Bugs and Birds Attack?

[MapMaker53]

Since the Phantom arms stick forward at 45 degrees, your applied sticker eyes will appear squished when viewing the Phantom head-on. Here is a stretched version for you that will compensate for both prop arm angles and look normal when viewed head-on by birds in flight after it is applied. I'm a graphics guy by day. Unfortunately, I don't have a print shop or I would print a sticker for you. You could always just print it out and use rubber cement spray adhesive to apply it. I personally would use the "temporary" spray mount type, not the permanent type if you go that route.

 

[StevenQX]

Man, I'll be quite honest here. I know how to intimidate seagulls so they leave my aircraft alone. They are plentiful and EVERY WHERE near the ocean as that is their "property". They are the buzzards of the seas. Opportunistic animals. I would NEVER intentionally hurt one! However, like the ground bound rat, they're NO danger of becoming extinct. So I take a very aggressive tact with them.

Once I get a grouping of them, like thugs, they hardly ever attack an intimidating adversary on their own and they almost always want a decisively superior amount of "friends" to help them out. I go on the offensive. I will suddenly ascend with all the power of my aircraft while turning sharply towards them in a gain arc. 50' of altitude above them and a rigorous turn and descent towards them makes them feel inferior. On my powered gliders, I put "owl eye" stickers on the plane. As I will do with this drone. It's a simple matter of having a JPEG file on a thumb drive and taking it to a local photo center. They can place these on a sticker background you can use to apply to your aircraft or drone. I had a friend with the required things for putting these on my fixed wing aircraft although he is no longer doing them. I really need to find a local print shop that will do such for my newest ParkZone Radian and the new fuselage for my now discontinued, but much loved, Firebird Stratos.

On the DJI, I will put them on the vents for the ESC's on the forward facing arms and use an exacto knife to cut out the vented areas to allow airflow into the airframe. The "nose" part will occupy the area just below the arms that has the word "PHANTOM" embossed on it. If I need to, I will line cut the opening for the USB port cover. Just as I did with the red stickers so I could remove the top of the Phantom without messing up the stickers.

This has worked very well for my fixed wing aircraft. I have no doubt it will be just as effective on this drone. Once I get it done, I'll have to post a video or series of pictures showing the application. So many things to do!

Edit: Found my JPEG file for Owl Eye stickers.

Believe me, I've been aggressive with them a lot of times (and i know that it works) because i usually fly over sea so is common to find some seagulls but in the place where i wrote on the other thread is impossible to win the fight until you're ready to destroy your phantom. In this area seagulls are more aggressive than usual and within some minutes they grown exponentially in number and is even very easy to have an accidental collision with one of them. I've thought too to stick on my phantom a sticker with eyes...i think the better way is to paint the phantom black. I don't know if the phantom would be black if they would be scared of it but i think yes...

 

[BlackHawk388]

Believe me, I've been aggressive with them a lot of times (and i know that it works) because i usually fly over sea so is common to find some seagulls but in the place where i wrote on the other thread is impossible to win the fight until you're ready to destroy your phantom. In this area seagulls are more aggressive than usual and within some minutes they grown exponentially in number and is even very easy to have an accidental collision with one of them. I've thought too to stick on my phantom a sticker with eyes...i think the better way is to paint the phantom black. I don't know if the phantom would be black if they would be scared of it but i think yes...

Most likely, you've come across a colony. There is nothing good to come of flying in an area like that. There will be so very many of them that there is always a younger male ready to replace any that have been injured by another bird or, in this case, your drone. It's simply best to depart and learn when your local Gulls are mating and nesting. Then, do not fly in that area until the nests are empty and the colony abandoned for the season.

Even a highly feared bird of prey will be attacked during that time. By more numerous Gulls than you can imagine.

One way to discern this is by actually listening to the calls of the Gulls. They are distinct. Even more so once the colony has been established for mating/breeding season and even more dramatically so once the various clutches of the colony have been established.

In other words, know the mating/maturation season. Then, avoid such flight in those areas.

 

[StevenQX]

Most likely, you've come across a colony. There is nothing good to come of flying in an area like that. There will be so very many of them that there is always a younger male ready to replace any that have been injured by another bird or, in this case, your drone. It's simply best to depart and learn when your local Gulls are mating and nesting. Then, do not fly in that area until the nests are empty and the colony abandoned for the season.

Even a highly feared bird of prey will be attacked during that time. By more numerous Gulls than you can imagine.

One way to discern this is by actually listening to the calls of the Gulls. They are distinct. Even more so once the colony has been established for mating/breeding season and even more dramatically so once the various clutches of the colony have been established.

In other words, know the mating/maturation season. Then, avoid such flight in those areas.

I'll do I'll do

 

[Ezookiel]

I hope everyone realizes that once a bird makes contact with a drone it is doomed to die. The spinning blades will severely lacerate the bird or chop off it's thin legs as soon as it makes contact. Unfortunately, birds will often view a drone as a threat to it's nesting area and territory. The drone usually recovers stability after such a hit if at a high enough altitude, but the bird will fly off to die, which means any fledglings back in the nest it was protecting will also die with no further food coming. So for the sake of the birds, try to avoid any type of confrontations, and certainly avoid flying in the vicinity of known nesting areas.

Hawks and Eagles, if they did decide to attack, would come in feet first from above, and those feet are going to cop a pounding from the 4 blades. I doubt plastic blades are going to literally chop off legs, but they're sure going to do enough damage to prevent them using those same legs for hunting for the next little while, and that's not a good thing.
There's a high hill above my house that I would dearly love to fly up to from my yard, or even just go up there in person and fly around, it's incredibly scenic, but there's a large Eagle that lives up there, and I'd hate to be responsible for injuring him/her, let alone the damage to my quad - stopping blades, even pausing them, is going to bring it down unless I'm at significant altitude and the props aren't damaged.

 

[THEHOFF]

Guess you lucky they didn't run into blades causing you to crash into the stream below...

 

[Ezookiel]

...i think the better way is to paint the phantom black. I don't know if the phantom would be black if they would be scared of it but i think yes...

Nope. Mine is black, and seagulls still get uncomfortably close. But I admit, I haven't flown in the one spot where they give me a hard time, since the last time when I got pissed off and chased one of them half way across the lake, zigging with his zigs, and zagging with his zags, and giving him a damned good scare. He behaved like he was flying for his life.
I'm not sure if they'd now leave me alone after that, or see me as now a proven threat, because I don't fly there now.

 

[MapMaker53]

One needs only to watch this video to appreciate the sharpness and deep cutting ability of these rapidly spinning plastic blades. And this guy had prop guards on his Phantom.

 

[Ezookiel]

That looks very much like CF blades, not plastic ones.
CF are a whole nother ball game.

 

[Ezookiel]

In fact, the poster confirms this on his youtube post:

Published on 1 May 2014
It is not what you can do with your hobby but what your hobby can do to you... DJI Phantom 2 it is not a toy, it is a Drone, take percautions when "playing" around with it. In this incident the propellers were carbon fiber which were stiffer and more difficult to control.​

What plastic blades would do would be significantly less drastic.
The heavier 9450's would be so thick they'd do little damage other than bruise you.
The thinner 9443's would be debatable - either break or bend, or maybe cut because they're quite thin, not sure on them, but CF are plain mean, even more so if one snapped and created a sharp edge