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Bold Eagles: Angry Birds Are Ripping $80,000 Drones Out of the Sky (cetusnews.com)
schwit1 found this story in the Wall Street Journal:
Daniel Parfitt thought he'd found the perfect drone for a two-day mapping job in a remote patch of the Australian Outback. The roughly $80,000 machine had a wingspan of 7 feet and resembled a stealth bomber. There was just one problem. His machine raised the hackles of one prominent local resident: a wedge-tailed eagle. Swooping down from above, the eagle used its talons to punch a hole in the carbon fiber and Kevlar fuselage of Mr. Parfitt's drone, which lost control and plummeted to the ground... "It ended up being a pile of splinters"...
These highly territorial raptors, which eat kangaroos, have no interest in yielding their apex-predator status to the increasing number of drones flying around the bush. They've even been known to harass the occasional human in a hang glider... Camouflage techniques, like putting fake eyes on the drones, don't appear to be fully effective, and some pilots have even considered arming drones with pepper spray or noise devices to ward off eagles.
One mining survey superintendent said he's now lost 12 different drones to eagle attacks, costing his employer $210,000. Another drone was actually attacked by nine different eagles, and its pilot estimates eagles are now attacking 20% of all drone flights in rural Australia.
These highly territorial raptors, which eat kangaroos, have no interest in yielding their apex-predator status to the increasing number of drones flying around the bush. They've even been known to harass the occasional human in a hang glider... Camouflage techniques, like putting fake eyes on the drones, don't appear to be fully effective, and some pilots have even considered arming drones with pepper spray or noise devices to ward off eagles.
One mining survey superintendent said he's now lost 12 different drones to eagle attacks, costing his employer $210,000. Another drone was actually attacked by nine different eagles, and its pilot estimates eagles are now attacking 20% of all drone flights in rural Australia.
Nature has decided. No, you can't fucking pepper spray an eagle. Give it up.
See subject line
and they know it. They are defending their position as the master of the sky, deadliest flying living creature.
They are smart and cunning and strong. They use their ability to fly high to develop a ton of momentum and tear apart their prey.
Pretty hard to defend against them, they won't back down.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Do we need further reminders that everything in Australia wants to kill you?
I hope the eagles knock each and every one of these machines out of the sky. I hope it ends up costing these companies millions, and there's not a fucking thing they're going to be able to do about it. Drone operators/owners are some of the most selfish, self-entitled assholes around, and every time one of them loses one of their drones, I cheer. Good riddance.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Aren't birds immune to pepper spray? Wouldn't simply being a drone add a lot of defense? I'd think rotors would break bird bones like twigs or at least hurt really bad.
Then map the area in a way that doesn’t fuck with the wildlife. Otherwise, boo-fucking-hoo that the pissed off eagles are downing your drones. These people deserve nothing but crocodile tears.
The machine ... resembled a stealth bomber.
Tragically, though flying in broad daylight, it was not escorted by a protective formation of fighter drones, making it an easy pick for the latest Talon strike fighters of the austral Aquiline air force.
Would pepper spray even work on an eagle? Birds can't taste capsaicin; if anything, it's numbing to them.
It's interesting to see how territorial these birds are. You can find lots of videos on Youtube of them doing things like attacking ultralights and such. I think they're simply going to have to "eagleproof" their drones. Which unfortunately will make them need to be bigger (and more expensive) for a given-sized payload, since a greater chunk of the mass fraction will need to go into structure.
All we want to do is eat your brains.
to fool Mother Nature.
Hands up if you're old enough to remember that TV commercial!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
This is apparently _not_ a quad copter, it's a bunch of fixed wing drones.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm most dreadfully embarrassed.
I think they're simply going to have to "eagleproof" their drones. Which unfortunately will make them need to be bigger (and more expensive) for a given-sized payload, since a greater chunk of the mass fraction will need to go into structure.
Or they could just make drones that don't look like pigs - then the angry birds would stop attacking.
#DeleteChrome
After the double bird strike put Sully in the east river, a shocking number of birds were killed in response.
All the wildlife there is out to kill you.
Best of all, these eagles are listed as endangered and are protected by Australian law. In fact IIRC, the sections of the law that pertain to endangered species impose a "strict liability" standard on actions that injure a member of that species. That means you don't even have to intend to inure one of these eagles. Just being careless can get you serious prison time.
