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Drone Comes Within 200 Feet of Airliner Over New York
New submitter FoolishBluntman sends this quote from CNN:
"An unmanned drone came within 200 feet of a commercial jet over New York, triggering an FBI appeal to the public for any information about the unusual and potentially dangerous incident. The crew of Alitalia Flight 608 approaching John F. Kennedy airport on Monday reported the sighting. 'We saw a drone, a drone aircraft,' the pilot can be heard telling air traffic controllers on radio calls captured by the website LiveATC.net. ... The unmanned aircraft, described by the FBI as black and no more than three feet wide with four propellers, came within 200 feet of the Boeing jetliner. The FBI said it was looking to identify and locate the aircraft and its operator. A source with knowledge of the incident says investigators interviewed the pilot and others on the Alitalia plane."
That's not a drone. That's an R/C model plane.
R/C model planes are much harder to legislate against.
So it's drone, dammit!
Sent from my ENIAC
Well, Iran is the proud new owner of an RQ-170, maybe they decided to take it for a joyride over US airspace?
I wonder when there'll start to be some sort of crackdown on personal UAVs or RCVs. I've still not heard of any incidents of these being used to harm people*, but maybe this is the first incident. It's bound to happen at some point though, and I certainly expect a wave of copycats, accompanied some panic and backlash. The technology's probably not at that stage yet - would need larger payloads or much better automatic guidance for anyone to do much. I can't see it far off someone sticking a grenade on the front of one though for a cheap guided missile, or a ricin tipped spike and just fly one into someone. Might seem a bit far fetched, but there's certainly people out there with a will to do so.
Of course, what can be actually be done about them isn't clear. It'd be like trying to stop pirate radio, but potentially even more difficult - fully automated devices wouldn't need any radio link, so the only thing you could really do it stopping purchase or having some form of traceable identifiers.
* With the huge exception of military drones of course. Crime using RCVs is certainly not new, see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1112673/Remote-control-toy-helicopter-used-fly-drugs-prison.html
It's a bit sad that I'm surprised the FBI response wasn't to shut down LiveATC.net.
Just as stupid and with the same potential casualties as the fucking morons who think it's a good idea to shine a laser into the cockpit of an aircraft. As previously noted by another poster, most real RC'rs are well aware of their responsibilities, so I can only imagine that this is the work of a complete wanker.
1) Nobody was supposed to see that drone. Since civilians obviously did, everyone is scrambling to act surprised about it.
2) They don't actually know whose drone it was.
You will know which it is by what happens to this story. If they figure out it belonged to any one of the various police-state departments the US government created and employs, the story will simply disappear- business as usual, nothing to see here. If it actually was a rogue drone, then whoever was flying it will probably get a story of their own in the near future.
No way it's a Parrot at 1750 ft above ground. Standard RF won't work much beyond 400-500 ft (which amateur quadrotor RC pilots consider seriously high altitude), and even at that it's so small it's very hard to control...
...thinks it would be easy to set up a Straw Man situation by surrupticiously arranging an agency to do it, then announce to the media that some unidentified incident occurred, which in turn becomes a case for legislating against Joe Citizen being allowed to fly FPVs.
How long before all RC helicopters (and all hobby RC planes for that matter) will be banned ?
Mah bad. I built it with an Arduino and some motors from Radio Shack and I had no idea it could fly so high. What a rush!
Now that I know it works, I'll be continuing with my plan to airdrop 32 oz. beverage containers over the city... muhahahaha!
who said anything about it being in control... once out of range of the transmitter it'll keep on flying (especially if a self stabilised quad copter type). Most hobby/toy ones don't have auto gps return to base capability.
Regardless of whether this is an RC model or not, if this got sucked into an engine we'd have a repeat of the Hudson river landing (best case scenario).
Can you explain how ingestion of an R/C aircraft can cause the failure of two engines, and subsequently result in a "best case scenario" equivalent to striking a flock of Canada Geese?
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
OK, so possibly it takes fewer R/C aircraft than geese to take out an engine. Then you wave a magic wand and say maybe the other engine will stop too. Losing one engine does not cause the other to fail, despite your appeal to 'additional stress'. Twin jets are able to fly with one engine. To be certified, they must demonstrate they can safely fly on one engine during the most stressful period of flight (a single engine failure late in the take-off roll.) They can also fly safely for a long time on a single engine. With appropriate safeguards, they are certified to do so for up to three hours (ETOPS-180) and coming soon, for over five hours.
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If the pilots and passengers didn't have anything to hide, why were they concerned?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Can you explain how ingestion of an R/C aircraft can cause the failure of two engines
It's worth noting here that geese, like most birds, have rather delicate bones. An R/C aircraft might have steel and other really hard materials that could do more damage. That drops the number of engines to one. If the remaining one fails due to the addition stress placed on it, then you have two engine failures as desired.
An uncorrelated, stress-induced failure of the remaining engine seems pretty unlikely — quoting Wikipedia:
"When flying far from diversionary airports, (so called ETOPS/LROPS flights), the aircraft must be able to reach an alternate on the remaining engine within a specified time in case of one engine failure. Power is not an issue. One of the engines is more than powerful enough to keep the aircraft aloft. Mostly, it is about maintenance and design requirements ensuring that a failure of one engine cannot make the other one fail, also. The engines and related systems need to be independent and (in essence) independently maintained. ETOPS/LROPS is often incorrectly thought to apply only to long overwater flights. In fact it applies to any flight more than specified distances from an available diversion airport. Overwater flights near diversion airports need not be ETOPS/LROPS compliant."
