flying three miles high, catastrophic collision. ( NO COLLISION OCCURRED )dc

[roadkilt]

Air temp at 15,000 feet is 5 F, or -15 C. Batteries would be warm when pulling hard current to get that high but would be chilling fast in the high wind. I dont see how its possible to get there with batteries getting seriously frozen and losing capacity. Mine drop by nearly 50% when below freezing. That would be one hard frozen drone.

 

[Tacoman]

The story is not credible. At 300-400kts it is not likely the pilots would see and be able to identify a drone as it flashed by. Also, I don't think Mavic could get to 15000ft. I have flown my up to 1000ft and it took a lot of battery. Also at 15000ft standard temperate will be a few degrees below freezing, battery capacity will be down. Also helicopters suffer from preformance degeration at altitude much more than fixed wing aircraft. Probably not anything like a Mavic. Couple of possibilities. It may have been a large fixed wing drone or a light manned aircraft much futher away than the pilots thought. At that altitude the planes may have both been VFR depending on the airspace type.

 

[KennyJr]

Out of curiosity, how do you get the MP to fly above 400 feet? Mine gets up to that elevation and holds. I've never really been in a position to go higher or really needed to, but how would it be done?

According to the specs the Mavic has a climb rate of 5 m/s. It would take a little over 16 minutes to make it 3 miles high. Considering that the current draw is higher during ascent I doubt it would make that high before you got a low battery warning. Even if you disabled low battery RTH you'd likely drain the battery by the time you made that high. Definitely a one way trip.

 

[theDRONEranger]

The Airbus pilot passes the eagle eye test for sure. His speed should have been somewhere between fast and blazing, which means split second to determine it was a drone. ****, this pilot was good. Wonder why he didn't get brand and model??? Just out of curiosity, would those measurement have been in metric or otherwise in the UK? Asking, cause I really don't know.

 

[lmel2005]

No, there are not MANY "near miss" incidents. They are extremely rare, considering the number of the drones sold worldwide.

The incidents near airports are rare too.

Drones don't collide with manned aircraft, because they don't share the same airspace. So the possibility for a collision is very little.

For those few who fly in nfz, or disturb air traffic, or disturb firefighters, the laws are strict, and the airspace they violate, is already restricted for all of us. So those who are crying for stricter regulations, should not be afraid, because regulations are already there, and are strict.

Yes, there is an hysteria about drones, mainly among drone users. It's obvious in this forum. I hope with time, they (we) all will calm down.

They make collision simulations, and report the results, as they are REAL incidents. But they aren't. The possibility is very low, and the possibility of real damage is even lower. At least until now. Real life is a witness of this.

I'm waiting the results of collision simulations, of a drone falling on international space station, with a speed of 50000 m/s. I'm sure they will be catastrophic. Lol.

 

[Chips]

We assume it is a DJI drone. Could be a home-made one with exceptional capability.

 

[Maxheadspace]

If a drone made it to 15,000 feet plus, there is a good chance it didnt make it back down in one piece. Can a battery even do that and still get you home? There had to be high winds pushing it away up that high.

Hehe... Drones have become the new UFO! Pretty soon people will start becoming abducted by drones...

Maybe someone will do the math, but I seriously question whether a standard hobby grade drone would make it to 15,500 feet. Ascent rate versus battery life, diminishing air density...it really seems to be stretching reality. So, 15,500 feet is 4,697 meters. The average DJI drone has a maximum ascent rate of 5 meters per second at what I assume would be sea level. If the atmospheric pressure remained the same all the way up, it would take the drone 16 minutes to reach that altitude, within the realm of most late-model drones. But atmospheric pressure doesn't remain the same and that drone would really be gasping to keep moving upward, significantly reducing climb rate as it moved up. I believe a drone would run out of battery long before reaching that kind of altitude, if it could even sustain upward movement at that height. I'm sure someone working in their basement laboratory could come up with a solution, and there are always people pushing the limit, but it's just one of those instances where the facts just don't sound right. Did the pilot pass a sobriety test? Maybe it really was a UFO!

 

[snoopx]

This story reminds me of the laser pointer stories you sometimes see in the news where it's claimed a commercial airline pilot had a laser shone in his eyes while flying by someone on the ground.
If you've ever used one of these lasers, any slight movement of your hand translates to a large movement of the point of focus of the laser. It wouldn't be possible to target a moving plane a large distance away with such accuracy.

 

[dewster]

There’s nothing to see at altitude. The best shots are at lower altitudes.

 

[sar104]

This story reminds me of the laser pointer stories you sometimes see in the news where it's claimed a commercial airline pilot had a laser shone in his eyes while flying by someone on the ground.
If you've ever used one of these lasers, any slight movement of your hand translates to a large movement of the point of focus of the laser. It wouldn't be possible to target a moving plane a large distance away with such accuracy.

That's simply not true. The beam has significant divergence and it is trivial to show that it can be done. And there are multiple well-documented cases of this happening.

