It 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.

"In the litigation, we were not presented with a credible argument showing that humanitarian use of model aircraft is illegal. I cannot predict what the agency will do, but I hope they will recognize and embrace this safe and beneficial use of the technology," Brendan Schulman, EquuSearch's attorney, said in a Wednesday e-mail. The FAA responded that the decision—which was based on a technicality without the merits being decided—"has no bearing on the FAA's authority to regulate" the commercial application of drones.

The missing elderly man, who has dementia, was located around 1pm Saturday in a 200-acre soybean field after a model drone, equipped with a first-person-view camera, discovered him alive.

"As we were making our way to the back corner to fly it one more time, we noticed a man kind of out in the far field sort of stumbling and looking a little bit disoriented," drone operator David Lesh told a local news broadcast.

The man suffered from mild dehydration.

Meanwhile, the FAA continues to assert that flying model drones for virtually any other reason than for pleasure is a breach of flight rules. But Schulman has repeatedly maintained that the regulations are unenforceable. And he's got at least one court ruling to back him up.

In March, a federal judge ruled that the FAA's ban on the commercial use of drones was not binding because flight officials did not give the public a chance to comment on the agency's rules. Congress has delegated rule making powers to its agencies, but the Administrative Procedures Act requires the agencies to provide a public notice and comment period first.

The agency has promised that it would revisit the commercial application of small drones later this year, with potential new rules in place perhaps by the end of 2015.

But for now, the FAA remains steadfast. Just last month, it reiterated its ban and even indirectly said that Amazon.com's proposed drone delivery service won't be hitting consumers' doorsteps any time soon.

Schulman said the Wisconsin man's discovery "validates what we continue to fight for in the Texas EquuSearch matter."

Listing image by David Rodriguez Martin