FWIW, I have a few thousand hours flying jet fighters and have hit rather large birds at high speed (me, not them), and have been hit by rather large caliber bullets (I assume also at high speed). From the two videos, taken at two locations, I cannot positively id a drone. What is described as a sudden altitude change in the second video doesn't look like anything in the first video, though it's mostly blocked by the inconveniently placed large sign. The appearance of a "large altitude change" could be easily explained by the pilot simply easing off the g in the turn to gain visibility, to gain a little speed if it was needed, or sure, to suddenly try to avoid something. It looks exaggerated in the second video I think because the camera is manually tracking something.
hitting a drone is unlikely to cause significant damage unless it hit in just the right spot. Seeing and overreacting to a drone might cause some damage but there is probably one second of altitude change there if any - that collision was already quite likely from the intercept path being flown. I've not flown either of those aircraft (before my time) but looking underneath during a turn requires effort and may not have even been possible, especially if there was a lack of awareness to prompt the look.
I think Juan's youtube video explaining the airborne change of directive from what in the comments on that video appears to have been an under briefed, and sadly under questioned briefing, is by far the most likely explanation.
would a strike directly on the prop possibly cause a stall or some other force to move the fighter that far out of position, or change course that drastically? I'm curious given the distinct differences between piston engine and jet engine planes.
While the prop is, uh, properly a wing, and technically hitting something with it would interrupt the airflow, they're quite strong and would likely just destroy the object, slightly damaging the prop. If it did damage it beyond usability, it'd been way more obvious in the video and with the prop breaking off.
If you're talking about the aircraft stalling, then it's unlikely as we don't see that significant of a movement in the brief second of video. Under g-load (an "accelerated stall") the buffer between the onset of the stall and the stall itself is decreased, and as I said elsewhere that while I have no familiarity with the handling characteristics of that aircraft, there's simply doesn't look like enough time for a stall to develop between when the aircraft supposedly hit a drone and for-sure hit the other aircraft. And from what I could see, the movement doesn't at all look like a stall, and from the moment I saw the two aircraft in the video you can see the intercept occurring - that's likely harder for the unfamiliar to see being unfamiliar with the concept of two disparate turning circles crossing at a point in the future, differing because of bank angle (one or even both "circles - i.e. vectors - could even be straight lines) and because of differing speeds.
From the limited videos I've seen, one pilot could not, or simply did not, see the other aircraft, either because of the bank angle blocking the view or not realizing the aircraft was there and being focused elsewhere (such as the aircraft in from of them) and simply ran into the other aircraft. How they got into that position is the difficult investigation, and Juan's YouTube video pointed out that the sudden airborne airboss directive was to cross flight paths, when they didn't brief such and rather unlikely had ever practiced such, and may not have even realized such.
Something that many people do not understand is that an aircraft “stall” has nothing to do with the engine or propeller except possibly as a contributing factor.
A stall in aircraft parlance refers to a change in airflow over the wings or control surfaces that causes the sudden or progressive loss of aerodynamic lift. This is an effect caused by the surface moving through the air at an excessive angle, so that the air stops flowing smoothly over the lifting surface, instead breaking down into a chaotic flow.
Stalls typically happen at low speeds, where an aircraft is pitching up excessively, but can also happen at higher speeds in steep turns or other maneuvers where the g forces on an aircraft make the wings have to support multiple times their normal load.
A midair collision with a small object is unlikely to cause a stall, unless it were to provoke a secondary reaction by the pilot or the control surfaces directly.
Either way, in this case the aircraft in question had the bomber in a blind spot and probably could not see the danger of collision, and in fact may have been frantically looking for it, even lowering the nose to get better visibility, having lost sight of it in a slightly distracted moment.
AFAIK there is no evidence of any condition here aside from inadequate planning, inadequate separation, and pilot error.
As a pilot I am only too aware of the possibility for this kind of accident to occur when operating in the vicinity of other aircraft. It’s surprisingly easy to collide with other aircraft despite the huge amount of empty space lol around you.
It usually takes a few confounding factors to line up to cause disasters to occur in aviation… it’s almost never just one or two.
If anyone reading is interested in the various types of stalls and unusual attitude recoveries, you may be able to find a flight instructor at the nearest airport willing to take a flight and show you some.
