Drone operator convicted for grounding fire fighting helicopters
 

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/cri...h-island-blaze

"At an earlier hearing, Riquelme Cruz made an application to receive a discharge without conviction and in his submissions to the court on Friday, he believed the offending was at a low level and a conviction would have an immediate impact on his travel plans.

However, Judge Saunders disagreed.

"I do not accept that this is low-level offending; to the contrary, I characterise it as at least moderately serious," she said.

"You deliberately flew a drone in an area where you knew that there was fire and you knew there were very serious airborne attempts to put out that fire. The purpose of you flying that drone was to take personal photographs.

"Fifty metres is not a long distance at all and that meant that you did put the helicopter pilots at genuine risk of a catastrophic collision."



He thought he was going to get away with it...

Well done that judge. About time we saw convictions for this.

/not as a mod

Is there a collection via paypal or some other electronic means where one may contribute a few monetary units on behalf of the judge's next pint, or fifty? One asks on behalf of all fellow PPRuNers and Rotorheads denizens who may feel as one does in this case.

One can only respond, otherwise, as follows: :D :ok:

I wonder if the firefighting helicopters would have been grounded if an average size bird was seen flying in the area?

If it was a > 2kg bird made from composites and hard metallic parts then probably.

They're sensible enough not to be flying around the scene of a fire.

Except for upside down birds .....


:rolleyes:

I think you will find the birds are feeding on creatures running from the fire front...
I have never encountered any more birds while flying fires, than any other time.
Would you be happy to continue flight operations if a drone was being flown close to you? If not, why make the comment? Are you a pilot?

Not sure who you are asking the question to...
Is the drone flying close to the helicopter or is the helicopter flying close to the drone?
Would it make any difference if you flew into a bird or a small drone I wonder?

I fly both and see two sides of the coin. I am sensible enough to keep out of the way of other aircraft when flying a drone and would land right away as soon as I heard an aircraft coming my way, I can not account though for over reacting third parties that would let a fire burn uncontrolled and ground all operations just because they saw a small drone!

Possibly to sell to the local TV news channel.

Flying on fires can be pretty full on. There are normally lots of other aircraft. Helicopters and Fixed wing assets laying down suppression. There are other machines controlling this suppression and maybe gathering intel and plotting the movement of the fire. There are also many people on the ground fighting the fire.
Here in Australia we set up temporary zones around the fire as the Fire authorities don't want anyone not involved in the effort in there as it is busy enough keeping a good lookout when you know what is there.
When a drone is spotted, the Air Attack supervisor will make the call to to send aircraft out of the area because the last thing they want is an aircraft damaged or brought down in the fire zone.

Fire suppression pilots don't want to be hit by anything if flying low level, operating near smoke over burning trees and bush. Even "A small Drone"

Heliringer
They don't want to be hit by birds either, but would operations be grounded if birds were spotted?
So what's the difference?

Birds in my experience are dam good at getting out of the way, D*ck heads with drones, I think not!

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/28/most...faa-warns.html

And there are a lot more birds in the sky than drones!

Chopjock.

We can’t control birds but we can reduce the risk of drones by educating people not to fly in our Fire Areas during active operations.

The birds tend to stick ahead of the fire chasing small insects and wildlife.
You sort of have an idea where they are.
Drone operators will be filming the action and probably getting in the way.

You’ve not been involved with aerial fire fighting?

Easy - the bird has a higher IQ than the drone operator?
And also the bird may have some inkling of self preservation along with the helicopter crew whereas the drone operator has none?

chopjock,

Would you fly your drone in the area if each helicopter had a guy in the back with the door open and armed with a 12 gauge just to even the odds?

If there were no control of drones intruding on bushfire ops how many drones would constitute a hazard, chopjock?

One?

Three?

A dozen?

How would you control such an intrusion? Why do you think that drones are forbidden to be flown near airfields if they are only (according to you) the equivalent of a bird flying around?

I've dealt with birds up to eagle size on NSW fires and they are predictable and manageable. A drone being controlled by a human with random and erratic flight paths is both difficult to predict and almost impossible to manage in the intense operations within a bushfire and is a definite hazard which deserves to be banned from such an environment.

