Las Vegas Airport - Drone Flying Over Plane

beejAMG · Feb 17, 2018

Not a drone but a plane

787steve · Feb 17, 2018

ascension said:
Hey Steve.
Did you delete a post?
It showed up in a notice, and claimed it was in this thread, but it seems to be gone.
To respond to the questions you posed in it:

When you first claimed your birdstrike, you did not indicate it was in a TA4 or A4.
The post read like an airline incident, which I would have surely recalled, since there have only been a very few that have penetrated the airframe, as you described.
One in my airline in 32 years.
I would surely have remembered it.

So....There was no effort to discredit it.
I was just suspicious that it was not an airline incident, which it wasn't.
I have no personal feelings about this issue whatsoever.

My one and only point in this and other similar discussions is to point out how the drone community is foolish to claim that bird danger is far more serious than drone mishandling.
Birds and airplanes have been operating together for over a century, and pretty well, if you ask me.
Goofy people operating drones in dangerous areas are stupid.
It's that simple.

I did delete a post. Unfortunately, I have a condition called an essential tremor. It makes typing a real pain in the a**. And sometimes it causes me to post a reply while I am midway through typing it. (after composing this post, and checking it, it took almost 15 minutes to type. sucks.)

As to the current discussion, we are getting way off point between you, me, and ac0j.
In my experience, bird strikes are not uncommon. But most are small birds which just bounce off the bottom of the fuselage. I have had many. Not a monthly event, but common enough to be "no big deal", perhaps 2-3 per year. Often we saw nothing, but heard the impact from below. Usually the only evidence was a smudge on the skin. In my experience, all were on approach. I don't recall hitting any on takeoff. I have quizzed some of my friends, and their experiences are similar. I think I may have had two, or three which were big enough to find parts remaining behind.

Sometimes, it seems to me, that you challenge people unnecessarily when their experience or data does not match your own history. I remember when I felt you were challenging my integrity about my own A-4 birdstrike experience. You said you would like to see the report. You went on to say that during your Navy flying no one in your squadron, Group, or Wing ever had a bird strike. I went in search and found this in a Navy Publication:
http://www.public.navy.mil/NAVSAFEC...gazines/approach/Approach-MECH_Vol_61_No2.pdf
"In the 30 years between 1981 and 2011, naval aviators reported more than 16,000 bird strikes resulting in $372 million of damage." That equates to 533 per year. With 9 operational wings, 59 per wing per year. So there may have been bird strikes in your wing about which you were not informed. Remember, not all bird strikes are big news.

But the bottom line is that none of this means anything when it comes to drones and airplanes. We shouldn't even be wasting space on a drone board discussing birds.
Airplanes can be anything from an ultra light or a glider to an Airbus 380. Speeds can range from negative speeds to Mach runs. Drones are structurally very different from birds.

Here is the link to the video of an F-16 swallowing a bird, resulting in a crash.
One bird, one less F-16.

In regard to airliners, while multi-engine airliners can fly and land with an engine out, we know that airliners in just that condition have also crashed. It would be a poor defense to cause a loss of an engine, then say the resultant crash wouldn't have happened if the pilot was any good. In my past five years working for Boeing, training crews from all over the world on the Dreamliner, I have come to find that the bell curve of pilot skill levels is a lot broader than I found while operating for a major US airline for 30 years.
I am afraid that when people discuss airliners not being downed by birds, they may be sending the message that there is no need for concern for those flying to set record distances, or altitudes, or to get a really cool shot of an airplane. And, of course, I bet most of those record range guys have no idea where the VR routes are. (Or even what a VR is.)

Bottom line:
Drones are a serious threat to manned airplanes and should be operated with that in mind at all times. I believe you will agree with that.
Falcon 104

Photo Booth · Feb 17, 2018

787steve said:
I am unconvinced. The fact that GTA has a drone feature doesn't mean this is from that.
As to the clarity of the picture, I have heard that racing drones don't have cameras optimized for thousands of feet away., but rather for shorter range obstacles. I will let a racing droner comment on that. I did look at several on line and you would not confuse them with MAVIC footage.

As to why no cars on the parking lot. If you go to Google Earth and select 3D mode, you may make out that the big empty lot is next to a building with a steeple on the front. Churches often have empty parking lots during much of the week.

And when the "fake" tape starts, you san see a couple little yaw twitches that look a lot like some of my bad Mavic videos. The footage I found on line from GTA was very different.

Lastly, in this article in Forbes, " JayO", who is being looked at by the Feds said it was a friend's, and while he did post it, he didn't take it. With the Feds after him, wouldn't he just have said it was fake if that was the case?

