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Drone Ban Extends 30 Miles Around DC, Per FAA (wusa9.com)

Posted by timothy on from the don't-spy-drones-hate-competition dept.

DewDude writes: If you thought done registration was bad enough; it just got worse for anyone living in the nation's capital. On Christmas Day (of all days); the FAA put into effect a rule that bans the flying of drones/quadcopters within a 30-mile radius around DC. This more than doubles the initial 15 mile radius no-fly-zone. The ban includes the counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Prince William, and the independent cities in the vicinity on the Virginia side. On the Maryland side; it includes Montgomery, Prince Georges, Howard, Anne Arundel; and parts of Calvert, Baltimore, and the extreme north-western end of St. Marys Counties in Maryland.

44 of 410 comments (clear)

  1. Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Gr33nJ3ll0 · · Score: 2

    Seems likely the only thing this is going to do is make a lot of people law breakers.

    1. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And that is how a state becomes a tyranny. Forsaking liberty for security.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Foxhoundz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes. That's how it works. First they ban our drones, next they're asking as for papers. Get over yourself.

    3. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2

      as soon as a Drone crashes in a jumbo jet and people die.

    4. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by sycodon · · Score: 5, Interesting

      So if I owned property within 30 miles, I can't fly my little RC plane or Quadcopter in my backyard?

      Because....why? And how does doing that affect you or anyone else?

      From TFA

      "So, anyone who flies drones or RC airplanes or anything within 30 miles of DC is now officially grounded," said hobbyist Cyrus Phillips.. "That came out on Christmas Day."

      He said the notice effectively closes the Capital Area Soaring Association and all other hobbyist parks within 30-miles.

       

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    5. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by sycodon · · Score: 2

      If there is a jumbo jet in my backyard, then they (and I) have more problems than a $40 drone.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    6. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So the fact that I'm angry that my son can't fly his little toy drone inside our own backyard makes me a spoiled child?

      I wonder what it's going to be like with another 10 or 20 years of you stupid fucks ruining everything.

      "Your freedom of speech doesn't extend to saying anything other people can hear."

      "Your freedom of the press doesn't extend to printing anything that the public can get their hands on."

      "Freedom to assemble is invalid because they might not be behaving peacably."

    7. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Foxhoundz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know what I find amusing? For a country that enjoys a lot of freedom, American citizens complain a lot of about tyranny and oppression, as if they've lived through it. The TSA is an agency that has been mismanaged due to a lack of oversight. That is not a definition of tyranny. That's just the american public being suckered into voting for people who aren't interested in representing them. All of the problems that plague the political system in the U.S. -- all of it -- can be resolved if the masses can agree not to be swayed by thirty-second ads. Whatever form of oppression Americans think they are in, believe you me, is a self-inflicted one, as the power to vote and bring about political change still rests with the voters. I have lived in a totalitarian country. One of their ways of getting their kicks is killing your relative and billing you for the bullet and time. Perhaps I'll join the melodrama when I start seeing similar occurrences happen in the U.S.

    8. Re: Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      RC operators were a microscopic minority.

      I've seen drones for sale in fucking supermarkets. No, your average asshole American dumbass cannot be trusted to obey sane regulation. Congrats; your neighbors have ruined your hobby.

    9. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A supermarket drone is less than a pound (half a kilo) and has a ceiling far below cruise for an aircraft. An aircraft on takeoff or approach will be flying pretty slowly. A Canada goose is somewhere in the vicinity of 8 lbs. and will stop a jet-engine, but still won't destroy a jumbo jet.

      You might as well worry about flocks of songbirds, which as you may know far outnumber and predate drones.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    10. Re: Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Pssssst

      We don't have to live through it. We've seen first hand how well it worked out for all the other countries who went through it over the years. Even had to send troops over to help deal with them. ( See: WWII )

      Learning from your own mistakes is expected. Learning from the mistakes of others is what sets folks apart from the average ones.

    11. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your liberty doesn't extend to flying quadrocopters wherever the fuck you feel like it.

      My liberty has nothing to do with flying or not flying quadcopters at all. That is the problem you're not realizing in your haste to critique Libertarians. You're logic is simple binary and thus incapable of judgement. Or as the good saying goes, only the Sith deal in absolutes.

