I know you're only joking but.. As an EV driver I would much rather have the spaces far away from the building to minimize the chance of someone with an ICE car taking the EV spot for the convenience. When I need a charge, I really need a charge It saves them 100 feet of walking, but may be the difference of my making it home or not. Also, I would like to have laws that if an ICE car blocks an EV spot we can call a tow truck to have them removed. I must admit to having been tempted to letting all the air out the tires on an ICE car that blocked an EV spot when I was low on charge and really could have used a charge (I ended up driving 45 on the highway risking my life, but I made it home with a few percent left).
Yes, I do. And, even in the 4,000 pound helicopter I fly, a drone strike will absolutely take it out of the sky.
Did a little looking around and found one case of a 2.4 pound bird taking a helicopter out of the sky. The windshield had been intentionally replaced with a weaker one, and even then the helicopter only crashed because the bird hit the fire extinguisher, which then hit the engine controls. So don't swap out your windshield.
Yes, that was the accident I was referring to, but most helicopters don't have bird resistant windshields (neither of the two types that I fly do). Additionally, some more quick googling finds more accidents:
Most of the helicopters are damaged by small birds (more than 220 helicopters) and only a few helicopters have been impacted by large birds. As obvious in the plot, the small birds mostly cause minor damages and no helicopter has been destroyed by the small sized bird. The medium sized birds have destroyed most of the helicopters and have caused most of the substantial damages to the helicopter
Unfortunately it doesn't define the size of small, medium, or large birds, but my guess is that large would be a goose sized bird (which I found lots of fatal accidents, but those are clearly much bigger than the sized drones we're talking about. I'm guessing (but it's a guess) that when they talk about medium sized birds we're talking about birds in the relative size of drones, i.e. 2-5 pounds (but that's just a guess).
This is just totally made up and wrong. First of all there are battery powered ADS-B-IN systems (I use a Stratus 2 with about 8 hours of battery life while doing ADS-B plus AHRS plus providing a WiFi hotspot plus built in GPS) - an ADS-B system running for the length of a typical drone flight would use very little power.
The Stratus 2S, according to the web page, requires an iPad to work, is 10 oz, costs $900 on its own, and isn't a transponder anyway, so it's completely irrelevant. Their transponder with GPS is $3500, not battery powered, and looks like your average drone won't carry it.
The Stratus is designed to talk to a specific aviation iPad application: Foreflight (which we all love), so it does a lot of stuff a straight ADS-B doesn't need to do (like provide a WiFi connection to an iPad). I used it as an example to show that battery usage is low. Your comment about the transponder reminded me to mention that some people may not be aware that there are two frequencies in use for ADS-B. There is the 1090Mhz band which does use a transponder, but there is also the 978Mhz band which just uses a regular radio. I've been assuming all along that is what drones would use. Here is an example of a complete ADS-B IN/OUT system that I've seen Yes, it's $2,000, but keep in mind that this is a certified piece of gear for aircraft. Note that it weighs less than a pound (I picked it up at a trade show and it was very light despite being in a metal enclosure with heavy connectors etc.). Also note the total current draw: 0.2 amps @ 12 VDC. To put the cost into perspective, we once took apart an aviation clock from one of our helicopters (that costs $300.00) and my EE buddy said it was less than a dollar in components. You can imagine what's inside this FreeFlight ADS-B: a small microprocessor and a transmitter. If the Futaba type companies can't produce that for under $100 they aren't even trying...
1) I've been flying helicopters 30 years and I think I know what will and will not take down a helicopter. Ask PHI and the families of the 9 people who were killed when a 2.4 pound bird went through the windshield. You think a 2.4 bird is going to cause less damage than a 2.5 pound drone? And... are you willing to limit drones to a maximum weight of 2.5 pounds or would you like to be able to fly larger ones in the airspace?
By the same token, I expect private and commercial aircraft to stay the *F%$* above 500 feet unless taking off or landing.
2) You might expect aircraft to stay above 500 feet, but you have no regulatory basis for that belief. The current situation is that we are allowed to operate below 500 feet when we take certain precautions, even when not taking off or landing. You might not like it, but until you get the FAA to change those regulations (which they are very unlikely to do) the fact is that even at 100 feet you may be sharing the airspace with us.
Buy a drone, fly it, *learn how it works*, then you can contribute seriously to this discussion.
3) So, I have to buy a drone before I can contribute to the discussion? Do you have to get a pilot license before you get to contribute to the discussion?
Your attitude is exactly what is going to polarize people against drone usage. I was talking with our FAA Tower chief last night and he mentioned that MedFlight has been complaining about so many drones around the hospitals and around scene calls that the Massachusetts State Police air wing now is on alert to chase down drone operators who are not following regulations. They've specifically asked us to keep an eye out for drones and report them to the police, much like has had to happen with laser pointer attacks.
If you'd like access to the airspace, I suggest you tone down your attitude and try cooperating with the people who are on the side of drone usage, otherwise you could easily see people throwing up roadblocks. Sure, drones are going to eventually happen. Would you rather have it happen in the next 2-3 years or would you like to polarize the aviation community and have it delay drones for 10 years? Right now I'm still on the side of sharing the airspace with drones if the safety concerns can be met, but after the last couple of discussions on Slashdot I'm starting to wonder whether it's worth it.
You know how much damage my 2 lb "drone" will do if it hits your thousand pound helicopter?
Yes, I do. And, even in the 4,000 pound helicopter I fly, a drone strike will absolutely take it out of the sky. The rotor wash will not move the drone out of the way. This is the second time I've heard this (maybe you're the same person as last time). Your assumption is faulty on a number of levels. A helicopter produces thrust by either moving a smallish amount of air very fast (in a hover) or a large amount of air relatively slowly (when we are in motion). If I flew a few feet over your head at 50 knots you would only feel a very gentle breeze, because in this case the helicopter is moving a huge volume of air down just a little bit. It's certainly not enough to move an object, whether that be a bird, drone, or such.
Secondly, there's a time issue: With a 30-40 foot rotor diameter, that means 15-20 feet of it is in front of the rotor mast. If the helicopter is moving at even 40 mph (i.e. slow flight) or even if the helicopter is stationary and the drone is moving at 40 mph that's 58 feet per second (40*5280/3600), so the time the object is under the rotor disk before it reaches the mast is 1/4 of a second. Even if there was a lot of downwash (which there isn't) it wouldn't move an object significantly in 1/4 of a second. It's actually a lot worse than that, because the windshield is 10 feet in front of the mast - the distance from rotor tip to windshield is actually closer to 10 feet - less in some ships like a MDHC-500 so, maybe 1/8th of a second. It doesn't matter, the basic idea is that even at slow speeds like 40 mph, that drone (or bird) is going to go through the windshield. It's ballistics not aerodynamics at that point. The reason most birds aren't struck is because at about 100 feet away they actively dive out of the way. If a bird doesn't do that, trust me it will strike the helicopter (speaking from experience).
As for ADS-B, it apparently costs several thousand for a system (including transponder), there's no battery-powered version (you really want it sucking power from the flight battery?), and it's going to weigh more than the drone.
This is just totally made up and wrong. First of all there are battery powered ADS-B-IN systems (I use a Stratus 2 with about 8 hours of battery life while doing ADS-B plus AHRS plus providing a WiFi hotspot plus built in GPS) - an ADS-B system running for the length of a typical drone flight would use very little power. The transmitter required if you were going to implement ADS-B-OUT wouldn't need to have the reach of a full blown ADS-B system because you'd only be interested in talking to nearby aircraft, but even a full blown ADS-B OUT system would use a small amount of power because of the intermittent nature of the transmission. Lots (most?) drones implement a video downlink transmission - this uses tremendously more power than an ADS-B system would need (video encoding, and a constant bitstream requires a fair amount of battery). The only reason there aren't battery powered ADS-B-OUT systems is the FAA won't currently allow it, but there is no doubt in my mind that the power requirements of ADS-B for a 1/2 hour flight are extremely modest.
In my opinion, and given that the drone already has a functioning GPS system, adding a battery powered ADS-B IN/OUT system to a drone should be able to be done for well under $100.00. I think FAA will seriously consider an ADS-B Lite for usage by drones, ultralights, etc. in order to further reduce the cost (and frankly, to not flood the current ADS-B frequencies with drone data). There is no reason we can't have drones participate in an affordable and low overhead fashion.
I really disagree with this. We were doing a lot of construction and real estate photography work which went 100% away to drones and no pilot I know ever complained or tried to stop it. It would be silly to try - the economic benefit is impossible to argue with. One person I knew who's entire business was aerial photography saw the business changing and just decided it was time to get out of that business, rather than try to be competitive with a low cost solution like a drone. She certainly never tried to obstruct the new way of doing that work.
The pilots I know just want to share the airspace without getting killed by someone with a drone who doesn't know what they're doing. It'll take some time to figure out a good way to coexist, and all pilots want is to avoid loss of life while we're figuring it out.
