For all the speculation, the actual impact of a done strike on a commercial aircraft / engine can't be that difficult to test and measure on the ground under safe conditions...

Perhaps the 'ban all drones now' brigade would do better to spend their energies trying to convince the relevant safety boards to conduct some proper research so that the risks can be properly quantified and understood?

crunchy bird ingestion
 

doubtless it's been said but in light of recent posts, bears repeating

the gears and rare earth magnets in drone motors are hard and will wreak havoc with turbine blade tip clearance..

A friend of mine worked on bird ingestion for P&W decades ago. He basically sharpened the first stage blades so they'd shred the bird and it could pass on through like the mostly water substance that a bird is.
There's no gears in a seagull.


Abuse a freedom and you'll lose it.
If th a-holes leep this up all their drones will be cellphone equipped , continuously broadcasting their owner's name and location .

That sounds like a good idea. In todays world of the Internet of everything that would go a long way to remove any tw@t factor.

Qualcomm joins drone fray in a big way.
 

Expect to see more drones than ever in the hands of amateurs.


New Qualcomm Tech Could Lead to the Ultimate Drone | WIRED

There is no way drone makers will be able to pre-program their products to geo-fence time-dependent events like this.

Student charged with endangerment after drone crashes into football stadium | Ars Technica

good idea: then I can program mine to deliver a pre-emptive strike

There are enough out there. An alternative to the second BMW perhaps? The skies over Cheshire will be full

I met a chap a year or so back who was just starting up as a professional photographer, he was very enthusiastic about using drones. He couldn't believe it when I told him the folks at EGCC might be interested in what he was planning to do.
He's based in Wilmslow. :E

"The first case in England of a person being prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service for using drones after a police-led operation."

Man fined after flying drones over Premier League stadiums - BBC News

UK government teams up with NASA to build drone tracking system
 

And of course these will always be flown iaw CAA regs:

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/567...name-them.html

UK government teams up with NASA to build drone tracking system
Quote:
The proposed system would track and trace all drones flying below 500 feet (150 metres), irrespective of whether they are being flown by commercial or leisure pilots.

It looks like they expect a 'cooperative' system in which 'drones' report their position to the regulator, otherwise they will have a lot of difficulty identifying them and even discriminating small UAS from birds. UAS now in hobbyist hands or self built will not enable cooperative surveillance so will be unaffected But no doubt the government will pay NASA handsomely for their failure.

Edit:

The quote from the House of Lords statement is
The technology that they are discussing is indeed a cooperative system being developed at NASA Ames by Parimal Kopardekar (PK) see:

http://www.atmseminar.org/seminarCon...Kopardekar.pdf

Expert Drones
 

This site seems to be a good place to get a feel for the state of the market. They offer a wide variety of commercial drones, and even offer drone insurance (not liability).

Find the drone for you. Expert Drones

In ohter news, the Finnish post office is playing with drone delivery, like Amazon's.

Finnish post office tests drone for parcel delivery | Reuters

Not just aircraft!
 

Some may say slightly off topic, but some may also say this is why the CAA has implemented the new rules...

Drone flies into Whangarei power lines, causes outage | Stuff.co.nz

Drone humor
 

OK, it's Friday, and it's time for a little drone humor.

Here's a father who rigged up his drone to pull out his daughter's baby tooth. All seems to go well, but you may be advised to not try this at home.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/video/pull...021828154.html

Drone at Manchester
 

Monarch flight ZB 547 from ACE, due at 1616Hrs, was unable to land At MAN due to "drone activity". Had to divert to Liverpool due low fuel. Currently in a "fuel queue" before return to MAN.
Don't know if any other flights affected.
AS

547 back at MAN 1808Hrs.
AS

Parents plane was kept in a hold for 20 minutes prior to landing at MAN due to 'Technical Issues at MAN'. Scheduled arrival was 1630.

We were flying into Toronto Pearsons Int six days ago when the 744 ahead of us reported a near-miss with a small sized UFO (either a bird or a drone, suspected latter). They did sound a bit worried during transmission to ATC but as usual, ATC replied with, paraphrasing here, "nothing is on my radar so therefore it is not my problem".

Shame really. Looks like we are going to have to share the skies with birds AND drones now...

