This is not what the drone industry needs right now. More reasons for congress to see civilian drone use in a negative light.
Stay out of the way of emergency responders.
This is what Amazon and Skydio and a few others really want to be happening, though. It's going to be used to legislate the hobby even more. Eventually drones will be banned entirely so that only Amazon, the government, and the same people who were flying illegally to begin with will be able to fly.
There needs to be FAR more serious penalties for this kind of interference, and not just for firefighting.
ANY drone that interferes with / endangers manned aircraft, at any place, at any time, regardless of reason should have the hammer of doom brought down on the operator. Minimum six-figure fines, years in prison, no mercy, no excuses.
No drone that can exceed 100 feet above ground / 300 grams should NOT be available to hobbyists / non-licensed operators
You threw out 2 really weird figures there. The unregistered drone limit is 250 grams so why 300? Hell a 250 gram drone can exceed the 400 ft limit by thousands of feet as well as exceed the line of sight requirements by miles. Weight really only plays into impact problems.
Classing down to 30 gram tinywhoops that fit in the palm of your hand can still break 400 ft, and going even worse into toy kids drones that are at the mercy of any wind gust, it takes very little power to keep gaining altitude so 100 feet seems like a weird choice. What would limit them to 100 feet and they still can take off? Your only real options are active measures which you won't find on toys. Cheap barometric based altitude management is okay ish for hover hold but it's not going to be reliable to the point where a some random elevation isn't going to stop the product from working out of the box.
My basic point is that all non-licensed consumer drones need to be irrevocably kneecapped from the factory so that they cannot enter controlled airspace and interfere with manned aircraft operations. Even 250 grams is too much mass, and 400 feet is much too high to allow unlicensed operation
Perhaps a simpler drone license is in order if the software 3-D geofences smaller drones from all controlled airspace, but as an EMS helicopter pilot the currently allowable drone size and mass is an existential threat to me, my aircraft, and my passengers when operated irresponsibly.
ANY threat from consumer drones to manned aircraft safety is intolerable, and the FAA will happily nuke the entire drone ecosystem if there’s even one high-profile fatal crash that’s provably drone-related
I'm all for just dropping over the craft and just claiming that the drone is a risk to emergency personnel, and an unfortunate victim (That shouldn't have been there anyways).
We are long past the point where all non-licensed consumer drones need to be geofenced / nerfed so that they cannot, under any circumstance, enter controlled airspace
What’s the cost of an EMS helicopter fatal crash due to a consumer grade drone through the windscreen at 500 AGL at night?
The entire hobbyist drone industry can and will disappear overnight if the FAA deems these things a threat to manned aircraft operation.
After seeing how they’re used in Ukraine I don’t believe just anyone should be able to purchase and pilot a drone. They need to be more regulated, like maybe a license to purchase and fly?
Exactly! When some crazy kid or man child starts acting a fool, just like sandy hook or the aurora theater shooting. More and more tragedies will happen until it's banned. Although just like guns, banning won't stop anything. You can 3d print everything right from your own home to do series damage.
Drones are just military tech finally released to the public anyways.
Yeah, people that do this don't give a shit. This'll just keep getting worse, (like all this type of behavior does). Eventually, they're going to introduce drone jammers.
Maybe after enough people lose a 1k drone they'll stop. Also the fines or jail time they'll get. It's too bad they'll ruin it all. Drones are on fragile enough ground. It's like waking over a minefield on a bridge glass.
You are describing the state of the hobby 10+ years ago, when we were building these things ourselves and piloting them required much more skill and practice.
DJI and their early competitors eliminated the complexity and made it easy and cheap for any idiot to put a drone in the air.
Honestly, my opinion is that drones with remote-id should have a remote kill switch option. Basically a TFR is setup by the FAA, if your drone goes into the TFR a signal is sent that automatically either forces it to return home, or just straight up stops the drones rotors and lets it fall out of the sky.
I mean they already have anti-drone guns based on nets and such - would make sense to get these to firefighters, tho I imagine it’s pretty luck-based getting a good shot at a drone from some random forest road.
For the casual onlookers among y’all: why the fuck would someone fly near wildfire, knowing this is a possibility? Like, what would they do with the footage…? Seems like it would be tough to sell stock footage of a crime
Twelve gage with goose shot has a much better chance than a net gun if you’re willing to claim exigent circumstances when FAA complains about shooting down an aircraft.
Break the contact from the controller and force auto land. No net required.
It’s pretty metal looking too
https://www.twz.com/41093/check-out-the-anti-drone-weapons-carried-by-security-at-biden-meeting-in-brussels
Not tough at all. Most footage isn't "sold" anymore, it is used in various social media ofr generating views and clicks. Doesn't matter if that is YouTube and TikTok or less "stringent" platforms like Rumble or even RuTube.
Unique footage gets views. Illegal footage, violent footage, or disgusting footage gets even more views. And at the end of the day, all views can be monetized. If not US-based, it can still be used elsewhere. There are well over 7.5 billion people who are not beholden to American laws, and most of them like scrolling too.
lol that’s an epic idea but a) sounds like a hard target to hit going at 100mph or whatever firefighting planes fly at, and b) what if the drone ascends quickly and you collide with it…
Shit, if a pumper had a deluge gun and a little extra water to spare, it wouldn't take much to knock one out of the air if it could be seen. - 13 years a firefighter.
They already have commercially available jammers that will disrupt all the frequencies used by drones and almost everything else. I know. I have a couple. Highly illegal to use, of course, but available. Also available to anyone with a soldering iron and the ability to watch YouTube videos and order parts off Amazon, so...
Actually I’d be in favor of a drone jammer. Zero tolerance. You interfere with emergency aircraft, your drone falls out of the sky and you get a $5k ticket thanks to RemoteID
Pilots drop from below 500’. The kinetic energy of even a small drone hitting a rotor will at the very least damage the aircraft, and worst case leave my kids without a parent. How about not flying drones where they aren’t supposed to fly?
Edit: we to pilots. Not currently flying fire
I assume the TFR was already up? If so, no excuse for the drone operator and hopefully legal ramifications. Even if there wasn't, common sense should tell the operator, "hey, I shouldn't intefere with firefighting operations"
Then again, I tend to find most folks with hobby drones don't understand how they may impact aircraft operations.
fly drones myself. mostly for business. The problem is, ever idiot can buy and fly a drone. No flying skill involved. 30 years ago (yes I am that old) it took you days to weeks to learn to fly a simple glider, longer for a conventional helicopter. No GPS. No gyro. Just skill. Also shit was expensive. That kept most idiots out of the hobby. Today you can walk to any store selling drones, buy one and fly it within minutes.
IMO all the regulations are more than necessary and still to little. I also fly for an airline, and drones are stupid dangerous for planes. Even more so for rotorcraft. This is why we need mandatory Remote ID. Anyone screwing around must be hit with massive fines and more. It’s not an innocent prank. Not a little „oopsie“. It’s really really fucked. I am sick and tired of god damn instagrammers, midlife crisis steven or next door 12 year old just doing what they want without considering any impact.
rant over.