For example, when it comes to drone flights, why should drone flights be encumbered by general aviation at all? Why are low-flying executive joy rides more valuable than energy efficient, low cost commercial drones?
Because General Aviation is a lot more than low-flying executives and it's been around and well regulated since the 1930s. Drones and GA can coexist. Why do you argue as if it's an either or situation?
Helicopter pilot here. I agree with you about geese vs drones. Not sure whether you meant that drones should require a full pilot license? I think maybe just a license that would take about 8 hours of study in order to pass the test. Make sure people understand the regs/airspace, and give the FAA something to take away if they abuse the privilege.
I also was posting recently in a Slashdot discussion on drones suggesting that requiring ADS-B is not such a big hardship, especially if they develop an ADS-B lite that is low power/low range. Also, I think it's reasonable for the drone to automatically land if an aircraft is close. I was a little surprised by the responses I got: basically, there should be no requirements on drones, even a small expense is too draconian. I think it's going to be an uphill battle with some people.
I also think that FAA should exempt smallish drones (say, the size/weight of a sparrow) if operated below 400 feet. Small enough that a collision with an aircraft is unlikely to cause a problem, low enough that it won't bother anyone but us helicopter pilots. Probably need to include some maximum speeds that the drone will move at (i.e. slow enough that it won't be slamming into a helicopter).
Agree with you we should fix this before someone gets hurt.
Sure, as soon as we institute a mandatory death penalty for any general aviation pilot who causes any fatalities.
Well, that was exactly the point I was trying to make - that's exactly what we have now - when there is a collision in flight the pilot most likely is going to die. Right now there is a disparity in the taking of risks, in that the pilot and his passengers are in mortal danger, and in general the drone operator is taking no risk to his person at all. This, and the low cost of entry to having a drone, mean it's possible (likely?) for people to operate drones in a reckless manner endangering airborne people. I think that whatever solution we arrive at needs to take into account that the average person who buys a drone probably can't be relied upon to understand and respect the risk they can be placing upon the other users of the airspace.
You make some good points, and I don't really disagree (except that the pilots will scream bloody murder) but I'd like to make a few comments:
1) I don't think General Aviation will be untouched, and in fact if what I hope happens (drones incorporated into the ADS-B system) there will probably be an expense to all of General Aviation to modify our ADS-B equipment. Additionally, we're already affected in that part of preflight planning for a mission now includes identifying NOTAM'd drone operation areas and marking them on the chart so that we're able to avoid those operations. As the numbers of drones increases, that workload will increase (I pointed out in another posting that currently there are 6 areas around my local airport). I would be surprised if in 10 years the airspace I work in (eastern Massachusetts) doesn't have at least 10,000 drones in the air when I go flying.
2) I agree that lots of stuff that was done in manned aircraft will be done better by drone. We've already seen this - construction progress photography work and real estate photography are pretty much 100% gone because it's now being done by drones. And you're right that some people will lose their jobs (or already have lost their jobs) and yet the pilot groups are not screaming bloody murder. We realize that there are jobs that are done better with a drone and it's pointless to argue against that.
3) What I don't want to see is tasks that can not be done by drones no longer be able to be done by aircraft (at all) because it would be too dangerous with all the drones around. For instance, if medical evacuation flights can't land at the site of an automobile crash because the area is swarmed by drones taking pictures, that would be a problem. Or the recent example of fire fighting being shut down because of the presence of drones in the area.
4) As an engineer I tend to think of technical solutions, and this one seems pretty easy to solve. We already mix it up with small drone like animals (birds). If you make a drone autonomously act like a bird (gets out of the way when an aircraft approaches) you'll be 50% of the way there. If you then allow the pilots to know of the presence of the drone through a cockpit system like ADS-B displays, I think you'd be 100% there. If the equipment is required on most/all drones the cost should be less than $100 (maybe closer to $25) and would give the added benefit of allowing drones to operate higher than 4-500 feet.
I didn't mention the windshield because I truly don't think a quadcopter would remain airborne long enough to hit it (my assertion that the main rotor would move it), unless the pilot is intentionally trying to run through it. If that's the case, no amount of regulation is going to help.
No, it doesn't work that way. The downwash of the rotor at speed is not going to move something like a drone out of the way. It won't move a small bird out of the way, nor even a child's balloon. You're probably thinking of a hovering helicopter, not a helicopter that is in flight. In the case of a helicopter in flight if the object is at the altitude of the windshield, it's pretty much going to go through the windshield and take out the crew. Any bird larger than maybe a sparrow will go through the windshield. Certainly a DJI will...
In the case of the DJI F550 Hexacopter video, it's not a question of stability. It's not a question of whether it fell or not. It's a question of an object hanging in the air where an aircraft could have hit it. He says in the comments:
My arguments for performing a high altitude flight at all were as follows: - No airplanes in this area ever fly as low as I did in the video - There is generally not much air traffic in this area at all - I checked with flightradar24.com before flying - Military, police, and emergency flights are virtually non-existant in this area - The multirotor was supposed to go straight up and straight down again
The problem with this is:
1) 99% of helicopter flying is done below 3,000 feet (so, he was definitely in the airspace we fly in). 2) "generally not much traffic" is not the same as "I know there was no traffic in the area" 3) flightradar24 (which is a relay of approach radar) only shows tagged aircraft - it's not going to show VFR/1200 traffic, and it's not going to show traffic at low altitude (where he was), i.e. it will almost never show my aircraft as most of my work is flying as untagged and often I'm below radar coverage anyway. 4) "Military, police, and emergency flights are virtually nonexistent"... But what about commercial operators operating off airway? How would he know? 5) "The multi rotor was supposed to go straight up and straight down again"... how would that prevent me from hitting it? If it happens to be there as I fly through the airspace, whether it's going up or down is immaterial. Just being there at the wrong altitude at the wrong time is a potentially fatal problem.
This also illustrates the problem with both him and you. He took these steps (like looking at flightradar24) not understanding that it wasn't showing the traffic that he was actually endangering. You think you know what you're doing, and you think you are taking precautionary steps, but in fact you don't know what you are doing and you're endangering people's lives.This is the best argument of all for the FAA to require an operator license in order to fly a drone. At least then there can be a course of training about how to avoid being a danger to air traffic, rather than people thinking they are being safe when they are not, just like your assumption that main rotor downwash or tail rotor downwash will help to avoid a collision which is totally wrong.
Apologies for the brashness, but is this lined with tinfoil, as well? Do you actually see them around Boston (directly see, not 'think you see'), or are you just playing into the media fear? You yourself even noted that the chance is low.
No, we don't see them and that's the problem!. We know they are out there: at this moment there are 6 NOTAMs for drones in the local area of my home airport. These are just the ones that people have bothered to notify the FAA about. There is no doubt in my mind that there are many many others. I can't see them. How do I avoid hitting them?
It's not a question of the people in the aircraft being more important than the drone operator. It's that their lives are at risk and his is not. I don't know where you got this idea that I don't think the people flying quads are real people. What I am saying is that you don't seem to see the difference in that you're asking aircrews and their passengers to accept additional risk to their lives and you aren't accepting the same risk. Yes, I think we need to integrate drones into the airspace. No, I don't think we're going to be willing to just trust you to yield to us. I can think of several ways this can work out:
1. Addition of ADS-B or similar system so that we can identify the presence of drones with other than visual means 2. Require drones to be visually easier to identify, i.e. make a requirement that drones can not be smaller than 30 feet in size nor operate > 30 mph. 3. Reverse ADS-B where all drones listen to ADS-B and land automatically when a manned aircraft is within 1 mile and 2,000 feet. 4. Maximum weight of 10 ounces for drones operated above 50 feet or within 1/2 mile of an aircraft landing area. 5. Spend billions of dollars to upgrade the current fleet of aircraft to make them drone-strike-proof. 6. Require NOTAM'd airspace before a drone flight. Charge $100 fee for each hour of NOTAM'd airspace to offset the cost of automated NOTAM notification for aircrews. 7. Mandatory death penalty for drone operators who cause a fatal crash due to the presence of their drone in the airspace
Any one of these solutions would probably work.
I know #7 sounds crazy and of course I'm not really serious, but it's exactly what you're asking us to do: risk our lives so that you can share the airspace with us. Why should we have to risk our lives to accommodate you if you're not willing to take on the same risk? How are you going to guarantee me that all the drone operators are serious careful operators like yourself, and that I won't have to deal with drunk/stupid/careless people putting drones in my path without regard to my safety?
The airspace below 18,000 feet is currently see and avoid airspace. Anytime an aircraft is operated in VFR conditions in that airspace, the pilots of all aircraft are required to see and avoid each other. It is not sufficient for one type of aircraft to see and avoid the other, it has to be possible for everybody to see and avoid everybody else. There are aircraft that are very difficult to see and avoid, for instance some ultralight aircraft (I'm thinking ultralight gyrocopters here). These aircraft are not much bigger than a person, and are extremely difficult to visually acquire. Frankly the reason this works is that there aren't very many of them, they don't fly that often, and typically only in good weather, and we tend to know where they fly from. Now we're talking about adding many vehicles to the airspace that are an order of magnitude smaller (and thus probably several orders of magnitude harder to see) and operating them all hours of the day. Basically, it will not be possible to see and avoid the average small drone like a DJI. I submit you need to incorporate a different method of collision avoidance because see and avoid will not work with drones.
