ATIS: Caution drones at pattern altitude

AcroBoy

AcroBoy

Line Up and Wait
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Jim N
Our Class D is next to the county fair grounds, and a trainer noticed three drones at pattern altitude (1,000 AGL). Apparently the tower controller called the county sheriff, but the next ATIS contained the warning about drones observed at pattern altitude.

This is just a start...
 
AcroBoy said:
Our Class D is next to the county fair grounds, and a trainer noticed three drones at pattern altitude (1,000 AGL). Apparently the tower controller called the county sheriff, but the next ATIS contained the warning about drones observed at pattern altitude.

This is just a start...
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They shut down firefighters all the time around here....imagine a little fire....easily handled if a few tankers and helos get there fast enough.

Nope....now we have a full blown blaze because some jackazz wants some YouTube time.

Leo's need to be poised in the area to blast these toys out of the sky!!!:yes

Time for SWAT to be on call along with CalFire!!!;)
 
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Well they're clearly out of shotgun range, and there's no way anyone's going to hit a small moving target with a rifle at 300 yards. I think it's only a matter of time before a midair with a drone takes out a plane and crew.
 
Well, you don't actually need to fire a metal projectile. There are much more efficient ways that I've tested.
 
AcroBoy said:
Well they're clearly out of shotgun range, and there's no way anyone's going to hit a small moving target with a rifle at 300 yards. I think it's only a matter of time before a midair with a drone takes out a plane and crew.
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They stop n hover awhile usually....still a tough shot but not impossible.

Would be nice if they had some electronic jamming to make it fall from the sky...Unfortunately most high end drones have a secondary backup and will return to base if faced with conflicting data.
 
Another drone bashing thread. Agree it not the drones fault. I fly quadcopters eg drones but I'm responsible where and how I fly. Most drone operators does not even know what pattern altitude is near airports. We need to educate these people.
 
I agree that education for drone operators is paramount to the safety of the NAS.

How does one go about doing that?
 
Of course you're right, but does it show common sense to be operating a drone next to an airport at the same height as airplanes are flying? If you're in a plane that hits one are you going to argue semantics?

Is the discussion of drones going to be: it's not drones that kill people, it's the drone pilots?
 
This is the reason we can not have nice things....
 
docmirror said:
Well, you don't actually need to fire a metal projectile. There are much more efficient ways that I've tested.
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Best solution is probably the classic one: Launch interceptors.

Build simple, cheap fixed-wing RCs with a VR camera, and fly them right into the quads. Pad the electronics (maybe even give them a drogue to slow their fall) and you can probably recover and re-use.

Simple foamies will have a thrust-to-weight ratio above one when the battery's fresh, so you can ascend right towards them. Even if you miss, it'll probably spook them bad enough to land their expensive toys.

Ron "Ramming speed!" Wanttaja
 
AcroBoy said:
Of course you're right, but does it show common sense to be operating a drone next to an airport at the same height as airplanes are flying?
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Common sense isn't so common anymore.
 
AcroBoy said:
Of course you're right, but does it show common sense to be operating a drone next to an airport at the same height as airplanes are flying?
Click to expand...

I think one big issue is that a lot of people don't know where the smaller airports are, nor do they understand what a traffic pattern is. I cant tell you how many times I've been talking to someone and mentioned landing at KOKB and had them say "there's an airport in Oceanside?"
 
The cat is out of the bag. There isn't a thing you will be able to do against drone operators who do nothing but look for YouTube likes (outside illegal activity).

And it's not really easy to go after the companies who sell them, since people can easily build their own.

Now what?

Can't easily institute a nationwide "drone-kill" program. If you jam the frequency people will find alternatives.