      No, the idea of liberty is fraught with messy dangerous things. If you want to live in a nice peaceful totalitarian state, where everything is mandated, regulated and bubble wraped for your protection, then fine, move to North Korea, where the state protects its people from the evils of Liberty. Because that is what you have advocated.

      But lets take a look at what is REALLY happening. It is now, against the law to fly a drone within 30 Miles of DC. That means that I cannot fly my drone, over my backyard (acreage) because you're too fucking scared. Now, I am a criminal for not doing anything other than minding my own business, harming, threatening, or otherwise anyone else.

      The real spoiled children are the ones crying for big government to protect them from scary imaginary boogiemen.

      So yeah, be riduculously afraid of my quadcopter on my property, and make me a criminal simply because you're too fucking stupid to have any judgements and thus deal in the absolute binary world you're comfortable in.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    12. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Special snowflakes are the people demanding government protect them from all the imaginary boogiemen they can dream up. I am asking nobody to protect me from anything other than governments making things illegal, simply because people like you can only make binary choices.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    13. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by dywolf · · Score: 2

      "statist" !
      DRINK!

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    14. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by mysidia · · Score: 2

      If I can't fly it in my own backyard, we have a problem.

      If this prevents you from flying in your own backyard, then please do start a lawsuit. Although, you might be required to actually break their regulation, and get them to put you in jail, and until that happens, the courts will not even hear a case against this abuse.

      Unfortunately, the way the legal system in the US works, nobody else can challenge the action of abuse that infringes a different person's fundamental liberties ---- in a perverse twist, the courts protect the government against challenges by refusing to recognize it as an infringement of my rights: If I can't prove the law actually causes me damage today (And "chilling" my activities is not sufficient, the harm has to already happened and be tangible and provable), then the courts use the concept of "lack of standing", in order to help regulators avoid any possibility of scrutiny over their abuses.

    15. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Thaelon · · Score: 2

      This entire argument is a just a red herring. Whether it's worse or not somewhere else is wholly without relevance.

      Laws don't make us free. Few restrictions do. Being able to do anything we want that doesn't adversely impact someone else does.

      --

      Question everything

    16. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To my understanding there really is all that much in the way of boogie men people are demanding protection from. The biggest demand right now regard protection from--very real--thug law enforcement officers.

      --
      Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
    17. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Coren22 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      30 miles from washington national airport covers the southern portion of Baltimore, including the inner harbor, as well as a significant portion of the state of Maryland.

      Look at Google maps, the mile key is on the bottom right corner. I used a post-it to mark the distance. It covers the entirety of Anne Arundel County, which includes Annapolis. That is a pretty significant reach.

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
    18. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by russotto · · Score: 5, Informative

      Although, you might be required to actually break their regulation, and get them to put you in jail, and until that happens, the courts will not even hear a case against this abuse.

      Oh, it's even better than that. There isn't any regulation. The FAA has several ways to make rules about the airspace. They can publish regulations in the Federal Register; this is the hard way. Or they can issue a NOTAM, a Notice to Airmen, containing restrictions in the airspace. This is the easy way. The NOTAM for the DC SFRA is here.

      It talks about model aircraft once:
      "THE FOLLOWING OPERATIONS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED WITHIN THE DC FRZ: [...] MODEL AIRCRAFT OPERATIONS"

      Note "DC FRZ". The DC FRZ (Flight Restricted Zone) is a 15-mile radius area centered on Reagan National. The SFRA is a 30-mile radius area centered on the same point. So where's the restriction for the whole SFRA? Well, they've published it on their website, and also in something called AC 91-57A. Thing is, "AC" stands for "Advisory Circular". By definition, it doesn't set any rules; it's advisory.

      So it's really tough to challenge the regulation, because _no such regulation exists_. The FAA has told the police to shut down fields, and told the (private) Academy for Model Aeronautics to shut down fields, or else. But they haven't bothered to make an actual regulation to back up their orders.

    19. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

      The FAA has previously stated that they will regulate anything between .5 and 55 kg as a 'hobbyist UAV'. Above 55 kg it's treated as a 'real' aircraft and gets an N number. UAVs get an "FA" number in the registry.* So little toy drones like a Hubsan X4 aren't being regulated but anything much over that, including the wildly popular DJI Phantom series, is being regulated.

      And for all of you firmware freaks, DJI has already implemented no fly zones where the craft will not start it's motors if it detects it's within those boundaries. Of course, you just have to shut off GPS mode and it has no clue as to where it is and you can continue your attempts at world domination by dispensing 250 grams of C4 or whatever .....