NZ too
 

Note the altitude reported for this 'near miss': 6000 feet/2000 metres...

Kaiapoi is 17 km north of the departure airport (Christchurch), at 2-4 metres above seal level.

Dean

"A large red drone flew too close to an Air NZ aircraft on Friday night and authorities are after the operator who they think was in Kaiapoi."

Source: AAP
26 SEP 2015

"Air New Zealand says the operator of a drone put its customers and staff at risk and should have the courage to come forward.

The Civil Aviation Authority says a "sizeable" red drone that on Friday passed close to an Air NZ A320 plane with 166 passengers on board as it climbed out of Christchurch en route to Auckland is being recorded as a near miss.

Air NZ says no evasive action was taken by the pilot of flight NZ542 but customers and staff were put at risk.

"What our pilot believed to be a drone was being operated in and around the flight path, but was fortunately spotted by our pilots who ensured the aircraft avoided it," said Captain David Morgan, Air New Zealand's chief flight operations and safety officer.

"This was reckless behaviour by the drone operator who has so far not had the courage to come forward and address their behaviour with authorities."

Director of Civil Aviation Graeme Harris said the remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS) passed close to the plane near Kaiapoi at an altitude of about 6000 feet.

CAA launched a full investigation shortly after the pilot reported the sighting and Transport Minister Simon Bridges was briefed on Friday night.

A new civil aviation rule for drones came into effect on August 1. Under the rule, anyone who wants to fly a drone beyond what is allowed for traditional model aircraft needs to apply for certification from the CAA.

"We have to assume that this RPAS pilot was unaware of the rules regarding flying unmanned aircraft," Mr Harris said.

"While RPAS technology is advancing quickly and offers some very significant benefits to a range of industries, it can pose a threat to conventional aviation activities and this must be carefully managed," he said."

Air NZ condemns drone operator | SBS News

The FAA proposes a $1.9 million civil penalty against drone operator
 

http://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=19555

Averages out at a penalty of $20k per flight.


Mickjoebill

Seems to me we're pussy-footing round this issue. The drones that are causing all the grief are the toy ones. So, they're toys...no reason why they should not be made illegal. And illegal to fly an existing one without a licence....which is never forthcoming.

Unfortunately, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Hundreds of thousands of these things are in the hands of people who only know which way up to hold a newspaper if there are pictures and they only watch MTV and play computer games when not flying their octocopters :p. Enforcement of any rules is now close on impossible. Aviation is living on borrowed time - there will be a 'drone' manned aircraft mid-air sometime soon. Yet even then banning them will not be just a case of writing laws and regulations and demanding licensing. The people that will lose out here will be the conscientious model aero clubs.

As far as the MAN incident goes, for anyone who knows the area, that would be somewhere near Woodbank Park, which makes sense.

That said what altitude can these things get to?

Look on youtube. There are claims of >4000 meters.

Trafi.fi - News - New aviation regulation on the use of unmanned aircraft and model aircraft - Trafi.fi - News - New aviation regulation on the use of unmanned aircraft and model aircraft

Finland has today introduced one of the most liberal aviation regulations in the world as regards the use of unmanned aircraft and flying models. The level of regulation depends on how the device is used. The requirements for model aircraft used for recreational purposes are significantly lighter than those for remotely piloted aircraft used professionally. On the other hand, professional operators may legally carry out such tasks that are not allowed for recreational flyers.

”Our brand new regulation on the use of unmanned aircraft is the most liberal in Europe, if not in the whole world. Right from the beginning, our goal has been to achieve as light a level of regulation as possible, and this has succeeded excellently in my opinion. The regulation leaves room for experiments and allows for the development of new business activities”, says Kari Wihlman, Director General at Trafi. ”We have wanted to pave the way for full-scale benefits to be gained from this new segment of aviation, and create opportunities for experimentation. It is particularly through tests and experiments that business activities can develop further.”

WOULD THIS BE OF ANY HELP?
 

New technology could blast drones out of the sky - BT

Pity there isn't a similar portable device which would transmit pulses to ruin the "music" leaking from personal stereo deaf users!! :rolleyes:

VERBAL INTERCOURSE RUNDOWN.
 

