4 ms·

Unless it was an industrial-sized drone, I don't see it doing much damage to a helicopter. Helicopter blades carry an enormous amount of energy in them. There

by bprater 11y ago

Unless it was an industrial-sized drone, I don't see it doing much damage to a helicopter. Helicopter blades carry an enormous amount of energy in them. There are stories of Vietnam-era military pilots using the rotor's blades to cut down small trees to rescue American soldiers in harrowing circumstances. Regardless, all airborn vehicles should be able to transmit their location to other aircraft. Rather than forcing drone pilots to get FAA approval, this technology should be built into all drones. Bad actors will get culled out quickly and all non-transponding drones could be considered a threat.

jacquesm 11y ago
Damage to the rotor blades could either snap a blade or cause it to become unbalanced. Choppers are barely flying it doesn't take a whole lot to bring one down.
- bigiain 11y ago
  Yet we don't see them falling out of the sky and killing people at rates that comment would suggest. A flock of geese dropped an airliner into the Hudson, but we still all buy plane tickets when it suits us, because we acknowledge that while there are risks and immensely tragic consequences - the balance of probabilities makes you seem like a crazy-person if you say you're afraid of flying.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Helicopters are pretty safe (well, not quite as safe as airliners but not bad, just stay away from the really small ones). But rotorstrikes with metal/plastic composites change the equation in a fairly bad manner. Especially a tail rotor would be pretty easy to break with a 3 pound drone and losing the tail rotor on a helicopter makes your day suddenly much more interesting. Has there been a controlled test where someone flew a drone purposefully into the rotor of a helicopter?
    - bigiain 11y ago
      "Has there been a controlled test where someone flew a drone purposefully into the rotor of a helicopter?" I'd be curious to know that. (It reminds me of the apocryphal chicken cannon story http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.asp http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.asp) A few things to keep in mind though. The incident here was at "700-800 feet", the chance of the heli doing Vmax at that height is pretty small (although in this ase it was described as a police heli chasing a car, so _maybe_ it was getting along a a fair clip?). A quadcopter owner in general is pretty motivated to _not_ have his expensive toy smashed up by aviation traffic, in much the same way as birds probably try pretty hard to dodge planes/helis. I think too many people are miscalculating the risks and consequences of "drones" - and it mostly bugs me because they're toys I enjoy playing with (which make me somewhat likely to be doing that miscalculating wrong as well, in the opposite direction…) I also enjoy riding motorcycles, and theres a fairli locally-famous quote here from one of the very senior motor vehicle bureaucrats saying "If motorcycles were invented today, we'd have banned them immediately." In retrospect that would have been "wrong" - motorcycles are "dangerous", sure, but about the same order of magnitude of dangerous as high school football or horse riding - activities which we as society deem "a bit dangerous but perfectly acceptable". And while I know neither you nor I have a dog in the US public opinion fight, I find the hysterical handwringing over the dangers of hobby drone immensely hypocritical from a country where 2/3rds of the elected politicians are deeply in bed with the NRA, and there's an entire industry profiting largely from locking young black men up for use and sale of pot... When the "drone" accident rate approaches within say three orders of magnitude of, say, the drink driving accident rate or even the falling-off-ladders rate, perhaps the media hysteria and the calls from non-participating parties to "ban it all immediately and lock everybody up!" just make people look ignorant and spiteful. (And Jacques, not sure why I'm currently engaging in "robust discussion" on at least two threads in HN with you right now - know that I respect you greatly, while disagreeing occasionally...)
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        The canon story is hilarious :) I've seen drones flying here that were lifting DSLRs, 8 motors, very powerful and quite heavy. A thing like that would do serious damage just by falling out of the sky, let alone on impact with a fast moving leading edge. Agreed that the drone risk is oversold. But what bugs me is that these morons that do this spoil drones as a useful and recreational thing for everybody else. It won't be long and 'drone operator' and 'irresponsible asshole' will be synonymous. It would be really nice if with every drone sold there would be a simple booklet stating the rules for the location the drone is sold into and some kind of mechanism that requires you to read that document before you can operate the drone.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    We don't see them falling out of the sky at a high rate because collisions are uncommon, not because collisions are harmless. And the fact that collisions are rare is not an argument for increasing the risk.
    - bigiain 11y ago
      Is that true? I had a circle of friends 10-15 years back who worked in maintenance for Qantas, and I heard about cleanups and repairs from birdstrike often enough to remember it. I have an uninformed opinion that collisions are not spectacularly uncommon, nor spectacularly serious. I wonder if the magnitude of risk increase we're talking about (by allowing drone operation under current rules, which this incident was not...) exceeds, say, allowing smokers (with their increased risk of coronary problems) to be commercial pilots?
