New Telemetry Suggests Shot-Down Drone Was Higher Than Alleged

AmiMoJo writes: The pilot of the drone shot down Sunday evening over a Kentucky property has now come forward with video seemingly showing that the drone wasn't nearly as close as the property owner made it out to be. The data also shows that it was well over 200 feet above the ground before the fatal shots fired. The shooter, meanwhile, continues to maintain that the drone flew 20 feet over a neighbour's house before ascending to "60 to 80 [feet] above me."

Comments

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

You would have trouble seeing such a drone at 'well over 200 feet above ground' let alone shooting it down with a shotgun.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you guys ever shot a shotgun??? I call BS on this 200ft claim and the 'expert'.

Something that small, if he hit it at 200ft, he either got REALLY lucky or fired A BUNCH of times (and got lucky).

Even birdshot is only effective at 40yds (120ft for you metric weenies (because math is hard)).

Re:Really?

[serbanp]

And you believe this? Even with good shotshell and a patterned gun, it's very unlikely to score a buckshot kill at more than 40-45 yards away. Hard to do for a stationary deer, impossible with a drone in the air.

The telemetry was either faked or, as an astute AC explained already, was showing the altitude at the launch point, which may be lower than the "trigger-happy" guy's backyard.

It simply doesn't pass the smell test.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even birdshot is only effective at 40yds (120ft for you metric weenies (because math is hard)).

Feet aren't metric. Way to perpetuate the arrogant+ignorant american stereotypes....

Re: Really?

[Runaway1956]

I might add that 50 meters STRAIGHT UP does not equate to a 50 meter horizontal shot. If the shot I'm shooting has a maximum effective range of 50 meters (or yards), I can expect that firing straight up into the air, my shot will only reach about 30 meters (or yards). Maybe 40. No matter how you cut it, shotguns are not long range weapons.

Duck hunters don't take those long shots into the sky for that very reason. They use decoys to bring the ducks down to landing approach height - 20 to 100 feet - then shoot them as they pass overhead. Even extra length, extra high powered "goose guns" can't reach much higher than 150 feet.

http://www.outdoorlife.com/pho...

Here, a collection of anecdotal evidence - http://www.duckhuntingchat.com...

Re:Really?

[AmiMoJo]

This seems to suggest that at 200ft the type of shot used here would be quite painful. Granted that isn't firing upwards, but even so it should be enough to damage a small, plastic drone. A broken prop would be enough to bring it down.

Re:Really?

[I'm New Around Here]

Two easy points of dispute. A) They use guns made/modified specifically to shoot that target. A standard shotgun some guy has behind his door for protection is going to have a very different pattern. B) How do you know this guy is such a crack shot?

And a third easy point, that has been mentioned many times above, is that shooting vertically, at a drone above you, limits the maximum range of the shot.

Re:Really?

[O('_')O_Bush]

A) No, they don't. They often use shotguns modified to be light and pointable if they are professional competitors, but most trap shooters use the same shotguns they would go hunting with. They also use chokes that are modified or less (as in, broad spread, less range) and the patterns are no different than any other commercial off the shelf shotgun (circular). All of my shotguns wear full chokes, which have much greater range, especially in a gun not designed for trap shooting (longer barrel). Also, trap shooters use reduced recoil (AKA, reduced range, reduced velocity, reduced power) loads and their shotguns typically only hold two shells. Basically, this argument boils down to, if a trap shotgun can reach, a hunting shotgun can reach MUCH MORE EASILY.
B) Trap shooters are shooting one shell at a very fast moving target. This guy just had to shoot a stationary target with one of his several shells.

As for your third point, a shotgun pellet at 5 grains and 0.05 BC (typical for a light sphere), loses half of its 1200 fps velocity within 200 yards (600 feet), and does that between a quarter and a half of a second due to aero drag. It doesn't matter which way you shoot the shot, because in that tiny time span, gravity at its very weak 9.8 m/s^2 doesn't affect that hardly at all, as it makes up less than 10% of the velocity change.

Re:Really?

[shaitand]

Have you ever played with a drone like this? You don't have to blow the thing up, smacking it with one finger in a casual swing is enough to crash one. It's hard enough to keep them up without any one trying to impact them.

At 200 ft your shot would be a nice little cloud and any of those pellets hitting the drone would be enough to take it down.

Think a target about 8x the size of a clay and far far more fragile. The actual body isn't more fragile but the flight stability is.

Kentucky is for Drones

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all drones. Drones make Rrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrr. What do drones make? Rrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrr rrrrrrr make the drones. YOU DRONES!

Impossible with #6 or lesser shotgun shot

[geggam]

... simply put at that range ( 200 ft ) any pellets the size of #6 or smaller would simply not have the ballistic energy.

2 ply cardboard wouldnt be penetrated at 200 feet.

Source : Years of hunting and shooting with 12 guages

Re:Impossible with #6 or lesser shotgun shot

[X0563511]

Go grab a model aircraft. Spin up the prop, and drop a piece of shot into the prop.

You'll probably end up with a broken prop, without any appreciable ballistic energy being involved.

Re:Impossible with #6 or lesser shotgun shot

[DRJlaw]

You're simply wrong.

Source: actual ballistics tables

60 yards is 180 ft -- 20 ft short of the target distance. 500 FPS will still hurt quite a bit.