Yes, a bird is composed of 70% water. A drone has hard materials such as lithium batteries, motor, metallic parts, etc. I'd much rather face the bird.

Actually a recent study showed how a drone as light as 300g can cause some pretty bad damage to a jet engine.

John,
I'm not saying don't control drones on bush fire opps, I'm suggesting that grounding operations and letting the fire burn uncontrolled just because a drone was "seen" is over reacting. By all means necessary enforce the rules, but put the dam fire out.

Jaair
Not very relevant to slow moving helicopters though...

Seriously, you appear to have little or no idea of how things are in a bushfire; you appear to put the safety and survival of the crews and aircraft below fighting the fire. The fire will burn even more uncontrolled should a Helitak be taken out of the equation because of a midair with a drone, then another (letting one in means letting all in), then there will be a self grounding by the remaining pilots.

Aircraft are only part of the equation in fighting bushfires: there are massive ground ops involving direct attack by firefighters, backburning, dozer trails, rakehoes to cut firebreaks, etc etc. They continue overnight when aerial attack is suspended (trials starting soon in Victoria for night flying) so the concept of a short grounding to find and stop illegal drone ops is a small hiccup in the overall scheme of things. Indeed, such a grounding gives a chance for a welcome break for the drivers, a refuel, maybe a shutdown and onceover of the Helitaks, Firebirds, bombers etc before getting back to the job at hand unhindered by selfish and illegal drone operations.

Really? Really?!!!

What the heck do you mean by that; do you discount the speed of the main rotor blades, the tail rotor blades in a machine 'slow moving' between pick up and drop at anything from 90-120 knots? Tail rotor blade vs illegal drone is unlikely to end well for either machine.

When you're in a hole, best to stop digging.

The report was about jet airliners, not slow moving rotory.
Helicopters pilots are trained to see and avoid birds. If a drone was spotted in the area, about the same size as a bird, probably travelling no faster than a bird, surely the pilots would spot the drone because they had been warned to look out for them as they do for birds?
How many actual drone strikes have there been v actual bird strikes recorded? What are the actual chances of a collision with a drone? Having been warned there was a drone seen in the area the pilots could keep an eye out, as they should be anyway for birds?
Therefore why ground operations if the pilots had been warned to look out for them?
Drones share the same space as helicopters for filming power boat racing with no associated hysteria.

http://www.facebook.com/P1SuperStock...5008714202006/

White drone against white smoke?

That statement beggars belief.

"just because a drone was "seen" is over reacting."

Um actually it came within 50 metres of one of the fire fighting helicopters. You are a tool.

I'm pretty sure chopjock is trolling.

Chopjock


Your 100 percent correct that in the speedboat racing world Drones and Helicopters co exists and I'm 100% sure that every morning the Drone operators and the Helicopter pilots sit in a SAFETY Meeting and go over the rule of where everyone will be. Some dork who just shows up at a fire has announced his intentions and the helicopter pilots don't know he's there until it too late.


:ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh:

About a year ago we had a drone operating on a fire that i was working. At the morning briefing the pilots were asked about drones and we all said "hell no". That afternoon they came back with a plan, they were going to have the drone operating overnight surveying, etc, and the drone pilots/operators turned up to see us to ask about weather conditions where they wanted to operate.

We all had a good chat with them and the next morning they showed us what they had produced overnight, very impressive. They also had a plan, along with our AAS and asked if they could operate over a set area of plantation forestry, and we just kept our flight paths clear of their operating area. It worked well, with both helicopters and drones operating in a similar "controlled" airspace. No problem.

However we had a plan, the drone operators had a flight plan, they had an aviation radio, and they even had a couple of spotters so that they could land the drone if a helicopter strayed into their airspace.

At no point did they try to get within 50m of a helicopter, and just being buzzing around helicopters without a plan!

Well, how many birds there are vs. how many drones? Granted.
But:
How much is known about behavior of birds (travelling routes and seasons, resting areas, survival instinct, fear, ...) vs. the behavior of drone pilots in the hunt the next best picture or video to upload to their social networks (which could be asocial behavior documented on social networks...weird)

Do you really want to see a drones last picture of a real crash being being that of a poor pilot's scared face?


Thracian

Not for the first time, either. He is trying something similar over in the Grand Canyon EC130 thread.