5 ms·

Why not just use a fixed-wing RC aircraft? Multi-rotor copters are great for stability and easy to fly, but suck for, say, flying over a border. And depending

by Mikeb85 12y ago

Why not just use a fixed-wing RC aircraft? Multi-rotor copters are great for stability and easy to fly, but suck for, say, flying over a border. And depending on your noise requirements, you could even use a fuel powered engine, which would give you much better height, range, speed, and payload.

dghughes 12y ago
I think the advantage is it can hover and perform a pinpoint landing.
- bsder 12y ago
  Why land? You'd be better off simply dropping the cargo. It's not like it would hurt drugs. So, take off in spot 1, trace out an arc, drop the package at some point (which would be so small as to be really hard to detect), land/crash in spot 2 a long way away. If the drone is cheap enough, just throw it away.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Use a weather balloon or rocket or something and go high on the Mexican side. Then head over and essentially become a guided bomb. Even with a 1:5 glide you could get many (50km?) km over and fall directly to the pickup site. A toy version of an ICBM. A quick search shows people doing the same thing for fun, so this must be used or not have enough payload capacity to make it more profitable than other methods. Perhaps the risk and cost is all about the pickup and 2kg is just as much work to get as 200. I suppose if the craft had a real detachable payload, it'd be really like a bomb. Perhaps complete with fake drops to act as countermeasures to surveillance.
    - bsder 12y ago
      > Use a weather balloon or rocket or something and go high on the Mexican side. High is visible and traceable. Unpowered glide is also traceable. Anything which stays in view too long is going to get filmed with by someone with a cellphone and a GPS. Low and fast wins. You want to stay low and cover a long curved path (preferably whose radius changes) so that the release of the payload is invisible and really hard to trace (a 40 mile path over a sparsely populated forest would be really hard to track). > so this must be used or not have enough payload capacity to make it more profitable than other methods I suspect more profitable is the answer to why it isn't done. Why pay $10,000 for a drone when you can pay $5,000 for a human mule that you need at either end anyhow?
cbr 12y ago
A fixed wing drone could turn off its engine to glide over the border. Very hard to hear, very hard to spot.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  Yeah was thinking of a glider. Silent, you can launch it via catapult launcher, at night it would be completely undetectable.
copperx 12y ago
Hell, you could put a jet engine on the aircraft. I doubt anyone at the border is prepared to handle a RC plane like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHWBSluUjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHWBSluUjU
- atmosx 12y ago
  Oh dear, that thing is awesome! Any idea how much time can fly at full speed? ps. WW would be proud! :-P
- atourgates 12y ago
  I'm trying to figure out the range of something like this. This is Hans Litjens' jet, he talks a bit more about it here[1], noting that it has 2L of fuel in the wings. I found one source that estimates that normal RC jet engines use 250ml/minute. If we assume that this thing uses 2x of a "normal" RC jet engine, at 350mph it could go about 23 miles in 4-minutes before running out of fuel. Or, from the border to just south of Del Mar. With that kind of range and speed, it seems like it'd be reasonable to avoid detection. [1] http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-jets-120/9133201-fast-rc-jet.html http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-jets-120/9133201-fast-rc-...
  - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
    I would guess that the range of such a device would be horribly short. The smaller the aircraft, the worse the range, in general, and the smaller a gas turbine, the worse its efficiency. Those should combine to give a truly awful range, but surprisingly somehow enough to be useful in this situation.
  - Mikeb85 12y ago
    Why do you figure it would use 2x the fuel of a 'normal' RC Jet engine? Edit - anyhow you're right on the consumption of this engine: 476 mL/minute. Still though, would be out of the feds' sight before they realize what's even going on. At night they'd never have a clue. RC Jets are fast as hell; over 200 mph is very common for turbine powered RC planes. More craziness, 440 mph RC jet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa-TSNeTK-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa-TSNeTK-A
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Sanddancer 12y ago
The US/Mexico border near Tijuana is pretty heavily populated on both sides, with the only real hurdle in points being the rather narrow Tijuana river. The agility of a drone would let it dart quickly enough over that you can get the goods over before someone noticed what was going on.

