A "what if" moment over Denver

I wonder if that was 8,000 MSL or AGL? There's a big difference out that way.
 
DaleB said:
I wonder if that was 8,000 MSL or AGL? There's a big difference out that way.
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The former NTSB investigator they interviewed seemed to be thinking MSL, since he referred to the 250kt speed limit below "10,000 feet".

Reminds me of an encounter I had a couple of months ago taking off on 27 from my home field. I had a traffic alert from my MFD (which is linked to a GDL90 ADS-B receiver). The target was about 500 feet above me and crossing my path but I couldn't see a thing. I leveled off and tried to talk to it on the CTAF, since it would have been at or slightly below pattern altitude. No response to several hails. When I was safely past it as shown on the display, I climbed again and turned around to have a look at it. The display showed that it was now coming toward me again (gulp). Still I saw nothing. Then it made a sharp turn (VERY sharp, even abrupt or so it seemed on the display) and proceeded on the downwind for 27. That's when I saw it: a large black shape, seemed to be some kind of fixed wing aircraft, too large for a bird. It flew the downwind, started to descend about where a pilot would, and then turned base very quickly, now moving across my line of sight very quickly. Then it overflew final and went WAY low behind some buildings NE of the field and I lost track of it.

NORDO idiot? RCA? Drone? Bird? I really have no idea what the heck it was and just hope that if it was some fool doing low-altitude daredevil antics that he stays the frak away from my airport.
 
azure said:
The former NTSB investigator they interviewed seemed to be thinking MSL, since he referred to the 250kt speed limit below "10,000 feet".

Reminds me of an encounter I had a couple of months ago taking off on 27 from my home field. I had a traffic alert from my MFD (which is linked to a GDL90 ADS-B receiver). The target was about 500 feet above me and crossing my path but I couldn't see a thing. I leveled off and tried to talk to it on the CTAF, since it would have been at or slightly below pattern altitude. No response to several hails. When I was safely past it as shown on the display, I climbed again and turned around to have a look at it. The display showed that it was now coming toward me again (gulp). Still I saw nothing. Then it made a sharp turn (VERY sharp, even abrupt or so it seemed on the display) and proceeded on the downwind for 27. That's when I saw it: a large black shape, seemed to be some kind of fixed wing aircraft, too large for a bird. It flew the downwind, started to descend about where a pilot would, and then turned base very quickly, now moving across my line of sight very quickly. Then it overflew final and went WAY low behind some buildings NE of the field and I lost track of it.

NORDO idiot? RCA? Drone? Bird? I really have no idea what the heck it was and just hope that if it was some fool doing low-altitude daredevil antics that he stays the frak away from my airport.
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Did you report this? If not you should.
 
If it showed on ADSB, my understanding is that it requires the craft to have ADSB-out capabilities. I know of no carbon-based feathered creature that meets that spec.
 
Threefingeredjack said:
Did you report this? If not you should.
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I was not talking to ATC at the time. If I had been, I would have. Who should I have reported it to after the fact, and how? It would be a little difficult now, since I couldn't even pin down the exact date/flight it happened on, nor the time it happened.
 
Jaybird180 said:
If it showed on ADSB, my understanding is that it requires the craft to have ADSB-out capabilities. I know of no carbon-based feathered creature that meets that spec.
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Not quite true. Aircraft with ADS-B out "look" different and you get more information about them, but plenty of information about non-equipped traffic is sent via ground based transmitters. See this link.

I know that birds can show up on controller radar, especially large ones or flocks of them. I don't know, though, whether the algorithm that decides what information is sent via ADS-B distinguishes between targets with and without transponders or Mode C. I know that I don't see every target on ATC's screen because I've had traffic called out to me that was not on my display.
 
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azure said:
I was not talking to ATC at the time. If I had been, I would have. Who should I have reported it to after the fact, and how? It would be a little difficult now, since I couldn't even pin down the exact date/flight it happened on, nor the time it happened.
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Given the time lapse, maybe it would be difficult. But I would start with FSDO. Even if you haven't got good details, maybe others have had a similar event and the compilation of details can help track this down. Idiots pulling stunts like that should not be given a free pass.
 
That recording sounds like it came from my LiveATC feed of KAPA. ;)

(It has a distinctive background sound from e compression and the scanner type.)
 
DaleB said:
I wonder if that was 8,000 MSL or AGL? There's a big difference out that way.
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I'm guessing MSL if the plane was on approach to BJC or APA. 13000 seems a little high if he was over Denver.
 
I saw this story over on diydrones, too. It appears seems that some think it's ok to fly without any way of providing visual separation and/or bust VFR cloud clearances. Probably a matter of time before one of them becomes FOD.
 
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If a small 5-6 pound bird does massive damage to light aircraft, eventually one of these drone morons who don't want to play nicely in the airspace system designed for more than just them, will kill someone -- and then the pitchforks will come out.
 
denverpilot said:
If a small 5-6 pound bird does massive damage to light aircraft, eventually one of these drone morons who don't want to play nicely in the airspace system designed for more than just them, will kill someone -- and then the pitchforks will come out.
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I agree 100%...........................

Sooner or later a UAV will either hit another aircraft or crash into a neighborhood, or schoolyard, or a mass assembly of people, like a sporting event and **** will really hit the fan.... :(:(
 
Considering the military must have transponders on their drones, how do we know it was a US drone?
 
I think you'll find that military drones probably comprise a small percentage of the UAVs in the sky over the US. A very small amount of money (in aeronautical terms) will set you up with a radio controlled or even semi-autonomous airplane or multi-copter, some of which have some pretty impressive capabilities. There are a lot of them being flown by just your average geek hobbyists, some of whom are totally ignorant of FAA regulations or the realities of traffic avoidance. Needless to say, none of them carry transponders.

So... US citizen owned and flown, yeah. US government owned? Probably not.
 
There's that RC airfield near Cherry Creek...
 
I think Buckley was doing an exercise that day....just sayin.
 
ejensen said:
I'm guessing MSL if the plane was on approach to BJC or APA. 13000 seems a little high if he was over Denver.
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Gotta agree...even the approach into DIA (KDEN) is 8000 MSL, which is 2500 AGL. So if the pilot looks at the altimeter and sees 8000, that makes perfect sense.
 
There's a fully autonomous UAS for aerial photography for $600 available now. It was mentioned in the EAA e-mail blast about a week ago.
 
denverpilot said:
That recording sounds like it came from my LiveATC feed of KAPA. ;)

(It has a distinctive background sound from e compression and the scanner type.)
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You are the guy that set up that feed? If so, I owe you some beers. Back when I was getting my PPL and liveatc didn't have nearly the coverage it does now, listening to the KAPA feed helped me immensely with my radio work. KAPA has a tower and a ton of traffic, most of which is GA, so it's great for listening to the kind of stuff that's relevant for a student pilot.
 
Wingsofglass said:
You are the guy that set up that feed? If so, I owe you some beers. Back when I was getting my PPL and liveatc didn't have nearly the coverage it does now, listening to the KAPA feed helped me immensely with my radio work. KAPA has a tower and a ton of traffic, most of which is GA, so it's great for listening to the kind of stuff that's relevant for a student pilot.
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The one with DEN Approach is another guy. I asked Dave if I could add the Tower/Ground only feed because I wanted to hear only APA traffic.

I'm down (or was an hour ago) due to a CableModem outage.

I also see that Dave found someone close enough to feed KDEN now. We were trying to find him a close location with Internet. Never could work out the tower we knew of right off the airport property. Get too far away you can't hear ground traffic.

Tons of DEN feeds now!
 
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