Drones threatening commercial a/c?
 

Here's a report of a drone thought to have been deliberately flown close (within 80 feet) to a commercial aircraft on approach at London Southend Airport. This event follows an American report of a drone nearly colliding with a passenger plane near Tallahassee's airport in March of this year; that near-collision happened at an altitude of over 2,000 feet.

Report: Drone nearly collided with British passenger plane on purpose

Do drones of this size present much of a danger to these aircraft? Would they be roughly equivalent to a bird strike? Could colliding with one bring a plane down?

Apparently the UK's BALPA will have a representative speak before the House of Lords this week about their concerns, so it sounds serious.

Small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are UAS that are 55lbs or less. I would expect a cockpit strike with a 55lb UAS could make your day too exciting. Most aero engines would become rather rough after ingesting a UAS too.

The problem is that there are idiots around who have graduated from l@ser pointers to flying these small UAS who are going to cause the entire commercial industry and for that matter model aircraft flying to be outlawed. They will do that by bringing down a passenger aircraft. Unfortunately it looks like they will continue being stupid until they do bring down an aircraft. :ugh:

Depends on the bird :E. Having a Google ( as you do :ooh:) I see that these seemingly easily available drones:...

Overview of our drones - Height Tech Gm

are somewhat more massive than your "**** me, I don't want to fly into you" Common Buzzard, which weighs in at a mere 1.3 kg max ....roughly 3 lbs in old money....

I'll let you draw your on conclusions, but personally I wouldn't want to collect a flesh, feather and blood 1.3 kg Buzzard, so as for a 2.5 kg drone...........



Yikes, :ooh: a suitcase weighing 55 lbs suitcase would be on the verge of triggering overweight charges on many airlines.......

whoever flies a drone or anything less than ~1000 ft from any aircraft should be jailed for a long time as a lesson for others

I'm afraid that drones are an unconfessed nightmare for airport security managers. No need to say more.

An obvious future nightmare for all commercial airliners. No need to be on the plane anymore and lighting your shoe on fire.

The NYC police dept is using the "T" word with respect to drones.

I had been thinking it would be an enjoyable way to spend some time now that I have given up my medical and sold my plane, but it looks like the environment for playing with one is going to be somewhat hostile.

Just another example of how the T-words have won.

I have one
 

The small dromes, known generally as quadracopters weigh a hundred gramms or so, I have two but the range is limited to a couple of hundred metres from the TX so unless you are airside or being pretty stupid, they wouldnt be a threat. Also they tend to drop out the sky why they go out of range.

The bigger ones are expensive, £350 for the smallest one so I dont think the lazer pointer idiots will be going there. Besides for for the non commercial user, there is a whole host of CAA regs to abide by.

Lets not panic yet.

Which none of them will read. Recently in the US the FAA attempts to prosecute a similar UAS operator using their policy statements failed because the judge said they had no legal effect. There is a continuing legal battle in that area. See:

Trappy and the FAA fine for flying over the University of Virginia | Personal Drones

I can assure you that the commercial UAS manufacturers are more worried than you are about their market being killed by someone being silly with a 'toy' UAS. Just wait till after Christmas when the sky is filled with Christmas UAS. :eek:

The advent of the drone, currently small expensive and of limited performance, is just the thin end of a potentially very big and dangerous wedge. Just look at the exponential expansion in mobile phone capability to see what can happen and Amazon, for example, are already looking at load carrying drones. Strict regulation is needed NOW to limit the weight, altitude and range of these devices and their operation should strictly licenced.
Like others I can see the threat to commercial aircraft of a bomb laden drone hovering on the glidepath, invisible in cloud or at night. What about the threat to General Aviation? Light aircraft operate mainly in the altitude range achievable by drone devices and the consequences of a collision with one are even more likely to have a serious or catastrophic effect than on a large commercial aircraft.
I would like to see drone operations restricted to a maximum of 250ft agl, day only, with a max weight of half a kilo. Operation should only be allowed to licenced operators and not within 3 miles radius of any airfield or licenced strip. Like a virus, these things are out there now and must be controlled before something seriously bad happens.

777fly - the problem is, how do you even start enforcing that? I can go to HobbyKing right now and get all the parts for a 2kg drone for somewhere around the $200 mark. So can anyone else. Even if the idiots knew that they needed a license (which they wouldn't, because they never have any communication with the CASA/CAA/FAA/EASA at all) they'd ignore it and fly anyway.

Keep in mind that the vast majority of model aircraft pilots are responsible. They fly under 400ft, keep the vehicle within a few hundred metres (because it's hard to see otherwise), and keep a watch out for any traffic that might be in the area.