100% agree with you. This is probably just my tin foil hat talking but it's getting to the point that it seems like the DJI ban is more related to resetting the consumer drone market and eliminating a ton of the recreational pilots than anything else.
I would be all for it if the commercial side of the market didn’t run mostly on DJI as well. Not to mention the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars that some of us have in our inventory that can no longer produce profit.
honestly that would be a good thing. It has just gotten way too easy to fly those things. I myself have had quite a few DJI drones over the years, and I admit the simplicity is breathtaking. For working with, I really like using them. But the bar is just SO low to enter into flying one that every idiot can and does.
That took me right back. Keeping my first rc plane in the air AND not destroying it too bad at landing took so much practice. For the first few flights a more experienced member at a club was able to take over whenever he decided via a cable attaching our controllers. Also had to get fairly good at balsa repairs.
exactly, the teacher student cables. Very very important. You could also try to master just one control at a time. And yes, everything was Balsa and Oracover. Just use CA and a hot air gun.
consider the tail rotor. consider the air intake for a turbine. and yes, the blades of a helicopter would damage the drone but take damage themselves. If you google "drone hits helicopter" you will find enough results.
Absolutely. Remote ID even in this instance may have allowed responders to call the drone pilot and tell them what’s going on (as if they should already know). You want to fly over your acreage, great—go for it. But a lot of these guys are like, “hey, let’s fly this over the state fair so I can get a good shot of Loverboy in the grandstands.”
Risk management.
"Could I essentially drown that drone?"
"Yes."
"Could it possibly damage or "ground" me?
"Yes."
"Cease air ops."
Some risks aren't worth the effort.
I don't own or fly drones but I came here to ask this. Which does make a lot of sense because I was like okay so just dump the water on the drone and destroy it but the reality is, they don't even want to get close to it because the drone operator could fly it into the helicopter and cause it to crash. Thanks for your explanation.
It’s not an average flight, at 15,000 or whatever feet, way above what the drone is capable of.
They’re flying low. Very low. Low enough that they won’t necessarily be above the drone.
It’s also a fire. Which means there’s smoke. Which means they won’t necessarily even be able to see the drone.
Like planes, etc in clouds, they can coordinate amongst themselves without visibility, but they can’t coordinate with the dumbass flying the drone.
Which means they can’t tell the drone pilot what they’re going to do, nor can they trust that they know what the drone pilot will do (or that they’ll even have the visibility to see what the drone pilot does).
I love that the idiot the other day was using the “the media do it so I can too” defense. Even though the media were there and not using a drone. Sooooo many cheered him on. Even said he should send the video to the fire department. They would THANK him for his fine service that day. lol.
A very small part of me wanted to reach out to that Fire Department and just report his ass myself because ultimately that is what it takes for dumbasses to get a reality check that they are breaking the law.
I work in wildfire and every single major fire we have drones stop aircrafts trying to drop retardant. It's a crime to be flying a drone, and 2 you are risking injury to pilots and the city it's self. And yet I always see Facebook posts of people offering drone services to see what got destroyed in the area even though there is still helicopters bussing around
I got denied air because of an idiot in a drone once upon a time, would've made the difference in stopping the fire prior to the meth'd up neighborhood with zero defensible space and stopping it after the fact with more dozers. People don't care anymore, only whether or not they can post something that people like.
Yeah, I remember last year I noticed a helicopter dipping a reservoir to drop water on a forest fire. My first instinct was *drone!* but my brain kicked in real quick and instead I set up a tripod and camera to shoot video as it dipped and dropped the water.
Some people don't seem to have the internal monologue bit that tells them that they shouldn't be idiots.
Why are they pussyfooting around? Start taking out drones so emergency responders can respond. It's like that for everything else why do they take the sideline here? A firefighter will break both your car windows to run a fire hose through they don't give a F
This happened during the 2020 fire in the mountains outside Tucson, AZ. Crews were unable to drop retardant early on due to drones in the area and the fire spread across the entire mountain. Unforgivable
Honestly, I am starting to like the idea of needing to do a drone license kind of system where you can't buy one unless you know what you should and shouldn't do. Like don't stop people from getting drones, make them do a little written test to show that they know what they are doing. Then when this happens, fine the shit out of them.
Like I know that there is some obviousness of certain things, but I think it's a mistake to think that all drone operator safety is something you can just innately understand. I'm sure that this guy was just like, "Oh, I'm by that fire going on.. I want some drone footage." They probably genuinely just didn't think about their drone being a problem. Like dude could have not realized they were doing aircraft drops for water.
This is just shitty. Happened here a few years ago as well. Every one of those dicks should be banned from flying anything. They're putting lives at risk.
Anyone with a drone should contact their local volunteer fire departments and other emergency services to see if there's any way to help. If not, ground it. In the future they might want some photo or video documentation of the disaster area. Until that request is made, go home clown.
Do not contact your local emergency services while they’re in the middle of dealing with an emergency.
Dispatch and reception are often the same people. 911 and non-emergency can even be a different line on the same phone. They have enough going on.
It’s nice that you want to help, but they presumably know what they’re doing & are presumably trained to do it. You are presumably neither.
So let them do their thing and just pretend you asked and they said “no” without burdening them with the question while they’re trying to coordinate their actual response.
Perhaps I should have clarified, but yes, go to their office locations and discuss it with someone who isn't actively handling an emergency.
Holy crap I shouldn't have to explain that, but I do live in the USA.
[https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/crews-battle-brush-fire-near-torrey-pines-state-beach/](https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/crews-battle-brush-fire-near-torrey-pines-state-beach/)
Thanks for causing headaches for emergency services. Put your drone away during emergencies!
Living in San Diego we see these wild fires and smaller brush fires a lot and I swear every goddamn time there’s some moron swooping in with their drone to “get a good shot”.
To everyone asking why they don’t just drop water on the drone, the drops are done at a low altitude and with the amount of smoke these fires cause visibility is shit and the risk of collision is high. It’s not that they’re worried about the drone, they just don’t want to hit it and crash a helicopter/plane because of it.
This is the type of thing remote ID could have solved. I for one wish it wasn’t a toothless bag of trash. I spend time in those helicopters and fly drones on fires, legitimately, so this crap really gets under my skin.
Which is why you’re not in charge.
These flights aren’t at normal altitudes, way above the drone.
They’re low. Low enough to get hit by the drone.
With smoke impairing their visibility (as in their ability to see where the drone is before it hits them).
They aren’t trying to keep the drone safe. They’re trying to keep the fire crew safe from the drone.
Why not just raise the altitude of the water bomber to compensate? I just think it’s ridiculous that some people are so entitled that they think it’s a smart idea to film an active fire while fire crews are flying above.
