Drone hit a news helicopter

[TheFoxSaysRingADingDing]

Los Angeles television station says chopper struck by drone, forced to make precautionary landing

A news helicopter belonging to an ABC owned-and-operated television station was forced to make a precautionary landing on Wednesday night after it struck an object believed to be a drone while flying over downtown Los Angeles.

www.foxnews.com

Either someone wasn't flying smart or maybe they thought that they could fly 400 feet above the buildings.

 

[Deleted member 93449]

So at this point no one knows what hit the helicopter.

 

[DDS]

the strike was @ 1100 ft?

didn't see that in the other article

 

[AMann]

The pilot reports seeing red and green lights go by just before the hit.

 

[Skywatcher2001]

oh boy . . . ?

 

[DroningOn]

The pilot reports seeing red and green lights go by just before the hit.

Link? I’ve seen the the pilot interviewed twice. At no time did he mention seeing red and green lights in either one.

 

[DDS]

Link? I’ve seen the the pilot interviewed twice. At no time did he mention seeing red and green lights in either one.

Maybe that's due to the fact a reporter is reporting to what the pilot THOUGHT he MAY have seen

As per the LA Slimes

“My pilot thought he saw a flash, and it looks like it might have been the green-and-red light from a drone that might have caught the corner of his eye,” Cristi said.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-05/abcs-air7-hd-helicopter-struck-by-drone

Lets see what the FAA comes up w/ as fact and not just speculation to make a headline

 

[AMann]

Maybe that's due to the fact a reporter is reporting to what the pilot THOUGHT he MAY have seen

As per the LA Times

“My pilot thought he saw a flash, and it looks like it might have been the green-and-red light from a drone that might have caught the corner of his eye,” Cristi said.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-12-05/abcs-air7-hd-helicopter-struck-by-drone

Lets see what the FAA comes up w/ as fact and not just speculation to make a headline

^^^Best idea - waiting for the final FAA report!

One thing for sure; It wasn’t a bird because birds don’t have lights!

 

[Macinfo]

Never a dull moment with a media that jumps to conclusions without any facts on a routine basis

 

[DroningOn]

Never a dull moment with a media that jumps to conclusions without any facts on a routine basis

That describes a lot of people here on this site too

 

[anotherlab]

If it was a bird strike, there should be some residue left. Until the FAA report comes out, it's just speculation. I was skimming the Twitter feed of ABC reporter who posted the story and some responded with a YT video of a drone pilot flying his drone in Shanghai and landing it on a tower to reset the height limit. Judging by limited battery time, I'm guessing it was a Mavic Air.

 

[g36pilot]

The peripheral "flash of light" could have been the object entering the helicopter's nav, anti-collision, or landing light beam.

 

[Scottalmas]

I am having some trouble believing a drone did that damage and would not have been effected by the wind produced by the helicopter propellers.

 

[anotherlab]

I am having some trouble believing a drone did that damage and would not have been effected by the wind produced by the helicopter propellers.

Any object hitting a helicopter is going to cause significant damage. The size and speed of the object hitting the helicopter are immaterial, when compared the helicopter. The size and speed of the helicopter are what determined the amount of damage. It's purely an exercise of F = m * v.

 

[BigAl07]

I am having some trouble believing a drone did that damage and would not have been effected by the wind produced by the helicopter propellers.

This should help....

(Not my calcs I'm copy/pasting from a post on another forum from @sar104 )
*********** Start Quotation ************
Take an arbitrary helicopter - I'm choosing a Sikorsky UH-60, which has a maximum takeoff weight of 10,000 kg and a rotor diameter of 16.4 m, sweeping an area of 211 m².

To support its weight the downthrust has to be 100,000 N, and so the downward pressure below the rotors needs to be of the order of 500 N/m².

The cross-sectional area of a Phantom is around 0.25 m², and so the downward force on the Phantom would be, at most, 125 N.

Acting on a mass of 2 kg, that will yield a downward acceleration of 62.5 m/s².

