How do you guys fly your drones?

[David Cooke]

First, he said his cousin "flew by an Inspire at 7500' over JFK." As in his cousin was flying a plane and passed by an Inspire.

Second, like Phantoms, the Inspire is software limited to 1640'. As in his cousin was telling a tale.

Yep you're right I missed the word "by" . . . so not his cousin but whoever the idiot was that has the inspire. That kind of recklessness will kill a bunch of people someday. . . so I hope the word gets out to warn ill informed operators ( they are not pilots) .. . of the risk they pose. Stay away from airports unless you are authorized and "in the loop" with aviation and stay below 400ft (300ft Cdn) at least . . . if you don't want to be responsible for bringing down a plane with innocent people in it.

 

[Fifty7]

I generally watch the AC and use the screen to check battery and take pictures. This weekend I was showing my family what the P3A could do in their backyard. I flew about 20 minutes and had just landed when a police helicopter flew right over the yard if I had to guess a little more than 200' up. Not sure what I would have done if I was still in the air as we were definitely in each others flight path.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

 

[Dirty Bird]

OMG! You are still missing the point. Inspires can't fly at 7500' altitude! Like the Heathrow tale, the story isn't true...

Yep you're right I missed the word "by" . . . so not his cousin but whoever the idiot was that has the inspire. That kind of recklessness will kill a bunch of people someday. . . so I hope the word gets out to warn ill informed operators ( they are not pilots) .. . of the risk they pose. Stay away from airports unless you are authorized and "in the loop" with aviation and stay below 400ft (300ft Cdn) at least . . . if you don't want to be responsible for bringing down a plane with innocent people in it.

 

[Dirty Bird]

Reading this thread I have to chuckle. Pass 'em out boys. Hope there's enough for everyone!

 

[Mike_Flys]

First, he said his cousin "flew by an Inspire at 7500' over JFK." As in his cousin was flying a plane and passed by an Inspire.
Second, like Phantoms, the Inspire is software limited to 1640'. As in his cousin was telling a tale.

No need to be like that.

My cousins exact words were. " we were flying over JFK tonight and about 7000 feet we missed a drone. It looked kind of like a DJI inspire It was very difficult to get a good look at it, and hard to say what direction it was moving.". Copped from the text message he sent me.
I'm sorry I got the altitude wrong as . So much for my memory.

In a fast single engine piston airplane a quick pass by a small object with blinking lights would make it very hard to identify.
My cousin, retired Navy officer, Airplane pilot, does not fly drones so by no means is he an expert at identifying them.

Excuse me for not being 100% accurate... even at this it is second hand information, but as I have known the source my whole life I trust it for what it is. He passed a drone while flying his airplane over JFK a couple weeks ago.

I thought the story was relevant to the discussion.
Not sure the accuracy of the report takes away from the dangers of flying beyond line of sight.


just my $0.02

 

[Dirty Bird]

Not only will an Inspire not fly to 7500', or even 7000' (it is firmware limited to 1640' just like a Phantom), but it also won't fly over JFK because JFK airspace is a software-enforced NFZ.

With respect, we don't know what your cousin saw because even he doesn't know what he thinks he saw. I'm sure he's a great guy but using unsubstantiated reports to validate an antiquated VLOS rule strikes me as silly.

This all ties in with "reports" of pilots claiming to see drones "everywhere." I want you to think about viewing a tiny white Phantom. Even when you are sitting still & know where it is & what you're looking for, it is very difficult to spot. Now put yourself in an aircraft with limited visibility, traveling 150 mph or more, & we are to believe pilots are being inundated with sightings of 380mm tiny white objects in the skies? Remember the fabled Heathrow airport "drone strike?" It simply didn't happen. I suspect the same is true for most of these drone sighting claims.

No need to be like that.

My cousins exact words were. " we were flying over JFK tonight and about 7000 feet we missed a drone. It looked kind of like a DJI inspire It was very difficult to get a good look at it, and hard to say what direction it was moving.". Copped from the text message he sent me.
I'm sorry I got the altitude wrong as . So much for my memory.

In a fast single engine piston airplane a quick pass by a small object with blinking lights would make it very hard to identify.
My cousin, retired Navy officer, Airplane pilot, does not fly drones so by no means is he an expert at identifying them.

Excuse me for not being 100% accurate... even at this it is second hand information, but as I have known the source my whole life I trust it for what it is. He passed a drone while flying his airplane over JFK a couple weeks ago.

I thought the story was relevant to the discussion.
Not sure the accuracy of the report takes away from the dangers of flying beyond line of sight.


just my $0.02

 

[Mike_Flys]

Not only will an Inspire not fly to 7500', or even 7000' (it is firmware limited to 1640' just like a Phantom), but it also won't fly over JFK because JFK airspace is a software-enforced NFZ.