Tail rotor pulls air in one side and pushes it out the other, so if the drone is on the wrong side it would actually get sucked into the tail rotor. Tail rotors are actually very delicate and losing even one blade can easily cause the aircraft to be uncontrollable (if, for instance, the gearbox comes off) which would almost certainly result in a fatal accident.
Main rotors are indeed much more substantial, however a main rotor strike on anything but the smallest of ultra-mini drone would most likely require replacement of the blade (generally figure $30,000-$50,000 per blade).
You also didn't mention the windshield, but you may not be aware that we don't have a windshield like a car in a helicopter. It's just a piece of cheap flimsy plastic. There's no way it will prevent a drone from coming through the windshield and striking the crew. I've started to consider wearing a helmet as protection against a drone coming through the windshield, but a helmet visor will only provide protection against the smallest of drones. If a larger drone with say a DSLR camera on board was to come through our windshield at even 50 mph (i.e. pretty darn slow flight for the helicopter) there's no doubt in my mind the pilot would be incapacitated (and therefore killed in the subsequent crash).
We don't think the strike was likely to be a bird because of a few things: the shape of the dent, the fact that bird strikes usually leave some feathers or blood behind, and the fact that the helicopter was struck sideways (i.e. the bird would have had to fly itself into the side of the helicopter, not something birds usually do). Bird strikes are usually when the helicopter flies into the bird, i.e. the strike is typically on a front facing surface of the helicopter.
As for the 3000 foot statement you make - what about that youtube with the guy flying the drone above the clouds? That was thousands of feet above the ground. I don't remember whether it was 5,000 or 10,000 but it was high.
Why would ADS-B be overkill? Drones already have up/downlink radios. They already have GPS. What more do you need for ADS-B? If it was a low power version it could probably be produced in volume for well under $100.00. A passive system (that basically would act like a bird, i.e. dive for the ground if an aircraft got too close) could probably be built for under $25.00.
The danger isn't being overstated. It might be true that right now, at this moment, there isn't a huge chance of a drone strike, but it's going to increase tremendously in the very near future. We definitely need to come up with workable solutions to sharing the airspace. To put it in perspective, the FAA requires the manufacturer of the helicopters I fly to make it extremely unlikely that a part of the helicopter will fail in a way that will cause a fatal crash. Generally by that they mean odds on the order of 1 in a billion. We need the same sorts of guarantees when we share the airspace between drones and manned aircraft. It needs to be extremely unlikely that drones will be causing fatal crashes.
I think the big disconnect here is between those of us who believe we are entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of our property and those who feel they are entitled to fly there drones wherever and whenever they choose. Both believe that any intervention will be an encroachment on their rights. As much as hate government regulation, this is one of those cases where it is necessary.
What about people who live near an airport? Are they entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of their property? Because I've visited people who live near a major US airport and the noise of a landing airplane every 30 seconds is awful. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just asking whether some people are entitled to peace and quiet and others are not?
Hopefully a combination of laws and common sense will apply to drones: basically "thou shall not annoy your neighbors with great regularity". An occasional drone flight over my yard is not going to get me upset... Having a drone hovering constantly over my yard making a racket will, as will one that is so low over my backyard that I worry about getting hit, or having it knock me off my ladder!...
I don't understand what you want. Unlicensed use of drones above 400 ft and close to airports is already prohibited. What benefit is there to imposing additional restrictions?
Furthermore, we may need to rethink priorities. Threats from drones to large commercial airliners and airports are small and fairly easy to deal with. So, the conflict mainly arises between drones and small private aircraft, and between those two, I think it's clear that drones are far more valuable to society than small private planes. So, instead of imposing draconian restrictions on drones, maybe we should strongly restrict the use of small private planes.
It's not just private planes. Or even planes. What about crop dusters? What about helicopters? Are we going to ground all of them because drones present an almost unavoidable hazard? (they're really too small to see until the collision is not preventable). There is lots of commercial work that takes place in commercial aircraft at very low altitude. As a helicopter pilot, our main hazards at low altitudes are wires and birds. The birds tend to get out of our way, and I would suggest that we need automation in the drones to do the same thing - we can share the airspace with them but there needs to be aids to help us see/avoid them, and they need to be able to autonomously get out of the way when a human occupied aircraft gets too near.
Right, but we can't have drones flying over 500' because that's where the aircraft are flying. We don't let aircraft fly at less than 500' because of the danger of crashing into something, not because of privacy considerations. Let the drones have the area between 250' and 500'. If there are privacy considerations, they apply to planes, only even moreso because planes are bigger and you can mount more advanced optics on them.
As I mentioned a few postings above, there are aircraft (helicopters) that work below 500'. And even airplanes are allowed to operate below 500' when landing or taking off (for instance, from your backyard). Merely setting an altitude limit for drones won't prevent all collisions. I think we need a more complete solution (and as an engineer I tend to think of technology based ones like including drones in the ADS-B system).
You've quoted the minimum safe altitudes regulation without any of the exceptions. Airplanes can fly lower than 500/1000 if they are taking off or landing. For instance, if you have a field in your backyard and you want to land your airplane there and then take off again, you can legally fly below those altitudes. I'm a helicopter pilot and we work jobs below 500/1000 all the time. There are requirements on us when working below those altitudes - we basically need to insure that we don't present a hazard to persons or property on the ground while doing such operations, even if we have an engine failure.
The problem for us with the drones is that they are small enough to be difficult to see, yet large enough to cause a fatal accident if we take a drone strike through the windshield or into the tail rotor, and they will be operating at the same altitudes we already have to work in for some jobs. In fact, we believe we may have already had a drone strike on one of our aircraft - the crew heard a bang and set down immediately. We found a dent in the helicopter that was very unlikely to be a bird strike... so what else flies into the side of the helicopter at 1000 feet? It may have been a drone. Luckily nobody was hurt, and the helicopter was repairable.
The national airspace is in the process of switching over from transponder equipped aircraft (radar) to ADS-B (radio+gps). Talking with one of the guys involved in the definitions of ADS-B it seems like they may have spec'd the system in a way to make it more difficult than it should be to require drones to be ADS-B equipped, but I'm pretty convinced that's the way we should go. That way drones will show up on my cockpit display and I'll have a better chance of avoiding them. Plus, I think there should basically be a requirement on the drone that "if an aircraft gets within (a certain small distance) the drone will autonomously land" so that the drone operator has a chance to land, but if they don't the drone lands by itself before it can be a collision hazard (again, think of landing the airplane in your backyard while your neighbor is flying his drone). Drones already have GPS; requiring them to have a low power implementation of ADS-B could be a relatively inexpensive solution.
It might be the case that you're not a good candidate for an EV. In my case, I was saving about $75/week commuting in the EV versus my STi. So, at that rate I was saving $3750.00 per year on fuel which easily pays for the insurance for the 2nd car. Take out the amount I'm paying on the lease for the EV and I'm still saving money at that rate. (it's not quite as good now with gas no longer costing $4/gallon) - I would have to do some calculating to see if it's still cheaper.
Another thing I haven't done yet but probably will is that in Massachusetts the insurance companies give a discount if you drive a smaller number of miles per year. The RMV claims if you drive less than 7500 miles you can get a discount of up to 50%. That will make my STi pretty inexpensive as a backup car.
It must be nice to have the spare money to keep multiple cars on the road just for different purposes.
Well, that's not really the reason I leased the car - I leased it because my daughter needed a car when my wife and I were at work, so I needed a third car no matter what. It just turned out that the EV worked really well in my situation. Going forward, as I said, it won't be that expensive for me to keep my STi as my backup car and the EV as the primary car. The STi has 200,000 miles on it and if I were to continue to use it as my primary car it probably would only last another year or two before the maintenance started to get expensive (I've already started hitting the part of the maintenance curve where things are needing to be replaced). So, by using the EV whenever I can, I extend the life of the STi and delay having to purchase another car (and still have a really fun gas car to drive when I just want to go out and have fun). Also, where my wife has a gas car (the Rav4) I think that eventually I'll retire the STi and just drive an EV, and on days when I need to do a long trip I'll plan on swapping cars with her (and for the really unusual case where we both need a long trip on the same day, I'll rent).
Renting a vehicle? You'll see I for one would need a real car several times a month, and that is a ginormous pain in the balls. Costly, and logistically really goddamn annoying to return it, get transport back from the rental place to my home, etc.