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        Birds hit planes all the time, usually no harm comes of it but there was a nice video (which of course I can't find) where you see a jet on take-off ingesting a single bird and having one hell of an accident. It all depends on what gets hit, how fast the plane is going and at what powerlevel the engines are operating. A bird is a pretty soft item compared to a drone though.
      - mikeash 11y ago
        I'd speculate that airliners hit more birds and suffer from it less compared to small aircraft. I could be way off, but my reasoning is that it's harder for a bird to dodge an airliner since it's moving faster, and the airliner presents much more frontal area. The airliner has much more weight margin for reinforcement, and much more motivation to avoid fatal crashes. (We're vastly less risk tolerant with airliners than small planes; airliners are the safest mode of transportation out there, where small planes are one of the more dangerous.) In any case, I'd guess that the increased risk is quite small at the moment. The question is what it will look like in 10-20 years as this stuff gets more popular and technology continues to drive the price down. How this stuff is handled today will set the stage.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
They also have to have razor-sharp edges http://achewood.com/index.php?date=06262007 http://achewood.com/index.php?date=06262007
tzs 11y ago
> Unless it was an industrial-sized drone, I don't see it doing much damage to a helicopter. Helicopter blades carry an enormous amount of energy in them. It was a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced [1]. Those weigh 2.8 pounds [2]. A 3 pound red-tailed hawk can take down an AH-1W Cobra attack helicopter [3]. I doubt that a 2.8 pound drone is less dangerous than a 3 pound bird, or that a military attack helicopter is significantly more delicate than civilian helicopters. [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/drone-nearly-collides-with-helicopter-operator-gets-caught/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/drone-nearly-coll... [2] http://store.dji.com/product/phantom-3-advanced http://store.dji.com/product/phantom-3-advanced [3] http://www.10news.com/news/report-bird-strike-caused-deadly-helicopter-crash http://www.10news.com/news/report-bird-strike-caused-deadly-...
- bigiain 11y ago
  And a flock of geese can take down an airliner - but we don't react by jailing hawk or goose owners, we acknowledge the risk and mitigate it where possible and accept the risk where it's not. Perhaps you've hit upon a decent yardstick by which to evaluate the dangers of consumer "drones", if it's lighter than an ISO-standard hawk or goose, it's something which the aviation people need to be dealing with anyway. If the heli pilot was flying above a highway in a manner where an unfortunately located bird might have caused him to crash - potentially onto a roadway full of bystanders cars - perhaps their behaviour was more reckless than the Phantom pilots...
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Animals are harder to control. Asking them to follow the rules and stay away from aircraft doesn't work. It does work for drone pilots, once you make it clear what the rules are, and enforce them. A lot of people are hurt or killed in car crashes with wildlife. Moose are especially deadly, but deer are a common menace. Should we then take this to mean that it's OK for anyone to put a large, heavy obstacle in a roadway in front of an oncoming car, since this is a danger that drivers have to deal with anyway? Or should we say that animals doing it is not an excuse, and punish people who endanger the lives of others?
shkkmo 11y ago
> all airborn vehicles should be able to transmit their location to other aircraft You don't know what you are talking about. That is not feasible. There are large numbers of model aircraft that cannot carry the weight of a GPS unit, let alone the transponder. This would impose a huge and unnecessary burden on existing hobbyists with thousands of hours of safe flight who generally carry 2.5 million in liability insurance.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I have a GPS unit sitting on my desk right now that I could swallow if I put some effort into it. And I'm pretty sure a good chunk of it is packaging that could be trimmed away if needed, too. The radio equipment needed to transmit the data from the GPS unit is a good point, for sure. But any model aircraft that can't carry the weight of a GPS unit itself won't pose a threat.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    > I have a GPS unit sitting on my desk right now that I could swallow if I put some effort into it. They aren't that big. Many FPV aircraft carry GPS units for automated return to base functionality and crash recovery. However, there is a significant number of UAVs that are extremely light and weight sensitive (microquads and ultralight gliders). > any model aircraft that can't carry the weight of a GPS unit itself is won't pose a threat. Right. It is quite likely that any requirement to carry transponders will be associated with certain weight limits and/or flight types. UAVs that will operate out of line-of-sight or that will operate autonomously will likely (and should) be required to carry transponders and have additional licensing/registration/insurance.

