You still have oxygen in your lungs at atmospheric pressure, so no, it's not a good simulation. Take a look at a Time of Useful Consciousness chart. At 35,000 feet (FL350), you have 30-60 seconds of useful consciousness; after that, your brain has become so oxygen deprived that it is essentially incapable of problem solving, even if you aren't quite unconscious yet. At FL500, that drops to 6 - 9 seconds. I don't care how hard you exhale at sea level, you aren't going to slip into unconsciousness after 6 - 9 seconds by holding your breath. Therefore, your "simulation" is flawed.
...might even be simple to pull after holding my breath for 60 seconds (and if you can't hold your breath for 60 seconds STFU)...
If you're a GA pilot, look into the high altitude hypoxia training that the FAA/USAF offers pilots (used to offer? I don't know if it's still available). Holding your breath really isn't a suitable way to simulate losing your oxygen supply at altitude.
You are giving him too much credit. Holding your breath at sea level is not at all like losing your oxygen supply at altitude. The partial pressure of oxygen in your lungs at altitude is much, much lower than at sea level, so you don't have the oxygen reserves in your lungs to continue supplying your brain and vital organs like you do when you hold your breath at sea level. It's more like filling your lungs with the exhaust from your car, THEN hold your breath for a minute (kids, don't try this at home!).
Let me take a wild guess...You haven't spent much time at high altitude, have you?
I used to scoff at the charts that show what the FAA euphemistically calls "useful time of consciousness" at varying altitudes. I mean, c'mon...if I try, I can hold my breath for 2 minutes or more, and I'm not nearly in as good shape as I should be. How can a pilot at high altitude have a useful time of consciousness of 30 seconds or less? It's trivial to hold my breath that long, even if I don't prepare for it beforehand.
Then one day, I got a revelation: It's trivial for me to hold my breath for 30-60 seconds and possible to break 120 seconds because the air in my lungs is under full atmospheric pressure. However, if I am at 25,000 feet of altitude, and my cockpit explosively decompresses (or, as in the case of a fighter pilot, if I am at lower atmospheric pressure and my pure oxygen supply is suddenly removed), I no longer have near as much oxygen in my lungs, and consequently, my body will go hypoxic much more quickly. You might think losing his oxygen supply for a full minute would be "like...working out hard", but you'd be wrong. I haven't read TFA, but if he was above about 15,000 feet MSL (and especially if he was above 25,000 MSL) it was much, much worse than that. His muscles might have been functional without oxygen, but I guarantee his brain functions were degrading rapidly.
Side point....If you have zero visibility, you need a gyroscope to tell up from down because of centripetal forces, your other senses can't help you whether you're ignoring them or not.
I don't know if you have any piloting experience or not, so I don't know if you are speaking from experience or not. However, I have been a pilot for a little over twenty years (albeit in much more mundane aircraft than F-16s or F-22s). In point of fact, not only can your other senses not help you, they will actively lead you astray. The stories about pilots flying by the seat of their pants are pure mythology.
If you ever get a chance to try flying on instruments, give it a try*. You wouldn't believe how quickly your sense of "up" and "down" get mixed up...or how difficult it is to ignore your kinesthetic senses and trust your instruments. There's a reason your average non-instrument rated pilot has a life expectancy of about 2-3 minutes, tops, when encountering instrument conditions.
*Alternatively, if you have a bar stool that can spin in circles, you can replicate the experience at home. Sit in the bar stool, close your eyes, and lean forward so that your forehead is touching your knees. Have a friend spin you a couple of times, then rapidly sit up. Oh, yeah...you might want some padding on the floor, because I guarantee you won't be able to stay seated:)
Thermal imaging is probably a bit beyond your average hobbyist's means, yes. However, in the optical spectrum, a GoPro Hero HD provides much better resolution and clarity than anything small enough to fly on a drone that was available back in the '80s. As far as pulling audio through a wall...I've got a fairly low end studio condenser microphone that is amazingly sensitive. The size, weight and power requirements of my mic would certainly set a lower bound on the size of the drone you could use, but those aren't insurmountable problems, especially since there are smaller, lighter mics available for a little more money. There are even condensers that run on USB power. A mic like mine may not be quite sensitive enough to be able to listen through walls (then again, it might...I've never tried), but you could certainly eavesdrop on conversations outside or through an open window, especially if you were to mount the mic in a parabolic reflector to make it more directional.