      * Except UAVs with a 333 exemption for commercial use which get an N number after a pilot's license, three hundred pages of forms and a six month wait.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    20. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by tibit · · Score: 2

      If jumbo jets can be taken out of the sky by 2oz drones (that's 99.9% of sold drones!), then we have waaaay bigger problems, dude.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    21. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by andydread · · Score: 2

      North Korea = Authoritarian paradise.
      Somalia = Libertarian paradise.

      While I agree that this law is moronic and brought to you by the bed wetters of America the fact still remains, a land of little to no government will look like Somalia or Afghanistan.

    22. Re: Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Obfuscant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Birds are not a microscopic minority, though, and civil aviation has managed to live with bird strikes for decades.

      I keep seeing this nonsense and I just can't let it keep going on. Birds are living things that, for political and scientific reasons, we cannot simply eliminate as a way of reducing the risk they cause to aviation. We have to live with them because we've decided that they have a right to live. We do take steps to limit the problem when we can.

      Drones, OTOH, are not living things, and they do not have a right to live. We can easily ban them from airspace where they pose a threat to other aircraft.

      The fact that one threat to something exists and cannot be eliminated does not mean we must put up with all threats, especially ones that can be eliminated. Trying to argue that since birds are a threat we cannot do anything to limit any other kind of threat is just stupid. There are all kinds of hazards in daily life that we cannot prevent, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to mitigate all of them that we can.

    23. Re: Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by MightyYar · · Score: 2

      My point was not made, then.

      The point is that birds are not going away and they dwarf the threat to aircraft posed by drones. If you have a whole system in place which can accommodate birds, that same system can handle drones. Drones as a threat to aviation only exists in the imagination, or in a tiny number on a risk assessment spreadsheet.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    24. Re: Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Mal-2 · · Score: 2

      The point is that birds are not going away and they dwarf the threat to aircraft posed by drones. If you have a whole system in place which can accommodate birds, that same system can handle drones. Drones as a threat to aviation only exists in the imagination, or in a tiny number on a risk assessment spreadsheet.

      We cannot (as yet) teach birds to target aircraft, thus it is unlikely to get multiple bird strikes in a short span of time. It does happen though, and the result is planes landing in the Hudson river. Despite their smaller numbers, drones can be directed to target aircraft. The absolute numbers don't matter.

      I'm not saying this ban is justified, merely saying that the almost-not-a-problem of bird strikes does not automatically imply that drones are likewise almost-not-a-problem.

      --
      How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
    25. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I am not opposed to government. I actually support a government that has a singular purpose, to protect the liberties of those that cannot protect themselves. This doesn't mean a "nanny state", but rather a government that serves to protect its citizens from tyrants, large and small. There are VERY few crimes that fall into this category.

      I'm very much idealist in this regard. The purpose of the government, is the secure the blessings of liberty. Those blessings are being eroded in the name of safety and security all the time, by people who aren't really concerned about either, but rather using those concerns to control the masses.

      Think of it this way, the citizens in general, are they afraid of their government or not? Personally, I do not trust the government a single bit. I don't trust those that have eroded liberties for everyone but themselves. I point to the current classic case, Hillary Clinton, who while trying to hide her public service email from everyone, including the public trust (government) is at the same time, wanting to back door Security on everyone's email (encryption) so the government can snoop. The government should not need to trust its citizens, but the citizens should be able to trust the government. Currently we are 100% backwards. And it is all done in the name of security and safety.

      Or, take this example from the TSA, who won't let more than 5oz of liquids on a plane. Mind you, they wantonly toss those same "dangerous" larger capacity liquid containers into the same trash, right next to the high density choke point for travelers in airports. Further, the 5oz limit doesn't actually stop the dangerous combination chemical reactions, in a well coordinated terrorist plot. The only conclusion I have is that appearances are more important than reality.

      And besides that, between 9-11 hijackings that will never happen again, and Paris Nightclub style attacks, it is much easier to go to high density population zones to mass kill people. Reality is not perception, and perception is not reality. Planes will still explode, rarely, on occasion (Egypt), and terrorists win with every tyrannical move to protect the people.

      True liberty depends on eternal vigilance, and too many people want to abdicate their responsibilities as citizens and have someone in the government do their job for them. And I personally consider people like that a threat, more so than all the Jihadis in the world, because they seem so innocent as they give away their liberties.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    26. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Is this even a real comment, or is it trolling?