I've always assumed that I would just drive to the rental place, leave my EV there while I used the rental car for the long trip, and then switch back to my EV on the way home. I haven't had to do it yet, but I don't see the problem with that. When I first got the EV I assumed that there would be several trips per month where I would need the gas car. I was surprised after a few months when I realized there was only about 1 trip a month that I really needed the gas car, and when I look back at those, almost every one of them could have been done with the EV if it had 200 mile range.
The sensible path for anyone who doesn't have money literally dripping out of their asshole to simply pick one vehicle that covers all their common use cases. And that vehicle is going to be a normal gasoline-powered car for the foreseeable future for the majority of people.
Well, you and I probably won't see eye to eye on this. There are others like you - I talked with one guy who has a sales job, so he drives to work and then has to drive to multiple clients and can easily drive several hundred miles per day, and he doesn't know ahead of time which clients he'll be seeing. So, clearly a gas car will work much better for him. And I think that out west, where people may live 50 or 100 miles from town, they probably need a gas car. And people who tow heavy trailers will probably need a gas powered pickup truck for the near future. But in the town I live in, most families are 2 or 3 car families, so the EV + gas combo like my wife and I will probably work for almost all of them, and as EV range hits 200-300 miles my guess is that all EV will be viable for a large percentage of them.
161 available from $5,000 to $10,000 881 available from $10,000 to $15,000
I have a Honda Fit EV which is very similar in specs to the Leaf. Yesterday is a good example of how we use the car. I took my daughter to her work (about 10 miles away) and then drove to an airport I had a flight at, and then drove home. Total, about 65 miles, and I used 1/2 charge. Plugged in when I got home, had a bit to eat, and then went out again - by then the charge was up to 75% giving me a range of about 90 miles (of which I used 20).
We're a 3 car family, counting the EV. My wife has a regular Toyota Rav4, I have a Subaru STI, and we have the Honda Fit EV which my daughter tends to drive. However, whenever she doesn't need the car I drive it because of the savings in gas - the STI needs premium fuel so right now gas is running about $3.00 per gallon, but there was a point where it was almost $4.00 per gallon. Yesterday for example I used about $1.60 worth of electricity, whereas the same trip in my STI would have cost me about $15.00. It adds up quick - I figured I was saving about $75/week when I was commuting in the EV.
My daughter will start college next year so I'll be back as the primary driver of the EV. I'll keep my STI as my backup car, but before my daughter was driving the EV I was using the EV as my commuter car and only using the STI when I had a long trip to make. It turned out that I was typically only using the STI once a month because the EV would work for all the other trips I would do. In fact, it can be a problem because the disc brakes on my STI would rust enough during the month that it would sometimes be difficult to get it moving.
I think that for people living close to metropolitan areas the EVs of today work pretty well, and the EVs that are about to start coming out with 200 miles of range will work even for people pretty far from city centers. Certainly the Honda Fit EV gets me to/from Boston (45 miles) without a recharge except in the winter when the range of the EV goes down. It's pretty easy to find a convenient spot to recharge in Boston, but typically I try to plan my trips so that I can make it round trip without having to recharge. DC Fast charging would also help, and I'll be sure to have that on my next EV. With 200 miles of range Boston would be easy trip even in subzero weather.
One thing that a lot of people who haven't driven EVs don't get: They're really nice to drive. Between the instant torque and low noise they're really very nice to drive. When I want to drive fast and make a lot of noise, the Subaru STI is great, but for a lot of trips the Honda Fit EV is really really pleasant to drive and can get up to highway speed quickly for an economy car (it's faster than the gas Honda Fit). The quiet smooth power is a very nice and different experience from a gasoline car.
The Tesla model 3 will almost certainly be my next car, and I won't bother with a backup gasoline car at that point.
A good point, but there have been studies in the past that show it takes a long time for a pilot who is out of the loop to turn off the automation and hand fly the aircraft. It's probably pretty safe to assume that professional pilots are very attentive during those parts of the flight where it's likely that they may have to take over control of the aircraft from the automation. I'm not sure I trust the average "driver" to do the same. I think that as soon as people start driving in autonomous vehicles they'll be even more guilty than they are today of being distracted by performing other tasks instead of monitoring the vehicle and it's surroundings.
If we allow autonomous vehicles on the road assuming that humans can be trusted to monitor the situation and take over at a moments notice, I believe we're setting ourselves up for lots of accidents. The fact that we can assign blame to the human for not monitoring the autonomous vehicle ignores the fact that they probably would have been paying more attention to the environment if they had been driving by themselves. I think it's reasonable that we require autonomous vehicles to be able to be at least as good as an attentive driver for avoiding accident situations such as a child running out into the street or an unexpected road hazard, before we let them on the road in large numbers.
I'm sure most of you have seen this Google https://www.youtube.com/watch?... video. It seems like they've given a lot of thought to how to detect other vehicles that need special attention such as bikes and trucks. I'd be curious to hear something authoritative about what they still can't detect autonomously...
Actually gyrocopter rotors and helicopter rotors use exactly the same types of airfoils. The only difference is that a helicopter can use an engine to turn the rotor, while the gyrocopter uses the airflow through the rotor to turn it. Helicopters do exactly the same thing when we glide with the engine shut down/disconnected. There are many different designs, but generally speaking gyrocopter and helicopter rotors are identical except that helicopters may use an engine to power the rotor.
If you want to check out a couple links on my helicopter website that discuss this:
Your blowing it out of proportion. The guy didn't endanger anyone.
So if that gyrocopter developed trouble on his approach, and veered 20 degrees to the left on its way down, which would have put him into a crowd of kids and tourists, no big deal?
Granted, only a few hundred people have died in gyro accidents since they became popular.
Actually I think you're the one blowing it out of proportion. The no fly zone isn't there to protect the kids and tourists, otherwise there would be no fly zones over every major city and populated area. It's there to prevent terrorist attacks which this guy took some reasonable (but not foolproof) steps to make sure nobody thought was what was going on. Yes, if he had aircraft problems he could have endangered people, but that's the case with every airliner flying into every major city. As a helicopter pilot with a couple hours in gyrocopters, I think it's pretty safe to say that he posed a very small and manageable risk to kids and tourists on his approach path.
My only problem with the stunt (I think it was pretty funny/cool mostly) is that the government will no doubt feel they need to further tighten security around D.C. in order to prevent future embarrassment. Luckily I'm in Boston with few requirements to ever fly in that airspace - in general I would avoid it like the plague but this will probably make it even worse.
As a pilot, I would never fly an aircraft which has a remote capability to take control away from me.
Fair enough, why? What specific objective reason(s) causes you to oppose the idea completely? I'm not for or against the idea but I'd like to hear why it is a good or bad idea. I understand the issue of situational awareness by the remote operator could be an issue. What else?
Because when I'm the Pilot In Command it means exactly that: I'm in command, and I'll pay with my life for the mistakes I make. That won't be true of people on the ground. If you don't want me in command, don't put me in command in the first place. I again refer to United Airlines 232. Why did that crew save 2/3 of the passengers when subsequent attempts in the simulator by other crews failed 100% of the time? One reason was probably motivation. Their lives were on the line. As a passenger I much more likely to trust the crew who's lives on are the line, than some guy on the ground trying to second guess them.
Also, I very much doubt you can construct a safe system which allows you to take control away from the crew. How do you implement that in a way which can't take control erroneously, yet can't be disabled by a suicidal crew? I very much doubt it can be done.
To suddenly decide that we can't trust the crew despite the fantastic safety record aviation has is just ludicrous.
Agreed though that also doesn't mean we shouldn't analyze the situation thoroughly to see if anything can practically be done. I generally share your sentiment that the safety record of aviation is great but it got that way by carefully examining disasters to see if any improvements could be made. Maybe there is an opportunity of some sort here to introduce improvements.
I said that in the original posting - more screening and evaluation of crew is probably needed. And the USA rule of "never one person alone in the cockpit" should be adopted world wide. But trying to take command away from the crew while in flight will cause many more problems then it would ever solve.
As a pilot, I would never fly an aircraft which has a remote capability to take control away from me. As a passenger, I would never fly in an aircraft in which remote control could be taken away from the crew. I don't even think the "remote copilot" is a good idea. There are a lot of good reasons to fly with a crew of 2... it's not just workload and risk of incapacitation. When things get weird, it's good to have another person to bounce ideas off of. United Airlines Flight 232 is a great example of that, and there are plenty more.
This isn't the first time we've seen suicide by the crew, but it's extremely rare (I can think of maybe 5-6 in 40 years). It sucks to be the people in the back when that happens, but it also sucks when an airplane drops on your house and kills you and your family. I'm as worried about one than the other which is: not very. We can improve the situation some: better screening of crew, USA style "always two people in the cockpit" rules... To suddenly decide that we can't trust the crew despite the fantastic safety record aviation has is just ludicrous.
