Whose sky is it anyway? U.S. drone case tests rights to air space
- Thread starter LuvMyTJ
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OR we could each attach 2 crackle-type roman candles to our drones and synchronously and remotely set them off over his house at night while simultaneously activating a local civil alert siren.
Dude, there is a huge difference between an RC plane and a real airplane. A drone will be no worse than a bird strike to a real plane.
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Ah, but a bird strike did take down US Airways Flight 1549 (The "Sully" movie.) where the jet engines lost power after striking the Canadian geese. I would have thought it would have just blended them up really well, but seems they did do damage to the engines. A drone may do more having some metal.
Being a pilot, I have been told "To hold position in the run-up area for birds" on take-off by the tower. Not uncommon now, and maybe even more so.
Canada geese (they are not "Canadian geese") weigh some 8 pounds, and flight 1549 ingested at least 3 of them. If you want to treat that as mainstream, feel free. Modern jet engines are designed to be able to take a bird strike of up to 4 pounds. Flight 1549 ingested at least 6 times that amount of bird.
A plane hitting a Phantom sized drone is not going to be knocked out of the sky.
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Not sure about other countries, but in the USA there is an inherent expectation of a right to privacy, which necessarily trumps the concept of who does or does not "own" the sky.
Still, discharging a shotgun up into the sky in the middle of a residential neighborhood is beyond stupid as it puts everyone around you at risk for serious harm. If you can hit the drone with water from a hose, it's probably too low and too close. If not, then it's most likely not a problem (other than the noise).
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Still, discharging a shotgun up into the sky in the middle of a residential neighborhood is beyond stupid as it puts everyone around you at risk for serious harm. If you can hit the drone with water from a hose, it's probably too low and too close. If not, then it's most likely not a problem (other than the noise).
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Until this has been proven we can't afford to ASSUME otherwise. We all know what ASSUME really means and when life and limb are at stage we can't afford to assume. Keep in mind that small general aviation windshields are not "Impact Rated" and birds a lot smaller than a goose has gone through GA windshields.
Also what do you think the dense mass of the phantom battery would do to a tail rotor of a medivac helo? I can't say for sure one way or the other but I'm also not willing to take that chance. I can show you first hand what happens when a tail rotor barely catches a Fiber Optic cable.... it didn't cause a crash but it damaged the tail rotor enough to ground the aircraft and require an alternate medivac to be dispatched to try to get a mother and unborn child to the hospital. Unfortunately ONLY the mother survived but that may or may NOT be due to the delay in getting them to the hospital.
Also keep in mind that merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time could lead to an air disaster. A new pilot encountering(not striking but maneuvering trying to avoid) a sUAS shortly after take-off could over react or react incorrectly and get into a Death Spiral on departure.
If this is the same case I read about earlier, the drone pilot was allegedly flying down into neighboring back yards at or below deck levels. That, is invasion of privacy! Shooting out of the air will get a fine. If the memory card didn't get trashed, the video will prove the case (assuming the pilot didn't ditch the card, since the drone was handed back to the pilot by police on site).
I posted on a similar conversation in another thread, you are delusional if you think your drone wont damage aircraft or hurt people in them such as microlight/ultralight pilots, hitting a 2lb object at 70-500mph is going to cause damage to aircraft and humans, the Airport Exclusion Zones should start to make some sense now.
A few months ago I flew my P3 around the block where I live. A neighbor 2 blocks away came screaming up the block and tried to grab the controller from me. I called the cops as did he and the cops went to his place first to get his side of events. He told them I flew the drone down into his back yard about 7 feet off the ground and looked into the bedroom window of his daughters. Said his 2 daughters had just came out of the bath.
1. On this flight the drone NEVER went below 125' (+ or -) except when taking off and landing at my house.
2. His back yard is relative small (only maybe 25 feet (+ or -) from the back fence to the house and the entire back yard is heavily surrounded with tall trees.
3. I am a very novice inexperienced pilot and could have NEVER flown down anywhere near his back yard. I DON'T GET NEAR TREES rather I fly high above them ALWAYS and my entire neighborhood is very very heavily loaded with trees.
4. So the officer comes to my house and tells me his (the neighbor's) side of the story and how my drone was in his back yard 7' off the ground. He goes on to say "maybe you couldn't understand the person's concern because you don't have children". Well, I'm guessing that ANYONE could understand that NOBODY wants ANY drone outside their daughters' bedroom but I'm starting that the officer has made up his mind and that this guy is a friggin' nut and that the guy is outright lying.
5. HERE IS THE PROBLEM THOUGH: I have the drone sitting on my kitchen counter and my laptop computer with the flight video loaded. I tell the sheriff that he can take a look of the ENTIRE flight (about 14-15 minutes ....... but get this: The sheriff refuses to look at the video or even any portion of it! He says "oh, those videos can be edited!" Yes, I try to explain flight logs and time frame and EVERYTHING that makes it almost impossible to alter the video and the flight log and that even if one could do that it's highly unlikely that they could do so in such a short time period. But the cop was not having to anything to do with looking at actual evidence because he was so smart and knew all about video editing.
So the cop left, no charges were filed and no follow-up events occurred but I'm only posting this to show how things can come down and how many perceive these drones. I'm 68 years old and as everyone knows, anybody over 65 with a drone is very likely to be a perv and not going to pull the wool over a knowledgeable police officers eyes. The whole event has resulted in my no longer flying in my neighborhood. It's a shame that I can only enjoy flying it in a wide open field far from civilization but like some of the mafia says "whadda ya gonna do?"
Flying around built up areas is an accident waiting to happen in more ways that one, your better off out in the fields 
would you say that about all flying objectsFlying around built up areas is an accident waiting to happen in more ways that one, your better off out in the fields
Thanks for that but I really bought the drone for a hobby that I could have fun with at or near my home. I have no interest in driving far from home to fly over and video corn fields and such.Flying around built up areas is an accident waiting to happen in more ways that one, your better off out in the fields
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