Viewing 22 posts - 81 through 102 (of 102 total)
  • Drone strikes aircraft at Heathrow
  • cobrakai
    Full Member

    I’ve been up a couple of times and have a few mates there. The difference in size between a380 and a321 from above makes me giggle. “aw look, it’s had a baby”

    molgrips
    Free Member

    they better have good targeting

    I like a good arms race.

    STATO
    Free Member

    andytherocketeer – Member

    5000ft? above Richmond Park?

    Ah crap, the only quote I can now find is the mirror <shudders> but I read it elsewhere honest!

    “The suspected drone which struck a British Airways as it came into land was flying at 1,700ft in the proximity of Richmond Park, police have revealed.”

    1700ft seems low but I dont think you would be at 5000ft if landing from that direction? Suppose that’s the issue with guessing where you are at speed and altitude, just because you can see Richmond park doesn’t mean your not miles away from it.

    househusband
    Free Member

    A few people have commented on the lithium in the lithium polymer batteries… these should be charged and stored in a special fire retardant sack just in case they burst into flames so I’m no doubt that pilots and airports want hovering incendiary devices kept well away from their airspace! Lipo battery fires are also very hard to extinguish.

    STATO
    Free Member

    Lipo battery fires are also very hard to extinguish.

    pretty sure it would go out quickly if you the contents of the battery into very small pieces and spread it over several hundred cubic meters of space at a velocity of several hundred miles per hour 😉

    Mikeypies
    Free Member

    The flight controllers on a drone as well as auto stabilising can be connected to a GPS and autopilot which can be programmed to fly a waypoint course, height can also be set so there is no need to control it other than take off and landing.

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    1700ft seems low but I dont think you would be at 5000ft if landing from that direction? Suppose that’s the issue with guessing where you are at speed and altitude, just because you can see Richmond park doesn’t mean your not miles away from it.

    Depending on the aircraft/weather, they’re usually about 1500ft – 1800ft over Richmond Park. If you look on Flightradar, you can see speed and altitude of all the incoming aircraft.
    High for a small consumer quadcopter like a Phantom, probably almost out of visual range.

    Equally, that’s very high for a plastic bag too!

    May even have been a birdstrike. Goose or gull or something like that. Might look quite similar to a quad when you see it in the blink of eye before your aircraft goes through it at 260mph…

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    Does it really matter if it’s out of sight.

    What’s the range on these FPV set ups?

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Unexpected plane in bagging area.

    DezB
    Free Member

    Thought this was a non-story when it was on the news the other week – A plane might have been hit by a drone and was undamaged. Ok, so nothing actually happened at all. Cheers.

    richmars
    Full Member

    What’s the range on these FPV set ups?

    In good conditions, 1-2 miles has been reported.

    altgreen
    Free Member

    If your approach is going well, you won’t be overhead Richmond park when landing to the west at LHR, your track will be at least half a mile to the north of the park depending on which runway is in use for landing.
    The aircraft will be roughly 2300 feet above the ground.

    aracer
    Free Member

    How big are those batteries?

    Only from a legal perspective, but then I don’t thing the drone flyers causing the issues are all that bothered about such laws.

    alexandersupertramp
    Free Member

    I have my Dji Phanton charging now, will get a first flight later today. Don’t intend to go as high as a plane

    richmars
    Full Member

    I have my Dji Phanton charging now, will get a first flight later today. Don’t intend to go as high as a plane

    Good luck. Set the max height to something like 50m, if your eyes are like mine you’ll lose sight of it above 100m anyway.

    alexandersupertramp
    Free Member

    Still timidly flying in beginner mode. Love it so far.
    How many battery’s do you use Richmars ?

    richmars
    Full Member

    Only got the one at the moment, I’m sure I’ll got another when the weather warms up.

    cranberry
    Free Member

    It was “unlikely” that a drone did hit the plane:

    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36159117

    If they can’t even tell after several days, then I am guessing that the story has been somewhat hyped.

    grumpysculler
    Free Member

    Plane needs a helmet cam. Then we can have angry pilots on youtube complaining about not enough space being left.

    andytherocketeer
    Full Member

    Not only was that one most probably not a drone, several others listed at 2000-2800ft, IME, probably wouldn’t be a drone either, even if still listed as possibly a drone.
    Certainly won’t be the clueless “buying a toy drone” crowd.

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    Interesting article on HackADay that looks at other reported “drone” near misses and agree with you Andy:

    Debunking the Drone Versus Plane Hysteria

    andytherocketeer
    Full Member

    Interesting article.

    Tri-rotors certainly exist, and indeed we were trying to get one working last August in Scotland. Basically a royal PITA, and about the only guy I know that got one working well is Swedish. So one at 1500ft? hahaha.

    Something 2m in length is not going to be a “drone”. It could feasibly be a model rocket. I have a store room full of such things, and 2000ft-4000ft is exactly where they might be. But not at that distance from Stansted.

    I don’t have historical records of our Notam info, but that reported incident would have been on the day we would have been launching near Twycross Zoo, so actually not too far from BHX. And I like to think that “we” know most high power rocketeers in the UK.

    Having flown literally hundreds of rockets to those sort of altitudes, often needing other people to help keep an eye on it, I don’t believe for one minute that anyone could fly a drone at that altitude. Definitely not line of sight, and most probably not FPV either. And most definitely, not any “toy” drone that would have been unwrapped on Xmas morning.
    All kinds of strange wind effects at those altitudes too.

    Don’t have any historical launch info for high altitude balloons either. But the one site we (well acquaintances of mine) would use, would typically put them at something insane like 80,000ft by the time the overfly stansted. (Got an ace go-pro pic of that somewhere).

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