What about the dudes that take aerial photographs with RC helicopters for a living?
I don't know anything about them, so I'm not really qualified to answer. However, if they are using RC helicopters to do professional aerial photography in the U.S., my non-expert GUESS would be that they might not be in compliance with FAA regs. The biggest question in my mind -- and IANAL, so take this for what it's worth (i.e., nothing) -- is "does an RC helicopter qualify as a 'drone'?" or does "drone" imply some type of autonomous flight capability? If the FAA considers a remotely piloted aircraft to be a drone, then I suspect they are only getting away with it because they haven't drawn attention to themselves yet.
And I'm pretty sure spying on the police for the sake of protestors is "non-commercial" activity.
In general I would agree, although I don't know if an FAA lawyer would. After spending a lot of time studying FAA regs and case studies (I'm a licensed pilot and flight instructor so believe me, I've spent a lot of time trying to decipher what is and what is not kosher by the FAA's standards), I can think of a lot of non-intuitive cases where the FAA might rule that something that was a "commercial" use, even though it wasn't intended to be so. The FAA's interpretation of what constitutes a flight "for hire or compensation" in full-scale aircraft has gotten a lot of pilots in hot water, even though they thought they were conducting a legitimate non-commercial operation. Furthermore, a lot of states have taken a very dim view of private citizens photographing or shooting video of police officers on duty, so even if the FAA doesn't object to this type of activity, there is a better than even chance that you could still find yourself in legal hot water for doing so.
I don't have a link handy ATM, but there is a youtube video of a guy flying a quadcopter, shooting bottle rockets at ballons filled with hydrogen in a rural field. It was kind of entertaining, actually;)
Yes, but there are manyautopilots that can relieve the operator from the duties of flying so that they can focus on operating the camera. Also, I could be mistaken, but I believe quadcopters/multicopters might be a little easier to fly than a conventional helicopter. At least, in my (admittedly entry-level) research into the subject, multicopters seem to be the platform of choice for most drone hobbyists (excluding fixed-wing designs, at least).
I've got a Hawkeye Heli, which is probably similar to the one you saw (if it's not the same thing). It's fine indoors, but not so great outside. First, the RC controls operate via infrared LEDs. In the sunlight, the transmitter is swamped by the sun, making the heli uncontrollable (basically, it will climb to about 20-30 feet, spinning at ~60rpm the whole time, then cut the engine and plummet to the ground). Second, it's so light -- and only marginally stable -- that if there is even the slightest breeze, it's again uncontrollable. Third, the range is extremely limited, like 50 feet or less. Finally, the camera is rather poor. The frame rate is so low that the video blurs every time you yaw the heli, and in a year of playing with the heli, I can count on one hand the number of still photos that weren't blurred beyond recognition. It's a fun toy, but not something that is actually useful for anything. If you want a real covert surveillance platform, you'll need to spend at least an order of magnitude more.
If I get a chance, I'll post some video from the heli on youtube and link to it here.
Right now, it's illegal (per FAA regs) to use drones for commercial purposes. Therearereports that someone has tried it anyway, but those who don't wish to draw the FAA's ire are waiting until the regs describing how and where drones can be used for commercial uses are finalized (expected some time in 2012, although that may be delayed with the recent arrest and subsequent resignation of Randy Babbit).
Do you remember the caption at the beginning of that movie? IIRC, it was something like, "The weapons and systems depicted in this movie are real and in use today." At the time, I was like, "Yeah, right" but middle-class hobbyists today have access to surveillance equipment that is every bit as good -- if not better -- than the surveillance equipment on Blue Thunder, and they are just about as quiet as . 'Course, I've yet to see a DIY Drone that carries a gun like Blue Thunder had;)
Why do so many privacy advocates go around screaming like Chicken Little about the falling sky of government intrusion and oppression, instead of creatively explaining how current law can be used to leash the hounds!
