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FAA records detail hundreds of close calls between airplanes and drones
FAA records detail hundreds of close calls between airplanes and drones (www.washingtonpost.com) さらに...
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These are not drones, they are remote control aircraft. There are regulations in place to deal with these. Time for the federal government to get off their butts and enforce the rules. FCC can track the control units, if they chose to do so. This is a law enforcement situation. Let's get this under control before someone really gets hurt.
While drone operators do have some leeway in operating their toys, certain circumstances should require that the drones be deactivated or not flown. It's my understanding that some of the fire damage that occurred to vehicles on I-15 near San Bernardino last month was the direct result of careless drone operation impeding the aerial fire tankers from dropping their loads. In this situation and any other like it, these emergency aircraft and controllers should be able to jam the drone control frequencies knocking them out of the air. Maybe the guy who shot one down with a shotgun had the right approach.
Coptermechanic, go out to your local airport and offer to prove your "lightweight plastic" drone would be no threat to any aircraft by offering to throw it into a propeller. Or a jet engine. Good luck. Or, do it yourself on any city street. Hover your toy over the street at windshield level and ask your neighbors to drive into the drone at 50 mph or so. I bet none of your neighbors will agree their cars will come out unscathed.
I am still looking for the "quad copter drone" that can be flown at 1600AGL that is ~1/4 of a mile in the air, and then there is lateral distance to take into account here. I have been a memeber and R/C helicopter "pilot" for many years and a member of the AMA. I have seen a few hundred feet AGL plus about 500ft lateral distance but nothing that these airline pilots "say" they are seeing at 1600ft up in the approach corridor, and I buy NONE of this "well they are a danger to the air traffic". Last I checked Sullenberger flew through a bunch of geese, not drones, and when they went about WIPPING out all the geese in the area people were up in arms about animal abuse. BS, you can't have it both ways, and a Candian Goose weighs a fair bit more than most of these "drones" that are out there by many pounds in some cases. These things are VERY light weight plastic, foam and carbon fiber, nothing that a bird strike rated engine couldn't handle, and there are have ACTUALLY been birdstrikes but NEVER one recorded case of a "drone" impacting ANY kind of aircraft. This is once again media over analysis and the general population have not even "general" knowledge talking out of there heads, and I am pretty sure at 1600MSL and 210kia and 100' seperation you'd not be able to tell me the make model and that you're sure it wasn't a seagull...
Rant over, sorry.
Rant over, sorry.
Reasonable people can agree to disagree, and I do. These craft do appear to be flying at altitudes at which you have not observed them. A recent medical flight with a patient aboard took evasive action to avoid one when approaching the hospital in Fresno CA. That could easily have been the first fatal encounter. With the increasing popularity of quad copters and the proliferation of sightings, it is a matter of when and not if, that an impact event will occur. Air tankers dropping on fires fly in very precarious conditions. A strike during a run might not cause fatal damage to an engine but could very well be a distraction at a critical time which results in a fatal loss of the aircraft. Risk is a cross product of the probability of an event x the outcome of the event occurring. These craft represent an unacceptable risk in the way some people fly them IMO.