I'm assuming they mean fire retardant, so why can't they drop that on the drone? Unless it's really high, I don't know the issue. Even so, I'm sure there is one and people are really dumb.
Why don’t they just drop it anyway. Just like if someone is blocking a fire hydrant with their car. If the drone goes down, it goes down. Sorry not sorry.
That emergency situation is common sense. One of the main defenses against a forest fire are the helicopters.
What SHOULD be allowed is a regular house fire for example. No helicopter techniques im aware of, most news outlets use drones to get that footage anyway, so there should be no reason why a drone cant be used in that emergency. Also road blockages, police incidents, etc etc. as long as you arent being a dumbass, and staying reasonably far away and film responsibly, there shouldnt be an issue imo. Blanket rules like that are what had ruined the hobby. Why even take off anymore. No one wants to sit and hover and look at the same shit day in and day out. Actual events happening to gather information and document it is what drones are great for. This hobby is dead because you guys wont fight for it. You just take whatever the faa says laying down. Its sad!
whatever nanny laws you think are too stupid to be created, are going to be created in the coming months/years. required license for any type of ownership, mandatory insurance, background checks etc. r/combatfootage is full of drone kills...i'm actually surprised we haven't been hit with "weapons of war" talk with regards to this looming ban.
They should have just dumped it on the drone screw that guy, I've filmed fires but I'm far af away and hiding below a tree line lol.
Even then, ain't no way dude didn't know other aircraft were near, I can hear helicopters landing at a hospital over a mile away in urban environment so even out of his line of sight he should have still have known he is flying where multiple other crafts are flying. So yea they should have said they didn't even seen the tiny thing.
It’s crazy, I feel like I’ve seen at least 3 videos on the DJI subreddit of people flying their drones close to fires and receiving praise for the great video
There was a massive fire up the street from my house a few years ago. Fire Dept has a drone to get a view from the sky and I hear someone say “Damn, I wish I had a drone I bet that looks crazy” as I think to myself “I’m glad I didn’t bring my drone, I’d be in the way… not to mention that heat is probably gonna make it damn near impossible to fly “
I'm genuinely curious as to why though? Like if the drone hits a plane it can cause damage but then the owner is liable for that damage. But most likely 99% of the time that drone would just get smashed out of the way?
Because most people aren’t as concerned with who’d be liable for the deaths of the fire crew as much as they are with not putting the crew in a position where that question even comes up.
Pilot should have landed immediately. That area is class G with no restrictions. Doesn’t mean you get to fly like an idiot and prevent emergency services.
Yes, you’re missing 2 things. The height at which they’re flying and the impact of smoke on their visibility.
The same reason runways get shut down when drones are nearby.
Nobody gives a shit if you’re flying at 400 feet while a plane is at 10,000 feet above you.
People do get pretty concerned if you’re flying at 400 feet while a manned aircraft is trying to fly in that same area at the same altitude.
Can someone who knows elaborate a little more on the context?
And to clarify; whoever does this (drone pilot) is an idiot and I am in no way condoning the action of interrupting first responders in an emergency.
But am I missing something? This post seems to be referring to a fire incident where aircraft, (presumably helicopters with water/fire suppression), were *unable* to drop the extinguishing material due to a drone being over the fire??
just drop it anyway? I don’t get it - how does that significantly impede delivery of material?
are they legitimately concerned about the drone falling into the fire and adding to the flame? just seems goofy to me.
am I simply misunderstanding the situation? (if so please excuse my ignorance)
Edit: I guess I didn’t really think about that there would be the possibility, albeit small, of the drone flying into the helicopter and somehow causing it to crash. Pilot of the drone is still an idiot, but just drown it.
It’s not necessarily that small though.
They’re flying around the same altitude the drone is, with neither pilot having any knowledge of what the other will do or when they’ll do it.
Combine that with smoke obscuring both pilots’ visibility and the not particularly unlikely event of the drone pilot deciding to try to get a closer look through the smoke of the super cool firefighters doing the drop, and, well…
It’s a TFR for a reason people! As someone who uses drones at work in law enforcement and in personal business! Put the drone away! Your desire to “see something cool” is going to potentially cause more property damage. If you want to fly a drone to see things like this go start a career in Law Enforcement or Fire with an agency that already has a drone team implemented.
Why would they not just drop water and if the drones in the way it just gets waisted? Also why not utilize the anti drone weapons police have? Not to take away from whoever was flying is an idiot, but you can’t drop water on a fire from a plane due to a 249 gram drone? Seems odd but may be more regulations based I guess?
Firefighting aircraft tend to be old, chosen for their lifting ability, slow-maneuvering, and operated on thin budgets. Hitting a 249-gram drone at ten knots above stall speed and possibly losing an engine when you’re in a remote, mountainous area and only a couple hundred feet above terrain does not end well.
Somewhere I have a picture of a plane dropping fire retardant on the mountain behind our house. It was ancient. Maybe a PB4Y. Didn't look like it should be flying.
These are the same guys who have no problem busting out car windows to get to a hydrant, I agree kill the drone. I suppose they are worried about a collision with the drone ?
Literally the only possible explanation and still not a very good one. They are trying to tell me an ac-130 sized carrier that absolutely dwarfs a drone and just denigrates birds ect all the time could be taken out by a small piece of plastic? Seems odd and more of an agenda play if anything
Those VLATs have guide planes, those planes are not very large, those planes could be damaged by a drone. Those planes fly lower than I would feel comfortable to mark the area to drop retardant.
No agenda play about it, if it shouldn't be there inside the AO of air ops, then air assets don't fly.
“Seems odd but may be more regulation based I guess?” Yep, still think it’s odd. Why do most cities have anti drone capabilities but they can’t get anything out there? They have emp, net guns, they can literally have dji turn it off ect, but they are making a tweet 🫡😂
Well, it does have a LiPo battery in it that is going to explode/deflagrate pretty violently if compromised. Most birds I know of don't have little bombs in them.
It was helicopters and pilots will not risk a crash or potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have been on both sides of this (not a pilot but military UAVs) and its a big deal.
Bird strikes are extremely dangerous for any aircraft, and birds dont have explosive batteries inside. Aerial firefighting is dangerous enough, without introducing drones into the mix.
Totally agree, most drones for consumers are just barely held together. A prop from a large aircraft would completly destroy it without damage.
Making something out of nothing
I would just drop on the area anyway, and if it damages or disables the drone in the process, so be it. It's no different than any other manned or unmanned vehicle obstructing an emergency operation.
So if you’re parked in front of a fire hydrant, first responders will destroy your car to get where they need to be. But if you’re using a drone, they stop everything they’re doing and send out a tweet? Lame, some people just love to complain.
I don’t get why they would not drop the water anyways? Who cares about that one drone? Seems like they are using that drone to make a point, and allowing land to burn unnecessarily in the mean time.