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Well, it is very cold above 30 thousand feet and the Turkeys are struggling not to freeze up there.
I doubt you'd be this cavalier if YOU were on a plane that had even a single engine failure. I bet you'd be crying like a little girl, big guy.
How is asking a technical question about an assumed cascade failure mode "cavalier?" With all due respect, I think you're on the wrong site.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Retired engine mech here.
Jet engines are tested with birds, but that doesn't mean birds can't damage them. It means they should be able to digest that standard weight of poultry and not fail. Maintenance would inspect (visual and fiber-optic borescope) them on return for maintenance.
Birds aren't metal. An engine sucking in an aircraft forms binder (for example) can sustain considerable damage just from the metal spine.
It's a crapshoot what sending hard parts down an intake will do. Just one bolt could, if it got to the compressor section, take an engine out. It rarely does.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The quadcopter did not come within 200ft of the plane. The plane came within 200ft of the quadcopter. Quadcopters can't go near fast enough to intentionally get in the path of a plane going hundreds of miles per hour. The quadcopter operator was likely FPV flying (with a live camera that generally looks at the ground) and wandered near or into a flight corridor without knowing it. 1750 ft is too high for reliable from-the-ground visual flight for a quadcopter. Flight corridors aren't usually "narrow". Even within a flight corridor, the plane *could* be anywhere across a big area of sky. Hence this was far more likely to simply be accidental.
It's more akin to a stupid Cessna pilot accidentally wandering across commercial flight corridors without knowing it. It happens a couple of times a year, and isn't quite as newsworthy though it's far more dangerous due to the vastly greater size and speed of the Cessna (though a Cessna still could never intentionally get itself in front of an airliner with any reliability at that height and speed). The error here is that the quad operator was flying that high in a flight corridor (RC planes fly *under* flight corridors all the time). RC planes are generally supposed to fly under 500 ft. It is also a practical limit just due to the visibility from the ground. Hence the likelihood the Quad was FPVing.
A Parrot AR drone always stays within wifi range of its operator, and has an altimeter to ensure it never goes higher than 350 feet.
Nah, go check their forums. There's more than a few reports there of users whose' drones mysteriously took off and disappeared into the sky. I don't think anyone really knows what happened because they don't end up recovering the device afterward. Also, you can turn off that altitude limit right in the standard software.
it comes within 200 feet according to the FBI who has a very vested interest in making sure nobody else has toys to play with. From yesterday: "“The pilot did not take evasive action. The flight landed safely," according to the FAA.". 200 feet=60yards.. Either it was a tiny toy (unlikely at that elevation) or it was far enough away the pilot felt no need to take action. Birds are bad enough around NYC, no pilot wants a 'drone' sucked into his engine on approach.
Seriously.
The things I did as a kid would now be labeled terrorism today. I used to live right near Kennedy Airport, in Rosedale Queens. I remember 747's and Concordes so low you could almost touch them.
Don't you think we shot off Estes model rockets? Don't you think we flew kites, *trying* to get them sucked into engines? And don't even get me started on the things done during July 4th -- all I'm going to say is "hydrogen filled balloons". You figure out the rest.
My point is: The crap I did as as kid, that went largely ignored by the authorities, would now make national news, and I'd be hauled off to jail practically every weekend. Some kids were simply using a radio controlled flying toy, and it wandered into the approach path. Big freaking deal.
I think the time I used a Sandhawk model rocket (D engine), glued the nosecone in place and filled it with tin-foil strips was far worse than what these kids did.
But you know, 1977 isn't 2012.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The government's crusade against Assault rifles is not to protect innocents, it's to protect Drones. Despite the rather small .22 caliber round, they're highly accurate and long range. You may not be able to kill a person with one from a mile away, but you sure as heck can shoot down a small sized drone with minimal chance of being caught...
I'm thinking you've never shot anything at a distance. Certainly never anything airborne at a distance. Chances of hitting a small, fast moving drone, with a handheld semi-auto rifle are, effectively, nil.
During WWII naval forces expended tens of thousands of rounds of AA shells for every full size aircraft engaged.
m
In the immortal words of Socrates, who said; 'I drank what?'
1) The government is NOT crusading against "assault rifles", they are crusading against semi-automatic rifles that LOOK LIKE assault rifles.
2) No, they're NOT highly accurate in and of themselves. Some of them are notoriously inaccurate.
3) No, they're NOT long range. Not by rifle standards, anyway. My .30-06 single-shot can push a bullet farther than my mini-14 can, by a considerable margin. Note that smaller calibre tends to mean more drag (larger surface area to mass ratio), which tends to mean that they lose both speed and accuracy quicker than a typical hunting round.
Contrary to popular rumour, we didn't switch to 5.56 because it was a super-powerful, incredibly accurate round. We switched because a soldier could carry more of them, and because they were capable of a disabling wound at battlefield ranges (typically a couple hundred yards or so).
Unlike our previous round, the 7.62 NATO, which weighed about three times as much, and could inflict a disabling wound out past 400 yards, if you bothered to shoot at someone that far away with your rifle.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
You should probably try to understand why entropy is, and why it doesn't apply here.
These plane are design to fly after one engine fails.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe it was using Apple maps?
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