cloudy sky, the drone is brightly lit. Drones are quiet, so if you are hearing jet engines it’s probably not from the drone.