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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.
The original Dutch article had an update that the user has since removed the video.
There is speculaton that the lithium batteries could explode if sucked into the jet engine, with unknown effect.
Geese rarely explode under similar conditions.
granted the Phantom 2 weighs much less than the average duck
It's a witch!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
there's a chicken cannon that is used to test that the engines can withstand bird impacts:
True, but ingesting things like that cause the affected engine to have to shut down. Running on reduced engine power is always dangerous for an aircraft, as they are now one failure closer to a fail-deadly condition, not to mention that the level of excitement created by an engine failure creates an atmosphere where pilots are running on adrenaline and are consequently more likely to make fatal mistakes.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
I'm a pilot, but I love drones, built a quad copter 3 years ago, a DIY job - at 11,000', sorry to say, possibility of impact is exceptionally high. Best case scenario, damage to manned aircraft in the tens of thousands - Worst case scenario - injury and loss of life. Probability of merely tens of thousands of dollars of damage = low, probability of loss of life = high. This isn't about killing anyone's fun flying the drones....- this is about the real (and not far fetched) danger of me and my passengers losing our lives due to someone taking some aerial photography or just messin' about. Drones need to be regulated, there needs to be safe guards installed. Don't think for a minute a pilot would spot one of these little drones and be able to avoid it. We really are at your mercy, airplanes are not big strong 'tanks' people think they are. They have thin skin, structures to withstand (only) aerodynamic lift properties. In the sky, avoidance is paramount. Also, geese/birds aren't made of plastic and metal, they are flesh and bone is which 'can blend' (if we're lucky). Metal and plastic parts colliding will certainly elevate our chances of surviving an impact. Folks talk about 'rights' in flying these drones, what about my 'right' to survive? We need rules, we need folks to abide by them, we need everyone to get along. BY THE WAY: As far as flying, come get a pilot license!! I did the drone thing, flying the 'real' thing is so much more enjoyable. The general aviation community is relatively small, we always welcome more folks in the sky - G/A is a great hobby, meet lots of people, lot's of places to travel to.
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.
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!
Jet engines are designed to withstand the ingestion of a frozen turkey
Nope. Not frozen.
There's a joke about this somewhere.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's not just about the even being unlikely - it's also about the consequences when it does happen. A one in a million event that dents someone's pride? No biggie. A one in million event that can result in multiple deaths or a mass casualty event? That's something to be concerned about.
3KM or so is impressive enough I suppose. But now I'm waiting for someone to take a C-130 up to 25,000 feet or so, lower the tailgate, and toss a drone out the back :-) Then start orbiting (the C-130), and let the drone climb as high from there as it can. I wonder what it would max out at? Might be better to make more efficient high altitude props on the drone for the thin air up there.
I'm also wondering if a drone can autorotate if its batteries went flat.
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.
The plane is a thousand times more likely to hit a bird.
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.
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?
Apparently there have been nearly 30 'close calls' between airliners and drones in the UK in the last year; some people are starting to worry.
at 11,000', sorry to say, possibility of impact is exceptionally high. Best case scenario, damage to manned aircraft in the tens of thousands - Worst case scenario - injury and loss of life. Probability of merely tens of thousands of dollars of damage = low, probability of loss of life = high.
Your comment conjures numbers out of thin air with no evidence to back them up. What is "exceptionally high" to you? 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? 1 in 1,000,000? Same question to your "high" probability for loss of life. How did you arrive at these conclusions?
And when you appeal to your authority as a pilot, are you talking commercial airliner or Cessna 172?
sorry to say, possibility of impact is exceptionally high.
For a pilot you have an unbelievably poor concept of risk evaluation.
You're not the New York subway. You don't have a machine taking up 100% of the available moving space every 5 minutes. You have a plane 5m x 10m (generously) trying to strike something the size of a football by random chance within an area defined by several cubic kilometers.
The possibilities of a strike happening by accident are TINY. The possibilities of a strike happening on purpose when someone actually tries to fly in the path of an aircraft equally would require a level of luck / skill that is borderline unachievable. Seriously I'm more concerned about terrorists, far more concerned about terrorists which is saying something because I don't give terrorism a second thought.
The best chance that someone who tries to strike an aircraft has is by flying on the approach path to the runway, even then there's a massive amount of luck and effort involved in actually making it happen. And I agree idiots flying a drone around an airport should get thrown into a spinning turbine.
Depends. Is the bird trying to fly into the engine intake? You don't rhink some fuckwit is going to do this? See laser pointers.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Aircraft are designed to survive bird strikes with minimal damage, and engines are designed to survive ingesting birds.
No, they're designed to not fail catastrophically and cut the rest of the plane in half with incredibly energetic chunks of turbine blade flying out. What they're not generally designed to do is survive in an operational manner.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You make the assumption that numbers are everything. In the Marine Corps, as an Artillery Operation Chief, we had to calculate air corridors for just this reason. While it is actually "little bullet big sky", the planning is "big bullet little sky". Why? Because the probability may be low. The possibility is always catastrophic. It is easy for an artillery man (or drone) to adjust his trajectory to avoid these corridors, it is impossible for a pilot to avoid something he cannot see. Even if you see the plane, traveling at 500+ mph doesn't leave one much time to get out of the way. Let's eliminate the possibility and play nice. Just my $.02
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.