 

[lmel2005]

This story reminds me of the laser pointer stories you sometimes see in the news where it's claimed a commercial airline pilot had a laser shone in his eyes while flying by someone on the ground.
If you've ever used one of these lasers, any slight movement of your hand translates to a large movement of the point of focus of the laser. It wouldn't be possible to target a moving plane a large distance away with such accuracy.

In fact, they should focus on pilot's eyes, not the entire plane.

I'm sure that simulations, found it was catastrophic.

 

[v8juice]

There’s nothing to see at altitude. The best shots are at lower altitudes.

You are entitled to your opinion but I have some nice photos of the nearby mountains taken from 5,400 feet.

 

[sar104]

In fact, they should focus on pilot's eyes, not the entire plane.

I'm sure that simulations, found it was catastrophic.

Provided that these are Class 3R (previously IIIa) less than 5 mW lasers (although no guarantee of that with the easy availability of higher power lasers on eBay etc.) there is little risk of eye damage but significant risk of temporary vision impairment, which is bad on short final. At around 1 km you have a beam diameter of the order of 1.5 m for a typical laser pointer with 1 mRad (0.086°) divergence.

 

[Aerial West]

There’s nothing to see at altitude. The best shots are at lower altitudes.

this is true. when i teach students, this is one of the first things i explain. we go high to get it out of their system,a nd them look for cinematric production value closer to life.

It's alot like scuba diving very deep... its cool, but there's very few things down there to see at all, and usually dark. life happens near the surface.

 

[Cheech Wizard]

"couple of dents". Tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage and a damaged gearbox which IS a flight critical component. Or are you claiming expensive damage isn't important?

You can throw rocks at moving cars, it'll put a "couple dents" but wont cause them to crash - does that mean its OK to throw rocks at cars?

You still don't get ac0j 's sarcasm?

 

[lmel2005]

Provided that these are Class 3R (previously IIIa) less than 5 mW lasers (although no guarantee of that with the easy availability of higher power lasers on eBay etc.) there is little risk of eye damage but significant risk of temporary vision impairment, which is bad on short final. At around 1 km you have a beam diameter of the order of 1.5 m for a typical laser pointer with 1 mRad (0.086°) divergence.

View attachment 47522

Aiming the cockpit of a moving plane, with a handheld laser pointer, from 1000 or 1500 m, is a difficult task, anyway.

 

[snoopx]

That's simply not true. The beam has significant divergence and it is trivial to show that it can be done. And there are multiple well-documented cases of this happening.

Your claimed significant divergence of 1.5m is not very much in the grand scheme of things when the plane is moving at several hundred miles per hour, several miles away and you are aiming for a pilots eyes in the cockpit.
As for your well documented cases, there are numerous 'well documented' cases of near drone-plane collisions reported in the press, which turn out to be doubtful, as the replies in this thread shows.

 

[Terry G]

Monday 17 September 2018
According to the Doncaster Free Press.
A passenger plane with 240 people on board narrowly avoided a catastrophic collision with a drone as it took off from Doncaster’s Robin Hood Airport.


The drone, which was flying three miles high, was just 100 feet away from the Airbus A321 which was climbing at 380mph after taking off from the airport.

The incident happened at the highest ever altitude recorded for a near-miss between a drone and an aircraft in UK airspace.

Packed passenger plane nearly hits drone at Doncaster Airport

I have to admit it, that was me. I was testing my DJI Spark battery to see if I could actually fly from here in Western Michigan to the UK and back in Sport mode in 12 minutes. Figured if I got up in the jet stream I just might make it. Came back but was 1100 meters short. Sorry for all the bad press it generated :>}

 

[sar104]

Your claimed significant divergence of 1.5m is not very much in the grand scheme of things when the plane is moving at several hundred miles per hour, several miles away and you are aiming for a pilots eyes in the cockpit.
As for your well documented cases, there are numerous 'well documented' cases of near drone-plane collisions reported in the press, which turn out to be doubtful, as the replies in this thread shows.

You can question pilot reports of drone sightings, and some are certainly incorrect, but when both pilots in the cockpit suffer temporary vision impairment due to bright green (usually) illumination from the ground there is little room for doubt. I'm not going to argue with you on this - even the most cursory search would reveal numerous occurrences, including where the perpetrators have been caught, admitted what they did, and been convicted.

 

[XavierFernandez]

I agree with your comments about the issues with drones at the altitudes reported, but not about the theoretical visibility of a drone at aircraft speeds. 0.75 seconds is ample time to notice and identify an object moving with parallax against a distant background.

As a simple direct comparison, since speed and length scale linearly, consider a white, one-inch object flying past (or into) your car windshield at 50 mph. I'm pretty sure that you have easily noticed and identified insects as small as that - I certainly have.

Wanna play a little devil's advocate here.

Are you sure you can identify an insect or you just assume (or your brain makes the match) of it as an insect because it is the most probable/desirable object of those characteristics in that scenario? I mean if I were to throw a paint ball or any other similar sized object out of context, would you be able to identify it as such or just assume that another bug spashed in your wind shield?

My point is that a pilot climbing and seein such object for a small time and having his mind in so many other things would much likely to just default to "drone" and raise the concern, than actually try to figure out what exactly is

Not saying it is right or wrong, but sounds like a probable scenario