Maybe because laws only leash the hounds when someone other than the hounds themselves are holding the leashes?
I don't know the laws where you live, but in my municipality, discharging firearms within city limits (with the possible exception of self-defense) is a crime. Not to mention that bullets, shot or slugs shot into the sky will fall back to earth with approximately the same velocity they had when they left the muzzle of your gun...meaning that a falling slug or bullet that hits a person or object will cause roughly as much damage as it would have had you simply pointed the gun at them...meaning you could be up on charges of reckless endangerment, unintentional homicide, etc. IANAL and all that, but I'd be looking for a different way to take down the drones, if I were you.
Actually if you recognize...a major political party increasingly dominated by religious fundamentalists...
I know/. isn't exactly the best place to go for intellectually honest debate, but seriously people, THIS IS NEITHER AN ISSUE OF POLITICAL PARTIES NOR RELIGION!!! Granted, many of the things that we have been discussing lately were started during G. W. Bush's (R) presidency. But Obama (D) has continued G.W.B.'s legacy, and even added to it. Throwing religion and partisan politics into the debate only serves to divide those who should be allied against this crap. Can we PLEASE stop pretending that it's the evil "(Republicans|Democrats)" who are doing this? It's BOTH.
Predator drones are serious overkill for routine police work, and their purchase and operational costs reflect that.
I've got a sub-$100 RC helicopter with a camera mounted in it. Video quality sucks, it's too light weight to fly anywhere but indoors except on exceptionally calm days, and the range is abysmal. However, with a single order of magnitude increase in acquisition cost, you can buy an off-the-shelf products that will solve most -- if not all -- of those problems. Bump the cost up to two orders of magnitude, and you've got a very capable machine for routine police work. Spend some time poking around on the SUAS News web site, and I think you'll be surprised at the tech that's available at hobbyist -- much less municipal government -- prices.
I'd recommend RFC1149. It's slow and a lot less reliable than what we're used to, but less susceptible to having cables cut, ISPs shut down or routers powered off.
It is patently obvious to any but the brain-dead that you simply cannot trust ANYONE - police, army, civilians - with anything capable of deadly force. Not a single one of you has the capacity to reason when usage is appropriate.
I was agreeing with your posts up until this one. Unfortunately, your statement quoted above is a crock of bovine poo. I have owned a number of firearms since I was old enough to legally purchase them, and I have never even considered using one on another human being. Why? Because the rules of engagement are crystal clear: when I have reason to believe that my life, or my family's life, is in mortal peril I will use whatever force -- up to and including, if necessary -- deadly force. In all other cases, the gun stays put away. Fortunately, the situations where deadly force is necessary are very, very rare...as in "I have yet to encounter one" rare.
And here's the clincher: there isn't a single thing any police force or government can do to completely eliminate the possibility of someone using deadly force on another. Guns aren't the problem. Neither are tanks, swords, knives, bows, belts, towels, rocks, box cutters, screwdrivers, laptop computers, magazines, newspapers, broom handles, molotov cocktails or any other "weapon" that any human being has ever leveraged against another in violence. Because the only deadly weapon that actually exists is the one between our ears. Our brain is the only tool we need for turning ordinary, harmless objects into weapons; attempting to eliminate the weapons in order to keep people from hurting each other is a futile effort because we are creative enough to find ways to turn anything within reach into a weapon when all else has failed.
I stand corrected -- thanks for the education. And FWIW, I agree that it would indeed be a nasty fight if push came to shove. The cynic in me suspects that more military personnel would "do their duty" than join the revolution, but then again, the spring uprisings in the Middle East are probably a better indication than my cynicism:)
Yeah, I would be hard-pressed to argue your point, at least in terms of how "they" look at it. From the "us" perspective (what you do to solve the problem), however, there's a bit of a difference. Ignorance can be cured with education. Timidity can't.
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You still have oxygen in your lungs at atmospheric pressure, so no, it's not a good simulation. Take a look at a Time of Useful Consciousness chart. At 35,000 feet (FL350), you have 30-60 seconds of useful consciousness; after that, your brain has become so oxygen deprived that it is essentially incapable of problem solving, even if you aren't quite unconscious yet. At FL500, that drops to 6 - 9 seconds. I don't care how hard you exhale at sea level, you aren't going to slip into unconsciousness after 6 - 9 seconds by holding your breath. Therefore, your "simulation" is flawed.
...might even be simple to pull after holding my breath for 60 seconds (and if you can't hold your breath for 60 seconds STFU)...
If you're a GA pilot, look into the high altitude hypoxia training that the FAA/USAF offers pilots (used to offer? I don't know if it's still available). Holding your breath really isn't a suitable way to simulate losing your oxygen supply at altitude.
You are giving him too much credit. Holding your breath at sea level is not at all like losing your oxygen supply at altitude. The partial pressure of oxygen in your lungs at altitude is much, much lower than at sea level, so you don't have the oxygen reserves in your lungs to continue supplying your brain and vital organs like you do when you hold your breath at sea level. It's more like filling your lungs with the exhaust from your car, THEN hold your breath for a minute (kids, don't try this at home!).
Let me take a wild guess...You haven't spent much time at high altitude, have you?
I used to scoff at the charts that show what the FAA euphemistically calls "useful time of consciousness" at varying altitudes. I mean, c'mon...if I try, I can hold my breath for 2 minutes or more, and I'm not nearly in as good shape as I should be. How can a pilot at high altitude have a useful time of consciousness of 30 seconds or less? It's trivial to hold my breath that long, even if I don't prepare for it beforehand.
Then one day, I got a revelation: It's trivial for me to hold my breath for 30-60 seconds and possible to break 120 seconds because the air in my lungs is under full atmospheric pressure. However, if I am at 25,000 feet of altitude, and my cockpit explosively decompresses (or, as in the case of a fighter pilot, if I am at lower atmospheric pressure and my pure oxygen supply is suddenly removed), I no longer have near as much oxygen in my lungs, and consequently, my body will go hypoxic much more quickly. You might think losing his oxygen supply for a full minute would be "like...working out hard", but you'd be wrong. I haven't read TFA, but if he was above about 15,000 feet MSL (and especially if he was above 25,000 MSL) it was much, much worse than that. His muscles might have been functional without oxygen, but I guarantee his brain functions were degrading rapidly.
Side point....If you have zero visibility, you need a gyroscope to tell up from down because of centripetal forces, your other senses can't help you whether you're ignoring them or not.
I don't know if you have any piloting experience or not, so I don't know if you are speaking from experience or not. However, I have been a pilot for a little over twenty years (albeit in much more mundane aircraft than F-16s or F-22s). In point of fact, not only can your other senses not help you, they will actively lead you astray. The stories about pilots flying by the seat of their pants are pure mythology.
:)
If you ever get a chance to try flying on instruments, give it a try*. You wouldn't believe how quickly your sense of "up" and "down" get mixed up...or how difficult it is to ignore your kinesthetic senses and trust your instruments. There's a reason your average non-instrument rated pilot has a life expectancy of about 2-3 minutes, tops, when encountering instrument conditions.
*Alternatively, if you have a bar stool that can spin in circles, you can replicate the experience at home. Sit in the bar stool, close your eyes, and lean forward so that your forehead is touching your knees. Have a friend spin you a couple of times, then rapidly sit up. Oh, yeah...you might want some padding on the floor, because I guarantee you won't be able to stay seated
Thermal imaging is probably a bit beyond your average hobbyist's means, yes. However, in the optical spectrum, a GoPro Hero HD provides much better resolution and clarity than anything small enough to fly on a drone that was available back in the '80s. As far as pulling audio through a wall...I've got a fairly low end studio condenser microphone that is amazingly sensitive. The size, weight and power requirements of my mic would certainly set a lower bound on the size of the drone you could use, but those aren't insurmountable problems, especially since there are smaller, lighter mics available for a little more money. There are even condensers that run on USB power. A mic like mine may not be quite sensitive enough to be able to listen through walls (then again, it might...I've never tried), but you could certainly eavesdrop on conversations outside or through an open window, especially if you were to mount the mic in a parabolic reflector to make it more directional.
What about the dudes that take aerial photographs with RC helicopters for a living?
