Discussion for article #222607
my prediction, the idiots in Washington are not going to bar drones until one falls out the sky and kills a child or a major catastrophe
ācome up with the rules to create a safe environment.ā
First rule of Drone Club*: Do not fly near real airports.
*actually a rule-of-thumb, basic common sense. The fact that it is in the handbook is solely so idiots and morons donāt bring down a commercial airliner.
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Or, as suggested in the article, is ingested by a jetliners engine, possibly resulting in a major catastrophe. The WSJ also says the drone operator is unknown at this time. Fly the friendly skies, indeed!
A drone crashed into a skyscraper this week here. Could most certainly have been at the same height as a plane. How many millions of these does Amazon want to put in the sky to delivery packages?
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It sounds terrible and shocking until you realize that millions of birds that donāt know any better are also in the sky. They hit planes only very rarely and even then do not usually do any serious damage.
They can certainly ban ādronesā, but since they are nothing more than some motors, battery, and simple radio electronics it wonāt stop anyone nefarious.
The FAA is mentioning this because they want to expand their authority.
This happened to a friend of mine and I, we were landing at a small airport northeast of Baltimore, and a small RC plane came whipping by within a few dozen feet of us. Scared the bejeezus (and probably something else) out of us. When you see a plane that quickly, itās takes a few tenths of a second to realize that itās small and close, and not large and a bit further away. Absolutely terrifying.
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āAnā US Airliner? OMGā¦TPM, a typo here and there I can forgive, but some of these latelyā¦
In case you were out sick when they discussed this inā¦ 5th grade ā¦ You use āaā before āuā when it has the initial sound of United or unicorn. [groan]
You used the right one in the article, but the headline both here and on the homepage use āan.ā
Does this mean I canāt have same-day delivery of my Enhanced Amazon Super Prime delivery of āThe Hobbit: the Triumph of the Hobbitā?
Why do the have a picture of an Airbus A320, if the subject plane is a 50-seat Canadair Regional Jet 200?
Many localities have laws restricting where and when aircraft modelers can fly their craft. Residential areas are common no-fly zones. I should think that active airports would also be. And 2300 feet seems very high for a model to safely fly.
One more reason to feed my dislike of flying.
Busted!!
That was my thought as well. Being near an airport this would likely be controlled airspace, regardless of general drone rules, and therefore already illegal.
If they find the person flying the model, would Florida recognize a āstand your airspaceā defense?
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Iām a little surprised this isnāt creating a huge Fox shitstorm.
Letās be careful and not get all FauxNewsworthy here! Be aware that āDroneā is a buzz word. A very small Camo F-4 flying at 2,400 ā has been a possibility for 40 years. R/C hobbyists have been flying these things since WW2, without notable problems. Iām sure they have made some common sense rules of safety. But it isnāt a drone unless it is transmitting a live TV signal back to the pilot, which is relative new. I saw this story on TV news last night and they were showing a video of a small quadracopter. And, the first time I heard the story, I was led to believe that it was a military drone! That kind of reporting has become way too common and acceptable!
Yes, drones are beginning to be a problem which needs some study and regulation, now. Especially before big money like Amazonās writes them for us! But please Josh, stay with your good journalism!
I was about to say the same thing. This story may well be true, but there are a few questions I have about it:
1- As others have noted, ādroneā these days can mean anything from a small quadcopter (Google DJI for particulars) carrying its own video camera to a larger more elaborate version of the same to the big boys used by the military. In this case, the story seems to suggest a smaller one.
2- However, if it is a small one, the chances of it being spotted from a commercial jet on approach when it is flying at 120-150 MPH are exceedingly small. Thatās not to say it wouldnāt cause major problems if it got sucked into an engine, but the chances of the pilots seeing it at all would be pretty unlikely (Have you ever been riding in a passenger jet and happened to spot even a small plane like a Cessna. Itās pretty small and being viewed against a moving and varigated background. Now try to imagine spotting a quadcopter.
3- Also as noted, 2,300 feet is awfully high for a smaller drone unit. The DJI, for example, has a radio control range of about 900 feet away from the controller unit. There are add ons which I think can extend that to two miles, but Iād guess there arenāt that many using it with that extra rangeā¦you have over a thousand bucks tied up in one of these and you want to keep it in sight.
So againā¦I donāt want to question the original claim totally, but there are some questions there that need more info.
I donāt think a model airplane, designed to look like an F4 Phantom jet, qualifies as a ādroneā, it is just a radio-control model that was flying too high and way too close to an airport.
But, ādroneā is a cool meme that will get people to read a headline, while āmodel airplaneā is soo '70s.
Before everyone gets their underwear in a bunch, this was probably not a ādroneā in the classic military/CIA sense (the government does not dress up itās drones to look like tiny replicas of obsolete airplanes like the Navy F-4.) It was more than likely a remote controlled hobby model, of which their are thousands in the country. There are FAA restrictions for operating these remote operated model aircraft, but it appears that this one may have wandered off the reservation.