      There's a gigantic difference between beneficial, equal access government paid and regulated things (education, roads, health and safety including regulations that actually protect us) and total bullshit like banning people from flying toy drones in their backyards, attempting to wedge backdoors into encryption implementations and pervasive illegal spying.

    27. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      My inspected food is laced with E.Coli
      My building is falling apart even after Architecture and reviews
      My cars regularly fail spectacularly (see recalls)
      And roads can be paved by Taxes on fuel (not siphoned off for progressive social programs).

      Meanwhile natural foods and Non-GMOs need to be certified, but GMOs and foodlike products don't.
      You can buy whole raw milk or various other things because they are "too dangerous".
      In some places, it is illegal to grow your own food (and other "plants").

      The fact that you're completely unable to make non-binary choices is your problem. All or nothing with you, and you think I am an idiot.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    28. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by Morgon · · Score: 3, Informative

      Usually, yes, but they've told the AMA to 'temporarily suspend' operations. The AMA thinks it's going to come to an agreement with the FAA in mid-January.

      http://motherboard.vice.com/re...

      --
      [DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
    29. Re: Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by greatpatton · · Score: 2

      And you really think that people willfully targeting an aircraft with multiple drone are going to comply to the no-fly zone?

    30. Re:Breakin' the law, breakin' the law by KGIII · · Score: 2

      Ah - just the UID I was looking for. This gonna effect you? If so, sorry. In all fairness, I've been warning the RC aircraft folks that this was coming for, well, years now. Literally, years - I've even offered possible solutions.

      They said, "You can't stop me!"
      I said, "That's not what regulations do, they establish punishments - often draconian, for violators."
      They said, "They can't find me."
      I said, "You need to get lucky *every* time and they need only be lucky once."
      They stuck their fingers in their ears.

      I said, "Hey, I'll give you free space and even get you guys a domain name and you can make a site, get sponsor buy-in, and have the vendors give out the URL and some safety instructions in all the packages - I'm sure they'll hop right on it AND sponsor you so that one or two of you might actually manage to make a career out of it."
      They said, "TL;DR"

      I said, "You should find that guy and punch them in the nuts."
      They said, "And go to jail?"
      I said, "Sure, if you want to keep your hobby alive and healthy, otherwise you're going to be stuck with draconian regulation."
      They said, "There you go with that draconian regulation. You Libertarians are stupid!"

      Ya know... I've wasted a lot of time typing out long posts. I've tried to explain it. I've made a good-faith effort to help AND I'm not even a fan of the hobby. I just hate to see people getting screwed over by other people's actions - I know what it's like to have a hobby ruined by other people. (I'm very much a firearm and automobile aficionado.)

      So, to you specifically - as I know you're into a variety of tech hobbies but unsure of this one, I do offer my sincere sorrow for this and your future losses. It's unfortunate that you'll be further restricted because of the idiots who have managed to turn an otherwise group of fine people into a group that's seen as a bunch of idiots and assholes. (I know some of these guys, they've been doing it since we were kids, they're neither of those.)

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  2. FAA rules conflict with local laws by careysb · · Score: 2

    This has been a widely reported issue that the FAA rules override local laws. In the Boulder, CO area there is designated "open space". It would be a good place to fly because there is lots of space and few people. Boulder says drones are forbidden, FAA says it's ok. Who to believe.

  3. Re:Time to buy land!! by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 2

    Man, I'll convert it to a strip club.

    bill clinton already did that

    And he provided complimentary cigars!

    --
    You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
  4. Re:FED by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, the Constitution requires 51 senators for quorum, or else the vote is not valid. Three senators voting unanimously to pass a bill in an empty Congressional meeting wouldn't meet requirements any more than dressing up in full court regalia and decreeing new US laws from your toilet seat would.

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  5. Re:Probably the extent of their radar by BitZtream · · Score: 2

    Why? A Phantom without a camera can carry plenty of payload to do plenty of damage. Doesn't have to move fast, just get there.

    30 miles is outside the range of your off the shelf DJI phantom, but I've got one thats flown 18 miles thats the same size roughly, of course all its payload capacity was consumed with the extra batteries ... but its a quad, the least efficient form of flying machine man has ever invented. A fixed wing aircraft has an order of magnitude more distance given the same inputs.

