Uh oh... Drone spotted in JFK Airspace

[firemanbill]

This can only mean trouble. Sounds like a quad copter or similar.

The pilot told investigators the object was flying at about 1,800 feet and looked like “a black drone about a meter square, with helicopter rotors on the corners.”

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/05...est=latestnews

[dahawk]

Not good. This kind of publicity will not bear well for the hobby.

[xmech2k]

Dude! What's the big deal!? He knew what he was doing. It's impossible for a quad to hurt an airplane! Name just one time that happened. Huh? You can't, can you? How come you guys are always trying to make rules and keep us down? This is a free country, right!? You guys just hate FPVers because we're cool and know how to have fun! Nothing happened, so quit talking about it before I really unleash on you stuffy party poopers!

(For all those that don't know me, that was all sarcasm. Just putting in what the defenders of what's possibly another stupid and dangerous stunt will say before they get the chance.)

Edit: And no, I don't hate FPV, but I hate when anyone in any segment of our hobby does ignorant things to put us all at risk, let alone those people in the plane, etc. Hopefully, this will turn out to be the airport police testing their new tool, and they forgot to notify the tower, and didn't think to keep it a little further from the runway. 200 feet isn't a huge cushion.

[LowThudd]

Green lasers. There were several instances of dumbarses shining high power lasers at aircraft. Now it is a serious issue. https://www.google.com/search?q=gree...hrome&ie=UTF-8 I'm sure if these occurances continue, licensing or even banning is not far behind. Could apply to drones, if people continue to use them illicitly.

[xmech2k]

Same mentality between the laser pointers and people who think it's OK to get closeups of airliners or whatever, flying in close proximity to them. Good analogy. Although at first thought, the laser pointer people almost seem to be wanting to cause an accident, while the close proximity pilots just refuse to recognize the risk they're taking with other peoples lives. Almost need a psychology degree to figure out what they're thinking!

[CNY_Dave]

Can't wait for some moron to put up an RC plane/copter/quad/hex with a green laser pointer taped on...

[Yakfishingfool]

I just did a quick read through of the FAA rc guidelines as presented on the AMA website. I believe that it states flying within 5 miles of a manned terminal airport requires some form of coordinated communication on use of airspace. I do not see any notation on limiting height to 400 feet.

[firemanbill]

Originally Posted by Yakfishingfool

I just did a quick read through of the FAA rc guidelines as presented on the AMA website. I believe that it states flying within 5 miles of a manned terminal airport requires some form of coordinated communication on use of airspace. I do not see any notation on limiting height to 400 feet.

AMA Safety Code A.2.C

Not fly higher than approximately 400 feet above ground level within three (3) miles of an airport, without notifying the airport operator

http://www.modelaircraft.org/files/105.PDF

[Yakfishingfool]

Thanks!

[BroncoSquid]

Originally Posted by xmech2k

Dude! What's the big deal!? He knew what he was doing.
(For all those that don't know me, that was all sarcasm. Just putting in what the defenders of what's possibly another stupid and dangerous stunt will say before they get the chance.)

Dude, yeah, you kinda had me spun there for a minute. And worse, I do know you.

[firemanbill]

Originally Posted by Yakfishingfool

Thanks!

No sweat, that is near and dear to us as the end of our runway at our club is exactly two miles from the end of the runway of the Newport News/Williamsburg Airport (KPHF)

[Murman]

2 miles? That's pretty close. We used to fly about 1.5 miles from the end of one of the local airport runways but it was about a mile to one side of the flight path.

[Yakfishingfool]

how do you handle the height restrictions? Especially gliders? Micro's no problem...

[xmech2k]

Originally Posted by BroncoSquid

Dude, yeah, you kinda had me spun there for a minute. And worse, I do know you.

LOL! Gotcha!

[stuart]

got me also,i was begining to get angry at your type and glad to read the rest.

[LowThudd]

I wouldn't be too surprised if the FAA has the capacity to read the pairing code of the operator. I doubt it would be possible to figure out who owned the Tx/Rx. But it could be used as evidence. I hope things like this do not cause us to need to register our equipment some day.

[firemanbill]

Originally Posted by Murman

2 miles? That's pretty close. We used to fly about 1.5 miles from the end of one of the local airport runways but it was about a mile to one side of the flight path.

We are not directly in any of the flight paths so that helps out a lot. We'll have the occasional flyover of some smaller general aviation type planes... usually my son doing his lessons, but nothing we can't avoid with due diligence.

We are all very aware of where we are and the importance of staying out of the way. All new members are THOROUGHLY briefed on procedures around the full scales.

Originally Posted by Yakfishingfool

how do you handle the height restrictions? Especially gliders? Micro's no problem...

That is our hardest problem and for that very reason we have no turbines, or big EDF types, and very few glider guys sans the radian types.

[kyleservicetech]

Originally Posted by firemanbill

No sweat, that is near and dear to us as the end of our runway at our club is exactly two miles from the end of the runway of the Newport News/Williamsburg Airport (KPHF)

Back in the mid 1980's we used to fly sailplanes at a school yard that was about 2 miles from the south runway and about 1/3 mile East of the approach line of the local Milwaukee airport. As long as the full size planes used the East-West runway, no problem. That was 5 or 10 miles away. But, if the wind shifted and they switched to the North South runway, time to pop the spoilers, and land. Quick.