Beware that it will count as flight instruction and you may end up hooked and forking out $20k for a private pilot license.
If you're talking civilian, then about all I could recommend is to take your time and let the experience build instead of trying to do too much at once. Most civilian pilots I know that have learned to fly fast jets tend to have to cram all their training into limited free time, and that makes it harder to keep a consistent training attitude. the military of course has a very formal and long tested training process, and while they've introduced a lot of technology in the last decade to try to shorten that time, it's still done under the supervision of well experienced and qualified instructors training consistently on familiar equipment, so in a way it's "easier" or at least easier to maintain a good focus
How many hours of training did you receive before flying without a more senior pilot with you? The L39 type rating requirement is a thousand hours but it won't be in the jet itself. I plan to do aerobatic training and everything but last I checked the Jet Warbird Training Center program was under 20 hours over a few days which terrifies me. Is that really enough training?
Once you have 1000 hours of real experience (hopefully in different types, not all in the same Cessna 172), 20 hours should be plenty for an L-39 type. Guys with previous military experience may only need 10 hours. I had no military experience, I did my L-39 type rating in 2020 and it took about 20 hours. Before that, about 500 hours of my experience came from a Columbia 400, which is a fairly fast, slippery piston single. I also did about 4 aerobatic lessons in a Mudry CAP-10B. Here's my first day of L-39 training, if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DN_vMq-l9w
Matt Guthmiller also has some recent videos on getting an L-39 up and running, and his first flights in it.
I've got your first day downloaded on my Plex and I've watched that video so many times in the last few months! Thank you so much for making it! Are you planning on putting the other days up? I remember you mentioned somewhere else that you have 5TB of video left to edit.
That definitely makes me feel better. I've gone into pilot training with a lot of fear and it's always come out "omg this feels like home" so I'm hopeful once I'm in the L39 it will be a similar experience :)
What other airplanes should I practice in for the 1000 hours authorization after getting my PPL in the 172? Once I get it I'll join PlusOne Flyers here in SD so I should have a diverse set of planes to practice with.
Edit: I have my email in the profile if there’s any way you could share the video. I’d love to see all the content from the ground school portions especially
Hmm, it's been awhile for me - I entered military training in 1980. ("In those days, wearing an onion on our belt as was the custom" - sorry :), I initially trained with a bog-standard civilian instructor at our local college (for those in ROTC) for about 20 hours, with most of us soloing after 10 hours and mostly being judged on simple airmanship and attitude. I paid for the next 20 hours myself with a different instructor and happily learned to fly off a tiny little grass strip and got my private. At UPT I think I had around 20 hours in the T-37 to first fly solo, and probably less in the T-38, since we had probably 100 hours by the time we go to the higher speed jet. We didn't do a whole lot of solo as I remember because there were specific agenda items that needed to be covered dual (formation work, instrument work, etc.), rather than just giving the kids the keys to the jets and letting them wander around the country. I recall that I graduated with about 175 hours, plus perhaps 100 hours of simulator time. The training all together lasted a year and was a full-time job with a flight or two every other day or so, plus lots of academics. I couldn't properly comment on the scheduling of the flight schools that are run for civilian pilots, other than to think they've got a decent track record and certainly meet whatever the FAA minimums are - the basics of flying indeed are pretty much the same and having 1000 hours of reasonably solid time already would be pretty good for the new aircraft experience training you're really getting, I'd think. Having the personal budget of both time and money to pursue training without rush or struggle is going to be the best thing you can do for yourself if that's within your control.
Edit: to add a little to this since I started thinking about it, while the total flight time seems fairly low, we would go fly in absolutely any weather short of an actual thunderstorm, and the IPs for the most part made the students do the flying/navigating/communicating/planning/etc. Flying close formation in drafty clouds with pounding rain would humble a low-time pilot, and occasionally it'd be bad enough to get a grunt out of the mostly drowsing (it seemed) graybeard in the backseat. My last assignment in the AF was to go teach UPT (at the base I learned at), and hoo boy, did I see that the vast majority of the stress that the students underwent was mostly self-induced and the flying was about as basic as we could do - it just seemed (and was) hard for the students because we all were so, to paraphrase a great philosopher, unknowing about our unknowns.
