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That's an extremist position. What if I want to build model rockets? They go into the sky, but the commercially available stuff doesn't go high enough to norma

That's an extremist position. What if I want to build model rockets? They go into the sky, but the commercially available stuff doesn't go high enough to normally affect airplanes so they're legal and unlicensed and have been for decades. Same for model airplanes, and model helicopters, and until we slapped the word 'drone' on quadcopters and strapped on good video cameras they weren't a concern either. Likewise, I'll take the opposite extreme position that if you want to fly airplanes over populated locations, stay more than a couple thousand feet away as well, you're noisy and small aircraft and their pilots don't have quite the safety record that large ones do. How many people have quadcopter operators killed compared to small aircraft pilots? Seems like the answer should be that pilots of small aircraft, the planes vulnerable to small impacts and the pilots actually killing people should be kept away from the populace. What's the utility of allowing small aircraft to fly over my house anyways? There's definitely room for both activities in the air.

jsmthrowaway 12y ago
> How many people have quadcopter operators killed Zero, meanwhile even Harrison Ford, an extremely qualified pilot, found a golf course when his engine gave out. Shit happens, and we need to plan accordingly instead of trying to prevent the shit in the first place. Oddly enough, I don't see worldwide media focusing on the private aviation hobby and how dangerous it is to everyone even though he landed on a fucking golf course. But no, one drone lands on the White House lawn and it's a national emergency with firmware updates pushed by DJI in response to ban Washington, D.C. My work, as I point out elsewhere in this thread, is to educate folks about the positive uses for drone technology and the industry that's about to happen. The possibilities of extending our senses into the air around us are endless. I've had people come up to me while operating in public and threaten me and my equipment. People are shooting at drones with some frequency in the more backwater parts of the United States. I'm waiting for one of those bullets to land a few miles away and kill a child, because I predict the backlash will be against the fliers, not the shooters. I often feel like I'm pushing, hopelessly against the avalanche of media fearmongering, because this technology has real, potent uses that should appeal to this community of startup tinkerers and hobbyists. We could be investing in automatic technology to build upon TCAS and integrate commercial UAS into that system, but we're not: we're trying to prevent the industry from ever happening. Imagine the Wright Brothers trying to tinker in today's regulatory climate. Remember how all of us fought against classifying our hobby as "drones," even though it's technically correct, because most peoples' exposure to the word "drone" is centered around Hellfire-carrying platforms? Yeah, this is why.
- kenrikm 12y ago
  Or Henry Ford.. If the car were inveted today I'm pretty sure it would be illegal. Again, 40k people die per year in cars yet no one blinks.
baddox 12y ago
Don't model rockets routinely go much higher than the 400 feet the FAA has traditionally limited hobby aircraft to?
- evilduck 12y ago
  I was just playing devil's advocate in light of an unreasonable position on the issue. I honestly don't know much about model rocketry specifics (build a few as a kid like 20 years ago, purchased as a kid, from a local hobby shop). I assume you can make them go more than 400ft into the air without much effort but you're probably not supposed to.
- eck 12y ago
  > Don't model rockets routinely go much higher than the 400 feet the FAA has traditionally limited hobby aircraft to? Even if they do, they're mostly cardboard, whereas model airplanes have things like small engine blocks. I bet a 737 engine could ingest a model rocket without anyone noticing.
  - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
    You'd be surprised. Jet engines are designed to be robust against some really crazy scenarios (I'm amazed a jet engine continues to function during the water injection tests I've seen), but all it takes is one blade failure -- with many to choose from in various places in the engine -- and it's game over. One can imagine many ingestions that might cause a blade failure, because the rotating fans in a jet engine are very high energy environments. With the right alignment of planets and hitting just right, a model rocket might cause a failure. It all depends and is hard to predict. Most people would predict modern engines as likely to survive ingestion of geese, but then we had US 1549 (and a USAF E-3 at Elmendorf before it). Even though the FAA has engine manufacturers like GE test the hell out of engines, it's tough to predict what will happen in the real world. Birds are a huge threat to aviation, both engine ingestion and windscreen collisions, and birds are mostly organic. (It goes without saying to stand the hell away from an operating jet engine even at idle, too, because humans do get ingested with fatal results.) I can't imagine an operating engine ingesting a drone or anything else with non-organic components would go well, and this is why I always advocate very strongly for safe drone operation. Here's an intentional intake blade failure to ascertain whether the engine can contain the failure without threatening the aircraft; this is useful to see what happens if something is ingested that causes a catastrophic blade failure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAhjSviYVr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAhjSviYVr8