With respect, we don't know what your cousin saw because even he doesn't know what he thinks he saw. I'm sure he's a great guy but using unsubstantiated reports to validate an antiquated VLOS rule strikes me as silly.

This all ties in with "reports" of pilots claiming to see drones "everywhere." I want you to think about viewing a tiny white Phantom. Even when you are sitting still & know where it is & what you're looking for, it is very difficult to spot. Now put yourself in an aircraft with limited visibility, traveling 150 mph or more, & we are to believe pilots are being inundated with sightings of 380mm tiny white objects in the skies? Remember the fabled Heathrow airport "drone strike?" It simply didn't happen. I suspect the same is true for most of these drone sighting claims.

I am a pilot and have seen small objects while flying many times, balloons (small kids balloons), birds,... things that do not have lights on them. I assure you if you pass with in a few hundred of a drone with lights on it in a small single engine piston airplane the odds of you seeing it are pretty good.

Maybe it wasn't an Inspire, maybe it was a hacked Inspire, maybe it was a drone that looks like an Inspire..., doesn't take away from the fact that it is unsafe.

I know that a lot of airliner sighting are not accurate, and believe me it drives me crazy when this happens and the way the media plays on it for ratings. It does not mean that it doesn't happen.

I feel you are missing the point which is there are people flying drones beyond line of sight and it is not safe. Which is the message I am trying to convey.
Just saying flying beyond LOS is dangerous doesn't get the point across like sharing a true story told to me by a close family member.

Guess we just have to agree to disagree.

Quick search turned up this.

 

[Dirty Bird]

Yes I would dare say MOST Phantom pilots fly beyond VLOS because that's only a few hundred meters for a device capable of traveling thousands of meters. Expecting pilots to observe antiquated VLOS rules is unreasonable &, as people do with unreasonably low speed limits, people will ignore them.

I don't understand the relevance of the video. We have no idea where this took place, I see no other aircraft nor an airport in the vicinity. Seems fairly rural from what I could see.

I am a pilot and have seen small objects while flying many times, balloons (small kids balloons), birds,... things that do not have lights on them. I assure you if you pass with in a few hundred of a drone with lights on it in a small single engine piston airplane the odds of you seeing it are pretty good.

Maybe it wasn't an Inspire, maybe it was a hacked Inspire, maybe it was a drone that looks like an Inspire..., doesn't take away from the fact that it is unsafe.

I know that a lot of airliner sighting are not accurate, and believe me it drives me crazy when this happens and the way the media plays on it for ratings. It does not mean that it doesn't happen.

I feel you are missing the point which is there are people flying drones beyond line of sight and it is not safe. Which is the message I am trying to convey.
Just saying flying beyond LOS is dangerous doesn't get the point across like sharing a true story told to me by a close family member.

Guess we just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Dirty Bird]

That settles it! You should never again fly over your back yard, or anywhere else for that matter, because a police helicopter might fly over!

I generally watch the AC and use the screen to check battery and take pictures. This weekend I was showing my family what the P3A could do in their backyard. I flew about 20 minutes and had just landed when a police helicopter flew right over the yard if I had to guess a little more than 200' up. Not sure what I would have done if I was still in the air as we were definitely in each others flight path.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

 

[Fifty7]

That settles it! You should never again fly over your back yard, or anywhere else for that matter, because a police helicopter might fly over!

Yeah right. All kidding aside, I honestly don't know how i would've reacted if i was still flying when i saw the helicopter. I don't live anywhere near an airport and helicopters are not the norm in my neighborhood but obviously it can happen anywhere. He was flying low and the possibility of a collision was definitely there. do you go higher, lower, move over. I'd like to think i would not have panicked and had time to get out of the way but I'm not sure.

 

[Dirty Bird]

I've been in that situation where I'm flying & out of nowhere a low-flying rogue helicopter appears. I try to reduce altitude while heading for the nearest structure since I know the chopper will avoid it. Once I simply snuggled up near a tall radio tower until the helicopter passed.

Yeah right. All kidding aside, I honestly don't know how i would've reacted if i was still flying when i saw the helicopter. I don't live anywhere near an airport and helicopters are not the norm in my neighborhood but obviously it can happen anywhere. He was flying low and the possibility of a collision was definitely there. do you go higher, lower, move over. I'd like to think i would not have panicked and had time to get out of the way but I'm not sure.

 

[ViperNuke]

If you are flying your phantom few hundreed feets away from you (something very few phantom ownders do) then looking at the aircraft instead of the Tablet seems like the logical thing to do, but if you are like the majority of phantom owners who flies this thing few miles away from them, then the tablet is your best friend. You can't see manned aircrafts or react to one coming when you can't even see the drone yourself. so i guess is how far your aircraft is that determines how you fly it.. Just my opinion.

 

[David Cooke]

That's an amazing tale. Especially since, like the Phantom, Inspires are limited to 1640' vertical height. Almost as entertaining as the mystery drone that hit a plane over Heathrow, only they never found the drone & there was no damage to the aircraft. The Immaculate Drone Strike!