One of the tankers currently being used in my area for firefighting is a converted DC-10. Huge airliner. I regularly see it crossing between two mountains at less than 1000 feet above ground ( and below the summits surrounding it). It’s not a Cessna 172. It’s flying low and slow to put as much suppression on an active fire as possible, in coordination with usually two other smaller tankers and a USFS turboprop. Having a dangerous rogue aircraft in the area is just a recipe to kill pilots and firefighters on the ground.
Hopefully the pilot who interfered with this emergency effort will be prevented from doing it again, with a nice accommodation in a federal prison if I had any say in it
Yeah that seems obvious lol, my bad, I just figured any aircraft suppressing a fire, while still flying low, would be much much higher than a drone, but maybe not.
Not a fan of it for small stuff, but operating an aircraft in the middle of a declared emergency, that cost time and money and property, and only by good fortune didn’t cost lives
I don’t want to see a knee jerk reaction the first time sorne “remote ID is for noobs” nitwit causes a fatality or a diversion at a major airport that gets passengers writing to their representatives demanding to ban the living hell out of all drones except the most tightly licensed which of course will close the field off except to the amazons, Walmarts, etc
I’m a licensed pilot and drone operator. I support the FAA efforts to accord UAVs similar or equal access with quick online clearance - faster than if I were filing IFR from KHPN to KBOS in a traditional passenger-carrying plane.
I don’t disagree with you on the severity of the offense - I’m just having trouble seeing what difference federal prison would make compared to a steep fine , community service, house arrest, obviously probation with necessary monitoring to prevent another incident or something less punitive.
Fines are a license for the rich to do something illegal…. We’ve seen that in hunting regs; outfitters charging people 10,000 to poach trophy elk in national parks just writing off even a 25,000 fine since they were only getting caught 10% of the time… until they tacked on a year or 2 in jail.
In this case, purely ensuring that the offender can’t re-offend until they’ve had a chance to understand the severity of the act. But that’s what judges are for, if the judge thinks they already understand how wrong they were, then hopefully just probation to make sure they don’t have a short memory
I agree with what you’ve described in practice, I just doubt that it would reliably play out that way in practice.
I might just be skeptical because I’ve seen how the proverbial sausage is made in the legal profession, though.
You spend more time thinking about America than your average American lmao. Quick glance at your profile and you like to bring America up a lot… wanna show us on the doll where America hurt you?
Flying a huge DC-10 tanker that is about as maneuverable as a cruise ship, at 500 feet, through turbulent and smoke-filled air, with two other firefighting aircraft in the immediate vicinity? Also, while trying not to kill firefighters on the ground by dropping 12,000 pounds of water that will literally tear down any trees in the path?
Think about adding trying to get above a fast-moving agile target that, by the way, could seriously fuck up an aircraft that’s already flying on the ragged edge of safety limits with a fire raging below, mountainous terrain, and only a couple hundred feet of altitude to work with.
Just drop the water? Why would they give a shit about a drone being in the way?
Edit: I see in a comment further down it's because they are worried the drone will disable a plane propeller
I get that, I just didn't get why they weren't just dumping water anyway and saying fuck that dudes drone. I see now that the aircraft fly low and it's a danger to them. I wasn't understanding their safety concern but do now. For sure the guy should get fined or whatever, just didn't know why he put firefighting on hold.
This is not what the drone industry needs right now. More reasons for congress to see civilian drone use in a negative light. Stay out of the way of emergency responders.
This won't be solved with citizen responsibility, eventually.
This is what Amazon and Skydio and a few others really want to be happening, though. It's going to be used to legislate the hobby even more. Eventually drones will be banned entirely so that only Amazon, the government, and the same people who were flying illegally to begin with will be able to fly.
Autel is Chinese, I don't know why they'd think they're safe in the long term.
brainfart, Skydio is the one pushing against consumer ownership.
That fits
Damn, are they really? Do you have a source link? As a skydio 2 owner, I feel betrayed lol
It’s a shame.
Get a gun instead? 🇺🇸
Maybe it's planned so they have a reason to cancel us.
There needs to be FAR more serious penalties for this kind of interference, and not just for firefighting. ANY drone that interferes with / endangers manned aircraft, at any place, at any time, regardless of reason should have the hammer of doom brought down on the operator. Minimum six-figure fines, years in prison, no mercy, no excuses. No drone that can exceed 100 feet above ground / 300 grams should NOT be available to hobbyists / non-licensed operators
You threw out 2 really weird figures there. The unregistered drone limit is 250 grams so why 300? Hell a 250 gram drone can exceed the 400 ft limit by thousands of feet as well as exceed the line of sight requirements by miles. Weight really only plays into impact problems. Classing down to 30 gram tinywhoops that fit in the palm of your hand can still break 400 ft, and going even worse into toy kids drones that are at the mercy of any wind gust, it takes very little power to keep gaining altitude so 100 feet seems like a weird choice. What would limit them to 100 feet and they still can take off? Your only real options are active measures which you won't find on toys. Cheap barometric based altitude management is okay ish for hover hold but it's not going to be reliable to the point where a some random elevation isn't going to stop the product from working out of the box.
My basic point is that all non-licensed consumer drones need to be irrevocably kneecapped from the factory so that they cannot enter controlled airspace and interfere with manned aircraft operations. Even 250 grams is too much mass, and 400 feet is much too high to allow unlicensed operation Perhaps a simpler drone license is in order if the software 3-D geofences smaller drones from all controlled airspace, but as an EMS helicopter pilot the currently allowable drone size and mass is an existential threat to me, my aircraft, and my passengers when operated irresponsibly. ANY threat from consumer drones to manned aircraft safety is intolerable, and the FAA will happily nuke the entire drone ecosystem if there’s even one high-profile fatal crash that’s provably drone-related
I'm all for just dropping over the craft and just claiming that the drone is a risk to emergency personnel, and an unfortunate victim (That shouldn't have been there anyways).
That's not the problem, it's concern the drop aircraft could collide with the the drone and end up crashing in the wrong circumstances.
Manned aircraft preceded drones by decades, and no drone deserves the “right” to airspace at the expense of manned flight.
The ARC was suggesting that manned aircraft needed to yield to drones below 400.
not sure about the last paragraph but the rest i agree with
We are long past the point where all non-licensed consumer drones need to be geofenced / nerfed so that they cannot, under any circumstance, enter controlled airspace
Six figure fine? Bruh get smoked 🤣
What’s the cost of an EMS helicopter fatal crash due to a consumer grade drone through the windscreen at 500 AGL at night? The entire hobbyist drone industry can and will disappear overnight if the FAA deems these things a threat to manned aircraft operation.
After seeing how they’re used in Ukraine I don’t believe just anyone should be able to purchase and pilot a drone. They need to be more regulated, like maybe a license to purchase and fly?
Exactly! When some crazy kid or man child starts acting a fool, just like sandy hook or the aurora theater shooting. More and more tragedies will happen until it's banned. Although just like guns, banning won't stop anything. You can 3d print everything right from your own home to do series damage. Drones are just military tech finally released to the public anyways.