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I know you're only joking but.. As an EV driver I would much rather have the spaces far away from the building to minimize the chance of someone with an ICE car taking the EV spot for the convenience. When I need a charge, I really need a charge It saves them 100 feet of walking, but may be the difference of my making it home or not. Also, I would like to have laws that if an ICE car blocks an EV spot we can call a tow truck to have them removed. I must admit to having been tempted to letting all the air out the tires on an ICE car that blocked an EV spot when I was low on charge and really could have used a charge (I ended up driving 45 on the highway risking my life, but I made it home with a few percent left).
Yes, I do. And, even in the 4,000 pound helicopter I fly, a drone strike will absolutely take it out of the sky.
Did a little looking around and found one case of a 2.4 pound bird taking a helicopter out of the sky. The windshield had been intentionally replaced with a weaker one, and even then the helicopter only crashed because the bird hit the fire extinguisher, which then hit the engine controls. So don't swap out your windshield.
Yes, that was the accident I was referring to, but most helicopters don't have bird resistant windshields (neither of the two types that I fly do). Additionally, some more quick googling finds more accidents:
This one took out a pitch link on the rotor head with the same kind of bird as the PHI crash we referred to I found a paper with an interesting quote:
Most of the helicopters are damaged by small birds (more than 220 helicopters) and only a few helicopters have been impacted by large birds. As obvious in the plot, the small birds mostly cause minor damages and no helicopter has been destroyed by the small sized bird. The medium sized birds have destroyed most of the helicopters and have caused most of the substantial damages to the helicopter
Unfortunately it doesn't define the size of small, medium, or large birds, but my guess is that large would be a goose sized bird (which I found lots of fatal accidents, but those are clearly much bigger than the sized drones we're talking about. I'm guessing (but it's a guess) that when they talk about medium sized birds we're talking about birds in the relative size of drones, i.e. 2-5 pounds (but that's just a guess).
This is just totally made up and wrong. First of all there are battery powered ADS-B-IN systems (I use a Stratus 2 with about 8 hours of battery life while doing ADS-B plus AHRS plus providing a WiFi hotspot plus built in GPS) - an ADS-B system running for the length of a typical drone flight would use very little power.
The Stratus 2S, according to the web page, requires an iPad to work, is 10 oz, costs $900 on its own, and isn't a transponder anyway, so it's completely irrelevant. Their transponder with GPS is $3500, not battery powered, and looks like your average drone won't carry it.
The Stratus is designed to talk to a specific aviation iPad application: Foreflight (which we all love), so it does a lot of stuff a straight ADS-B doesn't need to do (like provide a WiFi connection to an iPad). I used it as an example to show that battery usage is low. Your comment about the transponder reminded me to mention that some people may not be aware that there are two frequencies in use for ADS-B. There is the 1090Mhz band which does use a transponder, but there is also the 978Mhz band which just uses a regular radio. I've been assuming all along that is what drones would use. Here is an example of a complete ADS-B IN/OUT system that I've seen Yes, it's $2,000, but keep in mind that this is a certified piece of gear for aircraft. Note that it weighs less than a pound (I picked it up at a trade show and it was very light despite being in a metal enclosure with heavy connectors etc.). Also note the total current draw: 0.2 amps @ 12 VDC. To put the cost into perspective, we once took apart an aviation clock from one of our helicopters (that costs $300.00) and my EE buddy said it was less than a dollar in components. You can imagine what's inside this FreeFlight ADS-B: a small microprocessor and a transmitter. If the Futaba type companies can't produce that for under $100 they aren't even trying...
Exactly. And there's no reason to expe
1) I've been flying helicopters 30 years and I think I know what will and will not take down a helicopter. Ask PHI and the families of the 9 people who were killed when a 2.4 pound bird went through the windshield. You think a 2.4 bird is going to cause less damage than a 2.5 pound drone? And... are you willing to limit drones to a maximum weight of 2.5 pounds or would you like to be able to fly larger ones in the airspace?
By the same token, I expect private and commercial aircraft to stay the *F%$* above 500 feet unless taking off or landing.
2) You might expect aircraft to stay above 500 feet, but you have no regulatory basis for that belief. The current situation is that we are allowed to operate below 500 feet when we take certain precautions, even when not taking off or landing. You might not like it, but until you get the FAA to change those regulations (which they are very unlikely to do) the fact is that even at 100 feet you may be sharing the airspace with us.
Buy a drone, fly it, *learn how it works*, then you can contribute seriously to this discussion.
3) So, I have to buy a drone before I can contribute to the discussion? Do you have to get a pilot license before you get to contribute to the discussion?
Your attitude is exactly what is going to polarize people against drone usage. I was talking with our FAA Tower chief last night and he mentioned that MedFlight has been complaining about so many drones around the hospitals and around scene calls that the Massachusetts State Police air wing now is on alert to chase down drone operators who are not following regulations. They've specifically asked us to keep an eye out for drones and report them to the police, much like has had to happen with laser pointer attacks.
If you'd like access to the airspace, I suggest you tone down your attitude and try cooperating with the people who are on the side of drone usage, otherwise you could easily see people throwing up roadblocks. Sure, drones are going to eventually happen. Would you rather have it happen in the next 2-3 years or would you like to polarize the aviation community and have it delay drones for 10 years? Right now I'm still on the side of sharing the airspace with drones if the safety concerns can be met, but after the last couple of discussions on Slashdot I'm starting to wonder whether it's worth it.
You know how much damage my 2 lb "drone" will do if it hits your thousand pound helicopter?
Yes, I do. And, even in the 4,000 pound helicopter I fly, a drone strike will absolutely take it out of the sky. The rotor wash will not move the drone out of the way. This is the second time I've heard this (maybe you're the same person as last time). Your assumption is faulty on a number of levels. A helicopter produces thrust by either moving a smallish amount of air very fast (in a hover) or a large amount of air relatively slowly (when we are in motion). If I flew a few feet over your head at 50 knots you would only feel a very gentle breeze, because in this case the helicopter is moving a huge volume of air down just a little bit. It's certainly not enough to move an object, whether that be a bird, drone, or such.
Secondly, there's a time issue: With a 30-40 foot rotor diameter, that means 15-20 feet of it is in front of the rotor mast. If the helicopter is moving at even 40 mph (i.e. slow flight) or even if the helicopter is stationary and the drone is moving at 40 mph that's 58 feet per second (40*5280/3600), so the time the object is under the rotor disk before it reaches the mast is 1/4 of a second. Even if there was a lot of downwash (which there isn't) it wouldn't move an object significantly in 1/4 of a second. It's actually a lot worse than that, because the windshield is 10 feet in front of the mast - the distance from rotor tip to windshield is actually closer to 10 feet - less in some ships like a MDHC-500 so, maybe 1/8th of a second. It doesn't matter, the basic idea is that even at slow speeds like 40 mph, that drone (or bird) is going to go through the windshield. It's ballistics not aerodynamics at that point. The reason most birds aren't struck is because at about 100 feet away they actively dive out of the way. If a bird doesn't do that, trust me it will strike the helicopter (speaking from experience).
As for ADS-B, it apparently costs several thousand for a system (including transponder), there's no battery-powered version (you really want it sucking power from the flight battery?), and it's going to weigh more than the drone.
This is just totally made up and wrong. First of all there are battery powered ADS-B-IN systems (I use a Stratus 2 with about 8 hours of battery life while doing ADS-B plus AHRS plus providing a WiFi hotspot plus built in GPS) - an ADS-B system running for the length of a typical drone flight would use very little power. The transmitter required if you were going to implement ADS-B-OUT wouldn't need to have the reach of a full blown ADS-B system because you'd only be interested in talking to nearby aircraft, but even a full blown ADS-B OUT system would use a small amount of power because of the intermittent nature of the transmission. Lots (most?) drones implement a video downlink transmission - this uses tremendously more power than an ADS-B system would need (video encoding, and a constant bitstream requires a fair amount of battery). The only reason there aren't battery powered ADS-B-OUT systems is the FAA won't currently allow it, but there is no doubt in my mind that the power requirements of ADS-B for a 1/2 hour flight are extremely modest.
In my opinion, and given that the drone already has a functioning GPS system, adding a battery powered ADS-B IN/OUT system to a drone should be able to be done for well under $100.00. I think FAA will seriously consider an ADS-B Lite for usage by drones, ultralights, etc. in order to further reduce the cost (and frankly, to not flood the current ADS-B frequencies with drone data). There is no reason we can't have drones participate in an affordable and low overhead fashion.
I really disagree with this. We were doing a lot of construction and real estate photography work which went 100% away to drones and no pilot I know ever complained or tried to stop it. It would be silly to try - the economic benefit is impossible to argue with. One person I knew who's entire business was aerial photography saw the business changing and just decided it was time to get out of that business, rather than try to be competitive with a low cost solution like a drone. She certainly never tried to obstruct the new way of doing that work.
The pilots I know just want to share the airspace without getting killed by someone with a drone who doesn't know what they're doing. It'll take some time to figure out a good way to coexist, and all pilots want is to avoid loss of life while we're figuring it out.