The people flying drones around full-size aircraft are idiots, and the thing about idiots is that they don't pay a whole lot of attention to anything (like laws, common sense, airliners, crowds of people, etc). Realistically, it'd be nice to have some major penalties that actually get applied (so that people see the potential consequences) but that means finding the pilot - which is again a very difficult thing to do.

The vast majority of "drones" sold in stores are essentially radio controlled model aircraft - there are very few autonomous drones. There are quite strict rules from the CAA on how and where model aircraft can be flown. For example most people flying them in their garden will be breaking the rules on proximity to buildings.

Basic Principles | Aircraft | Operations and Safety

See also CAP722 Unmanned Aircraft System Operations in UK
Airspace – Guidance

CAP 722: Unmanned Aircraft System Operations in UK Airspace - Guidance | Publications | About the CAA

I think it would help if retailers of drones were required to put a summary of the CAA rules in with the product.

cwatters
Unfortunately, at the average drunken party on the Thames at Richmond, full of 'hooray Henry's' with a great deal more money than sense - it will be a great laugh to fly Marmaduke's new £5000 toy see if they can see into people's back gardens - then see how fast it can go or how high it can go..... what's an extended centre line? We are MILES from Heathrow...

And they wouldn't know an Air Navigation Order if it bit their backsides.

Unfortunately, whether we like it or not someone in an aircraft is going to hit one of these; and I don't think the regulators in Europe or the USA have a handle on how to deal with the problem.

Jammers can be installed in the airports to disrupt the control on all major frequencies used in remote controlled models, but you can still program a drone to fly to a preset GPS waypoint autonomously. As a r/c model enthusiast, i dont see a solution to this problem. If one wanted, he could build a drone capable of seriously damaging an a/c fly it right into a landing a/c, and he would only need a month or a couple months of setup and training so the fact that this hasnt happened yet is just due to terrorists being lazy and narrow-minded.

Yes the problem is I know you know but the average punter has no idea as has been said before untill someone gets one in an engine nothing will be done.

The big difference with modern multi-rotor UAVs is that unlike a conventional model helicopter or model aircraft they can be flown with ease because they are electronically stabilised by inbuilt electronic gyros and with GPS installed will hold position as soon as the controls are released. Therefore, anybody with the money to purchase one, or the bits and the skill to build one, can then fly it with no training whatsoever.

I own a six rotor UAV equipped for high definition filming. It weighs around 8 kgs. with 12" carbon fibre propellers which are like razors. I also happened to have attended the relevant ground school, passed the written exam, taken the flying test so now hold a BNUC-S and CAA permit for aerial work. To get that I also had to write an operations manual which is akin to that for operating a full size aircraft. All told around £10,000 has been spent but it is used for commercial aerial film work.

I am restricted to line of sight operations which is generally accepted as 400' vertically and 500m horizontally from where I am standing. I am also subject to numerous other (sensible) restrictions regarding how close I can fly to people, buildings, etc., etc.

Unfortunately the widespread availability and cheapness of UAVs means that idiots can have a field day. Someone is going to be seriously hurt or worse and then there will be a major clampdown. I just hope that those of us who take the operation of a UAV seriously will escape whatever draconian legislation ensues.

I am sure it is only a matter of time before a terrorist gets in on the act.

French nuclear power plants
 

During this month it has been reported that 7 of our nuclear power plants have been overflown by various unknown drones of different sizes.
What's cooking ???

Les mystérieux drones qui ont survolé sept centrales nucléaires en France

I read recently, that Sussex Police at Gatwick have obtained an expensive Drone which they intend to fly during incidents or accidents and indeed during training in and around the Airport!

Crowded Skies in the future!

More about the French drones cited by FlamantRose above from the BBC here: On French TV news yesterday evening, a French air-force spokesman also mentionned that "the drones were not detectable by military radar", only by visual observation...?!

The possibilities of who is behind these French drones are almost endless: Al-Qaeda or some other terrorist organisation; hackers trying to discover and eavesdrop on wireless networks operating at the power stations; Google map street view etc.

My own opinion is that it is Amazon.com, experimenting with their drone delivery service in a "controlled-airspace" where all other flying objects should normally NOT be found...?! :ok:

airship

Given the going's on with the Siven's barrage at the moment it came as no surprise that French lunchtime TV yesterday had the likes of Greenpeace and/or one of the more militant environmental groups in it's list of usual suspects..as you say the list of possibilities is endless..

Barrage de Sivens - LaDépêche.fr

Excellent post. I've flown aerial photography from R/C aircraft for some 15 years now and it is astounding to read of the incident now that the technology is cheaply and readily available to those with "more money than sense".

