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Record-Breaking 11000ft Flight Sparks Criticism In Pilot Community
An anonymous reader writes: In an attempt to break the world 'how high can you fly a consumer drone' record, an anonymous person from the Netherlands flew a Phantom 2 Quadcopter to a height of up to 3.4 km. That is more than 3 km above the maximum European Union legal height of 120 meters, which has applied since July 1, 2015 to hobby drones. Undoubtedly he set a new record of sorts, which also led to substantial discussions among the drone pilot community on the safe use of drones. At a height of 3.4 kilometers or 11000 feet you can indeed run into regular air traffic, or cause a lot of damage in case of a crash. Fortunately not in this flight -- but the battery had only 4% capacity at the moment of landing.
But honestly, what's the likelihood?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
There is speculaton that the lithium batteries could explode if sucked into the jet engine, with unknown effect.
Geese rarely explode under similar conditions.
I'll take your word for the figure, but that assumes that a) it's a head-on collision and b) the 640kN would be absorbed by the plane rather than the drone. Since the airflow around the plane is designed to flow smoothly, as the aircraft approached the drone would be deflected into the airstream and flow with it (being far lighter than the plane), so if it did hit it would not be anything like a head-on collision. But assuming that it was a worst-case scenario and did hit part of the plane hard enough to generate 640kN, the drone would rapidly disintegrate. Seems like the aircraft would be unlucky to suffer much more than a denting. Going into an engine is likely to be a lot worse, but then, they are designed to take a bird strike.
The only conclusion I can draw from stunts like this is that quadcopter enthusiasts want quadcopters eliminated. Because this is precisely this bullshit that is going to get them banned, and yet again and again we hear these stories. If they would just be cool, and be responsible with their quadcopters, things would be great. But noooooo, that's not happening. You'd figure the Dutch would be especially sensitive after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but noooooo. So, government is going to step in and take away their toys before we lose an airliner.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
A drone in a 3km cubes (say 7.28 ^ 11 positions) overlapping a plane (say 50m x 50m x 50m, 216000 positions).
We're looking at numbers of the order of 1 ^ 18 for simple instantaneous collission, say it passes 1000 of these cubes, 1 in 1 ^ 15.
But that assumes pure random chance, that the drone pilot never sees the plane. Which is unlikely.
Put this in context there are BILLIONS of birds in the sky, do you want to regulate them too?
Before someone counters with " omgthinkoftheplanes " the only reason this is even IN the news is because it contains the word " Drone " somewhere within it.
How many photos have you seen of folks strapping various items to balloons with a Go-Pro attached taking selfies of said items with the Earths curvature as the backdrop ?
I would think they are just as much a hazard to aircraft as any drone, yet no one is running about in a panic or demanding legislation requiring folks register their balloons when purchased :|
Seriously news types, drones are nothing new. RC craft have been around quite a while so find somthing else to sensationalize if you wouldn't mind.