by Mikeb85 12y ago

dghughes 12y ago

I think the advantage is it can hover and perform a pinpoint landing.

bsder 12y ago
Why land? You'd be better off simply dropping the cargo. It's not like it would hurt drugs. So, take off in spot 1, trace out an arc, drop the package at some point (which would be so small as to be really hard to detect), land/crash in spot 2 a long way away. If the drone is cheap enough, just throw it away.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Use a weather balloon or rocket or something and go high on the Mexican side. Then head over and essentially become a guided bomb. Even with a 1:5 glide you could get many (50km?) km over and fall directly to the pickup site. A toy version of an ICBM. A quick search shows people doing the same thing for fun, so this must be used or not have enough payload capacity to make it more profitable than other methods. Perhaps the risk and cost is all about the pickup and 2kg is just as much work to get as 200. I suppose if the craft had a real detachable payload, it'd be really like a bomb. Perhaps complete with fake drops to act as countermeasures to surveillance.
  - bsder 12y ago
    > Use a weather balloon or rocket or something and go high on the Mexican side. High is visible and traceable. Unpowered glide is also traceable. Anything which stays in view too long is going to get filmed with by someone with a cellphone and a GPS. Low and fast wins. You want to stay low and cover a long curved path (preferably whose radius changes) so that the release of the payload is invisible and really hard to trace (a 40 mile path over a sparsely populated forest would be really hard to track). > so this must be used or not have enough payload capacity to make it more profitable than other methods I suspect more profitable is the answer to why it isn't done. Why pay $10,000 for a drone when you can pay $5,000 for a human mule that you need at either end anyhow?

cbr 12y ago

A fixed wing drone could turn off its engine to glide over the border. Very hard to hear, very hard to spot.

Mikeb85 12y ago
Yeah was thinking of a glider. Silent, you can launch it via catapult launcher, at night it would be completely undetectable.

copperx 12y ago

Hell, you could put a jet engine on the aircraft. I doubt anyone at the border is prepared to handle a RC plane like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHWBSluUjU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHWBSluUjU

atmosx 12y ago
Oh dear, that thing is awesome! Any idea how much time can fly at full speed? ps. WW would be proud! :-P
atourgates 12y ago
I'm trying to figure out the range of something like this. This is Hans Litjens' jet, he talks a bit more about it here[1], noting that it has 2L of fuel in the wings. I found one source that estimates that normal RC jet engines use 250ml/minute. If we assume that this thing uses 2x of a "normal" RC jet engine, at 350mph it could go about 23 miles in 4-minutes before running out of fuel. Or, from the border to just south of Del Mar. With that kind of range and speed, it seems like it'd be reasonable to avoid detection. [1] http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-jets-120/9133201-fast-rc-jet.html http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/rc-jets-120/9133201-fast-rc-...
- FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
  I would guess that the range of such a device would be horribly short. The smaller the aircraft, the worse the range, in general, and the smaller a gas turbine, the worse its efficiency. Those should combine to give a truly awful range, but surprisingly somehow enough to be useful in this situation.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  Why do you figure it would use 2x the fuel of a 'normal' RC Jet engine? Edit - anyhow you're right on the consumption of this engine: 476 mL/minute. Still though, would be out of the feds' sight before they realize what's even going on. At night they'd never have a clue. RC Jets are fast as hell; over 200 mph is very common for turbine powered RC planes. More craziness, 440 mph RC jet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa-TSNeTK-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa-TSNeTK-A

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

Sanddancer 12y ago

The US/Mexico border near Tijuana is pretty heavily populated on both sides, with the only real hurdle in points being the rather narrow Tijuana river. The agility of a drone would let it dart quickly enough over that you can get the goods over before someone noticed what was going on.