I've heard now, that no model airplane flying of any sort is allowed in that suburb.

[firemanbill]

If you look at that pic of our field there is a buffer zone of forest between us and the housing areas... that is going away soon due to proposed developments and there will be housing within 1000' ft of our flight line.

It will not come any closer due to that land being city park property and the watershed for the water supply reservoirs.

However... it is close enough that we are confident there will be noise complaints and other things that will eventually get us shut down. We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

The next closest AMA fields to us are 30 miles or so in either direction.

[kyleservicetech]

Originally Posted by firemanbill

It will not come any closer due to that land being city park property and the watershed for the water supply reservoirs.

However... it is close enough that we are confident there will be noise complaints and other things that will eventually get us shut down. We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

(

Yeah
We are getting noise complaints from neighbors 1/2 mile to the East of our field. Interesting thing though, two hundred feet from those homes, between the homes and our field is a very heavily traveled railroad track where freight trains go by at 40 MPH. Guess those locomotives hitting their horns right behind those homes for the street crossing a bit down the road doesn't bother them.

[rcers]

Bummer you just can't cure stupid. Within 200 ft of a 777 brilliant.

[Rockin Robbins]

I think we have to be a bit careful here. The observer was an airline pilot with unknown ability to identify what he saw. The airliner did pass the UFO at 200 mph. The pilot stated his altitude but did not state the altitude of the UFO. This is important.

Okay, lets give the UFO a tentative ID as a tricopter or quadcopter. Let's also say the diameter of the craft is two feet. Pass something on the road that's 2' in diameter at 200 mph. Now describe what you saw. Now that's as you are driving a car, a fairly automatic process. Now put yourself landing an airliner. You're darned busy. You don't have time to sight see or closely examine objects out your window for long periods of time.

At 200' a 2' object subtends half a degree, the same size as the full moon. That's as large as the fingernail on your pointing finger held out at arm's length. Identification would be difficult at best. Let's say the object is not a 2' FPV but a full sized gyrocopter. Now it has a diameter of about 20 feet and the thing is really half a mile away. You see, the pilot's estimate of distance is dependent on what he thought the object was.

The FBI didn't help any, describing the UFO as approaching within 200' of the airliner. Let's see, if it is an FPV with a marginal speed of 30 mph, it approached the 200 mph airliner? Perhaps somebody would like to explain how that would happen. It's more like the airliner approached the UFO, which was comparatively stationary. But anything to generate controversy, eh?

Now let's suppose it was a quadcopter. If the quadcopter was flying at 1700 feet, how long did it take to get there? Now that it's there, how long to fly back for a landing? Am I off the mark by saying that it might not even have the battery power to achieve such an altitude and return? Does anybody know of any quadcopter anywhere that has done any such thing? I've never heard of one and there would be a lot of crowing if one had.

Things just don't add up to a coherent, believable story here and I don't think we can take it at face value.

On the other hand I've owned a green laser for five years and use it all the time to point out stars, constellations and deep sky objects during astronomical viewing sessions. I've used it in the presence of dozens of police officers and officials--never had a problem.

[rcers]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I think we have to be a bit careful here. The observer was an airline pilot with unknown ability to identify what he saw. The airliner did pass the UFO at 200 mph. The pilot stated his altitude but did not state the altitude of the UFO. This is important.

Not so sure. The pilot described the drone in detail (the FBI version of the report has good detail) and he said it was small about a meter wide and it had 4 horizontal propellers on each end in a X shape. The Pilot sounds like a US native and was quite clear in the communication to ATC.

Furthermore - they were not the only plane to report it. JetBlue also saw it and veered further away after the warning from the other pilot and ATC. Another flight and crew noted it as well.

ATC reported his altitude and he said the device was at 1800 feet.

I suspect the reports will all start to gel soon but I bet this thing was well over 1k likely close to 2k.

I am also pretty confident this guy will be found and won't be flying quads anymore. I do agree we should not over-react. The BIG issue is it comes at a time when this element is under intense pressure to limit drones, UAV's and even hobby items are under the scrutiny.

And yes Quads can EASILY fly long enough to get to 1700 feet AGL - some can do that in 40-50 seconds (that is 30mph). Most quads can go 5-10 minutes so that is super easy - and long enough at altitude to be seen by 3-5 planes on approach with 1.5 minute separation. Very likely since it was seen by 3 separate flight crews.

Don't forget flight crews have a pretty good eye for stuff that flies. It was a quad for sure.

Mike

[LowThudd]

Well, it is a concern, since bills like this are in existence, and likely to pass: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/th...OE_017_xml.pdf

Could easily hurt the sport for many of us.

In LAX there were several weeks with regular Green Laser incidents, and it is considered serious here by law enforcement. With more than 5 airports in the L.A. and surrounding area, it does become an issue. Lot's of air traffic.

[Rockin Robbins]

If it was an FPV quad this was no teenager. To get the ability to FPV the thing (altitude was way too high to be able to control from the ground visually), to have the battery life to be able to climb to 1700 feet, loiter to wait for multiple jets and land, this is a high dollar and highly visible project.

That leads me to believe that what was seen could have been something completely different.