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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.
So what you are actually saying... "but the battery had only 4% capacity at the moment of landing" ...is that these things need better/bigger batteries.
Airplanes are made from relatively thin aluminum, and travel at hundreds of miles/hour. Thus, a hovering 2 kg drone struck by an airplane flying at 200 mph would generate a force of 640 kiloNewtons (5x the thrust of an F100's jet engine.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The FAA was created when two planes flew into each other.
With as many reckless operators, they are ensuring it's simply a question of when, not if.
For jets, the maximum speed is frequently it's maximum rating for the windshield to withstand a bird strike. Once you're above roughly 8000 feet airspeed can frequently start climbing well past safe speeds from this perspective. This is because most strikes occur at or near airports. And once you're clear of the airport the odds of bird strike is dramatically reduced. At these speeds, you can easily kill a pilot and perhaps two. You can easily kill everyone on a jet. Control of an aircraft is difficult once the windshield is gone. Especially if you have a medical emergency of the pilot flying the aircraft.
Also, compared to something like a bird, drones are much more substantial because of their metal parts. Plus, with lithium batteries being so common, a strike can easily initiate a lithium fire within the cockpit. A drone strike is worse in every possible way than a bird strike.
In light aircraft, I've seen a buzzard almost take the horizontal stabilizer off of an aircraft (Mooney M20J).
The real problem is there is a horrible combination of ignorance, stupidity, and arrogance in the drone community. It's simply a matter of when they will kill people, and how many, not if.
Air-traffic authorities should provide for this sort of thing by allowing trained (licensed?) hobbyists to file a flight plan ahead of time, to give the authorities time to say "no, the airspace is busy at the time you requested" or "yes, go ahead, we've put you in the system and will alert other airspace users of your presence. Please use transponder code ABCXYZ."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Google Image search of "birdstrike aircraft": https://www.google.com/search?...
Now explain to all those birds that they should have been deflected around the aircraft.