Reporting someone

[MacDyver]

Ok, I've experienced a prop pop off of a quadrotor, and what happens is the same thing when you drop a brick. Straight down. If you're 300 ft AGL over a bridge like that, and a motor fails; a prop snaps or pops off, a bird flies into you, that quadrotor is coming straight down and achieving terminal velocity. If that hits someone's windshield when they're doing 55 (haha the Golden Gate bridge, who is doing 55?), this would kill someone. This is why you never, ever fly a quadrotor over a busy roadway. If this guy had a hexarotor or a counterrotating 8-prop quad (see ShotOver.com) arrangement (and a waiver), I wouldn't bat an eyelash. But RaptorMan is right. Stuff like this is going to ruin it not just for the commercial operators, but the hobbyists too. And don't tell me that the Mavic is Small. If Payton Manning threw a Mavic full tilt at your head, you would be an inpatient at the hospital if not worse.

Hex's don't crash? Does waivers somehow reduce damage? in order to get a waiver wouldn't one must take the 107 exam? Hobbyist/ Recreational users gain nothing by doing so except more restrictions.
Just personally I fly using AMA rules using Hover which I downloaded from the FAA site because it doesn't allow the input of user parameters (the version I have doesn't) if the FAA approves it I don't see the need to make things more complicated. I get you, I ride motorcycles and when I see idiots I cringe, but no point getting bent out of shape because when that idiot crashes and burns two more will replace him/her. Manned aviation underwent the same sky is falling scrutiny in its early years, we will have our growing pains adjust and I suspect manned aviation will soon become a nostalgic conversation over cold beers.

 

[lake_flyer]

Of course they do. But yet, **** still happens, doesn't it.
You didn't answer my question: How do you leave your house if you're so fearful?

I wonder if you didn't make a typo in your username?

Followed the discussion here, unbelievable. We're talking about airspace, the 3rd dimension. Cars don't hurl down from the skies when they get a flat.

Indeed, **** happens, bit only after you did everything you could to prevent it from happening.
If you didn't, it isn't '**** happens' ......YOU HAPPENED.

 

[William Gaddy]

Hex's don't crash? Does waivers somehow reduce damage? in order to get a waiver wouldn't one must take the 107 exam? Hobbyist/ Recreational users gain nothing by doing so except more restrictions.
Just personally I fly using AMA rules using Hover which I downloaded from the FAA site because it doesn't allow the input of user parameters (the version I have doesn't) if the FAA approves it I don't see the need to make things more complicated. I get you, I ride motorcycles and when I see idiots I cringe, but no point getting bent out of shape because when that idiot crashes and burns two more will replace him/her. Manned aviation underwent the same sky is falling scrutiny in its early years, we will have our growing pains adjust and I suspect manned aviation will soon become a nostalgic conversation over cold beers.

Hex's crash, they ALL crash. Anyone on here who has not crashed their favorite expensive drone hasn't been Baptised by Fire yet. My only point is that certain rotor configurations are more redundant than others. Have a quad? ONE thing fails and down it goes. Hexa? Well, if a bird takes out two adjacent props, down it goes. Octocopter? A lot more redundant in real situations, but even these have failure modes -- just a lot less likely. Quads are NOT safe for flying over crowds or busy roadways IMHO, period, full-stop.

 

[William Gaddy]

This is what a jammed brushless motor bearing does to a Phantom 3. This woman spent 3 days in the hospital. I'm certain no one on this forum would look forward to paying her medical bills...

It's a moot point anyway, this poster was flying a Mavic about as much as I teach Mandarin Chinese at the University of Timbuktu.

 

[Morgon]

I have done more in my life than you will ever dream of. Its people like you that do nothing.

How incredibly presumptuous. I bet typing that out made you feel real good about yourself. Hope the rest of your day is as pleasant as you are!

 

[RaptorMan]

Well, let's take a step back, before we jump to conclusions here. Here's what we know.

1) Some random guy (who we don't know) posted a video that CLAIMED to be a Mavic flying over the roadway on the Golden Gate Bridge.
a) If this is true, this is unwise because of the fact that the Mavic is a quadrotor, and at 300 FT AGL it's teminal velocity upon failure is like a bullet.
b) Quadrotors are prone to failures (props, motor, battery) -- it's an outside risk, but not a zero one that it will drop out of the air like a brick.
c) It's a V1 pre -release UAV, who in their right mind would conduct such a risky flight with an unproven platform?
d) I call bulls***t.

2) This could be a repost/clickbait. Someone posted a video of a properly outfitted Matrice, S1000, ShotOver or other UAV with proper redundancy, and was flying with a Sec 333 Waiver, and this other a******e reposted the original video with a new tagline with "Mavic" to get clickbait.

Or, it's somwhere in between these two. I suspect we'll never know.

Nevertheless, the fact that 3rd party people on here are actually DEFENDING situation 1) above are actually my main concern. People need to understand the limitations and dangers of these things.