by bprater 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago

Damage to the rotor blades could either snap a blade or cause it to become unbalanced. Choppers are barely flying it doesn't take a whole lot to bring one down.

bigiain 11y ago
Yet we don't see them falling out of the sky and killing people at rates that comment would suggest. A flock of geese dropped an airliner into the Hudson, but we still all buy plane tickets when it suits us, because we acknowledge that while there are risks and immensely tragic consequences - the balance of probabilities makes you seem like a crazy-person if you say you're afraid of flying.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Helicopters are pretty safe (well, not quite as safe as airliners but not bad, just stay away from the really small ones). But rotorstrikes with metal/plastic composites change the equation in a fairly bad manner. Especially a tail rotor would be pretty easy to break with a 3 pound drone and losing the tail rotor on a helicopter makes your day suddenly much more interesting. Has there been a controlled test where someone flew a drone purposefully into the rotor of a helicopter?
  - bigiain 11y ago
    "Has there been a controlled test where someone flew a drone purposefully into the rotor of a helicopter?" I'd be curious to know that. (It reminds me of the apocryphal chicken cannon story http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.asp http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.asp) A few things to keep in mind though. The incident here was at "700-800 feet", the chance of the heli doing Vmax at that height is pretty small (although in this ase it was described as a police heli chasing a car, so _maybe_ it was getting along a a fair clip?). A quadcopter owner in general is pretty motivated to _not_ have his expensive toy smashed up by aviation traffic, in much the same way as birds probably try pretty hard to dodge planes/helis. I think too many people are miscalculating the risks and consequences of "drones" - and it mostly bugs me because they're toys I enjoy playing with (which make me somewhat likely to be doing that miscalculating wrong as well, in the opposite direction…) I also enjoy riding motorcycles, and theres a fairli locally-famous quote here from one of the very senior motor vehicle bureaucrats saying "If motorcycles were invented today, we'd have banned them immediately." In retrospect that would have been "wrong" - motorcycles are "dangerous", sure, but about the same order of magnitude of dangerous as high school football or horse riding - activities which we as society deem "a bit dangerous but perfectly acceptable". And while I know neither you nor I have a dog in the US public opinion fight, I find the hysterical handwringing over the dangers of hobby drone immensely hypocritical from a country where 2/3rds of the elected politicians are deeply in bed with the NRA, and there's an entire industry profiting largely from locking young black men up for use and sale of pot... When the "drone" accident rate approaches within say three orders of magnitude of, say, the drink driving accident rate or even the falling-off-ladders rate, perhaps the media hysteria and the calls from non-participating parties to "ban it all immediately and lock everybody up!" just make people look ignorant and spiteful. (And Jacques, not sure why I'm currently engaging in "robust discussion" on at least two threads in HN with you right now - know that I respect you greatly, while disagreeing occasionally...)
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      The canon story is hilarious :) I've seen drones flying here that were lifting DSLRs, 8 motors, very powerful and quite heavy. A thing like that would do serious damage just by falling out of the sky, let alone on impact with a fast moving leading edge. Agreed that the drone risk is oversold. But what bugs me is that these morons that do this spoil drones as a useful and recreational thing for everybody else. It won't be long and 'drone operator' and 'irresponsible asshole' will be synonymous. It would be really nice if with every drone sold there would be a simple booklet stating the rules for the location the drone is sold into and some kind of mechanism that requires you to read that document before you can operate the drone.
- mikeash 11y ago
  We don't see them falling out of the sky at a high rate because collisions are uncommon, not because collisions are harmless. And the fact that collisions are rare is not an argument for increasing the risk.
  - bigiain 11y ago
    Is that true? I had a circle of friends 10-15 years back who worked in maintenance for Qantas, and I heard about cleanups and repairs from birdstrike often enough to remember it. I have an uninformed opinion that collisions are not spectacularly uncommon, nor spectacularly serious. I wonder if the magnitude of risk increase we're talking about (by allowing drone operation under current rules, which this incident was not...) exceeds, say, allowing smokers (with their increased risk of coronary problems) to be commercial pilots?
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      Birds hit planes all the time, usually no harm comes of it but there was a nice video (which of course I can't find) where you see a jet on take-off ingesting a single bird and having one hell of an accident. It all depends on what gets hit, how fast the plane is going and at what powerlevel the engines are operating. A bird is a pretty soft item compared to a drone though.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      I'd speculate that airliners hit more birds and suffer from it less compared to small aircraft. I could be way off, but my reasoning is that it's harder for a bird to dodge an airliner since it's moving faster, and the airliner presents much more frontal area. The airliner has much more weight margin for reinforcement, and much more motivation to avoid fatal crashes. (We're vastly less risk tolerant with airliners than small planes; airliners are the safest mode of transportation out there, where small planes are one of the more dangerous.) In any case, I'd guess that the increased risk is quite small at the moment. The question is what it will look like in 10-20 years as this stuff gets more popular and technology continues to drive the price down. How this stuff is handled today will set the stage.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago

They also have to have razor-sharp edges http://achewood.com/index.php?date=06262007 http://achewood.com/index.php?date=06262007

tzs 11y ago

> Unless it was an industrial-sized drone, I don't see it doing much damage to a helicopter. Helicopter blades carry an enormous amount of energy in them. It was a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced [1]. Those weigh 2.8 pounds [2]. A 3 pound red-tailed hawk can take down an AH-1W Cobra attack helicopter [3]. I doubt that a 2.8 pound drone is less dangerous than a 3 pound bird, or that a military attack helicopter is significantly more delicate than civilian helicopters. [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/drone-nearly-collides-with-helicopter-operator-gets-caught/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/12/drone-nearly-coll... [2] http://store.dji.com/product/phantom-3-advanced http://store.dji.com/product/phantom-3-advanced [3] http://www.10news.com/news/report-bird-strike-caused-deadly-helicopter-crash http://www.10news.com/news/report-bird-strike-caused-deadly-...

bigiain 11y ago
And a flock of geese can take down an airliner - but we don't react by jailing hawk or goose owners, we acknowledge the risk and mitigate it where possible and accept the risk where it's not. Perhaps you've hit upon a decent yardstick by which to evaluate the dangers of consumer "drones", if it's lighter than an ISO-standard hawk or goose, it's something which the aviation people need to be dealing with anyway. If the heli pilot was flying above a highway in a manner where an unfortunately located bird might have caused him to crash - potentially onto a roadway full of bystanders cars - perhaps their behaviour was more reckless than the Phantom pilots...
- mikeash 11y ago
  Animals are harder to control. Asking them to follow the rules and stay away from aircraft doesn't work. It does work for drone pilots, once you make it clear what the rules are, and enforce them. A lot of people are hurt or killed in car crashes with wildlife. Moose are especially deadly, but deer are a common menace. Should we then take this to mean that it's OK for anyone to put a large, heavy obstacle in a roadway in front of an oncoming car, since this is a danger that drivers have to deal with anyway? Or should we say that animals doing it is not an excuse, and punish people who endanger the lives of others?

shkkmo 11y ago

> all airborn vehicles should be able to transmit their location to other aircraft You don't know what you are talking about. That is not feasible. There are large numbers of model aircraft that cannot carry the weight of a GPS unit, let alone the transponder. This would impose a huge and unnecessary burden on existing hobbyists with thousands of hours of safe flight who generally carry 2.5 million in liability insurance.

mikeash 11y ago
I have a GPS unit sitting on my desk right now that I could swallow if I put some effort into it. And I'm pretty sure a good chunk of it is packaging that could be trimmed away if needed, too. The radio equipment needed to transmit the data from the GPS unit is a good point, for sure. But any model aircraft that can't carry the weight of a GPS unit itself won't pose a threat.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  > I have a GPS unit sitting on my desk right now that I could swallow if I put some effort into it. They aren't that big. Many FPV aircraft carry GPS units for automated return to base functionality and crash recovery. However, there is a significant number of UAVs that are extremely light and weight sensitive (microquads and ultralight gliders). > any model aircraft that can't carry the weight of a GPS unit itself is won't pose a threat. Right. It is quite likely that any requirement to carry transponders will be associated with certain weight limits and/or flight types. UAVs that will operate out of line-of-sight or that will operate autonomously will likely (and should) be required to carry transponders and have additional licensing/registration/insurance.