I could be wrong about all of this. Can you say where you found that it had been shown to be fake?
Thanks

The person that created the video INTENTIONALLY wanted to try to fool people. The video was clearly edited to add overlays to make it appear real and I'm confident other aspects were edited too.

The "internet" has been getting fooled by these kinds of videos for years. Remember the one showing an eagle swooping down and carrying away a small child? Clearly fake (and its creator later admitted to it being fake) yet that didn't stop a LOT of people from believing what their eyes were seeing.

When it comes to EVERYTHING posted on the internet we all need to put on our critical thinking caps and not instantly believe what we WANT to believe. There are PLENTY of people that WANT this fake drone video to be real and true. But that doesn't make it real or true.

Several of the DJI Facebook Groups have discussed this video and plenty of folks are "unconvinced" despite this very convincing evidence to the contrary. Those threads are where I found the information I've shared, which was presented by other critical thinkers doing their best to get people to use their own brains for critical thinking.

The fake video looked fake to me from the GET GO. I'm befuddled how anyone can look at it and think it looks like real drone video.

Mark

ac0j · Feb 17, 2018

Well done Steve!
The percentage of drones in flight paths versus birds in flight paths is quite in favor of more birds than drones by a huge margin.
There is NO QUESTION that ingesting a drone would be considerably more problematic than ingesting a seagull.
But I think we can ALL agree that there will be very few confirmed drone vs aircraft collisions. Based on the odds.

Lopez0015 · Feb 17, 2018

.. 2 last pages contributes nothing

ac0j · Feb 17, 2018

Last two posts were even more pointless.....(this one included)

Lopez0015 · Feb 17, 2018

Jeje yes
is contagious

787steve · Feb 18, 2018

Photo Booth said:
The person that created the video INTENTIONALLY wanted to try to fool people. The video was clearly edited to add overlays to make it appear real and I'm confident other aspects were edited too.

The "internet" has been getting fooled by these kinds of videos for years. Remember the one showing an eagle swooping down and carrying away a small child? Clearly fake (and its creator later admitted to it being fake) yet that didn't stop a LOT of people from believing what their eyes were seeing.

When it comes to EVERYTHING posted on the internet we all need to put on our critical thinking caps and not instantly believe what we WANT to believe. There are PLENTY of people that WANT this fake drone video to be real and true. But that doesn't make it real or true.

Several of the DJI Facebook Groups have discussed this video and plenty of folks are "unconvinced" despite this very convincing evidence to the contrary. Those threads are where I found the information I've shared, which was presented by other critical thinkers doing their best to get people to use their own brains for critical thinking.

The fake video looked fake to me from the GET GO. I'm befuddled how anyone can look at it and think it looks like real drone video.

Mark

Your confidence is inspiring. But your explanation is not. I have a LOT of air to air maneuvering experience. What I saw on that video looks quite familiar. Can you explain why the original poster would not have simply admitted the hoax when outed and under investigation by the feds? And please find one little bit of GTA video that looks like this. One of the pieces of evidence of it's being fake was the empty parking lot, which turns out to be a church. The only other evidence was the low quality of the video. Again, it is my second hand info that racing drones are not optimized for long distance photography. I could be wrong.
Yes, we ALL have to be suspicious of what we see and read on line. And some people have been fooled by internet posts for years. But do you think one experienced drone pilot was fooled by the fake video of the drone knocking a winglet off of an airliner in flight? I certainly hope not. Are you SURE you are not the one who is believing what you WANT to believe?
For instance, when you start off by saying it has been shown to be fake, when in reality, you only read on a board other's opinions that it is fake. Well, I have to put my thinking cap on, right then. Believe me, I wish it was fake. I hope it is fake. But some other drone guys posting their opinion, doesn't make it fake.

Afremont · Feb 18, 2018

787steve said:
Your confidence is inspiring. But your explanation is not. I have a LOT of air to air maneuvering experience. What I saw on that video looks quite familiar. Can you explain why the original poster would not have simply admitted the hoax when outed and under investigation by the feds? And please find one little bit of GTA video that looks like this. One of the pieces of evidence of it's being fake was the empty parking lot, which turns out to be a church. The only other evidence was the low quality of the video. Again, it is my second hand info that racing drones are not optimized for long distance photography. I could be wrong.
Yes, we ALL have to be suspicious of what we see and read on line. And some people have been fooled by internet posts for years. But do you think one experienced drone pilot was fooled by the fake video of the drone knocking a winglet off of an airliner in flight? I certainly hope not. Are you SURE you are not the one who is believing what you WANT to believe?
For instance, when you start off by saying it has been shown to be fake, when in reality, you only read on a board other's opinions that it is fake. Well, I have to put my thinking cap on, right then. Believe me, I wish it was fake. I hope it is fake. But some other drone guys posting their opinion, doesn't make it fake.