I think it is highly UNLIKELY that the drone used in that video was a Mavic Pro and my guess is the video is from a couple years ago and perhaps before the 400 foot rule so it may in fact have been legal at the time - I don't know. But, posting that video now when the rules about 400 feet etc have been in place for more than a year is just unconscionable. And, given that there were many other similar videos posted at nearly the same time with many different names and all had links to click for discounts on DJI drones makes it real clear it WAS click bait.

A few days earlier I posted about a large number of youtube videos with Mavic Pro tags but were actually pron -- that post got deleted, probably due to the reference to pron, but it's pretty clear that youtube is now a favorite target for spam. Google need to do a better job confronting this before youtube becomes completely useless.


Brian

 

[RaptorMan]

Morgon taking the self-righteous poindexters to task. Mildly amusing if it weren't so pathetic that grown men choose to live this way.

And when a helicopter with five people on board crashes and kills everyone because they ran into a drone operated by someone that considered following the rules and common sense to be ... to much like poindexter's -- what do you think will happen to the rest of us poindexter's?

It is just sad that folks in our hobby STILL don't get this -- it may well spell the eventual end of our hobby.


Brian

 

[Dave Armbrust]

I think many are misunderstanding the airspace and the Part 107 rules.

The airspace here is class G (uncontrolled) up to 700' AGL at which point it become Class E, not class B. Class B does not start until 3,000' MSL here.

Under Part 107 you can go higher than 400' AGL if you stay within 400' of a structure such as the bridge. It appears that he probably did stay within 400' of the bridge.

The UAS may go BLOS if you use an Visual Observer who remains within LOS. While a manned aircraft operating near this area could be at risk we have yet to determine how great the risk of a UAS are to manned aircraft. An UAS that weigh as little as a Mavic at 1.62 pounds is far lighter than many birds. In 2014 we had 13,668 bird strikes that were reported to the FAA. It is estimated that only about 20% of the strikes are reported. The would indicate somewhere around 65,000 strikes per year or about 180 daily. From 1990 through 2013 there were 25 fatalities or about one per year attributed to wildlife strikes. As you can clearly see the bird strike rate is very high and the fatalities extremely low at one in 65 thousand.

Now remember we have yet to confirm even a single strike of a manned aircraft with a UAS. I have to believe that UAS is far less likely to strike a manned aircraft as its operator is far more likely to take intelligent evasive action than a bird. To assume that such a UAS strike would result in a fatality is a bit alarmist, but with zero data we can not make any conclusions and are not likely to be able to do so anytime soon as currently the rate of UAS strikes is so low.

That leaves 107.39 which prohibits you from operating over human beings but unfortunately "over" is not very well defined in regards to distance and/or angle. Clearly operating within 2' but not "over" a human being is far more dangerous than operating 300' above a human being. With a failure at 300' the odds of it coming exactly straight down is very slim. It is far more likely that a failure would result in the drone landing in the water, hiting the bridge or the road way. Even if it did strike a vehicle it seems likely that it would do so in such a way that it did not cause harm to the occupant. Part of the danger of flying "over" a human being in a moving vehicle is the distraction that such a sighting may have to the driver. The UAS in this video seemed to be high enough that such a distraction is unlikely.

Remember we have aircraft flying above us constantly with these flights being far more dangerous to people on the ground than a two pound UAS. A manned helicopter is allowed to make exactly the flight path we observed in this video and the lost of control of this helicopter is far more likely to result in lives than lost of control of a 2 pound UAS.

Clearly we need a better definition of "over". Regardless, I did not consider the flight exceeding dangerous even if it was technically prohibited. Personally I think it would be far more dangerios for this person to play baseball than fly his done in such a manner.

 

[RaptorMan]

Dave, I think we've established that this video is NOT from a Mavic Pro and it's my guess dates back a year or more -- probably closer to two years. A guess on my part but a reasonable one I think. In addition, there is a segment of the video where the drone is quite a distance away from the bridge and way higher than the top of the towers -- my guess is well over 1200 feet. At that location the visual observer would need to be on a boat, which is possible but not terribly likely.

Additionally, as I mentioned before the Golden Gate Bridge is at the top of the list of iconic locations that Homeland Security fears will be targeted by terrorists. That being the case the police are very quick to question anyone acting suspiciously. There are eyes on the bridge 24/7/365. So, if they see a drone flying about they will investigate -- if they see it.

In summary, this video is likely a couple years old and had been re-purposed by the click bait spammers to get you to click on the "discount coupons" link that's prominently displayed on the dozens of videos they posted at nearly the same time. So, it's unlikely this drone video was shot using a Mavic Pro.

But Dave, just to be clear, are you as a chief flight instructor suggesting that what they did to make this video is OK?


Brian

 

[slim.slamma]

Morgon taking the self-righteous poindexters to task. Mildly amusing if it weren't so pathetic that grown men choose to live this way.

I knew it was something special about you. You Florida guy's

 

[The Editor]

Closed!