For example, when it comes to drone flights, why should drone flights be encumbered by general aviation at all? Why are low-flying executive joy rides more valuable than energy efficient, low cost commercial drones?
Because General Aviation is a lot more than low-flying executives and it's been around and well regulated since the 1930s. Drones and GA can coexist. Why do you argue as if it's an either or situation?
Helicopter pilot here. I agree with you about geese vs drones. Not sure whether you meant that drones should require a full pilot license? I think maybe just a license that would take about 8 hours of study in order to pass the test. Make sure people understand the regs/airspace, and give the FAA something to take away if they abuse the privilege.
I also was posting recently in a Slashdot discussion on drones suggesting that requiring ADS-B is not such a big hardship, especially if they develop an ADS-B lite that is low power/low range. Also, I think it's reasonable for the drone to automatically land if an aircraft is close. I was a little surprised by the responses I got: basically, there should be no requirements on drones, even a small expense is too draconian. I think it's going to be an uphill battle with some people.
I also think that FAA should exempt smallish drones (say, the size/weight of a sparrow) if operated below 400 feet. Small enough that a collision with an aircraft is unlikely to cause a problem, low enough that it won't bother anyone but us helicopter pilots. Probably need to include some maximum speeds that the drone will move at (i.e. slow enough that it won't be slamming into a helicopter).
Agree with you we should fix this before someone gets hurt.
Sure, as soon as we institute a mandatory death penalty for any general aviation pilot who causes any fatalities.
Well, that was exactly the point I was trying to make - that's exactly what we have now - when there is a collision in flight the pilot most likely is going to die. Right now there is a disparity in the taking of risks, in that the pilot and his passengers are in mortal danger, and in general the drone operator is taking no risk to his person at all. This, and the low cost of entry to having a drone, mean it's possible (likely?) for people to operate drones in a reckless manner endangering airborne people. I think that whatever solution we arrive at needs to take into account that the average person who buys a drone probably can't be relied upon to understand and respect the risk they can be placing upon the other users of the airspace.
You make some good points, and I don't really disagree (except that the pilots will scream bloody murder) but I'd like to make a few comments:
1) I don't think General Aviation will be untouched, and in fact if what I hope happens (drones incorporated into the ADS-B system) there will probably be an expense to all of General Aviation to modify our ADS-B equipment. Additionally, we're already affected in that part of preflight planning for a mission now includes identifying NOTAM'd drone operation areas and marking them on the chart so that we're able to avoid those operations. As the numbers of drones increases, that workload will increase (I pointed out in another posting that currently there are 6 areas around my local airport). I would be surprised if in 10 years the airspace I work in (eastern Massachusetts) doesn't have at least 10,000 drones in the air when I go flying.
2) I agree that lots of stuff that was done in manned aircraft will be done better by drone. We've already seen this - construction progress photography work and real estate photography are pretty much 100% gone because it's now being done by drones. And you're right that some people will lose their jobs (or already have lost their jobs) and yet the pilot groups are not screaming bloody murder. We realize that there are jobs that are done better with a drone and it's pointless to argue against that.
3) What I don't want to see is tasks that can not be done by drones no longer be able to be done by aircraft (at all) because it would be too dangerous with all the drones around. For instance, if medical evacuation flights can't land at the site of an automobile crash because the area is swarmed by drones taking pictures, that would be a problem. Or the recent example of fire fighting being shut down because of the presence of drones in the area.
4) As an engineer I tend to think of technical solutions, and this one seems pretty easy to solve. We already mix it up with small drone like animals (birds). If you make a drone autonomously act like a bird (gets out of the way when an aircraft approaches) you'll be 50% of the way there. If you then allow the pilots to know of the presence of the drone through a cockpit system like ADS-B displays, I think you'd be 100% there. If the equipment is required on most/all drones the cost should be less than $100 (maybe closer to $25) and would give the added benefit of allowing drones to operate higher than 4-500 feet.
I didn't mention the windshield because I truly don't think a quadcopter would remain airborne long enough to hit it (my assertion that the main rotor would move it), unless the pilot is intentionally trying to run through it. If that's the case, no amount of regulation is going to help.
No, it doesn't work that way. The downwash of the rotor at speed is not going to move something like a drone out of the way. It won't move a small bird out of the way, nor even a child's balloon. You're probably thinking of a hovering helicopter, not a helicopter that is in flight. In the case of a helicopter in flight if the object is at the altitude of the windshield, it's pretty much going to go through the windshield and take out the crew. Any bird larger than maybe a sparrow will go through the windshield. Certainly a DJI will...
In the case of the DJI F550 Hexacopter video, it's not a question of stability. It's not a question of whether it fell or not. It's a question of an object hanging in the air where an aircraft could have hit it. He says in the comments:
My arguments for performing a high altitude flight at all were as follows:
- No airplanes in this area ever fly as low as I did in the video
- There is generally not much air traffic in this area at all
- I checked with flightradar24.com before flying
- Military, police, and emergency flights are virtually non-existant in this area
- The multirotor was supposed to go straight up and straight down again
The problem with this is:
1) 99% of helicopter flying is done below 3,000 feet (so, he was definitely in the airspace we fly in).
2) "generally not much traffic" is not the same as "I know there was no traffic in the area"
3) flightradar24 (which is a relay of approach radar) only shows tagged aircraft - it's not going to show VFR/1200 traffic, and it's not going to show traffic at low altitude (where he was), i.e. it will almost never show my aircraft as most of my work is flying as untagged and often I'm below radar coverage anyway.
4) "Military, police, and emergency flights are virtually nonexistent"... But what about commercial operators operating off airway? How would he know?
5) "The multi rotor was supposed to go straight up and straight down again"... how would that prevent me from hitting it? If it happens to be there as I fly through the airspace, whether it's going up or down is immaterial. Just being there at the wrong altitude at the wrong time is a potentially fatal problem.
This also illustrates the problem with both him and you. He took these steps (like looking at flightradar24) not understanding that it wasn't showing the traffic that he was actually endangering. You think you know what you're doing, and you think you are taking precautionary steps, but in fact you don't know what you are doing and you're endangering people's lives .This is the best argument of all for the FAA to require an operator license in order to fly a drone. At least then there can be a course of training about how to avoid being a danger to air traffic, rather than people thinking they are being safe when they are not, just like your assumption that main rotor downwash or tail rotor downwash will help to avoid a collision which is totally wrong.
Apologies for the brashness, but is this lined with tinfoil, as well? Do you actually see them around Boston (directly see, not 'think you see'), or are you just playing into the media fear? You yourself even noted that the chance is low.
No, we don't see them and that's the problem!. We know they are out there: at this moment there are 6 NOTAMs for drones in the local area of my home airport. These are just the ones that people have bothered to notify the FAA about. There is no doubt in my mind that there are many many others. I can't see them. How do I avoid hitting them?
Your last few se
It's not a question of the people in the aircraft being more important than the drone operator. It's that their lives are at risk and his is not. I don't know where you got this idea that I don't think the people flying quads are real people. What I am saying is that you don't seem to see the difference in that you're asking aircrews and their passengers to accept additional risk to their lives and you aren't accepting the same risk. Yes, I think we need to integrate drones into the airspace. No, I don't think we're going to be willing to just trust you to yield to us. I can think of several ways this can work out:
1. Addition of ADS-B or similar system so that we can identify the presence of drones with other than visual means
2. Require drones to be visually easier to identify, i.e. make a requirement that drones can not be smaller than 30 feet in size nor operate > 30 mph.
3. Reverse ADS-B where all drones listen to ADS-B and land automatically when a manned aircraft is within 1 mile and 2,000 feet.
4. Maximum weight of 10 ounces for drones operated above 50 feet or within 1/2 mile of an aircraft landing area.
5. Spend billions of dollars to upgrade the current fleet of aircraft to make them drone-strike-proof.
6. Require NOTAM'd airspace before a drone flight. Charge $100 fee for each hour of NOTAM'd airspace to offset the cost of automated NOTAM notification for aircrews.
7. Mandatory death penalty for drone operators who cause a fatal crash due to the presence of their drone in the airspace
Any one of these solutions would probably work.
I know #7 sounds crazy and of course I'm not really serious, but it's exactly what you're asking us to do: risk our lives so that you can share the airspace with us. Why should we have to risk our lives to accommodate you if you're not willing to take on the same risk? How are you going to guarantee me that all the drone operators are serious careful operators like yourself, and that I won't have to deal with drunk/stupid/careless people putting drones in my path without regard to my safety?
The airspace below 18,000 feet is currently see and avoid airspace. Anytime an aircraft is operated in VFR conditions in that airspace, the pilots of all aircraft are required to see and avoid each other. It is not sufficient for one type of aircraft to see and avoid the other, it has to be possible for everybody to see and avoid everybody else. There are aircraft that are very difficult to see and avoid, for instance some ultralight aircraft (I'm thinking ultralight gyrocopters here). These aircraft are not much bigger than a person, and are extremely difficult to visually acquire. Frankly the reason this works is that there aren't very many of them, they don't fly that often, and typically only in good weather, and we tend to know where they fly from. Now we're talking about adding many vehicles to the airspace that are an order of magnitude smaller (and thus probably several orders of magnitude harder to see) and operating them all hours of the day. Basically, it will not be possible to see and avoid the average small drone like a DJI. I submit you need to incorporate a different method of collision avoidance because see and avoid will not work with drones.