I don't know anything about them, so I'm not really qualified to answer. However, if they are using RC helicopters to do professional aerial photography in the U.S., my non-expert GUESS would be that they might not be in compliance with FAA regs. The biggest question in my mind -- and IANAL, so take this for what it's worth (i.e., nothing) -- is "does an RC helicopter qualify as a 'drone'?" or does "drone" imply some type of autonomous flight capability? If the FAA considers a remotely piloted aircraft to be a drone, then I suspect they are only getting away with it because they haven't drawn attention to themselves yet.
And I'm pretty sure spying on the police for the sake of protestors is "non-commercial" activity.
In general I would agree, although I don't know if an FAA lawyer would. After spending a lot of time studying FAA regs and case studies (I'm a licensed pilot and flight instructor so believe me, I've spent a lot of time trying to decipher what is and what is not kosher by the FAA's standards), I can think of a lot of non-intuitive cases where the FAA might rule that something that was a "commercial" use, even though it wasn't intended to be so. The FAA's interpretation of what constitutes a flight "for hire or compensation" in full-scale aircraft has gotten a lot of pilots in hot water, even though they thought they were conducting a legitimate non-commercial operation. Furthermore, a lot of states have taken a very dim view of private citizens photographing or shooting video of police officers on duty, so even if the FAA doesn't object to this type of activity, there is a better than even chance that you could still find yourself in legal hot water for doing so.
I don't have a link handy ATM, but there is a youtube video of a guy flying a quadcopter, shooting bottle rockets at ballons filled with hydrogen in a rural field. It was kind of entertaining, actually ;)
Yes, but there are many autopilots that can relieve the operator from the duties of flying so that they can focus on operating the camera. Also, I could be mistaken, but I believe quadcopters/multicopters might be a little easier to fly than a conventional helicopter. At least, in my (admittedly entry-level) research into the subject, multicopters seem to be the platform of choice for most drone hobbyists (excluding fixed-wing designs, at least).
Go to youtube and search for "RC FPV". There's lots of video of people doing exactly that.
I've got a Hawkeye Heli, which is probably similar to the one you saw (if it's not the same thing). It's fine indoors, but not so great outside. First, the RC controls operate via infrared LEDs. In the sunlight, the transmitter is swamped by the sun, making the heli uncontrollable (basically, it will climb to about 20-30 feet, spinning at ~60rpm the whole time, then cut the engine and plummet to the ground). Second, it's so light -- and only marginally stable -- that if there is even the slightest breeze, it's again uncontrollable. Third, the range is extremely limited, like 50 feet or less. Finally, the camera is rather poor. The frame rate is so low that the video blurs every time you yaw the heli, and in a year of playing with the heli, I can count on one hand the number of still photos that weren't blurred beyond recognition. It's a fun toy, but not something that is actually useful for anything. If you want a real covert surveillance platform, you'll need to spend at least an order of magnitude more.
If I get a chance, I'll post some video from the heli on youtube and link to it here.
Right now, it's illegal (per FAA regs) to use drones for commercial purposes. There are reports that someone has tried it anyway, but those who don't wish to draw the FAA's ire are waiting until the regs describing how and where drones can be used for commercial uses are finalized (expected some time in 2012, although that may be delayed with the recent arrest and subsequent resignation of Randy Babbit).
Do you remember the caption at the beginning of that movie? IIRC, it was something like, "The weapons and systems depicted in this movie are real and in use today." At the time, I was like, "Yeah, right" but middle-class hobbyists today have access to surveillance equipment that is every bit as good -- if not better -- than the surveillance equipment on Blue Thunder, and they are just about as quiet as . 'Course, I've yet to see a DIY Drone that carries a gun like Blue Thunder had ;)
Ahhh...yeah, I did miss that. Looks like our opinions aren't as widely separated as I first thought. Sorry about that.
Why do so many privacy advocates go around screaming like Chicken Little about the falling sky of government intrusion and oppression, instead of creatively explaining how current law can be used to leash the hounds!
Maybe because laws only leash the hounds when someone other than the hounds themselves are holding the leashes?