So pretty much those drone operators have to suck it up.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Nothing a 10 gauge goose gun can't fix.
It's a protected species. Hope you like spending time in jail.
When you are talking about large tracts of land there are plenty of legitimate non-dildastic uses for drones. I doubt someone flying an 80k machine is a drone enthusiast.
love is just extroverted narcissism
We're talking about Australian Wedge-Tailed Eagles, not the American bald eagle (which is basically a glorified seagull).
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
You're going to need a bigger drone.
One countermeasure to bird attacks is to demonstrate superior flight capability. Of course this requires pre-emptive training of the raptors. A drone can out climb any bird and demonstrating this ability will often serve to prevent aggressive behavior. This is certainly not a cure all but one element of an effective strategy that includes maintaining appropriate situational awareness of one's flight environment of which these birds are a part.
more power to Mother Nature.
drone ops...tossers and wankers.
The Problem: Drone flies in a manner the that the Eagles think is either prey or competitor. Solution: Find a flying creature they don't attack - Most likely a vulture(everybody thinks vultures are icky, even other birds) - and imitate it's flight
They're not professionals, they can't even out fly an eagle.
when you do it for money you are a professional
love is just extroverted narcissism
Go shooting protected birds in Australia, and you'll be lucky if the cops get you before the locals do. Most australians consider poaching somewhere between pedophilia and keeping dead hookers in the basement. When I worked at the department of parks, we'd have to think very hard over what info we'd release on animal abuse prosecutions, becuase people would react so angily that vigilantism was a real possibility.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
The key word is "protected". Injuring or killing protected specieis is what gets you in for a bad time with an angry judge, regardless of whether its endangered, or not. Although its largely an academic distinction. Most non endangered protected species are only a bad summer away from endangered anyway.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Yep. I remember once installing a video conferencing system worth all up close to a quarter of a million dollars in the early 2000s. I asked the CEO "How do you guys financially justify spending all this money?" to which he replied "kid we got more money than we know what to do with, this is nothing", and he was right, the mining company in particular had ridiculous amounts of capital just lying around in bank accounts or investments a few million to stick crazy expensive video conferencing machines into all their regional HQs was barely pocket change for these people
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
... should be the headline.
It's kinda like when a bull kills a matador, all I can think is "Fuck Yeah!"
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
I remember in the late 70s or early 80s there was a Cessna taken out by an Eagle. The pilot was able to land the plane and said that he saw nothing at all, just bang, blood and feathers. The windscreen exploded and the passenger was knocked unconscious IIRC. The pilot was quite badly injured but managed to land with some difficulty. There was an investigation as to why his mayday calls went unanswered. Amazingly enough the conclusion was that the microphone was made u/s by the massive amount of blood that had poured into it.
There will be pics and more detail around somewhere. The formal investigation was published.
There's a species that meddles with what we want to do? Why is it allowed to continue existing? Remove it from the ecosystem.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Worried about the eagles? Mining companies generally do surveys not to enhance a species' habitat but to destroy it. Oh, we're not allowed to harm eagles? NP, we'll just mine the shit out of their territory, and they can sustain themselves by preying on the leftover boulders. Yummy!
When an Eagle's talon strikes a Lithium Polymer battery it may not end well for the attacking Eagle. Although the impact of the bird alone is not healthy for such batteries, drones are designed with impacts in mind. Puncture wounds not much.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Reminded me of a story my dad wrote back in the 60s: The Wedge-Tailed Eagle.
Stop flying drones around the Australian outback!
Light aircraft flying back and forth.
Noisy, polluting and expensive.
I'm not so sure about the "expensive" part. The wet rate for a small airplane is in the $100-$170 per hour range. Compared to what the drones cost, and how short they seem to last, I don't think cost saving could be the reason here.
Being able to hover and descend below safe flight levels to get better pictures might be a factor.
I don't think at that height that a shotgun will do you much good. What we really need to do is release an animal that can prey on these problematic eagles. We have DNA for the Haast's eagle they had a 10' wing span and could make short work of these. A grant for a few hundred thousand from the mining company could get things started.
Never thought that birds could be more effective than shotguns...
Your move, NRA card-holding privacy conscious anti-environmentalists.
Your move...
As a NRA card-holding privacy conscious environmentalists, I'm rooting for the eagles.
Just another day in Paradise