Tail rotor pulls air in one side and pushes it out the other, so if the drone is on the wrong side it would actually get sucked into the tail rotor. Tail rotors are actually very delicate and losing even one blade can easily cause the aircraft to be uncontrollable (if, for instance, the gearbox comes off) which would almost certainly result in a fatal accident.
Main rotors are indeed much more substantial, however a main rotor strike on anything but the smallest of ultra-mini drone would most likely require replacement of the blade (generally figure $30,000-$50,000 per blade).
You also didn't mention the windshield, but you may not be aware that we don't have a windshield like a car in a helicopter. It's just a piece of cheap flimsy plastic. There's no way it will prevent a drone from coming through the windshield and striking the crew. I've started to consider wearing a helmet as protection against a drone coming through the windshield, but a helmet visor will only provide protection against the smallest of drones. If a larger drone with say a DSLR camera on board was to come through our windshield at even 50 mph (i.e. pretty darn slow flight for the helicopter) there's no doubt in my mind the pilot would be incapacitated (and therefore killed in the subsequent crash).
We don't think the strike was likely to be a bird because of a few things: the shape of the dent, the fact that bird strikes usually leave some feathers or blood behind, and the fact that the helicopter was struck sideways (i.e. the bird would have had to fly itself into the side of the helicopter, not something birds usually do). Bird strikes are usually when the helicopter flies into the bird, i.e. the strike is typically on a front facing surface of the helicopter.
As for the 3000 foot statement you make - what about that youtube with the guy flying the drone above the clouds? That was thousands of feet above the ground. I don't remember whether it was 5,000 or 10,000 but it was high.
Why would ADS-B be overkill? Drones already have up/downlink radios. They already have GPS. What more do you need for ADS-B? If it was a low power version it could probably be produced in volume for well under $100.00. A passive system (that basically would act like a bird, i.e. dive for the ground if an aircraft got too close) could probably be built for under $25.00.
The danger isn't being overstated. It might be true that right now, at this moment, there isn't a huge chance of a drone strike, but it's going to increase tremendously in the very near future. We definitely need to come up with workable solutions to sharing the airspace. To put it in perspective, the FAA requires the manufacturer of the helicopters I fly to make it extremely unlikely that a part of the helicopter will fail in a way that will cause a fatal crash. Generally by that they mean odds on the order of 1 in a billion. We need the same sorts of guarantees when we share the airspace between drones and manned aircraft. It needs to be extremely unlikely that drones will be causing fatal crashes.
I think the big disconnect here is between those of us who believe we are entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of our property and those who feel they are entitled to fly there drones wherever and whenever they choose. Both believe that any intervention will be an encroachment on their rights. As much as hate government regulation, this is one of those cases where it is necessary.
What about people who live near an airport? Are they entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of their property? Because I've visited people who live near a major US airport and the noise of a landing airplane every 30 seconds is awful. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just asking whether some people are entitled to peace and quiet and others are not?
Hopefully a combination of laws and common sense will apply to drones: basically "thou shall not annoy your neighbors with great regularity". An occasional drone flight over my yard is not going to get me upset... Having a drone hovering constantly over my yard making a racket will, as will one that is so low over my backyard that I worry about getting hit, or having it knock me off my ladder!...
I don't understand what you want. Unlicensed use of drones above 400 ft and close to airports is already prohibited. What benefit is there to imposing additional restrictions?
Furthermore, we may need to rethink priorities. Threats from drones to large commercial airliners and airports are small and fairly easy to deal with. So, the conflict mainly arises between drones and small private aircraft, and between those two, I think it's clear that drones are far more valuable to society than small private planes. So, instead of imposing draconian restrictions on drones, maybe we should strongly restrict the use of small private planes.
It's not just private planes. Or even planes. What about crop dusters? What about helicopters? Are we going to ground all of them because drones present an almost unavoidable hazard? (they're really too small to see until the collision is not preventable). There is lots of commercial work that takes place in commercial aircraft at very low altitude. As a helicopter pilot, our main hazards at low altitudes are wires and birds. The birds tend to get out of our way, and I would suggest that we need automation in the drones to do the same thing - we can share the airspace with them but there needs to be aids to help us see/avoid them, and they need to be able to autonomously get out of the way when a human occupied aircraft gets too near.
Right, but we can't have drones flying over 500' because that's where the aircraft are flying. We don't let aircraft fly at less than 500' because of the danger of crashing into something, not because of privacy considerations. Let the drones have the area between 250' and 500'. If there are privacy considerations, they apply to planes, only even moreso because planes are bigger and you can mount more advanced optics on them.
As I mentioned a few postings above, there are aircraft (helicopters) that work below 500'. And even airplanes are allowed to operate below 500' when landing or taking off (for instance, from your backyard). Merely setting an altitude limit for drones won't prevent all collisions. I think we need a more complete solution (and as an engineer I tend to think of technology based ones like including drones in the ADS-B system).
You've quoted the minimum safe altitudes regulation without any of the exceptions. Airplanes can fly lower than 500/1000 if they are taking off or landing. For instance, if you have a field in your backyard and you want to land your airplane there and then take off again, you can legally fly below those altitudes. I'm a helicopter pilot and we work jobs below 500/1000 all the time. There are requirements on us when working below those altitudes - we basically need to insure that we don't present a hazard to persons or property on the ground while doing such operations, even if we have an engine failure.
The problem for us with the drones is that they are small enough to be difficult to see, yet large enough to cause a fatal accident if we take a drone strike through the windshield or into the tail rotor, and they will be operating at the same altitudes we already have to work in for some jobs. In fact, we believe we may have already had a drone strike on one of our aircraft - the crew heard a bang and set down immediately. We found a dent in the helicopter that was very unlikely to be a bird strike... so what else flies into the side of the helicopter at 1000 feet? It may have been a drone. Luckily nobody was hurt, and the helicopter was repairable.
The national airspace is in the process of switching over from transponder equipped aircraft (radar) to ADS-B (radio+gps). Talking with one of the guys involved in the definitions of ADS-B it seems like they may have spec'd the system in a way to make it more difficult than it should be to require drones to be ADS-B equipped, but I'm pretty convinced that's the way we should go. That way drones will show up on my cockpit display and I'll have a better chance of avoiding them. Plus, I think there should basically be a requirement on the drone that "if an aircraft gets within (a certain small distance) the drone will autonomously land" so that the drone operator has a chance to land, but if they don't the drone lands by itself before it can be a collision hazard (again, think of landing the airplane in your backyard while your neighbor is flying his drone). Drones already have GPS; requiring them to have a low power implementation of ADS-B could be a relatively inexpensive solution.
.... Are you arguing that electric cars are more reliable in a power outrage?
They might be if you have a solar panel installation at your home! :-)
It might be the case that you're not a good candidate for an EV. In my case, I was saving about $75/week commuting in the EV versus my STi. So, at that rate I was saving $3750.00 per year on fuel which easily pays for the insurance for the 2nd car. Take out the amount I'm paying on the lease for the EV and I'm still saving money at that rate. (it's not quite as good now with gas no longer costing $4/gallon) - I would have to do some calculating to see if it's still cheaper.
Another thing I haven't done yet but probably will is that in Massachusetts the insurance companies give a discount if you drive a smaller number of miles per year. The RMV claims if you drive less than 7500 miles you can get a discount of up to 50%. That will make my STi pretty inexpensive as a backup car.
It must be nice to have the spare money to keep multiple cars on the road just for different purposes.
Well, that's not really the reason I leased the car - I leased it because my daughter needed a car when my wife and I were at work, so I needed a third car no matter what. It just turned out that the EV worked really well in my situation. Going forward, as I said, it won't be that expensive for me to keep my STi as my backup car and the EV as the primary car. The STi has 200,000 miles on it and if I were to continue to use it as my primary car it probably would only last another year or two before the maintenance started to get expensive (I've already started hitting the part of the maintenance curve where things are needing to be replaced). So, by using the EV whenever I can, I extend the life of the STi and delay having to purchase another car (and still have a really fun gas car to drive when I just want to go out and have fun). Also, where my wife has a gas car (the Rav4) I think that eventually I'll retire the STi and just drive an EV, and on days when I need to do a long trip I'll plan on swapping cars with her (and for the really unusual case where we both need a long trip on the same day, I'll rent).
Renting a vehicle? You'll see I for one would need a real car several times a month, and that is a ginormous pain in the balls. Costly, and logistically really goddamn annoying to return it, get transport back from the rental place to my home, etc.