I don't know the laws where you live, but in my municipality, discharging firearms within city limits (with the possible exception of self-defense) is a crime. Not to mention that bullets, shot or slugs shot into the sky will fall back to earth with approximately the same velocity they had when they left the muzzle of your gun...meaning that a falling slug or bullet that hits a person or object will cause roughly as much damage as it would have had you simply pointed the gun at them...meaning you could be up on charges of reckless endangerment, unintentional homicide, etc. IANAL and all that, but I'd be looking for a different way to take down the drones, if I were you.
Actually if you recognize...a major political party increasingly dominated by religious fundamentalists...
I know /. isn't exactly the best place to go for intellectually honest debate, but seriously people, THIS IS NEITHER AN ISSUE OF POLITICAL PARTIES NOR RELIGION!!! Granted, many of the things that we have been discussing lately were started during G. W. Bush's (R) presidency. But Obama (D) has continued G.W.B.'s legacy, and even added to it. Throwing religion and partisan politics into the debate only serves to divide those who should be allied against this crap. Can we PLEASE stop pretending that it's the evil "(Republicans|Democrats)" who are doing this? It's BOTH.
Irrelevant. The literal truth (or lack thereof) of the metaphor makes it in no way any more or less suitable for communicating a general principle.
Predator drones are serious overkill for routine police work, and their purchase and operational costs reflect that.
I've got a sub-$100 RC helicopter with a camera mounted in it. Video quality sucks, it's too light weight to fly anywhere but indoors except on exceptionally calm days, and the range is abysmal. However, with a single order of magnitude increase in acquisition cost, you can buy an off-the-shelf products that will solve most -- if not all -- of those problems. Bump the cost up to two orders of magnitude, and you've got a very capable machine for routine police work. Spend some time poking around on the SUAS News web site, and I think you'll be surprised at the tech that's available at hobbyist -- much less municipal government -- prices.
If it's not any different, why do they need to do it? Just use a beat cop.
There are places that are public which are not easy to patrol or observe with stationary surveilance cameras.
Then it's NOT just like a beat cop then, and the laws regulating the use of drones should reflect that fact.
I'd recommend RFC1149. It's slow and a lot less reliable than what we're used to, but less susceptible to having cables cut, ISPs shut down or routers powered off.
It is patently obvious to any but the brain-dead that you simply cannot trust ANYONE - police, army, civilians - with anything capable of deadly force. Not a single one of you has the capacity to reason when usage is appropriate.
I was agreeing with your posts up until this one. Unfortunately, your statement quoted above is a crock of bovine poo. I have owned a number of firearms since I was old enough to legally purchase them, and I have never even considered using one on another human being. Why? Because the rules of engagement are crystal clear: when I have reason to believe that my life, or my family's life, is in mortal peril I will use whatever force -- up to and including, if necessary -- deadly force. In all other cases, the gun stays put away. Fortunately, the situations where deadly force is necessary are very, very rare...as in "I have yet to encounter one" rare.
And here's the clincher: there isn't a single thing any police force or government can do to completely eliminate the possibility of someone using deadly force on another. Guns aren't the problem. Neither are tanks, swords, knives, bows, belts, towels, rocks, box cutters, screwdrivers, laptop computers, magazines, newspapers, broom handles, molotov cocktails or any other "weapon" that any human being has ever leveraged against another in violence. Because the only deadly weapon that actually exists is the one between our ears. Our brain is the only tool we need for turning ordinary, harmless objects into weapons; attempting to eliminate the weapons in order to keep people from hurting each other is a futile effort because we are creative enough to find ways to turn anything within reach into a weapon when all else has failed.
I stand corrected -- thanks for the education. And FWIW, I agree that it would indeed be a nasty fight if push came to shove. The cynic in me suspects that more military personnel would "do their duty" than join the revolution, but then again, the spring uprisings in the Middle East are probably a better indication than my cynicism :)
Yeah, I would be hard-pressed to argue your point, at least in terms of how "they" look at it. From the "us" perspective (what you do to solve the problem), however, there's a bit of a difference. Ignorance can be cured with education. Timidity can't.
Sure you do -- follow the money. That will inevitably lead to the backside that said congresscritter has been kissing.