> 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.
The claim was, hitting a drone has a high chance of being fatal - the same high chance hitting a bird has... particularly in vulnerable stages of flight. Nothing you, or anyone else has offered counters this claim, because it's just reality. Hitting things in aircraft is never a good thing, and is always a significant cause for concern.
We've been lucky so far more idiots haven't flown drones closer to airshows or airports. There are plenty, and there have been collisions with devastating damage but luckily no fatalities (perhaps yet). There are plenty of pictures on the internet if you want to compare damages to bird strikes.
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.
I may have missed it, but I don't see anywhere in that linked article that mentions bullet proof windscreens... and Wikipedia for the aircraft also makes no mention. Plus, we're not just talking about this particular aircraft in this incident, but generally all aircraft.
But, I would not be surprised it was tried, particularly with WWII era machines. There's very little actual benefit to having one on any aircraft, even CAS aircraft. A modernly restored version meant for airshows and racing probably would have replaced it for something more modern and lighter weight.
The person in the picture is speculating it's a bullet proof windshield, and he's mistaken (particularly from the P-39 aircraft mentioned in the link). If you look at both a P-63 and P-39 you will not find any windshield or window that is even remotely shaped like what is held in the image.
Regardless, modernly speaking, very few (if any) aircraft have bullet proof windshields. They are impractical for a number of reasons, including weight, size, thickness (distortion of picture), and efficacy. If a pilot is within small-arms distance they generally are already in trouble...
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.
Because "the system" might have made a mistake. And even if the shadowban was warranted at some time, the poster might have improved their conduct in the meantime and should be given another chance.
Usually, when I see a reasonable but dead comment, I vouch for it. If the commenter is shadowbanned and their other most recent comments are also reasonable and civil, I (sometimes) alert them to their status.
We've all got our irrational fears, but whether you're flying in a jumbo jet or a single-prop bug-smasher this one is very irrational indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicl...