It's curious how this individual managed to get the drone footage from the SD card. Usually when a piece of equipment is used in a criminal act, the equipment in question is impounded by law enforcement.
Calif. tourist fined $20K for out-of-control drone that landed at airport in Las Vegas flight in 2018
- Thread starter BigAl07
- Start date
The aircraft WAS impounded but was returned later fully intact. Rest assured they have a complete copy of every bit/byte of data from the aircraft but it was returned to him at a later date.
I watched the video and now it is even more puzzling...as in it seems this guy was an even bigger idiot than originally thought:
He thinks the fine was excessive but I think he deserves it. Terrible decision making and total disregard for any and all regulations.
As a thought experiment I would ask what the FAA would do if this flight had gone differently. What if all of the following were done:
- When you see a picture of him with his modded controller, you immediately see that he is not a "rookie" or "noob" when it comes to flying drones. If he has enough time, energy, and money to mod his controller for long distance flights then he can't plead ignorance to the regulations.
- Do we think that the incorrect FAA registration number on the drone was unintentional?
- Was the drone modified to not have geo-fencing?
- It is strange the way the drone basically drifts sideways the entire flight with the camera pointing straight down. This is not the typical behavior of a pilot actually controlling his drone. If he was controlling it, I assume he would want to see where he was heading.
- It seems to me therefore that he lost his connection between controller and drone very early on. It looks like that very first building may have blocked signal right from the start. It's amazing that he didn't hit any tall building on that voyage.
- If he did lose signal very early on then it means he either did not have his RTH enabled and/or that he also lost GPS signal. GPS signal loss also seems likely because the drone kept drifting in the same direction and speed for the entire voyage (presuming the wind was blowing in that direction). So did he have a GPS issue? The drone was generally above the buildings the entire time so one would think a functional GPS unit would have obtained a lock at some point. Or was it the right day and time that a GPS signal lock could not be obtained and he took off anyway?
- At landing the drone was still drifting sideways. I am amazed that a Phantom landing like that did not topple over.
He thinks the fine was excessive but I think he deserves it. Terrible decision making and total disregard for any and all regulations.
As a thought experiment I would ask what the FAA would do if this flight had gone differently. What if all of the following were done:
- The pilot displayed the proper FAA registration number on his drone.
- The pilot checked airspace before the flight and obtained LAANC clearance prior to takeoff.
- The drone was not modified to disable geo-fencing.
- The pilot checked for proper GPS lock and setting of home point prior to takeoff.
- The pilot stayed at or below the authorized LAANC altitude.
- The pilot did not fly over people.
- The drone then has a failure where it loses both GPS lock and signal with the controller while it is still in VLOS.
- From there let's assume the rest of the flight goes exactly the same as this one did, where it drifted and finally landed at the airport when the battery was depleted.
Frankly I'm surprised the feds gave him back his drone at all. Usually when civil forfeiture happens, it costs tens of thousands in litigation to MAYBE get some of the property back.
A $15,000 fine for endangering the lives of potentially many passengers on an airliner, vs. a $42,000 fine for EACH video, for not marking your video correctly as 'for kids' or 'not for kids' on Youtube. Seems the world is a little out of balance these days.
A $15,000 fine for endangering the lives of potentially many passengers on an airliner, vs. a $42,000 fine for EACH video, for not marking your video correctly as 'for kids' or 'not for kids' on Youtube. Seems the world is a little out of balance these days.
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MARCH 18, 2015
Man Who Crashed Drone on White House Lawn Won’t Be Charged
Man Who Crashed Drone on White House Lawn Won’t Be Charged, Says He Wasn't Trying to Impress a Date
Shawn Usman, the man who crashed a drone on the White House grounds on Jan. 26, will not be criminally charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the...
@BigAl07 asked me to take a look at the flight log for this unfortunate flight. The only log available appears to be an AirData csv conversion, which is missing a lot of data fields, but there is still quite a lot of information to work with.
Firstly, the log messages indicate a number of compass errors and a switch to ATTI mode before the control connection was lost. Without the magnetometer data to compare with the IMU yaw values, I employed the usual trick of differentiating the recorded position with respect to time and then subtracting from the IMU velocity. This technique generally highlights compass errors quite well by deviation from the expected baseline of zero.
