Drone pilot to plead guilty in collision that grounded aircraft fighting Palisades fire

[High_Order1]

oops, cut off another salient part

 

[GadgetGuy]

PMS 520 begs to differ

View attachment 185310

Thanks for sharing the illustration. I didn't word my post well. What I was trying to say is illustrated in your post. There is no drone zone in the stack around the FTA, and the FTA owns the entire airspace over the FTA area. No one else can legally transit it at any altitude. Clearly, the Super Scooper was in the FTA zone likely dropping water when it hit the drone flying below 400 feet AGL.

 

[High_Order1]

The guide discusses integrating UAS traffic into those areas.

The only reason I debate this is that there was another 'interaction' where the .gov was trying to pin a rotary wing strike onto the rec drone types.
Then it was learned it was a Tx Hwy Patrol on an autonomous return to home flight, in an approved corridor.

We had some coverage here, but when I went back to look, all the supporting articles were 404'd for some reason, leaving me to try to massage those brain cells.

The graphic seems to suggest different types of aircraft have different layers to live in, and the scooper in that diagram has a minimum altitude.

Ah well

 

[GadgetGuy]

The guide discusses integrating UAS traffic into those areas.

The only reason I debate this is that there was another 'interaction' where the .gov was trying to pin a rotary wing strike onto the rec drone types.
Then it was learned it was a Tx Hwy Patrol on an autonomous return to home flight, in an approved corridor.

We had some coverage here, but when I went back to look, all the supporting articles were 404'd for some reason, leaving me to try to massage those brain cells.

The graphic seems to suggest different types of aircraft have different layers to live in, and the scooper in that diagram has a minimum altitude.

Ah well

I think you are conflating orbiting and maneuvering with water dropping. As I understand it, the Super Scoopers fly as low to the ground as they can in the FTA zone, in order to drop the water as accurately as possible. No UAS flights should ever be in that same water drop zone.

 

[High_Order1]

I agree there should be nothing else in the stack and corridor of a drop.

But it then begs the question, was the scooper dropping? If not, he may not have been where he was supposed to be. Irrelevant when the operator admits he lost visual, but

 

[GadgetGuy]

I agree there should be nothing else in the stack and corridor of a drop.

But it then begs the question, was the scooper dropping? If not, he may not have been where he was supposed to be. Irrelevant when the operator admits he lost visual, but

I strongly suspect the scooper was in the FTA zone, entering to drop or exiting after a drop. There is no claim that the drone pilot was also exceeding 400 feet AGL, so they were in the same under 400 foot AGL airspace. The real issue isn't losing VLOS. It is that he never should have been in that airspace at any altitude, and had he been paying proper visual attention to the area that he was flying toward, even if he couldn’t see the drone itself, he should certainly have seen and heard the scooper, and known to immediately hit the deck, and get the heck out of there.