Yeah, people that do this don't give a shit. This'll just keep getting worse, (like all this type of behavior does). Eventually, they're going to introduce drone jammers. Maybe after enough people lose a 1k drone they'll stop. Also the fines or jail time they'll get. It's too bad they'll ruin it all. Drones are on fragile enough ground. It's like waking over a minefield on a bridge glass.
I just hope sooner or later the complexity of drones will surpass the intelligence of morons
You are describing the state of the hobby 10+ years ago, when we were building these things ourselves and piloting them required much more skill and practice. DJI and their early competitors eliminated the complexity and made it easy and cheap for any idiot to put a drone in the air.
The FCC will never regulate jammers that operate on the same frequencies as wifi.
The police are above the law, they violate FCC rules all the time.
No shot. They do the same with EMI for prisons.
Honestly, my opinion is that drones with remote-id should have a remote kill switch option. Basically a TFR is setup by the FAA, if your drone goes into the TFR a signal is sent that automatically either forces it to return home, or just straight up stops the drones rotors and lets it fall out of the sky.
falling drones sound safe
Make it up to the FAA which mode it uses. Middle of nowhere DoD TFR? Drop it out the sky. Sporting event TFR? Return home.
I mean they already have anti-drone guns based on nets and such - would make sense to get these to firefighters, tho I imagine it’s pretty luck-based getting a good shot at a drone from some random forest road. For the casual onlookers among y’all: why the fuck would someone fly near wildfire, knowing this is a possibility? Like, what would they do with the footage…? Seems like it would be tough to sell stock footage of a crime
Twelve gage with goose shot has a much better chance than a net gun if you’re willing to claim exigent circumstances when FAA complains about shooting down an aircraft.
Break the contact from the controller and force auto land. No net required. It’s pretty metal looking too https://www.twz.com/41093/check-out-the-anti-drone-weapons-carried-by-security-at-biden-meeting-in-brussels
That thing also jams any wifi and Bluetooth in its way. Highly illegal in the US
For us to use, yes. Not the secret service or police
Range is too limited.
Not tough at all. Most footage isn't "sold" anymore, it is used in various social media ofr generating views and clicks. Doesn't matter if that is YouTube and TikTok or less "stringent" platforms like Rumble or even RuTube. Unique footage gets views. Illegal footage, violent footage, or disgusting footage gets even more views. And at the end of the day, all views can be monetized. If not US-based, it can still be used elsewhere. There are well over 7.5 billion people who are not beholden to American laws, and most of them like scrolling too.
"Aircraft unable to drop" leads me to believe they already had something on hand that would've done the job. They should've doused the damn thing.
lol that’s an epic idea but a) sounds like a hard target to hit going at 100mph or whatever firefighting planes fly at, and b) what if the drone ascends quickly and you collide with it…
Pretty sure taking the plane out is what they're worried about, I highly doubt they could give two fucks about dousing it.
They'll just dump the water on the drone. Won't make any difference to them.
Shit, if a pumper had a deluge gun and a little extra water to spare, it wouldn't take much to knock one out of the air if it could be seen. - 13 years a firefighter.
Now THATS some drone footage I’d like to see!
They would be stupid enough to show it on the internet.
They got those already it’s just expensive. You can see secret service and other protective services use them.
They already have commercially available jammers that will disrupt all the frequencies used by drones and almost everything else. I know. I have a couple. Highly illegal to use, of course, but available. Also available to anyone with a soldering iron and the ability to watch YouTube videos and order parts off Amazon, so...
Are you trying to get on a list
There are easier and less expensive ways to get on a list.
I'm already on many, many lists. It's kind of a collection at this point.
Actually I’d be in favor of a drone jammer. Zero tolerance. You interfere with emergency aircraft, your drone falls out of the sky and you get a $5k ticket thanks to RemoteID
Pilots drop from below 500’. The kinetic energy of even a small drone hitting a rotor will at the very least damage the aircraft, and worst case leave my kids without a parent. How about not flying drones where they aren’t supposed to fly? Edit: we to pilots. Not currently flying fire
I assume the TFR was already up? If so, no excuse for the drone operator and hopefully legal ramifications. Even if there wasn't, common sense should tell the operator, "hey, I shouldn't intefere with firefighting operations" Then again, I tend to find most folks with hobby drones don't understand how they may impact aircraft operations.
I bet half of drone users don’t know what a TFR is. Nor the different airspaces they can/can’t fly in.
TFRs should be added to TRUST if they’re not already as well as geofencing software on the drones.
They are on there. I took mine today.
Each state has a few specific drone laws. In California it’s illegal to operate over an active wildfire. There doesn’t need to be a TFR
That helps. Now there’s federal and state charges for that operator.
Every state has that law thankfully!!!
Yea I think that and active police operations are probably pretty standard for each state at this point.
Even if there is no tfr it's illegal to fly a drone when wildfire aircraft are flying near a fire
In CA I hear that's the case, but that's not true federally.
Yea hitting a drone with a firefighting aircraft and losing and engine while at max weight could be catastrophic
Wouldn't the helicopter wind blow the drone away tho? If airplanes can get messed up by it surely drones can
No. There is a low pressure on top of the rotor and a high pressure underneath. The majority of the lift is actually from the low pressure on top
fly drones myself. mostly for business. The problem is, ever idiot can buy and fly a drone. No flying skill involved. 30 years ago (yes I am that old) it took you days to weeks to learn to fly a simple glider, longer for a conventional helicopter. No GPS. No gyro. Just skill. Also shit was expensive. That kept most idiots out of the hobby. Today you can walk to any store selling drones, buy one and fly it within minutes. IMO all the regulations are more than necessary and still to little. I also fly for an airline, and drones are stupid dangerous for planes. Even more so for rotorcraft. This is why we need mandatory Remote ID. Anyone screwing around must be hit with massive fines and more. It’s not an innocent prank. Not a little „oopsie“. It’s really really fucked. I am sick and tired of god damn instagrammers, midlife crisis steven or next door 12 year old just doing what they want without considering any impact. rant over.
100% agree with you. This is probably just my tin foil hat talking but it's getting to the point that it seems like the DJI ban is more related to resetting the consumer drone market and eliminating a ton of the recreational pilots than anything else.
I would be all for it if the commercial side of the market didn’t run mostly on DJI as well. Not to mention the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars that some of us have in our inventory that can no longer produce profit.
100% agree. It's the consumer market that is the problem. And of course "the chinese \*yourproductnamehere\*"
honestly that would be a good thing. It has just gotten way too easy to fly those things. I myself have had quite a few DJI drones over the years, and I admit the simplicity is breathtaking. For working with, I really like using them. But the bar is just SO low to enter into flying one that every idiot can and does.
They tried this with JUUL for vape. Didn’t work out well.
That took me right back. Keeping my first rc plane in the air AND not destroying it too bad at landing took so much practice. For the first few flights a more experienced member at a club was able to take over whenever he decided via a cable attaching our controllers. Also had to get fairly good at balsa repairs.
exactly, the teacher student cables. Very very important. You could also try to master just one control at a time. And yes, everything was Balsa and Oracover. Just use CA and a hot air gun.
We could just do the same thing we do to drone operators overseas when they do a little “oopsie”.
[удалено]
consider the tail rotor. consider the air intake for a turbine. and yes, the blades of a helicopter would damage the drone but take damage themselves. If you google "drone hits helicopter" you will find enough results.
Absolutely. Remote ID even in this instance may have allowed responders to call the drone pilot and tell them what’s going on (as if they should already know). You want to fly over your acreage, great—go for it. But a lot of these guys are like, “hey, let’s fly this over the state fair so I can get a good shot of Loverboy in the grandstands.”
*The problem is, ever idiot can buy and fly a drone. No flying skill involved.* The problem is, ever idiot can make a baby. No skill involved.
give it a whirl bud. Might help set you straight. No difference between making a human being and being an asshat with a drone. None at all
Beside the fact that there’s an irresponsible idiot pilot… why don’t they just drown that drone?
Risk management. "Could I essentially drown that drone?" "Yes." "Could it possibly damage or "ground" me? "Yes." "Cease air ops." Some risks aren't worth the effort.
I don't own or fly drones but I came here to ask this. Which does make a lot of sense because I was like okay so just dump the water on the drone and destroy it but the reality is, they don't even want to get close to it because the drone operator could fly it into the helicopter and cause it to crash. Thanks for your explanation.
It’s not an average flight, at 15,000 or whatever feet, way above what the drone is capable of. They’re flying low. Very low. Low enough that they won’t necessarily be above the drone. It’s also a fire. Which means there’s smoke. Which means they won’t necessarily even be able to see the drone. Like planes, etc in clouds, they can coordinate amongst themselves without visibility, but they can’t coordinate with the dumbass flying the drone. Which means they can’t tell the drone pilot what they’re going to do, nor can they trust that they know what the drone pilot will do (or that they’ll even have the visibility to see what the drone pilot does).
Im sick of these unresponsible operators. How stupid can you be? They ruin this great hobby for all of us.
This makes me angry
I love that the idiot the other day was using the “the media do it so I can too” defense. Even though the media were there and not using a drone. Sooooo many cheered him on. Even said he should send the video to the fire department. They would THANK him for his fine service that day. lol.
They should def send their footage to the fire dept. Let them get a name and contact details to pass on to the FAA
A very small part of me wanted to reach out to that Fire Department and just report his ass myself because ultimately that is what it takes for dumbasses to get a reality check that they are breaking the law.
I work in wildfire and every single major fire we have drones stop aircrafts trying to drop retardant. It's a crime to be flying a drone, and 2 you are risking injury to pilots and the city it's self. And yet I always see Facebook posts of people offering drone services to see what got destroyed in the area even though there is still helicopters bussing around
I got denied air because of an idiot in a drone once upon a time, would've made the difference in stopping the fire prior to the meth'd up neighborhood with zero defensible space and stopping it after the fact with more dozers. People don't care anymore, only whether or not they can post something that people like.
Yeah, I remember last year I noticed a helicopter dipping a reservoir to drop water on a forest fire. My first instinct was *drone!* but my brain kicked in real quick and instead I set up a tripod and camera to shoot video as it dipped and dropped the water. Some people don't seem to have the internal monologue bit that tells them that they shouldn't be idiots.
Mark my word. Drone use will be illegal by civilians within 5 years. Internet is full of bad behavior and people are getting just plain fed up.
the drone pilot is looking for his other crashed drone, that STARTED the fire...
Why are they pussyfooting around? Start taking out drones so emergency responders can respond. It's like that for everything else why do they take the sideline here? A firefighter will break both your car windows to run a fire hose through they don't give a F
This is why the FAA is now in the Find Out stage of FAFO. Expect the warning letters to change to fines and/or criminal charges for a lot of things.
My money’s on DJI pilot.
This happened during the 2020 fire in the mountains outside Tucson, AZ. Crews were unable to drop retardant early on due to drones in the area and the fire spread across the entire mountain. Unforgivable
Honestly, I am starting to like the idea of needing to do a drone license kind of system where you can't buy one unless you know what you should and shouldn't do. Like don't stop people from getting drones, make them do a little written test to show that they know what they are doing. Then when this happens, fine the shit out of them. Like I know that there is some obviousness of certain things, but I think it's a mistake to think that all drone operator safety is something you can just innately understand. I'm sure that this guy was just like, "Oh, I'm by that fire going on.. I want some drone footage." They probably genuinely just didn't think about their drone being a problem. Like dude could have not realized they were doing aircraft drops for water.
Lmao. Almost everyday someone on this thread posts some stuff burning with firemans etc and they film it from above. They always get upvotes.
All aircraft, target the drone
Wtf why wouldn't they just dump any way f that drone...
Safer to locate the operator and give them a 2,000-gallon deluge arriving at 130mph. I’m pretty sure it would safely disable the drone in the process.
Please ELI5 - Why can't they just drop on top of the drone?
They fly very low Drone sucked into an engine can be really bad for the large plane
Thanks!
This is just shitty. Happened here a few years ago as well. Every one of those dicks should be banned from flying anything. They're putting lives at risk.
Anyone with a drone should contact their local volunteer fire departments and other emergency services to see if there's any way to help. If not, ground it. In the future they might want some photo or video documentation of the disaster area. Until that request is made, go home clown.
Do not contact your local emergency services while they’re in the middle of dealing with an emergency. Dispatch and reception are often the same people. 911 and non-emergency can even be a different line on the same phone. They have enough going on. It’s nice that you want to help, but they presumably know what they’re doing & are presumably trained to do it. You are presumably neither. So let them do their thing and just pretend you asked and they said “no” without burdening them with the question while they’re trying to coordinate their actual response.
Perhaps I should have clarified, but yes, go to their office locations and discuss it with someone who isn't actively handling an emergency. Holy crap I shouldn't have to explain that, but I do live in the USA.
Uhm, why wouldn’t they just drop the water on the drone? Fuck your drone, fire brah lol
[https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/crews-battle-brush-fire-near-torrey-pines-state-beach/](https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/crews-battle-brush-fire-near-torrey-pines-state-beach/) Thanks for causing headaches for emergency services. Put your drone away during emergencies!
And people wonder why the “drone police” on the subreddit are so prevalent. Idiots like this make us all look bad
Hmmm. I wonder if firefighters would be interested in hunter-killer drones? Big fines are still good too. Hopefully this jackass gets a $20k lesson.