I've always assumed that I would just drive to the rental place, leave my EV there while I used the rental car for the long trip, and then switch back to my EV on the way home. I haven't had to do it yet, but I don't see the problem with that. When I first got the EV I assumed that there would be several trips per month where I would need the gas car. I was surprised after a few months when I realized there was only about 1 trip a month that I really needed the gas car, and when I look back at those, almost every one of them could have been done with the EV if it had 200 mile range.
The sensible path for anyone who doesn't have money literally dripping out of their asshole to simply pick one vehicle that covers all their common use cases. And that vehicle is going to be a normal gasoline-powered car for the foreseeable future for the majority of people.
Well, you and I probably won't see eye to eye on this. There are others like you - I talked with one guy who has a sales job, so he drives to work and then has to drive to multiple clients and can easily drive several hundred miles per day, and he doesn't know ahead of time which clients he'll be seeing. So, clearly a gas car will work much better for him. And I think that out west, where people may live 50 or 100 miles from town, they probably need a gas car. And people who tow heavy trailers will probably need a gas powered pickup truck for the near future. But in the town I live in, most families are 2 or 3 car families, so the EV + gas combo like my wife and I will probably work for almost all of them, and as EV range hits 200-300 miles my guess is that all EV will be viable for a large percentage of them.
As I me
So, a quick check of cars.com shows used Leafs:
161 available from $5,000 to $10,000
881 available from $10,000 to $15,000
I have a Honda Fit EV which is very similar in specs to the Leaf. Yesterday is a good example of how we use the car. I took my daughter to her work (about 10 miles away) and then drove to an airport I had a flight at, and then drove home. Total, about 65 miles, and I used 1/2 charge. Plugged in when I got home, had a bit to eat, and then went out again - by then the charge was up to 75% giving me a range of about 90 miles (of which I used 20).
We're a 3 car family, counting the EV. My wife has a regular Toyota Rav4, I have a Subaru STI, and we have the Honda Fit EV which my daughter tends to drive. However, whenever she doesn't need the car I drive it because of the savings in gas - the STI needs premium fuel so right now gas is running about $3.00 per gallon, but there was a point where it was almost $4.00 per gallon. Yesterday for example I used about $1.60 worth of electricity, whereas the same trip in my STI would have cost me about $15.00. It adds up quick - I figured I was saving about $75/week when I was commuting in the EV.
My daughter will start college next year so I'll be back as the primary driver of the EV. I'll keep my STI as my backup car, but before my daughter was driving the EV I was using the EV as my commuter car and only using the STI when I had a long trip to make. It turned out that I was typically only using the STI once a month because the EV would work for all the other trips I would do. In fact, it can be a problem because the disc brakes on my STI would rust enough during the month that it would sometimes be difficult to get it moving.
I think that for people living close to metropolitan areas the EVs of today work pretty well, and the EVs that are about to start coming out with 200 miles of range will work even for people pretty far from city centers. Certainly the Honda Fit EV gets me to/from Boston (45 miles) without a recharge except in the winter when the range of the EV goes down. It's pretty easy to find a convenient spot to recharge in Boston, but typically I try to plan my trips so that I can make it round trip without having to recharge. DC Fast charging would also help, and I'll be sure to have that on my next EV. With 200 miles of range Boston would be easy trip even in subzero weather.
One thing that a lot of people who haven't driven EVs don't get: They're really nice to drive. Between the instant torque and low noise they're really very nice to drive. When I want to drive fast and make a lot of noise, the Subaru STI is great, but for a lot of trips the Honda Fit EV is really really pleasant to drive and can get up to highway speed quickly for an economy car (it's faster than the gas Honda Fit). The quiet smooth power is a very nice and different experience from a gasoline car.
The Tesla model 3 will almost certainly be my next car, and I won't bother with a backup gasoline car at that point.
A good point, but there have been studies in the past that show it takes a long time for a pilot who is out of the loop to turn off the automation and hand fly the aircraft. It's probably pretty safe to assume that professional pilots are very attentive during those parts of the flight where it's likely that they may have to take over control of the aircraft from the automation. I'm not sure I trust the average "driver" to do the same. I think that as soon as people start driving in autonomous vehicles they'll be even more guilty than they are today of being distracted by performing other tasks instead of monitoring the vehicle and it's surroundings.
If we allow autonomous vehicles on the road assuming that humans can be trusted to monitor the situation and take over at a moments notice, I believe we're setting ourselves up for lots of accidents. The fact that we can assign blame to the human for not monitoring the autonomous vehicle ignores the fact that they probably would have been paying more attention to the environment if they had been driving by themselves. I think it's reasonable that we require autonomous vehicles to be able to be at least as good as an attentive driver for avoiding accident situations such as a child running out into the street or an unexpected road hazard, before we let them on the road in large numbers.
I'm sure most of you have seen this Google https://www.youtube.com/watch?... video. It seems like they've given a lot of thought to how to detect other vehicles that need special attention such as bikes and trucks. I'd be curious to hear something authoritative about what they still can't detect autonomously...
Actually gyrocopter rotors and helicopter rotors use exactly the same types of airfoils. The only difference is that a helicopter can use an engine to turn the rotor, while the gyrocopter uses the airflow through the rotor to turn it. Helicopters do exactly the same thing when we glide with the engine shut down/disconnected. There are many different designs, but generally speaking gyrocopter and helicopter rotors are identical except that helicopters may use an engine to power the rotor.
If you want to check out a couple links on my helicopter website that discuss this:
http://www.copters.com/helo_ae...
http://www.copters.com/aero/au...
Hear hear.
Your blowing it out of proportion. The guy didn't endanger anyone.
So if that gyrocopter developed trouble on his approach, and veered 20 degrees to the left on its way down, which would have put him into a crowd of kids and tourists, no big deal?
Granted, only a few hundred people have died in gyro accidents since they became popular.
Actually I think you're the one blowing it out of proportion. The no fly zone isn't there to protect the kids and tourists, otherwise there would be no fly zones over every major city and populated area. It's there to prevent terrorist attacks which this guy took some reasonable (but not foolproof) steps to make sure nobody thought was what was going on. Yes, if he had aircraft problems he could have endangered people, but that's the case with every airliner flying into every major city. As a helicopter pilot with a couple hours in gyrocopters, I think it's pretty safe to say that he posed a very small and manageable risk to kids and tourists on his approach path.
My only problem with the stunt (I think it was pretty funny/cool mostly) is that the government will no doubt feel they need to further tighten security around D.C. in order to prevent future embarrassment. Luckily I'm in Boston with few requirements to ever fly in that airspace - in general I would avoid it like the plague but this will probably make it even worse.
As a pilot, I would never fly an aircraft which has a remote capability to take control away from me.
Fair enough, why? What specific objective reason(s) causes you to oppose the idea completely? I'm not for or against the idea but I'd like to hear why it is a good or bad idea. I understand the issue of situational awareness by the remote operator could be an issue. What else?
Because when I'm the Pilot In Command it means exactly that: I'm in command, and I'll pay with my life for the mistakes I make. That won't be true of people on the ground. If you don't want me in command, don't put me in command in the first place. I again refer to United Airlines 232. Why did that crew save 2/3 of the passengers when subsequent attempts in the simulator by other crews failed 100% of the time? One reason was probably motivation. Their lives were on the line. As a passenger I much more likely to trust the crew who's lives on are the line, than some guy on the ground trying to second guess them.
Also, I very much doubt you can construct a safe system which allows you to take control away from the crew. How do you implement that in a way which can't take control erroneously, yet can't be disabled by a suicidal crew? I very much doubt it can be done.
To suddenly decide that we can't trust the crew despite the fantastic safety record aviation has is just ludicrous.
Agreed though that also doesn't mean we shouldn't analyze the situation thoroughly to see if anything can practically be done. I generally share your sentiment that the safety record of aviation is great but it got that way by carefully examining disasters to see if any improvements could be made. Maybe there is an opportunity of some sort here to introduce improvements.
I said that in the original posting - more screening and evaluation of crew is probably needed. And the USA rule of "never one person alone in the cockpit" should be adopted world wide. But trying to take command away from the crew while in flight will cause many more problems then it would ever solve.
As a pilot, I would never fly an aircraft which has a remote capability to take control away from me. As a passenger, I would never fly in an aircraft in which remote control could be taken away from the crew. I don't even think the "remote copilot" is a good idea. There are a lot of good reasons to fly with a crew of 2... it's not just workload and risk of incapacitation. When things get weird, it's good to have another person to bounce ideas off of. United Airlines Flight 232 is a great example of that, and there are plenty more.
This isn't the first time we've seen suicide by the crew, but it's extremely rare (I can think of maybe 5-6 in 40 years). It sucks to be the people in the back when that happens, but it also sucks when an airplane drops on your house and kills you and your family. I'm as worried about one than the other which is: not very. We can improve the situation some: better screening of crew, USA style "always two people in the cockpit" rules... To suddenly decide that we can't trust the crew despite the fantastic safety record aviation has is just ludicrous.