The resulting data agree with the compass error messages at around 60, 150 and 200 seconds. The cause of the errors is impossible to determine from such limited data, but it the problem led to the FC switching to ATTI mode. In the plot below the rather confusing wifi reconnect status values are removed for clarity:
The switch at 240 seconds, briefly interrupted by autoland, led to the aircraft drifting away and losing connection after flying behind a tall building that obstructed the link. In that sense the event was accidental, but for some reason the pilot made no attempt at all to control the aircraft once it started drifting - almost no stick inputs at all other than one very brief application of elevator at 255 seconds:
That's strange, because despite the compass errors the aircraft did respond appropriately to stick inputs, including the brief elevator input at 255 seconds:
The pilot had 73 seconds to control the aircraft after the ATTI switch occurred and the aircraft ceased autolanding at the home point, and before the connection was lost:
As a sanity check on the final outcome, extrapolating drift rate and battery depletion yields the following:
That suggests that it should have drifted to around 5000 m before autolanding. That puts it at the airport, although further than it actually travelled by around 1200 m. The reason is that the drift rate (i.e. wind speed) slowed as it headed for the airport. Analysis of the video show the actual track followed, with autolanding at almost exactly the predicted time (1068 seconds) just west of 19L-1R.
In conclusion, it looks like very careless piloting - either the pilot had no idea what to do in ATTI mode, or failed to notice that it was drifting away.
Firstly, the log messages indicate a number of compass errors and a switch to ATTI mode before the control connection was lost. Without the magnetometer data to compare with the IMU yaw values, I employed the usual trick of differentiating the recorded position with respect to time and then subtracting from the IMU velocity. This technique generally highlights compass errors quite well by deviation from the expected baseline of zero.
The resulting data agree with the compass error messages at around 60, 150 and 200 seconds. The cause of the errors is impossible to determine from such limited data, but it the problem led to the FC switching to ATTI mode. In the plot below the rather confusing wifi reconnect status values are removed for clarity:
The switch at 240 seconds, briefly interrupted by autoland, led to the aircraft drifting away and losing connection after flying behind a tall building that obstructed the link. In that sense the event was accidental, but for some reason the pilot made no attempt at all to control the aircraft once it started drifting - almost no stick inputs at all other than one very brief application of elevator at 255 seconds:
That's strange, because despite the compass errors the aircraft did respond appropriately to stick inputs, including the brief elevator input at 255 seconds:
The pilot had 73 seconds to control the aircraft after the ATTI switch occurred and the aircraft ceased autolanding at the home point, and before the connection was lost:
As a sanity check on the final outcome, extrapolating drift rate and battery depletion yields the following:
That suggests that it should have drifted to around 5000 m before autolanding. That puts it at the airport, although further than it actually travelled by around 1200 m. The reason is that the drift rate (i.e. wind speed) slowed as it headed for the airport. Analysis of the video show the actual track followed, with autolanding at almost exactly the predicted time (1068 seconds) just west of 19L-1R.
In conclusion, it looks like very careless piloting - either the pilot had no idea what to do in ATTI mode, or failed to notice that it was drifting away.
Very well done SAR. I think this helps to prove what many of us suspected all along.
Thank you for your time and expertise.
@mossphotography this should help explain many things we were wondering about.
Allen
Thank you for your time and expertise.
@mossphotography this should help explain many things we were wondering about.
Allen
Perfect....Fines started around $15K but late fees etc have it up to $20K and climbing.
Calif. tourist fined $20K for out-of-control drone that landed at airport in Las Vegas
Flying drones on the Strip requires Federal Aviation Administration approval. This approval is only given to licensed, professional pilots. If you are not licensed and something goes wrong, you wouldwww.fox5vegas.com
Jerry
I missed the local news on this one. Was anyone able to play back the flight using the log file referenced in the article? The longitude/latitude data makes no sense. It shows the drone was only 900 feet from home point but it landed between two taxiways on the far north end of our N/S runway. (19R) Fortunately the bulk of our traffic lands/departs to the west. It's rare for traffic to land to the south.
I'm just curious.
I'm just curious.
Ah, I missed that one somehow! Thanks for pointing it out! That guy was nuts & lucky at the same time. The Strip is an extremely busy helicopter route. Good thing he was flying during the day.
That was excellent work! I had it eyeballed landing a bit more to the northwest between the first two taxiways. Personally, I hope he never flies again.
Thanks. The landing spot that I marked is accurate to within 5 meters or so - the uncertainty due to it bouncing somewhat as it came down.
The flight log supplied was already a csv file, so I just imported it into Wavemetrics Igor Pro for analysis. The flight track was constructed by picking visual location data from the flight video.
Your perfect scenario can't be applied here due to the nature of the location. The only way it can be valid is if he wasn't flying at all. The area above and around The Strip is immensely busy. Common sense should have prevailed. This is the 3rd incident in the past 18 months or so where someone has done something incredibly stupid and in each case only pure luck prevented any injuries. I see two themes here: 1) Stupidity on the part of the "pilot" and 2) Too must trust in the technology. I think the fine fit the crime.