Maximum range with "no" ballistic energy is 200 yards, and we're talking about smaller birdshot (#7.5-8), not #6.

Sign a liability waiver, stand 200 ft away, and allow me to blast away at you with Remington 12 guage #6 if you're so sure of yourself...

Re:Impossible with #6 or lesser shotgun shot

[DRJlaw]

"The speed at which a projectile must travel to penetrate skin is 163 fps and to break bone is 213 fps."

Source.

I can keep this up all day. Vague references to your so-called "hunting experience" don't trump actual data.

Re:Impossible with #6 or lesser shotgun shot

[ameline]

He was using #8 shot. The range with a 30 degree muzzle elevation for #8 is 100 yards. If the drone was at 200 feet altitude, and that much downrange (angle would be 45 degrees) the distance would be just under 100 yards -- I think if the altitude of 200 is correct (big if) these tables show that it was at the very limit of the range of #8 shot. I think it's far more likely that the drone was at around 100 feet or less above ground, and within 100 to 150 feet of the shooter. Even aviation grade barometric altimeters are often out by as much as 25 feet, and must be set for the ambient pressure (which drifts).

Re:Impossible with #6 or lesser shotgun shot

[I'm New Around Here]

Vice president Cheney shot a man in the face with birdshot. It barely broke the skin. And the victim was 78 years old. Skin gets easier to tear as we get older.

terminology

[jsepeta]

Is it a drone, capable of flying by itself, or is it a radio controlled vehicle that must be piloted?

Was it lingering over the guy's property or passing through his airspace?

Clearly the pilot did not take evasive action. Being able to shoot it makes it seem like he was pestering the homeowner.

Might want to reconsider paying the fine...

[Above]

I can pay the fine

Federal Law does not put drones in a special category. They are just another aircraft. The penalty is up to 20 years in federal prison, and a $250,000 fine. That's in addition to the charges this individual has already faced for discharging a fire arm in the city he lived in, as they make that illegal there.

More interestingly, there is a line here that is not well defined. What's the difference between:

• Google taking pictures from a Satellite for google maps.

• Bing taking pictures from a Cessna at 10,000 feet for Bing maps.

• The police helicopter flying over at 3,000 feet but only using their eyes.

• The police helicopter flying over at 3,000 feet and using their 100x super-zoom camera.

• The drone at 400 feet with a GoPro.

• The done at 100 feet with a GoPro.

• The drone hovering outside your window with a GoPro.

I think most people would say the first is fine, and it's not legal to try and shoot down the google satellite. Similarly, I think most people would be ok with taking action against the last one to protect privacy (even if that isn't legal per the federal law I cited above). This technology is so new, we simply haven't decided as a society where the line should be drawn, and our old laws probably don't work well.

It's not just personal houses either. What about the drones used by activists to fly over industrial operations breaking the law and get footage of it? Can the industrial operations shoot them down? If they do the same thing with a Cessna at 3,000 feet everyone would say no. What makes a drone at 400 any different?

Re: Might want to reconsider paying the fine...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=76381

Myth #1: Unmanned aircraft are not aircraft.

Fact â"Unmanned aircraft, regardless of whether the operation is for recreational, hobby, business, or commercial purposes, are aircraft within both the definitions found in statute under title 49 of U.S. Code, section 40102(a)(6) [49 U.S.C. Â 40102(a)(6)] and title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations section 1.1.[14 C.F.R. Â 1.1].

Took a while...is the data real?

[bradley13]

I wonder that the video and data didn't go up immediately. A couple of days is enough to edit the telemetry and video. Maybe they're honest, maybe they're not. However, it seems really unlikely that someone would be massively offended by a drone 70 meters up.

If they were going to file charges against anyone, it was really stupid for the police not to impound the drone as evidence.

Altitude is difficult to estimate

[damn_registrars]

There have been studies done before asking average people to estimate how high an object is in the sky (generally balloons or kites) and the estimates were generally awful. Even judging the difference between 60 and 200 feet is generally beyond the range of what most humans can comprehend in vertical distance.

Re:shooter should have talked to owner first

[bws111]

Why is it the property owners reponsibility to go find and talk to the drone operator? The drone operator, on the other hand, knows where his toy is going so maybe HE should actually act like a responsible person and let the property owners know what he is doing ahead of time.

Re:What's the deal?

[urbanriot]

No fear and none of your left or right wing BS, many of us just don't like it, we don't like drones hovering around our homes engaging in actions that aren't as obvious as a human's actions. We have the ability to interact with people that trespass on our property but we don't have the ability to discern the functionality of a drone hovering around us. Furthermore, I don't feel safe with the idea of an unlicensed heavy object falling from the sky and harming children... or me for that matter.

Re:The missing part of this story's coverage

[Rockoon]

The telemetry shows that it was too high to be "peeping"

The telemetry also shows that it was at -45.9 feet when it crashed (see the video.) We can presume the telemetry is accurate and it crashed so hard that it buried itself 46 feet under the ground, or we can assume that this "telemetry" is bullshit.

You seem to want to presume accurate telemetry even when the evidence is right in front of you that it isnt accurate. Why is that? Why have you stopped giving a shit about accuracy and veracity? What motivation do you have to be willfully ignorant?