Did you hear the one about scrambling 2 F-18s near Ottawa ( 17:45 25 May 2016 this is true) . .when a commercial flight at 3000ft flew over one near the airport. I cannot imagine what F-18 pilots thought they were going to see or do when they got there. . .likely nothing . . since they'd never see it I'm sure. . let alone shoot at it. . . so it must have been just for show . . to make a point.
Drone near Ottawa airport prompted NORAD to scramble CF-18s

 

[techmyjustin]

So today I happened to be driving down the road where I often fly my drone. To my surprise I looked up and there is a helicpoter flying around just a little above the tree tops circling around and flying here and there. it looked like they were doing photography of a development but regardless of what they were doing, my first thought was wow- if my drone happened to be up in the air at that time and I was flying and I was flying outside of VLS it would have been ALL too easy to have some type of accident! He was extremely low and based on the angle I could see him at and some other reference points there near him that I know well, I suspect he was somewhere between 175-250' in the air. it made me think about the safety of flying outside of VLS and kind of reinforces the FAA's "suggestion" no flying be done outside of VLS.....

This is an interesting story, the helicopter was only a couple hundred feet from the ground. If you were flying your Phantom nearby, and the helicopter pilot complained, would he have any leverage or right of way?

In a case of Phantom vs Helicopter, would the Phantom pilot need to land because the Helicopter is more expensive and more shiny, loud, and carrying people?

We can take the high road and land our Phantom because we are nice guys and there are people aboard the helicopter, all that good stuff. But... couldn't the helicopter pilot think the same way and say he doesn't want to put his passengers in danger, so he will leave the unsafe flying area?

Emotions, Morals, or whatever you call it aside, who should really get the right of way? If it's the helicopter just because it's bigger and more expensive, that's an interesting way to think about it I guess.

Let's say the helicopter crashed into the Phantom, causing zero damage to the helicopter, could the Phantom pilot sue the helicopter pilot?

 

[USsUASDriver]

In the US, the FAA has stated that manned aircraft always have the right of way over a UAS. So responsibility is on the drone pilot to get out of the way if there is a chance of a conflict. It's one of the reasons for the standard VLOS restrictions on UAS operators (or a visual observer if the UAS is beyond VLOS of the remote pilot).

When I'm flying my P4, I keep an ear and an eye out for helicopters mostly (highly unlikely that a fixed wing would be that low over where I tend to fly).

 

[Alex Baxter]

Not that it's particularly relevant, but I think CAA minimum altitude rules are 500ft (150m) in open country, 1000 ft (300m) over towns/crowds etc for light aircraft, in Ireland it's the same. Never the twain shall meet, theoretically, but I think there seem to be proportionally as many rule breakers in light aircraft as there are flying drones.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

Light manned aircraft can be flying below the minimum altitudes if it has recently taken off or is about to land. I live in a town with a lot of air harbors (float planes) and heliports. I see craft below the minimum all of the time and you just can't say that they're breaking any rules unless you know there flight path including source and destination points

And as a casual observer, you don't.

 

[WetDog]

This all ties in with "reports" of pilots claiming to see drones "everywhere." I want you to think about viewing a tiny white Phantom. Even when you are sitting still & know where it is & what you're looking for, it is very difficult to spot. Now put yourself in an aircraft with limited visibility, traveling 150 mph or more, & we are to believe pilots are being inundated with sightings of 380mm tiny white objects in the skies? Remember the fabled Heathrow airport "drone strike?" It simply didn't happen. I suspect the same is true for most of these drone sighting claims.

Apparently the 'Heathrow Incident" did really happen. Except the plane smashed into a plastic bag. But yes, it's damned hard to see an even an Inspire flying at 100 knots. And the pilot had to have the technical chops to bypass the NFZ. So it could possibly be a UAV. Or a UFO.

Remember those? We don't seem to see them anymore.

 

[mcphipps]

For me, I watch the craft as much as possible. Just last weekend I was out flying in back of my house a couple hundred feet up. Just lazily flying not taking video just flying. I see this yellow airplane coming toward the area I was flying. I knew right away what it was and I brought my drone down to 50 feet and brought back to me. The plane is the local cropduster for the corn and beans in our area. I did not want to mess around while he was up there. He makes his passes at very low altitude. I would have loved to have gotten footage of him working but that is too dangerous. I just waited until he completed the field and I went back up. The point is, VLOS is how I saw him coming. I also use the screen when I am pretty far out, which not as often as before. I really like to "see" the drone when I fly.
Just thought I would pass along my experience.

 

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

And the pilot had to have the technical chops to bypass the NFZ

Not all UAVs are like DJI products with GeoFencing and programmed NFZs. People can still put together their own quads that don't require chops other than just flying.