Well, that stopped the conversation, again!

Any nerds/techies out there prepared to comment on if/how effective the UAV jammer would be?? :O

Disconnect the pilot from the aircraft mid-flight and without warning?

Can't see any potential for anything to go wrong there... :ugh:

Of course, in the UK at least, deliberately causing interference to a radio user / service is against the law - even in licence exempt bands.

Many drones have some sort of fail safe mode they enter if control lost. Some just hover in place, some can return to base and land others will just crash. I believe the idea behind the jammer is to temporarily put the drone into fail safe mode in the hope that the pilot will "get the message" something is wrong. In many cases just having the drone crash will still be better than allowing it to continue flying.

Unless you can verify in advance that your target will fail in a safe way, that seems like an unacceptable level of risk. Remember, anyone can DIY a drone with relative ease these days and the market for commercial products gas exploded. You simply cannot rely on the features advertised by any particular manufacturer being present in the speck that you happen to be looking at in the sky.

I suspect that this technology would prove more useful in situations where collateral damage is deemed more tolerable than it is within yards of a civilian airport in peace time.

I may be wrong, but this sounds like defence equipment to me...

If the drone or multicopter is using hobby grade 2.4 then saturating the entire band would probably kill it.

A lot of 2.4 systems these days use frequency hopping, changing channel around every 100ms. This is used to ensure a robust RF link.

Probably not a great solution to the problem though....

World's first drone airport
 

will be in Rwanda?

The world's first airport for drones will be built in Rwanda - Quartz

Some of these posts are amusing.

There's pilots here that have dabbled with RC and have some authority or knowledge to back up their statements and opinions.

But on the other hand, there is a hell of a lot who don't. It's mildly refreshing to see pilots who criticise the less informed or knowledgeable when they make posts regarding types and SOPs with "You have no understanding, so your input is invalid :ugh:" Yet they post misinformed comments here - the boot is on the other foot.

Not sure why, but that tickles me immensely:ok:

US government to register all drones
 

All drones to be registered.
Wow, must be as dangerous as guns?? yet gun laws are not wholly effective in preventing them being used in anti social way.

U.S. government to announce drone registration rules on Monday - Fortune

May deter some from silly behaviour, but in general its not the law abiding that engauge in silly (or nefarious) behaviour.


Mickjoebill

Lucky the bad guys can't just make a drone in their garage, eh?

Still, regulators gotta regulate. And, to be fair, if you're flying something the size of a light aircraft, it should be treated as one. Hopefully there'll be a sane limit on the small end of the drone market, because the idea that every tourist is going to register their one-ounce selfie drone when they visit America is laughable.

how true.... but then again if one refers to the war on drugs...it doesn't stop the guvment from spending billions to attempt the impossible... expect to see drone sniffing dogs in the near future...

Registration in USA
 

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx Announces Unmanned Aircraft Registration Requirement | Department of Transportation

Long and short, in November, a group of 'experts' will set the guidelines for registering all unmanned aircraft, even toys. We will see what happens. If the sign up goes like ACA (Obamacare), we will spend over a year after the red line (and this administration holds red lines very seriously) trying to make a wb site that works, while all your emails go to some private server in a closet that no one knows about except Snowden.
Seriously, between 1 and 5 reports a day of these things flying near commercial aircraft, air ambulances, or fire fighters.

It would appear that no-one has any idea of how many of these drones/uas/toys are around. Most toy shops have a few dozen assorted radio controlled helicopters of around 2 ozs weight hobbyist model shops perhaps a hundred or so. So let's be conservative and say that there are 20 million of these drones/toys in the wild. I do not see how it is feasible to put together an organization that would need to be the size of the state DMVs to maintain a registry of these toys/UAS/drones. But I can see how this would appear to be extremely attractive to an empire building bureaucrat. :hmm:

Even if it were done - it will not stop someone flying a small radio controlled aircraft into the path of a manned aircraft. But efficacy is not one of the requirements of a bureaucratic registration system.

Since birds have a history of causing many plane crashes and drones have not the government would accomplish much more by installing a transponder on all birds before registering small drones. That would keep them busy for a while.

Drone companies are doubling down on maps with safety in mind
 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ddress-safety/