I'm still unconvinced it's real. The plane would have been at approximately 1300 feet. He sure climbed above it really fast and then executed his roll over perfectly. It just seems too perfect.

787steve · Feb 18, 2018

Afremont said:
I'm still unconvinced it's real. The plane would have been at approximately 1300 feet. He sure climbed above it really fast and then executed his roll over perfectly. It just seems too perfect.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Hopefully this will be resolved one way or the other. BTW, at 3 miles from the runway, the airplane would be at 900'. I watched one fpv of a drone racer in the mountains, and the performance and range displayed looked entirely sufficient to make a flight like this. Especially as the airplane was descending on final, as he would know exactly where it would pass and at what altitude it would be. Simple to discern by observing other traffic.
It just occurred to me that one way to test the GTA theory would be if someone who had the game could simply manage to take the same aerial view from 1000' on GTA and post it along side the video like the Google Earth comparison. Maybe you could ask someone on the board where you found that info to try it. They wouldn't have to bother with the airplane, just compare the GTA ground image with the other. I think that would be strong evidence one way or the other. And I am not trying to win an argument. I really hope someone can show how they match up. That might be the way to get us all off the hook. Care to give it a try, and ask that of the other board?
Take care

Afremont · Feb 18, 2018

Well, I picked my estimated altitude from the claim of it being 4 miles out. I believe that was the distance a pilot stated on here. Another person claimed 3.4 miles. At any rate, the drone needed another hundred feet or so above it, so....

I still feel it was just too well framed and timed. I suppose it could have been tried quite a few times until the drone pilot got it right. At any rate, it doesn't really matter, it made the news and the damage is done.

MMCompton · Feb 18, 2018

ac0j said:
that was no drone. What drone flips like that? clearly a fixed wing plane of some sort by the maneuvers it made.

It actually dove into a loop as the plane went under it from what it looks like

Looks to me like wake turbulence from the passenger jet.

787steve · Feb 18, 2018

MMCompton said:
Looks to me like wake turbulence from the passenger jet.

I would have agreed with both of you until I saw this:
Check it out. Racing drone footage.

787steve · Feb 18, 2018

Afremont said:
Well, I picked my estimated altitude from the claim of it being 4 miles out. I believe that was the distance a pilot stated on here. Another person claimed 3.4 miles. At any rate, the drone needed another hundred feet or so above it, so....

I still feel it was just too well framed and timed. I suppose it could have been tried quite a few times until the drone pilot got it right. At any rate, it doesn't really matter, it made the news and the damage is done.

I just checked it on Google Earth and it is about 3 1/2 NM. So we were both off a bit.

787steve · Feb 19, 2018

Photo Booth said:
Left side is a still frame from the controversial video. Right side is Google satellite view. Click image for larger version.

Where did all of the swimming pools go in the faked video? Look at the long vertical row of homes to the left of the airliner's nose. The fence line at the rear of those homes is right up against the rear of the homes and all swimming pools have vanished. Where are the cars in the parking lot? Where is the detail that modern drones are capable of? A still grab of my iPad mini's screen is far more detailed than that.

I forget the name of the video game. The game maker added a "drone" feature to the game fairly recently. The game maker doesn't put brand names on objects but someone in another thread linked an add-on that's downloadable for the game to put a name on airliners seen in the game. And, surprise, the only available airliner name via that add-on is Frontier.

It is fake. I suspected it was fake the moment I saw it.

Mark

I went on a Grand Theft Auto board and asked if this was possibly a GTA manipulation. I posted the link to the video as well as your side by side with google earth.
This is the string of replies I got.

"GTAV is based on Los Angeles California, not Las Vegas. I’ve got over 3,000 hours into GTA Online. There is no neighborhood in GTAV that looks like the one in the video.

quote
#3
There are no versions in Las Vegas?
Thanks

quote
#5
787steve posted...
What about GT Las Venturas? Isnt that based on Vegas?

GTA:San Andreas included the city of Las Venturas however it was released in 2004/2005(ps2/xbox/pc) with a few rereleases on the next gens of consoles, without improvements to the graphics.
So there is no way it was used without a ridiculous/impossible amount of work."

So GTA seems to be out.