Unless you want big brother. There just isn't a great answer for "drones". About the best answer I could think of is to require that RC aircraft frequencies broadcast GPS locations of the radio. Not sure that is possible, or something that can't easily be defeated, but at some point the recreational drone operators need to be educated.
 
woodchucker said:
There just isn't a great answer for "drones". About the best answer I could think of is to require that RC aircraft frequencies broadcast GPS locations of the radio. Not sure that is possible, or something that can't easily be defeated, but at some point the recreational drone operators need to be educated.
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Most probably it needs to be a system and set of procedures, that:
- is cheap enough so any drone of significant size has it (~$10-15)
- it adds huge value (practical, fun, entertainment or any other) to the drone operator so everyone wants to have it on
- instead of forbidding anything it nudges the drone operator towards correct behavior
- it teaches you the safe skies procedures while you fly

It needs to be a win-win solution for all. One thing is sure, the skies will be soon filled with drones, from the $50 self-built ones to $1000 DJI/3DR's to automated non-piloted ones.

On another somewhat related note:
"Google Wants a Piece of Air-Traffic Control for Drones"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...unclog-drone-filled-skies-like-it-did-the-web
 
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That looks like a really interesting article. I'm glad to see that there are people working on finding constructive solutions.
 
A college kid has designed a system in his drone that will fire a pistol. Drone air wars are on the way.
 
frfly172 said:
A college kid has designed a system in his drone that will fire a pistol. Drone air wars are on the way.
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Years and years ago, David Letterman had a set of engineers from Mattel on the show. Seems like they had a contest each year, to see who could design the most dangerous toys. One was called "Baby's First Sawblade Shooter," which was basically a bungee-powered gun that threw 7" sawblades hard enough to stick them in plywood.

The finale was a battling drone competition. Two remote controlled blimps, full of hydrogen. Armed with a candle on a front-projecting rod....

Ron Wanttaja
 
Do these consumer grade drones use the same freqs as the RC model guys ?
 
frfly172 said:
A college kid has designed a system in his drone that will fire a pistol. Drone air wars are on the way.
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There's a couple of drone mounted guns on YouTube, but the Roman candle wars is funniest.
 
Scrabo said:
Do these consumer grade drones use the same freqs as the RC model guys ?
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For the most part, on the 2.4 GHz band. The main difference in the consumer grade stuff is built with the idea of increased lifting capacity and flight times.
 
Scrabo said:
Do these consumer grade drones use the same freqs as the RC model guys ?
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Depends. Old RC planes use 75MHz with discrete channels, typically NFM. All the newer radios being used by both drones and planes are 2.4GHz ISM band shared with WiFi, microwave ovens, BlueTooth, etc. The new radios are typically frequency hopping spread-spectrum and have no concept of channels--just bandwidth.

It's not impossible to jam or even hijack the radios, but many of these craft are able to hover and navigate autonomously via GPS.
 
Drones are the future of warfare.... why deploy soldiers when you can deploy drones and go house to house.... Now we need mechs and we will be all set....
 
Any of them that are sold with GPS ought to require a nav database preventing them from operating near airports or in controlled airspace. The fines for tampering or circumventing should be steep.

I'm honestly amazed that a plane hasn't sucked one into its engine yet. It's surely a matter of time.
 
I cannot speak for all quadcopters, but my DJI Inspire 1 will not let me fly in restricted airspace. That includes airports.
 
jmp470 said:
I cannot speak for all quadcopters, but my DJI Inspire 1 will not let me fly in restricted airspace. That includes airports.
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That database for many countries is wildly inaccurate. Large operational airports missing, many decommissioned ones as no-fly zone still.

Also, it's not restricted airspace. It's just round funnel-like forbidden zone, in many cases quite different size and shape from the actual airspace.

And of course DJI is just a fraction of drones out there.
 
AustinPilot said:
Any of them that are sold with GPS ought to require a nav database preventing them from operating near airports or in controlled airspace. The fines for tampering or circumventing should be steep.
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Will never happen. Big part of drones are self-built from $1-10 components. The GPS module costs $10 as well and it just outputs the dumb coordinates. Most of the software used is open source and easily modifiable.

Another big part are the $50, $100 etc cheap Chinese multicopters.
 
AustinPilot said:
Any of them that are sold with GPS ought to require a nav database preventing them from operating near airports or in controlled airspace. The fines for tampering or circumventing should be steep.

I'm honestly amazed that a plane hasn't sucked one into its engine yet. It's surely a matter of time.
Click to expand...

Some of them are already so equipped.
 
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