The UH-60 flies at 150 knots (78 m/s), and so the time taken for even a stationary Phantom to pass the 16.4 m under the rotors, front to back, would be 0.2 s.

Applying the standard equations of motion, vertically, to the Phantom, it will be deflected downwards by 1.4 m in that time, not even nearly the height of the aircraft.

But, since the fuselage is positioned such that only around one half the length of a rotor blade extends ahead of it, the time that an incoming Phantom would be exposed to the downforce before striking the aircraft would be roughly one quarter of the estimate above - i.e. 0.05 s. In that time the deflection will be around 7 cm. Barely noticeable - it's still hitting the windshield.
*********** End Quotation ************

 

[dave canada]

The Devil made me do it or now the drone made me do it , common sense goes a long ways if you are in an area where you are lucky enough the others let you fly,

 

[sar104]

Any object hitting a helicopter is going to cause significant damage. The size and speed of the object hitting the helicopter are immaterial, when compared the helicopter. The size and speed of the helicopter are what determined the amount of damage. It's purely an exercise of F = m * v.

Just a minor point: F = m * dv/dt. The product of mass and velocity is momentum, not force, which is rate of change of momentum.

 

[sar104]

This should help....

(Not my calcs I'm copy/pasting from a post on another forum from @sar104 )
*********** Start Quotation ************
Take an arbitrary helicopter - I'm choosing a Sikorsky UH-60, which has a maximum takeoff weight of 10,000 kg and a rotor diameter of 16.4 m, sweeping an area of 211 m².

To support its weight the downthrust has to be 100,000 N, and so the downward pressure below the rotors needs to be of the order of 500 N/m².

The cross-sectional area of a Phantom is around 0.25 m², and so the downward force on the Phantom would be, at most, 125 N.

Acting on a mass of 2 kg, that will yield a downward acceleration of 62.5 m/s².

The UH-60 flies at 150 knots (78 m/s), and so the time taken for even a stationary Phantom to pass the 16.4 m under the rotors, front to back, would be 0.2 s.

Applying the standard equations of motion, vertically, to the Phantom, it will be deflected downwards by 1.4 m in that time, not even nearly the height of the aircraft.

But, since the fuselage is positioned such that only around one half the length of a rotor blade extends ahead of it, the time that an incoming Phantom would be exposed to the downforce before striking the aircraft would be roughly one quarter of the estimate above - i.e. 0.05 s. In that time the deflection will be around 7 cm. Barely noticeable - it's still hitting the windshield.
*********** End Quotation ************

The damage looks consistent with impact from a small drone. Less than was observed in the Dayton impact tests with a Phantom, although the helicopter will have been going slower. They are probably going to need some debris to get to a definitive conclusion on this one.

 

[BigAl07]

The damage looks consistent with impact from a small drone. Less than was observed in the Dayton impact tests with a Phantom, although the helicopter will have been going slower. They are probably going to need some debris to get to a definitive conclusion on this one.

I think your last statement is going to be the deciding factor... not UAS debris then our community is going to scream "Not a Drone". But, even if they don't find debris and if they can't determine for sure it was NOT a UAS then it will go down in the minds of John Q. Public (and Allen TBH) as a UAS strike. Once the story went out it's Guilty until proven otherwise.

 

[sar104]

I think your last statement is going to be the deciding factor... not UAS debris then our community is going to scream "Not a Drone". But, even if they don't find debris and if they can't determine for sure it was NOT a UAS then it will go down in the minds of John Q. Public (and Allen TBH) as a UAS strike. Once the story went out it's Guilty until proven otherwise.

I suspect that's correct - most people who saw this report will likely take away that it was obviously a drone, whether or not there ends up being unambiguous evidence either way. It appears to me that there is penetration damage on that leading edge, in which case there is likely to be something left of whatever impacted it inside the structure. The two separate damage areas are harder to explain - it makes me wonder if whatever hit bounced off the fuselage forward of the tail or was disrupted by a main rotor.