Anyway, I'm sure you'll do fine learning to fly the L-39. It's a popular and comparatively affordable jet airplane I understand and looks like fun.
How different are the T-37/38s from common civilian trainers like the 172? How good were the simulators back then (I haven't use any sims outside of consumer stuff so I have no real point of comparison)?
What do you mean by pursuing training without rush or struggle? Looking at the cost of fuel and rental for the first thousand hours, let alone the cost of the jet with new TFE engine, I'm much more scared of stretching out the training so much that I'm always rusty.
> to add a little to this since I started thinking about it, while the total flight time seems fairly low, we would go fly in absolutely any weather short of an actual thunderstorm, and the IPs for the most part made the students do the flying/navigating/communicating/planning/etc. Flying close formation in drafty clouds with pounding rain would humble a low-time pilot, and occasionally it'd be bad enough to get a grunt out of the mostly drowsing (it seemed) graybeard in the backseat.
That sounds scary - I've been taught so far that bad weather is one of the leading cause of GA fatal accidents thunderstorm or no. Were your trainers or the jets themselves just better at withstanding adverse weather? Or are we civies too risk averse? I can't imagine doing it in close formation.
Former pro video editor here. The second video looks like bullshit.
Serious people would show the video at normal speed, then slowed done, and added timecode, as well as documenting their methods. They also wouldn't make assumptions about what was going on, eg 'tries to restart the engine'. These black blobs look to me like compression artifacts, from zooming a video from a phone camera that was compressed for storage and then compressed again when uploaded to social media.
Also, even if there was an object and the engine went out (which seems unlikely, most drones are pretty fragile and would be destroyed by a propellor), losing power doesn't mean losing all control of the plane. Manual flight control would still work to some extent. But I don't see last-minute efforts to avoid a collision that tragically failed; it looks like the fighter was pointed straight at the bomber.
I haven't checked to see if it originates on 4chan, but it wouldn't surprise me. No-standards amateur sleuthing is the norm there, occasionally they get something right but their hit rate is like 5% at best. That's not stereotyping, I've been a regular there since 2008.
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fieryskiff11 33 minutes ago [dead] | parent | next [–]
>I've been a regular there since 2008
Your username makes sense now
Not sure why, it's a made-up word I came up with in the 1990s for myself and is not meant to convey any secondary meaning. 4chan allows persistent usernames but I've never bothered to create one.
The NTSB preliminary report points strongly toward negligence, which I'm sure was not lost on the potential defendants, their insurance companies, and their counsel. If I were on the defendants' legal team, I would be very happy to see a video like this surface, regardless of where it came from. I'd be even happier to see it picked up by a major news outlet, which would generally require first that it pop up in popular online news sites, like say HN.
The Blancolirio channel covered the preliminary report and it says the air boss ordered them to change flight paths. Nothing was mentioned about a drone.
The Blancolirio channel is pretty respected when it comes to covering aviation incidents. (Seriously, the first article of the site linked in the parent comment was just talking about most expensive airports for Christmas car parking.)
And Juan questioned the flight director's wisdom in having the jets and bombers flying at the same altitude so near the audience. Had there been a 500-ft separation, any collision would have left a lot more reaction time.
Just because they are respected doesn't mean something else they are doing is wrong.
560,000 views, times a minimum of one man-minute wasted (that's just the intro, I didn't let the person waste away any rest of my life) is 1 man-year and 23 man-days of collectively wasted time, just to add a couple extra dollars of ad revenue.
This person is saying that he values a couple of extra dollars and not the one resource that you can't get more of: time in your life.
The guy is a an actual airline pilot. He's showing the same stuff that NTSB would be analyzing in their investigation.
You're oddly barking up the wrong tree by complaining about a genuine pilot's non-sponsored youtube channel to recommend a website that is passenger focused.
It's like complaining about a scientific journal having too many words and recommending the Yahoo! Health article instead. It's a different audience.
And that's comendable, but SponsorBlock says it also can skip over annoying parts (such as irrelevant talk about local weather and video pans of trees) and not just sponsorship plugs.