jsmthrowaway 12y ago

> How many people have quadcopter operators killed Zero, meanwhile even Harrison Ford, an extremely qualified pilot, found a golf course when his engine gave out. Shit happens, and we need to plan accordingly instead of trying to prevent the shit in the first place. Oddly enough, I don't see worldwide media focusing on the private aviation hobby and how dangerous it is to everyone even though he landed on a fucking golf course. But no, one drone lands on the White House lawn and it's a national emergency with firmware updates pushed by DJI in response to ban Washington, D.C. My work, as I point out elsewhere in this thread, is to educate folks about the positive uses for drone technology and the industry that's about to happen. The possibilities of extending our senses into the air around us are endless. I've had people come up to me while operating in public and threaten me and my equipment. People are shooting at drones with some frequency in the more backwater parts of the United States. I'm waiting for one of those bullets to land a few miles away and kill a child, because I predict the backlash will be against the fliers, not the shooters. I often feel like I'm pushing, hopelessly against the avalanche of media fearmongering, because this technology has real, potent uses that should appeal to this community of startup tinkerers and hobbyists. We could be investing in automatic technology to build upon TCAS and integrate commercial UAS into that system, but we're not: we're trying to prevent the industry from ever happening. Imagine the Wright Brothers trying to tinker in today's regulatory climate. Remember how all of us fought against classifying our hobby as "drones," even though it's technically correct, because most peoples' exposure to the word "drone" is centered around Hellfire-carrying platforms? Yeah, this is why.

kenrikm 12y ago
Or Henry Ford.. If the car were inveted today I'm pretty sure it would be illegal. Again, 40k people die per year in cars yet no one blinks.

baddox 12y ago

Don't model rockets routinely go much higher than the 400 feet the FAA has traditionally limited hobby aircraft to?

evilduck 12y ago
I was just playing devil's advocate in light of an unreasonable position on the issue. I honestly don't know much about model rocketry specifics (build a few as a kid like 20 years ago, purchased as a kid, from a local hobby shop). I assume you can make them go more than 400ft into the air without much effort but you're probably not supposed to.
eck 12y ago
> Don't model rockets routinely go much higher than the 400 feet the FAA has traditionally limited hobby aircraft to? Even if they do, they're mostly cardboard, whereas model airplanes have things like small engine blocks. I bet a 737 engine could ingest a model rocket without anyone noticing.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  You'd be surprised. Jet engines are designed to be robust against some really crazy scenarios (I'm amazed a jet engine continues to function during the water injection tests I've seen), but all it takes is one blade failure -- with many to choose from in various places in the engine -- and it's game over. One can imagine many ingestions that might cause a blade failure, because the rotating fans in a jet engine are very high energy environments. With the right alignment of planets and hitting just right, a model rocket might cause a failure. It all depends and is hard to predict. Most people would predict modern engines as likely to survive ingestion of geese, but then we had US 1549 (and a USAF E-3 at Elmendorf before it). Even though the FAA has engine manufacturers like GE test the hell out of engines, it's tough to predict what will happen in the real world. Birds are a huge threat to aviation, both engine ingestion and windscreen collisions, and birds are mostly organic. (It goes without saying to stand the hell away from an operating jet engine even at idle, too, because humans do get ingested with fatal results.) I can't imagine an operating engine ingesting a drone or anything else with non-organic components would go well, and this is why I always advocate very strongly for safe drone operation. Here's an intentional intake blade failure to ascertain whether the engine can contain the failure without threatening the aircraft; this is useful to see what happens if something is ingested that causes a catastrophic blade failure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAhjSviYVr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAhjSviYVr8