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What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

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Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#41

Post by axau »

wvenable wrote: post #39
axau wrote: post #38

I hope one day drones are regulated similarly to guns, i.e. de facto banned unless some exception applies, such as: - you're in the middle of nowhere - you're doing it exclusively on a property you own (and the property is large enough) - the use case is in the public good (e.g.: police can use guns) In other cases, the downsides are large given potential for abuse/voyeurism/sabotage, and upsides seem nil.

> I hope one day drones are regulated similarly to guns What country are you in?

USA, which, contrary to popular belief, has lots of restrictions on the use (though not necessarily ownership) of guns. Try discharging a weapon anywhere near a major metropolitan area and let me know how it goes :)

Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#42

Post by nraynaud »

bri3d wrote: post #3

Summary: Flight instructor saw a drone during low-altitude hovering exercises with a student, tried to land, and hit a bush. Much like lasers I suspect the psychological role of drones as a pilot distraction could be as great or greater than the actual risk to an airframe. Article has good links to various drone collisions (all resulting in limited damage to the larger vehicle) as well as FAA study showing drones cou…

The trick is that there has never been any confirmed dangerous collision with a quadcopter, all the tests have shown them less dangerous than geese, and accidents in the wild have never impacted the air-worthiness of the aircraft.

We will probably end up with the 400 feet AGL banned for aviation, and 300 feet AGL limit for recreational flying, and 100 feet of buffer.

General aviation pilots violate regulations all the time without being disciplined, and kill people once in a while, and it's a bit hard to put all the burden on the recreational remote controlled aircraft pilots.

here is a guy with a cool head on the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0gOxuyr438

Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#43

Post by bri3d »

nraynaud wrote: post #42
bri3d wrote: post #3

Summary: Flight instructor saw a drone during low-altitude hovering exercises with a student, tried to land, and hit a bush. Much like lasers I suspect the psychological role of drones as a pilot distraction could be as great or greater than the actual risk to an airframe. Article has good links to various drone collisions (all resulting in limited damage to the larger vehicle) as well as FAA study showing drones cou…

The trick is that there has never been any confirmed dangerous collision with a quadcopter, all the tests have shown them less dangerous than geese, and accidents in the wild have never impacted the air-worthiness of the aircraft. We will probably end up with the 400 feet AGL banned for aviation, and 300 feet AGL limit for recreational flying, and 100 feet of buffer. General aviation pilots violate regulations all th…

That was a great video, thank you for the link!

I think that's a pretty sensible set of rules, but it turns gray in situations like this helicopter hover training one where civil aviation pilots have a legitimate need to be under 300ft AGL for a length of time. My intuition (and this is what I was trying to push with my comments around the collisions in the article never affecting an airframe) was that drone pilots need to be better educated around staying the hell away from other flying vehicles (which I treated as a given, probably leading to downvotes) but also that helicopter pilots will need to be trained to treat drones like geese and not to react as strongly as this pilot did, since, to your point, it's going to be hard to put the entire burden on RC pilots.

However, based on the other comments in this thread, this seems like a very controversial stance for the HN crowd, and I do sympathize with the argument from the helicopter pilot in this thread that they've already got enough on their plate without needing to handle mental interrupts from other junk flying around. The proliferation of recreational drones with terrible inexperienced pilots is definitely a problem we'll have to handle in the coming years.

Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#44

Post by wpietri »

craftyguy wrote: post #26
wpietri wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's ridiculous. Pilots are correctly very reluctant to hit things. Historically, we have wanted them to do their best to avoid that. You could argue that we should now train pilots to carefully pause and consider whether the thing they are about to hit is safe to hit. But for that, you'd have to show that the additional reaction time in avoiding collisions is really net safer. And if you did argue that, yo…

Well by avoiding trying to hit one thing, they hit the ground. That's (arguably?) worse than hitting just about anything else other than perhaps another large aircraft or a missle.

In this case, maybe. But you have to do a sum over all cases to prove that your proposed solution is better. Otherwise it's just a way, post facto, to blame somebody. An error which is one of the biggest topics of Dekker's book.

Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#45

Post by _s »

nraynaud wrote: post #42
bri3d wrote: post #3

Summary: Flight instructor saw a drone during low-altitude hovering exercises with a student, tried to land, and hit a bush. Much like lasers I suspect the psychological role of drones as a pilot distraction could be as great or greater than the actual risk to an airframe. Article has good links to various drone collisions (all resulting in limited damage to the larger vehicle) as well as FAA study showing drones cou…

The trick is that there has never been any confirmed dangerous collision with a quadcopter, all the tests have shown them less dangerous than geese, and accidents in the wild have never impacted the air-worthiness of the aircraft. We will probably end up with the 400 feet AGL banned for aviation, and 300 feet AGL limit for recreational flying, and 100 feet of buffer. General aviation pilots violate regulations all th…

Generally GA aircraft have a 500’ AGL limit to adhere to; and it’s higher above built-up / high density areas.

Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#46

Post by nraynaud »

bri3d wrote: post #43
nraynaud wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is that there has never been any confirmed dangerous collision with a quadcopter, all the tests have shown them less dangerous than geese, and accidents in the wild have never impacted the air-worthiness of the aircraft. We will probably end up with the 400 feet AGL banned for aviation, and 300 feet AGL limit for recreational flying, and 100 feet of buffer. General aviation pilots violate regulations all th…

That was a great video, thank you for the link! I think that's a pretty sensible set of rules, but it turns gray in situations like this helicopter hover training one where civil aviation pilots have a legitimate need to be under 300ft AGL for a length of time. My intuition (and this is what I was trying to push with my comments around the collisions in the article never affecting an airframe) was that drone pilots n…

there is a little issue, you don't hover an helicopter next to people and, and you don't land next to untrained people (because they could rush to the tail rotor). And they turn a lot around a site before landing, where was the pilot of the RC quad, and why didn't they see them?

Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#47

Post by kelchm »

cmurf wrote: post #29
kelchm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> staying below 400 feet As someone that has spent a lot of time flying model sailplanes, I want to point out that there is no regulation which prevents a hobbyist from flying above 400ft AGL, as long as you abide by the guidelines established by the AMA or another "nationwide community-based organization". The FAA boils everything from section 336 (the "Special Rule for Model Aircraft") as follows: - Fly for hobby o…

FAR 101.41 (b) subsumes any such guideline as a regulation. AMA's see and avoid guideline says any flight expected to go above 400 feet requires a spotter, so if you don't do that, you're violating FARs. Operating an sUAS with autopilot (among other things) has its additional advanced flight system programming guidelines, which have a hard 400 foot ceiling when operating within 5 miles of an airport. This is legally…

I disagree with your interpretation. Here is the exact verbage you are referencing from the AMA:

A spotter should be used to assist in monitoring the surrounding airspace for manned aircraft whenever a flight is expected to exceed 400 feet above the ground and that operation is expected to be in proximity to known manned aircraft traffic such as at a mixed-use facility or within three miles of an airport. The spotter must have sufficient visual acuity and be mature enough to take this responsibility very seriously.

So unless you are operating at a mixed-use facility or within three miles of an airport, you do not need a spotter to fly a model aircraft above 400ft AGL.

Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#48

Post by cma »

GiorgioG wrote: post #12

They were flying in a remote area, low to the ground. If it wasn't by an airport and below 400 feet, I'm not sure there was any wrong-doing on the drone's part. Sometimes they're called 'accidents' aka s * happens.

They weren't flying in a remote area. It was a small island with a big residential development.

Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#49

Post by huffpopo »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #22
huffpopo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helicopters are slow, and they probably didn't have the rotor speed needed to yank the collective. Hitting a 2kg drone would result in expensive repairs, e.g. $30K for replacement rotor blades and you still might crash. I probably would have taken the hit but I'm much better off than the average R22 pilot who often operate or razor thin margins. That said; my bet is that there was no drone. My guess is the student ma…

Was it 2kg or 0.5kg drone? Is there much difference between two, afaik all of them are more or less plastic. If planes and helicopter are ok with hitting birbs, perhaps we should regulate drone manufacturing to be more like birbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl-27Bk_RME

Drones have harder parts and I would expect hardness to play a big role in damage done. But it doesn't even need to be hard, raindrops can also do a fair amount of expensive damage.

Re: What May Be U.S.’s First Drone-Linked Aircraft Crash Is Being Investigated

#50

Post by huffpopo »

huffpopo wrote: post #11
mpetrovich wrote: post #5

I wonder why the pilot didn’t attempt to go straight up.

Helicopters are slow, and they probably didn't have the rotor speed needed to yank the collective. Hitting a 2kg drone would result in expensive repairs, e.g. $30K for replacement rotor blades and you still might crash. I probably would have taken the hit but I'm much better off than the average R22 pilot who often operate or razor thin margins. That said; my bet is that there was no drone. My guess is the student ma…

I'm curios on the 10+ downvotes this received since posting; would someone care to give me a reason. Thx
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