3 ms·

I've been subject to Wing flyovers, when they first started it was bad, really bad. Like giant mosquitos you could hear clearly from half a mile away. On one pa

I've been subject to Wing flyovers, when they first started it was bad, really bad. Like giant mosquitos you could hear clearly from half a mile away. On one particularly bad afternoon we got 6 (highly invasive) flyovers directly over us in less than 30 minutes while working in the garden. I would get "drone tinnitus" , the high pitch noise was very noticeable but would fade out to the border of perception on each flight such that after so much exposure I would begin to hear drones when there were none. It was awful. We considered selling the house and wondered if there would even be anywhere safe to move to. It's better now for 3 reasons: 1) I think they have newer models that are quieter so more distant deliveries can't be heard. 2) they altered delivery path such that they don't fly directly back over a house reducing the double tap you would get being on the flight path. And most importantly: 3) I don't think they do much business anymore, they reduced their offerings and I think they hardly do any deliveries. good riddance.

kevindamm 2y ago
The Wing team did some optimization passes on the blade design to reduce the noise and direct the sound away from the ground, some time after their initial experiments.
- chasd00 2y ago
  > The Wing team did some optimization passes on the blade design to reduce the noise i was about to say, just make the drones quieter. That tech exists and surely a company like Amazon can spend some effort on reducing noise. Now how much to reduce has to be defined by a regulatory agency like the city/county/state government or whatever. Seems like a pretty standard noise issue that can be solved
  - ticulatedspline 2y ago
    I was pretty pro-drone till experiencing it. After that I realized even if they could make them completely silent (which is impossible) if you extrapolate out to how many drones would be flying around pretty much continuously were drone delivery to really take off it would still be a solid "Do Not Want".

kevindamm 2y ago

The Wing team did some optimization passes on the blade design to reduce the noise and direct the sound away from the ground, some time after their initial experiments.

chasd00 2y ago
> The Wing team did some optimization passes on the blade design to reduce the noise i was about to say, just make the drones quieter. That tech exists and surely a company like Amazon can spend some effort on reducing noise. Now how much to reduce has to be defined by a regulatory agency like the city/county/state government or whatever. Seems like a pretty standard noise issue that can be solved
- ticulatedspline 2y ago
  I was pretty pro-drone till experiencing it. After that I realized even if they could make them completely silent (which is impossible) if you extrapolate out to how many drones would be flying around pretty much continuously were drone delivery to really take off it would still be a solid "Do Not Want".