    Remember, quads (the toys you see) are really horrible flying machines. They require full artificial stability 100% of the time or they won't fly. No human can sense or react quick enough to keep them in the air, and they only get made because they are mechanically simple, strap 4 motors with props onto 4 arms and you're essentially done. No linkages for control services, no control surfaces, no control surface flex or any other things that happen during flight, the software on the controller takes care of everything and making software is freaking cheap as shit compared to designing a proper aircraft. So the toys are quads.

    Any drop thats going to be a threat isn't going to be a quad.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  6. Re:OK FAA - I challenge you to simplify by Martin+Blank · · Score: 2

    SkyVector can help you there, though it's not authoritative.

    TFRs (Temporary Flight Restriction areas, though some aren't all that temporary--Disneyland has had one since the 1990s) and SFRs (Special Flight Rules areas) are outlined in red, and while they don't always get sporting events, TFRs due to fires usually do go up.

    --
    You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
  7. Re:FED by bws111 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Do you believe every stupid thing you read? The House passed the Federal Reserve Act 298 to 60 and the Senate passed it 43 to 25. And President Wilson signed it.

  8. Re:FED by Martin+Blank · · Score: 2

    The Federal Reserve Act was passed 287-85 by the House on September 18, 1913, and passed 54-34 by the Senate on December 18, 1913. President Wilson signed it on December 23, 1913.

    --
    You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
  9. Re:FED by Martin+Blank · · Score: 4, Informative

    Correction from info posted by bws111: The votes I posted were for the initial passage. The votes bws111 posted were for the reconciliation form of the Act. Those are more technically correct.

    --
    You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
  10. Theory that Drones can be weaponized by DigiShaman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Drones can be weaponized; hence the ban. Short of turning the metaphorical DC bubble into literal reality, this was entirely expected. I'm extremely annoyed and dismayed that any of you would be surprised. This isn't news except for the clueless morons out there.

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  11. Re:OK FAA - I challenge you to simplify by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Great, then just program all of those dangerous birds flying around to obey the same zone.

    This whole fucking discussion is predicated on the "fact" that these drones pose a danger. Yet, while we have drones enjoying unprecedented popularity, we do not have any incidences of an aircraft being in any real danger. Even if we did, how many more bird strikes are there each year?

    This is yet another example of failure to do a cost-benefit analysis and simply accepting the government's default position of safety over freedom on something. Let's not allow the crippling CYA culture that dominates the public sector to invade our lives. Please?

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  12. Re:OK FAA - I challenge you to simplify by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

    Yes the nation needs toy airplanes if we want another generation of pilots and aerospace engineers.

    Ask any military pilot where/when he got 'the flying bug'?

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  13. Re:Gotta love our overweening government! by Zak3056 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I realize I lose the argument by starting it this way, but the above is just so clueless, that I feel I have no choice: "You're a fucking idiot."

    Congress makes laws. The executive branch makes rules. The executive branch cannot make rules unless they have the delegated power to do so. Congress passed a LAW that said, in essence, that "the FAA's delegated power to make rules does not extend to model aircraft." The FAA made a rule that extended to model aircraft, which it specifically DOES NOT HAVE THE POWER TO DO.

    This has nothing to do with "laws being revised to account for future development." It is a department of the government (unelected bureaucrats, no less) ignoring its enabling legislation. This is actually rule by fiat, i.e. dictatorship, and not the democratic process.

    Go back to fucking civics class.

    --
    What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
  14. Re:OK FAA - I challenge you to simplify by tibit · · Score: 2

    I don't know what you're droning about, but what people normally buy is not planes, but toy drones, that weigh 2oz, have a ~100m control range, and 3 minutes flight time. That's 99.9% of the drones out there. It doesn't matter where you fly them, the most damage they'll do is to cut up someone's eye if you fly one into someone's face. My biggest worry was about what happens if one gets sucked into the turbine of a small helicopter. A friend who was doing some FOD ingestion testing on these small turbines tells me that there might be some damage in the rarest of circumstances, but nothing that makes it immediately non-flyable/fall out of the sky. He then told me "oh, BTW, the choppers have big fucking screens on the intakes - I told you what would happen if you'd toss one straight into the turbine inlet. If you got it to hit the screen first, it'd fragment enough that it'd most likely not register anywhere until the turbine overhaul."

    --
    A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.