I saw a good analysis by a pilot who does this kind of formation flying (and I think who knew some of the people involved). I think this is before the preliminary NTSB report was released, so it is speculative, but his view was that there was a pretty good likelihood that the shape of the P-63 probably meant that the pilot probably lost sight of the B-17 for a decent amount of time during the turn, and that while we don't yet know exactly where the planes were supposed to be in the formation, his view from the ADS-B data was that the pattern seemed to be just plain dangerous and shouldn't have been done without vertically separating the slower planes (B-17 etc.) and the faster planes.
Nonsense. Utter nonsense. There are multiple video angles of this if you do the research. Dan Gryder has done some research and has come to a very logical conclusion. General aviation is his forte. Check out his analysis: https://youtu.be/prk0j8cveYY?t=1352
Basically, it appears that the organizer/commander instructed the p-63f to take the 500ft path (distance from the crowd) and the b-17g to move to 1000ft distance while they were at the same altitude. Disorganization from the getgo led to the crash. If you see a general aviation crash and want to know what happened, check out what Dan has to say first.
I hadn't heard that detail, but that's baffling. Why would they think crossing paths at the same altitude and without the other traffic in sight is a good idea?
Im having trouble seeing if there are clear rules around this type of thing.
If so - I dont see how this shouldnt be tried criminally. Similar to how someone would be tried for driving a car through a pedestrian area and striking someone, even if they had not explicit intent to harm.
Don't you have to call the tower when you fly a drone within 5 miles of the airport? I can't imagine that the airport would've given the OK to someone flying so close to the runway.
> Give way to and do not interfere with other aircraft.
> Fly at or below FAA-authorized altitudes in controlled airspace (Class B, C, D, and surface Class E designated for an airport) only with prior FAA authorization by using LAANC or DroneZone.
> Flying drones in restricted airspace is not allowed. Drone pilots should always check for airspace restrictions prior to flight on our B4UFLY app or the UAS Facility Maps webpage.
Beyond needing to abide by the file mile rule, this airspace would have had an active TFR.
If you were flying the drone there in the approved space - you'd obviously know your drone was struck. Shouldnt that person have reported it immediately if they were being proper about following all guidelines?
Or as the promoter of the airshow permitting drones to be used, I'd be calling every single one of them in to show me their drone and all footage acquired during the event. Any one of them raising a stink about it, I'd be providing their contact information to the authorities.
No mention of a drone from any of the actually trustworthy sources.
The sad reality of this incident is that it was likely just a result of poor vertical separation, either due to badly planned flight paths or lack of preparation, more likely both.
> It's my worst nightmare whenever I'm flying these days.
Maybe if someone is deliberately flying near an airport and moves into the exact right position at the right time without first being spotted
But in practice, mainstream drones are GPS locked to not fly anywhere near airports and it's not really realistic to just accidentally get a drone too close to an airplane anywhere else. Also, the sky is a massive place and drones have limited flight time. I think the drone-airplane collision fears are greatly exaggerated outside of unique low-altitude specialty flying like airshows.
> Hitting a drone is your worst nightmare while piloting small aircraft
A small GA aircraft hitting a drone has a very high fatality chance, particularly in the stages of flight most likely to encounter amateur drone operators (ie. takeoff and landing).
A swan can weigh 8 kilos, a goose can weigh 6, and DJi phantom weighs 1.2 kilos.
Multiple planes crashed with fatalities vecause of birds, as far as I am aware none have done so because of a drone.
The fear of drones had led to pilots reporting drone sightings at 10,000 feet in the middle of the Ocean, thousands of miles from shore.
"Several commenters noted that the AMA analyzed those reported ‘incidents’ and found that out of the 764 reported records, only 27 (or 3.5%) were identified as a near mid-air collision, with nearly all of those involving government-authorized military drones"
It’s also kind of insulting to those of us who go out of our way to safely fly drones recreationally. More and more drones you purchase today have built-in GPS transponders. I’m notified when airplanes are nearby even at altitudes I can’t reach, and I can tell you what kind of air space I’m in easily. I’m registered with the FAA as required, and I’ve taken more safety courses than I need, mostly because I wouldn’t mind getting my part 107.
I tell everyone these things are not for kids, especially the $1K+ drones capable of high altitudes and speeds. If you go online and find a video of someone doing something stupid, you’ll find an army of enthusiasts telling them so in the comments because they want to preserve the hobby.
What's the point you're trying to make? Just because we don't yet have a confirmed kill from a DJI Phantom means it's impossible?
We do have confirmed strikes from drones, and the damage has been devastating. We do have confirmed strikes with fatalities from birds. There is not much difference between a bird and a drone when an aircraft strikes it at speed...
These drones are often operated by folks with zero training and zero deference for the law or aviation safety (highlighted by the fact they're operating near an airport). It's just a matter of time... if it hasn't already happened right here in this Dallas incident.
> What's the point you're trying to make? Just because we don't yet have a confirmed kill from a DJI Phantom means it's impossible?
Anything is possible, there is a guy that was killed by his beard, shot by a dog and every year several people die from being tangled on bedsheets. Lets keep things in proportion.
I, for one, am unclear why we immediately jumped to regulating drones, but when Tespa autopilot kills people, nobody seems to care?
The real point is that people in this thread are too quick to blame drones, when geese outnumbet them 1000 to one. I live near an airport and a huge flock of geese is constantly here. When I see people with real drones, they tend to know whay they are doing.
The only people I see fooling around are people who buy a tiny drone for $50 on Amazon and the worst those drones can do is get aruck in your hair while filming nudes.
> We do have confirmed strikes with fatalities from birds.
Yup.
> There is not much difference between a bird and a drone when an aircraft strikes it at speed...
Open to debate.
Even if true: There's a whole lot more birds near airports than illegally operating drones. So even if there's some tiny, absolute risk, the relative risk appears low.
This seems surprising. Most drones weigh no more than a medium sized bird and are made out of flimsy materials that shatter readily. Sure there might be a bit of fire from the destruction of the battery pack, but nothing that should be a major problem for a GA aircraft. Unless by drone you are talking about a Global Hawk? I would count that as a high fatality risk.
Really? Very high? My uneducated guess is that there's a very high chance of damage to the airplane, but not of crash landing, and certainly not of death.
Well, I've hit birds with wingspans around a dozen feet (didn't go measure). They make a mess, and have killed people I knew, but that was mostly because of their size and the penetration of the windscreen. Hitting a smaller object could certainly cause some damage but it wouldn't likely be immediate and catastrophic unless it was in a critical spot.
You don't need a source. An object striking an aircraft in flight is devastating, and can be very fatal. Just because the object was made in China vs. hatched out of an egg doesn't really matter... the results will be the same.
Well, according to wikipedia, only between 11-15% of bird strikes result in damage to the aircraft. Apparently large birds like geese are the main danger.
I imagine a similar distribution with drone strikes, as most drones do not weigh as much as a goose, at least of those in the hands of a typical idiot (who would fly in the path of a plane).
That's why 'very high fatality chance' doesn't seem right to me, but I can't find any statistics on it.
Most (practically all) aircraft do not have bullet-proof windshields (including military), for starters, and secondly a several pound meat ball travelling at closing speeds anywhere between 60kts (GA) to 200+ kts (jets/airliners/mil) is going to do a number on the aircraft regardless if it incapacitated the pilot.
Doubly-so if it's a several pound metal ball...
You don't want to hit anything in an aircraft, ever.
Bulletproof windshields were very common during this period, although 43-11719 doesn't appear to have been fitted with one, likely because the F variant never advanced beyond the prototype stage.
Actually, I'd say the most vulnerable part for a strike in a single engine craft is the engine, which sits ahead of the cabin. At low altitudes there's precious little time to correct for any sort of engine failure.
It looks like a small black spec a few hundred feet off the ground to me. Drone seems pretty likely. Perhaps it's junk that fell off another aircraft, it could be a satellite falling to Earth for all I know, but drone seems like the first hypothesis to rule out. Or that the footage is inauthentic I suppose.
Looking through their comments, it's pretty clear they know they're banned, why they're banned, spoke with dang about it at the time, and embraced being banned (I think because they feel it filters out low effort replies? Their statement was on the matter was terse, but semiparphrasing they said "I'm aiming for a shadowban" because "replies are the worst").
I don't get it. How do you know that GP is shadowbanned? The post looks just like a normal post to me; I'm not even sure what it means for it to be dead.