And here is the complaint the FAA originally filed, which includes flying through crowded streets, flying through a tunnel with traffic, flying as high as 1500ft AGL, flying at an individual causing them to jump aside [apparently moments before crashing into a hedge], and flying within 100ft of the UVA Medical Center's heliport [though the video was being filmed for UVA].
Man, that looked rather dangerous and the pilot seemed to have a complete disregard for potentially crashing into buildings and harming someone if that thing fell to the ground or went through a window. If he was just meandering around in what would have looked like a safe manner I wouldn't care as much, but intentionally getting extremely close to buildings and doing acrobatics in a populated area seems pretty reckless.
To my knowledge, "Trappy" (nickname of the pilot) is one of the best RC pilots around. He flies for Team Blacksheep, and is a big figure in the drone community for encouraging safety, education, and progressing the tech.
He's definitely known for pushing the envelope on reckless flight, but I get the sense that he would take responsibility if something happened.
These flying wings (foam plane model) absorb a lot of force on impact. Even with the GoPros and all radio equipment loaded on. Aside from causing commotion, I think it's unlikely that you'd severely injure someone. Possible, but unlikely. A quad-rotor heli falling out of the sky would really hurt, though.
The issue is the example being set. Trappy is definitely one of the best, but his videos don't demonstrate his hours of experience, or safety considerations, to a novice pilot. The affordability of the machine plus some examples of fancy flying are sure to put dangerous machines in the hands of idiots, and that's best avoided. Remember - these things fly out of the box with no training.
Trappy also has access to many more multicopter spares than the rest of us. This may have something to do with his reckless flying!
A GoPro falling from the height he was flying would certainly hurt and possibly maim a person or damage property.
I'm sure he would take responsibility, but when people are taking risks around me I'm happier if I am assured they will be made to take responsibility.
I think there's a pretty low risk of serious damage occurring from this drone colliding with much of anything. This is the model being piloted in the videos: http://www.ritewingrc.com/Zephyr_II_ARF.html
It's basically two pieces of EPS foam with some electronics and a pusher prop. If you were going to be hit in the face by a "drone" - you couldn't really pick a less damaging one.
If the drone has any significant speed, it will cause serious damage to an individual if hit. If it causes a traffic disruption, the danger then comes from a vehicle that may make a maneuver to avoid getting hit or if a driver loses control after colliding with the drone. It it shatters glass, serious lacerations could occur for pedestrians.
This kind of flying is highly reckless and only an asshole would do this.
My thought was that a kite from a nearby park might fly into the face of a skateboarder causing them to veer into the road forcing a motorcycle to evade and crash into a bus, severing the fuel line and blowing up thirty seven children but leaving the driver unharmed.
The environment they were flying in presents several challenges to maintaining a reliable control and video signal while flying. In such a populated area the noise floor is likely to be pretty high to start with.
The pilot is using 433mhz for control and 1.3ghz for video, so right off the bat you have an 800mw video transmitter within a wingspan (54"?) of the control receiver. The control radio is only outputting 500mw and is considerably farther away.
All the buildings close by make for a multipathing nightmare, but can be mitigated by the use of circularly polarized antennas. There is a lot of DIY involved in building one of these with plenty of opportunities for something to go wrong, they're really just hacked together from consumer-grade wireless security systems.
I hope you can see how these factors make it much more likely control could be lost and make your comparison seem pretty silly.
It still appears to be moving at freeway speeds or greater, and at 65mph even foam can be dangerous to humans.
It's hard to pin its speed, but watch it move through city blocks in seconds & remember that driving/bicycling/motorcycling always looks slower than real speed in POV videos
Thats critical. Below 500ft and away from airports you're basically out of manned use airspace. above that (depending on the area) and now you're creating a very real hazard for manned aircraft.
If the video was filmed "for" UVA, it's strange that they didn't include a more complete/balanced picture of the grounds. 80-90% of the video seemed to revolve around the hospital area.