Per usual, those of us in compliance and doing a good job will be the real losers. :(

I'm not sure that you could get away with jamming the 2.4GHz band. Wifi operates at 2.4GHz too, and I suspect that there'd be plenty of lawsuits if an airport decided to disable all 2.4GHz equipment within 10km (or whatever distance is appropriate).


I wonder whether there's another way to "shoot down" a drone. Maybe a highly targeted beam on both 2.4GHz (control) and 1575MHz (GPS) to make the drone completely unflyable - although that relies on being able to detect and target the drone quickly.

How about training falcons to intercept them? I saw a video where a drone was downed quite easily by a bird recently.

In what way are these drones more of a risk than conventional remote control planes and helicopters? Is it just the ease of use and stability from the 4 or more rotors?

My experience with a r/c helicopter was that with a lot of patience (indoors, no wind) you may get somewhere near to your target. Outside with weather, moving quickly to intercept an aircraft would have been impossible (for me and my kit)



Oh and a personal moan calling it London Southend Airport just so the Orange ones can claim they fly to the capital.... It's not even in Southend:ugh:

The new(ish) quadcopters require almost no skill whatsoever. When compared to a r/c helicopter you could say zero skill. When compared to an r/c plane, you could say 1/100th of the skill.

Basically they will fly by themselves. You simply use the joysticks to move them from one place to another. You can even (with some models) give them GPS coordinates and they will go there by themselves.

So line of sight is not a requirement to keep the thing "under control", or even to get it where you want.

And you can get this for less than £100.

with respect the above is not close to the truth

1. you can buy quadcopter for less than 100 pounds and they will not do all this as above, in fact they are not going to be able to fly at any distance to bother aircraft

2. Drones that you can programme GPS into and they fly themselves are illegal in most countries as you have to have control and line of sight according to the air navigation order. Those that don't come under this are operated by USAF / RAF / A de la air

3. There is a lot of hysteria about this - most chinese RC handsets will not even get to half a mile let alone further.

4. The quads are easy to fly but the orientation issue remains and they are easy to crash. also if the GPS lock is not gained at launch then the GPS is irrelevant

5. In terms of ease of flight quads / prop plane / turbine plane / big heli

Personally - I think this is a lot of scare mongering.... the only major issue is idiots flying these things near people. Plenty of videos on you tube of what big helis do to flesh, image 4 props going like the clappers!!

jammers - lot of old :mad: as far as drones are concerned. If the signal is lost most quads either return to launch site or drop out of the sky. They cannot continue on some automated destructive pathway. Also these are illegal in most countries in EU and North america as they don't comply with air nav laws

I'm not sure but i think that most r/c transmitters operate on different bands than WiFi does, since they dont interfere with WiFi signal. What is called 2.4Ghz is a lot of frequancy band/channels. And the most popular commercial quadrocopter, the Phantom, operates on 5.8Ghz IIRC. Although 5.8Ghz is also used for some new generation of WiFi i think it can be sacrificed.

Also on the level of rumours, i have spoken once to a son of an oligarch on a r/c models festival, who is himself into r/c flying and is a famous 3D heli pilot in Russia, and he said that in Kremlin and in oligarch's countryside residencies there are devices akin to military countermeasure jammers that will fry the electronics of a drone should it breach the airspace above them. I have nothing to prove those claims though and i am not even sure if it is possible from the physics standpoint. As i understand, the device should induce strong currents in any conducting materials through electromagnetic induction in the vicinity.

Extensive resources currently available
 

If you care to examine what is available on the web for relatively little effort you might be astonished at the breadth and variety. You could do worse than to start here A newbie's guide to UAVs - DIY Drones.

Searches on terms such as "ardupilot" and UAV will yield lots of information which has clearly escaped several of the contributors here. There is, for example, a company in Buenos Aires which is marketing a fixed wing UAV with a 20Kg payload and a maximum weight of 87Kg. They're asking US$12,600 for the airframe without electronics. It doesn't take much imagination to see to what nefarious purposes this could lend itself.

GPS jammers have been deployed by military and security forces, and knowing the frequency and feeble power of the transmissions should be readily constructed by anyone interested and energetic enough to do so. Jamming 2.4 Ghz would be much more problematic, as it is the current standard for WiFi, and pretty much any domestic and industrial wireless communication, including medical devices etc. In fact if I planned to use a UAV as a terrorist or merely mischievous device to interfere with aviation I think I would equip it with a GPS device and autopilot for primary flight control. To alter the flight path I would use radio control to revise the GPS co-ordinates.

I have not, and never will have any plans to put this into action, but I think we should all be aware of the possibilities.:hmm:

There is a new "breed" of drones that are controlled by a micro-controller, like Arduino or PICaxe. These have built in gyroscope and acceleration, and some even have GPS (and if they don't a GPS unit to install on one costs about £10).

I also know of people who have built quad- and sex-copters programmed entirely by Arduino, with accelerometers, gyroscopes and GPS. In fact there is a well known U-tube channel where you can get all the instructions to make your own out of about £40 worth of kit.

These are very capable of "flying" themselves, and easily programmed by anyone with a PC and the development environment to download the program (the software is free).

I personally know of 2 people who have a drone quadcopter that will fly to and maintain a programmed GPS position.

As for them being illegal. I know of a few people who have untaxed cars here in the UK, as well as some without MOT. Let alone all those cars that have been sold with existing remaining tax on them. Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

There are hundreds and hundreds of articles on robotics that explain how to make a self-contained using GPS. If you have a microcontroller controlling a copter, it is a simple thing to add GPS, and many people have already done it. Most of these people are too smart to do something stupid like park it at the end of a runway, but that doesn't mean it's not possible.

The Drone era
 

It is here.

Like superpowers, drones can be used for good or evil. Unlike in comic books, evil is usually the strongest side.

Did you see that drone in a football match last week, with a flag of one of the teams? It triggered a quarrel, but that's nothing. Imagine that drone swiftly flying direct to the VIP zone, with half a kilo of explosives in it…

Drones will be regulated, heavily, if the authorities don't want a security nightmare. They can even device "shoot and forget" models, that autonomously fly to the target and detonate. Maybe even using cameras and face recognition… Technology is advancing too fast. BAd guys with a little imagination have now a superuseful tool, now. It can be the weapon, or an observing tool, or a decoy… What a nightmare!

That regulation will be good for air safety as well. And they can use air safety as the reason for the heavy regulation that drones require. Police and government, however, they will love using drones for their purposes, that sometimes are evil, too...

It is also evil, to me, that one day one will not be able to look at the sky without seeing a schwarm of them drones.

In today's NY Times:

Unidentified Drones Are Seen Above French Nuclear Plants

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/wo...ar-plants.html

Mark

I suspect the NY Times is finally picking up on the French media coverage of the last week or two that was mentioned in previous posts.


FWIW yesterday's "Liberation" French Language newspaper ran a "special" on this (sadly you need a subscription to get anywhere near yesterday's piece) and yet again it was covered on French TV news following at least one more power station overflight (I believe at night, at the weekend).

No-one is as yet claiming responsibility.

Chinese made a laser turret to down small drones

http://rt.com/news/201795-china-drone-defense-laser/

FAA Investigating drones near JFK
 

FAA investigating drone sightings near New York's JFK Airport - CBS News

Why worry about l@ser turrets or targetted radio jamming beams to disable them?
A good old shottey will do the trick up to a certain altitoode!
Both barrels... boom boom.
Or any other kinetic weapon.
Bit of good old buckshot right up them - eh?!!!
In fact the bird scarer bloke could be paid a bit extra to look after such duties around most airports - no?
And out of shotgun range - just mount a bleedin' Phalanx system on the control tower roof.
That'd sort the buggers.
Sorry - it's Thursday night here and I've run out of my meds...

And various other posts.


It's called deterrent sentencing, (correctly or loosely.) and punishes people for crimes that haven't yet been committed.

I think it's imperative we have the ramifications promulgated in every way possible before locking people up and throwing away the key. After all, we do have the finest newspapers and television in the world . . . don't we?

Also, when any drone is sold, the vendor MUST warn the purchaser of the dangers and the law - in writing and verbally. And I would suggest, file a copy of the purchaser's acceptance of the warnings.

Then you can bring out the tonne of bricks.

Potentially a huge problem - cheap price, ease of use, 'dubious' reasons for purchase, lack of control over operators.

Unlike model aircraft, where aeromodellers are generally responsible individuals who operate in a sensible manner, drone operators may have ulterior motives and not simply be hobbyists in the normal sense.

Drones, if it flies the FAA plans to regulate it.
 

Everything down to what used to be considered toys will be regulated.

AIUI, this was an NTSB ruling countermanding a ruling previously made by an NTSB official (NTSB administrative law judge, Patrick Geraghty, in an appeal by Raphael Pirker against $10,000 fine by FAA).
So the NTSB do consider paper airplanes and helium party balloons as subject to regulation. In practice, I guess they will be concerned with anything that could cause injury or damage to property, which is certainly true even for model aircraft (Roman Pirozek killed by "toy" helicopter).

The wording of the 1958 Act seems as clear as the Second Amendment, and we know how controversial that turned out to be. I can see this going all the way to the Supreme Court.