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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
...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.
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.
They've been limited to 400 feet and within site of the operator for a long time now. If this truly is an RC aircraft, then it's clearly well beyond that established rule, considering it was spotted at nearly 2,000 feet. The operator is an idiot, "plane" and simple.
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.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
How long before all RC helicopters (and all hobby RC planes for that matter) will be banned ?
They are already trying in Texas and in New Hampshire. Notice the inclusion of drones by name in the legislation, and the lack of differentiation between government use and private use.
This article from a few weeks ago shows that two other state legislatures, specifically Florida and Virginia, are attempting a legislative fix to drone use, though those attempts are targeted specifically at government use of drones. The mayor of Seattle cancelled the Seattle PD's drone program and ordered the chief of police to return the ones they'd already bought to the manufacturer for a refund.
With that said, attempts to block government use of drones are probably doomed to failure, since the FAA has already been directed by the 112th Congress to integrate drones into the national airspace via HR 658 (relevant section here,) and police departments across the nation are buying them in droves, despite what happened in Seattle. The DHS's "loan a drone" program, coupled with DHS's $4M grant program to local law authorities to acquire drones, would strongly suggest that government use of drones is here to stay.
Given the push/pull legislative wars being driven by the privacy vs. public safety debate, I doubt that banning RC aircraft is a viable legislative option. What is (probably) going to happen with RC aircraft is what has already happened with other "hobbies" that are deemed to be a threat to public safety (think: greenhouses that could be used for growing pot, legal chemicals that could be used to manufacture illegal drugs, model rockets that could be weaponized.) Purchases of RC aircraft and related equipment will be tracked at the point of sale and those records will be forwarded to the feds, where the purchasers will end up on an FBI watch list, just like the purchasers of the above-mentioned items.
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."
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.