It’s not about what you can see. It’s more about what you can or can’t do
I’ll take a falling drone 100 percent of the time.
Thank you for posting great example of stupid pilots. This is more of a reason why there really should be more regulations than less (for ultralight pilot training). Lets take each one here so that you understand what was going on, because for those who are not pilots you have no idea who knows what they are doing and who does not. I was a flight instructor for many years so I can clearly see the immediate problems with the so-called pilots, in both of your posted videos.
First the idiot powered parachute pilot (?). He has no helmet, no eye protection for an insect hitting him in the eyes and it happens a lot in open cockpit aircraft and he has an unsecure hat on. Total idiot who is one of those people who is best described as having the lights flashing and the barrier down, but there just never seems to be a training coming along, if you get my meaning. You NEVER take to the air in an open cockpit with out eye protection or a helmet, yet so many people do. You never take off in a pusher aircraft as this one is, without making sure there is nothing that can possible come loose and go through the prop, as in his hat.
The man is poorly trained because you will see that the moment his hat comes off, he is startled and looks up for it. He has instantly taken his concentration away from the business at hand. That is making a smooth and safe transition from the ground into the air. He is at his highest work load of the flight, the take off, with the second highest being his landing approach and touch down. He should have immediately ignored the hat and concentrated on his flying the aircraft. Now many PPC type aircraft are rather poor at quick control on take off, because the chute is oscillating left and right and they are trying to keep things in as straight a line as they can while they climb out to a safe altitude.
Since we can not see what this idiot was looking at as he tried to take off, we do not know if he was heading for the bushes, or if he was heading in a clear unobstructed direction for takeoff. If it was the latter, then he was distracted by the loss of his hat which meant he allowed the PPC to drift off to hit the brush he went into. Had he concentrated on his flight first, he may have made it into the air. Of course then a big bumble bee might have hit him in the eye and the pain would have distracted him and the watering of the eyes would have rendered him incapable of flying the craft and he might have again crashed. Though that aircraft would just gently glide down and hit anything in his way, so not too bad plus it is soooo slow that the inertia of the crash would be very minimal, so safer for the occupant in slow moving crashes.
Next we have the three axis pilot. Very good start, he is wearing a helmet and eye protection. However, he takes off and immediately begins a low level turn over an area of ground that allows very little if any area for him to put it down, in case of an engine out situation, which as you see can and does happen. This pilot would be what I would describe as having a full six pack but lacking the little plastic things that hold all the cans together, if you get my drift here. It looked like he was taking off from a proper runway and what he should have done is climb out straight ahead, slowly gaining altitude until he is at a safe enough altitude to then do a turn to where ever he intends to go flying. That way, as his engine failed he would have simply gone into landing mode straight ahead and been perfectly safe and had a flying machine that he could have used again. So obvious pilot error putting himself and possibly others, in danger.
When you fly from an airport or field, you climb out at a shallow angle of attack and in a straight line until you reach a safe altitude that would allow you to pick a good spot to land if you suffered an engine out. Again we can not see what the area around this pilot(?) looked like, so can't make an informed conclusion to his actions. What we can determine is that his inputs on the stick were very poor because if you carefully watch his hand movement, you will see what is best described as either a low time or poorly trained pilot, doing what they feel is correct but is completely the wrong thing to do. As he lost power he started to pull back on the stick which you NEVER do because you are putting yourself into a stall situation. He then began full pull back on the stick which tells me he put the aircraft into a full stall and it fell out of the sky, even if he had somewhere to glide to. Plus as you see there were only seconds to react because why? He was too low and should never have been flying over terrain that he could not land into when at such a low altitude.
So, now that you are more informed about what you posted, take another look at each of your crash samples and see why these are two dumb pilots who may have mountains, but lack ski lifts that go all the way to the top. This is what happens to poorly trained ultralight pilots or to ultralight pilots who try and tech themselves to fly. Whether an ultralight or a jet, the air is a very unforgiving environment and if you take to it, you had better be properly trained to handle all that it can throw at you, even when flying a toy drone.
