Man Killed By His Own Radio-Controlled Helicopter In Brooklyn

An anonymous reader sends this news from the Wall Street Journal: "A 19-year-old model helicopter enthusiast was killed Thursday when a toy helicopter he was flying struck him in the head, a law-enforcement official said. Victim Roman Pirozek 'was known to be aggressive in his flying and often executed tricks. He was executing a trick when he was struck,' the official said. Mr. Pirozek – depicted in [this YouTube video] he posted in July — was flying a remote-controlled helicopter worth about $2,000 when it struck him, cutting off the top of his head, the official said. The Woodhaven, Queens, resident was pronounced dead at the scene. His father was with him at the time of the accident, the official said."

Comments

Re:OUCH

[Splab]

At first I thought, fuck man, that sucks, but then I read that one of his tricks was to fly the helicopter close to his head.

This was a pure Darwin Award moment, plain and simple, stupid trick ended with someone getting hurt. It's up there with torn groin videos from bad landings...

Re:OUCH

[BitZtream]

Which is sad.

Some facts about R/C Heli's in the same general class as the one that killed him:

They weigh roughly 10-12lbs, this one was a gas turbine, so it likely weighed a little more.
The rotors each weigh about 3/4 lbs, most of the weight being from lead added near the tips to facilitate autorotation.
They can fly at speeds up to 100mph, though its unlikely he ever went over 30mph when doing 3d aerobatics.
The rotor tips in non-aerobatic flight travel at about 300mph.
In aerobatic modes, the rotor speed goes up by about 30% so you have reserve power, that brings them to nearly 400mph.
Carbon fiber blades are used not because they are lighter (you really don't want lighter blades at that size), they are more rigid, flex is wasted energy and can cause tail boom strikes.

Doing the math on the rotor blades, .325kg * 175m/s * 0.5 = ~28.4 the tips carry approximately 28 joules of energy assuming they don't separate from the rotor head.

That in and of itself, not so impressive. If you get hit with the broad side of a rotor, it hurts like hell, but won't even bruise most people.

But thats not what happens. Even if the rotor separates from the hub in a crash, they are aerodynamically stable. They are wings after all. They fly straight and true in almost every case with the weighted leading edge up front.

Thats 28 joules of energy in what is basically a knife edge. It can easily severe a leg at the ankle.

These are miniature aircraft. They are easily deadly.

I've put multiple helis into the ground to avoid possibly hitting someone or something, some of the scariest experiences I've ever had were due to a out of control heli. The worst was where I didn't properly fasten the radio antenna and it got pulled into the rotor blade during inverted flight nearly directly over the flight line (where everyone stands to fly) at our local club. Nothing I could do at that point but watch it tumble towards the ground and yell at people to scatter. I was able to recover the aircraft when it got closer to me and without hurting anyone, but you can not imagine the fear people had as the aircraft was tumbling towards them.

Jokes about this kid getting hurt are about as funny as jokes about the Shuttle Columbia's last re-entry.