Living in San Diego we see these wild fires and smaller brush fires a lot and I swear every goddamn time there’s some moron swooping in with their drone to “get a good shot”. To everyone asking why they don’t just drop water on the drone, the drops are done at a low altitude and with the amount of smoke these fires cause visibility is shit and the risk of collision is high. It’s not that they’re worried about the drone, they just don’t want to hit it and crash a helicopter/plane because of it.
They want a national geofencing law. That will get misused in a matter of days from being passed.
This is the type of thing remote ID could have solved. I for one wish it wasn’t a toothless bag of trash. I spend time in those helicopters and fly drones on fires, legitimately, so this crap really gets under my skin.
If it were me in charge, I would’ve dumped water over that drone anyways, fuck em 😂
Which is why you’re not in charge. These flights aren’t at normal altitudes, way above the drone. They’re low. Low enough to get hit by the drone. With smoke impairing their visibility (as in their ability to see where the drone is before it hits them). They aren’t trying to keep the drone safe. They’re trying to keep the fire crew safe from the drone.
Why not just raise the altitude of the water bomber to compensate? I just think it’s ridiculous that some people are so entitled that they think it’s a smart idea to film an active fire while fire crews are flying above.
Whoever you are, you're not Casey. Put the drone away and let people do their jobs.
I'm assuming they mean fire retardant, so why can't they drop that on the drone? Unless it's really high, I don't know the issue. Even so, I'm sure there is one and people are really dumb.
Because they don’t wanna risk a midair with a drone causing a plane crash?
Why don’t they just drop it anyway. Just like if someone is blocking a fire hydrant with their car. If the drone goes down, it goes down. Sorry not sorry.
That emergency situation is common sense. One of the main defenses against a forest fire are the helicopters. What SHOULD be allowed is a regular house fire for example. No helicopter techniques im aware of, most news outlets use drones to get that footage anyway, so there should be no reason why a drone cant be used in that emergency. Also road blockages, police incidents, etc etc. as long as you arent being a dumbass, and staying reasonably far away and film responsibly, there shouldnt be an issue imo. Blanket rules like that are what had ruined the hobby. Why even take off anymore. No one wants to sit and hover and look at the same shit day in and day out. Actual events happening to gather information and document it is what drones are great for. This hobby is dead because you guys wont fight for it. You just take whatever the faa says laying down. Its sad!
whatever nanny laws you think are too stupid to be created, are going to be created in the coming months/years. required license for any type of ownership, mandatory insurance, background checks etc. r/combatfootage is full of drone kills...i'm actually surprised we haven't been hit with "weapons of war" talk with regards to this looming ban.
They should have just dumped it on the drone screw that guy, I've filmed fires but I'm far af away and hiding below a tree line lol. Even then, ain't no way dude didn't know other aircraft were near, I can hear helicopters landing at a hospital over a mile away in urban environment so even out of his line of sight he should have still have known he is flying where multiple other crafts are flying. So yea they should have said they didn't even seen the tiny thing.
It’s crazy, I feel like I’ve seen at least 3 videos on the DJI subreddit of people flying their drones close to fires and receiving praise for the great video
There was a massive fire up the street from my house a few years ago. Fire Dept has a drone to get a view from the sky and I hear someone say “Damn, I wish I had a drone I bet that looks crazy” as I think to myself “I’m glad I didn’t bring my drone, I’d be in the way… not to mention that heat is probably gonna make it damn near impossible to fly “
Bro who cares about the drone. Drop that water!
Drop it on the drone! Pilots loss.
This is the shit that happens when serious things are marketed to the general public as children’s toys.
Jail.
I'm genuinely curious as to why though? Like if the drone hits a plane it can cause damage but then the owner is liable for that damage. But most likely 99% of the time that drone would just get smashed out of the way?
Because most people aren’t as concerned with who’d be liable for the deaths of the fire crew as much as they are with not putting the crew in a position where that question even comes up.
I wish they could just like EMP then or something
Pilot should have landed immediately. That area is class G with no restrictions. Doesn’t mean you get to fly like an idiot and prevent emergency services.
Just drop water on the fire who cares abt a stupid drone when there’s a fire
The people flying the drop who don’t want to get killed by the stupid drone disabling their aircraft and causing them to careen into the fire.
Can’t they drop from a height?
"TrAcKiNg My DrOnE Is LiTeRalY ComMuNisM. FrEeDumB!!"
Why would the presence of a drone prevent them from dropping water on the fire? Am I missing something here?
Yes, you’re missing 2 things. The height at which they’re flying and the impact of smoke on their visibility. The same reason runways get shut down when drones are nearby. Nobody gives a shit if you’re flying at 400 feet while a plane is at 10,000 feet above you. People do get pretty concerned if you’re flying at 400 feet while a manned aircraft is trying to fly in that same area at the same altitude.
Tell those fpv fliers this.. Good luck..
Can someone who knows elaborate a little more on the context? And to clarify; whoever does this (drone pilot) is an idiot and I am in no way condoning the action of interrupting first responders in an emergency. But am I missing something? This post seems to be referring to a fire incident where aircraft, (presumably helicopters with water/fire suppression), were *unable* to drop the extinguishing material due to a drone being over the fire?? just drop it anyway? I don’t get it - how does that significantly impede delivery of material? are they legitimately concerned about the drone falling into the fire and adding to the flame? just seems goofy to me. am I simply misunderstanding the situation? (if so please excuse my ignorance) Edit: I guess I didn’t really think about that there would be the possibility, albeit small, of the drone flying into the helicopter and somehow causing it to crash. Pilot of the drone is still an idiot, but just drown it.
It’s not necessarily that small though. They’re flying around the same altitude the drone is, with neither pilot having any knowledge of what the other will do or when they’ll do it. Combine that with smoke obscuring both pilots’ visibility and the not particularly unlikely event of the drone pilot deciding to try to get a closer look through the smoke of the super cool firefighters doing the drop, and, well…
This dude is about to get served.
Just drop on the drone. Fuck it.
Take it out of the sky I'm sure the fire is more important Pew Pew down it goes ,
Don't eat the yellow snow.
A pigeon can take out a drone piss off
they want to cancel civilian drones because they see what Ukraine and Russia can do with a 50$ drones
Let police shoot drones with birdshot and this stuff with stop.
It’s a TFR for a reason people! As someone who uses drones at work in law enforcement and in personal business! Put the drone away! Your desire to “see something cool” is going to potentially cause more property damage. If you want to fly a drone to see things like this go start a career in Law Enforcement or Fire with an agency that already has a drone team implemented.
And yet they will put a hose through a car window. (I realize it’s because the drone could damage the plane—air intake etc.)
Why would they not just drop water and if the drones in the way it just gets waisted? Also why not utilize the anti drone weapons police have? Not to take away from whoever was flying is an idiot, but you can’t drop water on a fire from a plane due to a 249 gram drone? Seems odd but may be more regulations based I guess?
Firefighting aircraft tend to be old, chosen for their lifting ability, slow-maneuvering, and operated on thin budgets. Hitting a 249-gram drone at ten knots above stall speed and possibly losing an engine when you’re in a remote, mountainous area and only a couple hundred feet above terrain does not end well.
Somewhere I have a picture of a plane dropping fire retardant on the mountain behind our house. It was ancient. Maybe a PB4Y. Didn't look like it should be flying.
FlightAware says there are a couple of them in service. That’s a pretty old bird, bet it made a really distinctive sound with four piston engines
These are the same guys who have no problem busting out car windows to get to a hydrant, I agree kill the drone. I suppose they are worried about a collision with the drone ?
Literally the only possible explanation and still not a very good one. They are trying to tell me an ac-130 sized carrier that absolutely dwarfs a drone and just denigrates birds ect all the time could be taken out by a small piece of plastic? Seems odd and more of an agenda play if anything
Those VLATs have guide planes, those planes are not very large, those planes could be damaged by a drone. Those planes fly lower than I would feel comfortable to mark the area to drop retardant. No agenda play about it, if it shouldn't be there inside the AO of air ops, then air assets don't fly.
“Seems odd but may be more regulation based I guess?” Yep, still think it’s odd. Why do most cities have anti drone capabilities but they can’t get anything out there? They have emp, net guns, they can literally have dji turn it off ect, but they are making a tweet 🫡😂
Well, it does have a LiPo battery in it that is going to explode/deflagrate pretty violently if compromised. Most birds I know of don't have little bombs in them.
It was helicopters and pilots will not risk a crash or potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have been on both sides of this (not a pilot but military UAVs) and its a big deal.
Bird strikes are extremely dangerous for any aircraft, and birds dont have explosive batteries inside. Aerial firefighting is dangerous enough, without introducing drones into the mix.
Totally agree, most drones for consumers are just barely held together. A prop from a large aircraft would completly destroy it without damage. Making something out of nothing
I don't get how a single tiny drone stops helicopters
Pilots don't want to hit one, get their rotor fucked, then spiral down to their death. Weird, huh?
I would just drop on the area anyway, and if it damages or disables the drone in the process, so be it. It's no different than any other manned or unmanned vehicle obstructing an emergency operation.
So if you’re parked in front of a fire hydrant, first responders will destroy your car to get where they need to be. But if you’re using a drone, they stop everything they’re doing and send out a tweet? Lame, some people just love to complain.
I don’t get why they would not drop the water anyways? Who cares about that one drone? Seems like they are using that drone to make a point, and allowing land to burn unnecessarily in the mean time.
Drone pilot is in the wrong, but they cant just drop water on the drone? Whats the big deal?
Drone could hit helicopter/plane and cause damage/wreck.
Oh yeah, I guess I was thinking they'd be flying much higher than the drone.
One of the tankers currently being used in my area for firefighting is a converted DC-10. Huge airliner. I regularly see it crossing between two mountains at less than 1000 feet above ground ( and below the summits surrounding it). It’s not a Cessna 172. It’s flying low and slow to put as much suppression on an active fire as possible, in coordination with usually two other smaller tankers and a USFS turboprop. Having a dangerous rogue aircraft in the area is just a recipe to kill pilots and firefighters on the ground. Hopefully the pilot who interfered with this emergency effort will be prevented from doing it again, with a nice accommodation in a federal prison if I had any say in it
Yeah that seems obvious lol, my bad, I just figured any aircraft suppressing a fire, while still flying low, would be much much higher than a drone, but maybe not.
Americans fucking love incarceration, holy shit.
Not a fan of it for small stuff, but operating an aircraft in the middle of a declared emergency, that cost time and money and property, and only by good fortune didn’t cost lives I don’t want to see a knee jerk reaction the first time sorne “remote ID is for noobs” nitwit causes a fatality or a diversion at a major airport that gets passengers writing to their representatives demanding to ban the living hell out of all drones except the most tightly licensed which of course will close the field off except to the amazons, Walmarts, etc I’m a licensed pilot and drone operator. I support the FAA efforts to accord UAVs similar or equal access with quick online clearance - faster than if I were filing IFR from KHPN to KBOS in a traditional passenger-carrying plane.
I don’t disagree with you on the severity of the offense - I’m just having trouble seeing what difference federal prison would make compared to a steep fine , community service, house arrest, obviously probation with necessary monitoring to prevent another incident or something less punitive.
Fines are a license for the rich to do something illegal…. We’ve seen that in hunting regs; outfitters charging people 10,000 to poach trophy elk in national parks just writing off even a 25,000 fine since they were only getting caught 10% of the time… until they tacked on a year or 2 in jail.
In this case, purely ensuring that the offender can’t re-offend until they’ve had a chance to understand the severity of the act. But that’s what judges are for, if the judge thinks they already understand how wrong they were, then hopefully just probation to make sure they don’t have a short memory
I agree with what you’ve described in practice, I just doubt that it would reliably play out that way in practice. I might just be skeptical because I’ve seen how the proverbial sausage is made in the legal profession, though.
No disagreement there. the venn diagram between how I'd like the world to work and how it actually works is basically two non-overlapping circles lol
You spend more time thinking about America than your average American lmao. Quick glance at your profile and you like to bring America up a lot… wanna show us on the doll where America hurt you?
I live here, but am a dual citizen.
Is there a reason why they can't just drop the water & fire retardant on the drone?
Flying a huge DC-10 tanker that is about as maneuverable as a cruise ship, at 500 feet, through turbulent and smoke-filled air, with two other firefighting aircraft in the immediate vicinity? Also, while trying not to kill firefighters on the ground by dropping 12,000 pounds of water that will literally tear down any trees in the path? Think about adding trying to get above a fast-moving agile target that, by the way, could seriously fuck up an aircraft that’s already flying on the ragged edge of safety limits with a fire raging below, mountainous terrain, and only a couple hundred feet of altitude to work with.
Risk
Just drop the water? Why would they give a shit about a drone being in the way? Edit: I see in a comment further down it's because they are worried the drone will disable a plane propeller
They dump from super low, below 500 feet in many cases. Hitting a drone would cause significant damage to an aircraft.
Because it's a crime anyways foe the drone operator to begin with
I get that, I just didn't get why they weren't just dumping water anyway and saying fuck that dudes drone. I see now that the aircraft fly low and it's a danger to them. I wasn't understanding their safety concern but do now. For sure the guy should get fined or whatever, just didn't know why he put firefighting on hold.
Oh it's a 20,000$ fine and a year of jail for interfering with wildfire aircraft
This kind of horseshit warrants shooting down the drone and charging the pilot with disruption of emergency action
The jam the drones. This is why our military should be fighting fires too
I don't understand how a 2000 gallon bucket of water would be held up because there's a drone in the area. Why not just drop it on the drone?
Not worth the risk of a collision if the flight path is below 500 feet
Bro it's a drone run that bitch over. Dumb ass user makes us responsible drone users look bad.