Drones and light aircraft

[berkshire]

This film footage showed up today , It vaugly suggests that designers might look at putting stronger/Heavier leading edges on.

https://udayton.edu/blogs/udri/18-09-13-risk-in-the-sky.php

B.E.


You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[3DDave]

UAV vs manned aircraft collisions are certainly a possibility, but it's mostly a worthless endeavor to deal with them.

I think the real answer is for the FAA, and similar orgs, to mandate carrying of transmitters on all aircraft that communicate the location and speed of the air vehicle, and receivers for their broadcasts on all aircraft. However, this means spending money, which the manned aircraft industry is loath to do.

It's not as if there aren't a large number of cases of manned aircraft slamming into each other, even on the ground, and it tires me seeing UAVs as if they are a primary problem while doing nothing about the general case which had yielded so many fatalities.

So far there is one collision with a copter to point to. In the mean time there are dozens of collisions with birds and dozens of collisions between aircraft and cases where aircraft have plummeted into densely populated areas due entirely to pilot error, yet pilots commenting on UAVs project as if they are flooding the skies like aerial explosive mines, to the point of reporting party balloons and shopping bags and even geese as 'drones.' Some even blamed a drone when a helicopter pilot trainee backed his chopper into trees - apparently the threat posed by a two pound drone is greater to a helicopter than a 2000 pound tree.

At this point it is the same sort of research that goes into replacing chain drives on bicycles; funded by people who think there must be something done in spite of all evidence that there is no need for that particular change. Want to go faster? Add a motor.

Want to avoid devastating collision damage? Avoid collisions.

In the meantime I wonder how horrific it will be when a high-speed military helo takes out a powered parachute operator.

 

[berkshire]

3D dave,
Well you are cheery tonight.
The one thing I got out of this, was that bird strikes tended to mess up the leading edges then the bird disintegrated into mush.
The Drone did more internal damage. I did a canopy repair on a glider some years ago where the pilot had a close encounter of the wrong kind with a turkey vulture. Apart from blood and feathers all over the pilot and a broken canopy , no real harm done. It looks like from this report that a similar collision with a drone would do more damage because the drone stays together.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[3DDave]

Bitter, just very bitter. Frankly winglets have been more damaging to aviation than non-weaponized drones are likely to ever be, but even though they do damage there's no anti-winglet frenzy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_Aéreos_Flight_1907

,not to mention the nearly once a month story about some wing or tail taking it from a scimitar during ground handling.

The case against drones is simple - create new laws, incarcerate more people, and not make a bit of difference to flight safety, because it makes pilots feel good to see someone punished for what someone else might do and lets legislators put another fraudulent feather in their caps.

 

[berkshire]

They can also be the victim Dave,
I had a Varieze that was minding its own business on an airport tiedown, in Alabama, when a king air taxied by, and over, its wing removing one of its winglets.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[GregLocock]

"At this point it is the same sort of research that goes into replacing chain drives on bicycles; funded by people who think there must be something done in spite of all evidence that there is no need for that particular change. "

Yup.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[WKTaylor]

Let me lead with this 'old True story'...

Scientists at NASA have developed a gun built specifically to launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.

British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made. But when the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof windshield and smashed it to smithereens, crashed through the control console, snapped the engineer's backrest in two and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin.

Horrified, Britons sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield, and begged the US scientists for suggestions.

NASA's response was just one sentence: "Thaw the chicken."
--------
Frozen chickens and hard-bodied objects have one thing in common... little/no deformation to absorb/spread energy on impact.

Heavy warm-bodied birds inhabit the skies... along with chickens in Far Side cartoons[?]... Which represent a known real and serious threat to aircraft structures/systems, life and limb. We have all seen the photos of bird impacts on radomes, leading edges and windshields.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHRDFoZibK8

NOW, light weight small toy and hobbyist UAVs probably represent no major threat to aviation in-general... except for, maybe, ultralight aircraft and helicopters, parachutists/paragliders and anyone in an open cockpit aircraft.

BUT the size weight/density and of UAVs is growing higher and higher by the day...

Drone Crashes During World Cup Race in Italy just behind a down hill skier during an event... the UAV is a comparative monster... relative to a 'camera equipped Parrot drone' 'Toy'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPd7H0912Us

The obvious element is that fragile humans inhabit aircraft... where non-aviator 'computer-gamer' types... who barely understand their UAVs... much-less understand the catastrophic implications of collisions and/or the distraction the vehicles cause... are beginning to fly in the same airspace as humans that can die. See-and-avoid is the general 'law of the air'... but what about out-a-bounds UAVs? WHEN COLLISIONS HAPPEN, THEN WHAT ARE THE MORAL, ETHICAL AND LEGAL IMPLICATIONS?

Here is another old aviation wisdom... that I have slightly altered for this topic...

Who dies if the aircrew screws-up? The crew and passengers.
Who dies if the mechanic screws-up? The crew and passengers.
Who dies if ATC screws-up? The crew and passengers.
Who dies if the weather forecasters screw-up? The crew and passengers.
Who dies in aircraft-to-aircraft mid-air collisions? BOTH crews and passengers.
Who dies if a aircraft collides with a UAV? The crew and passengers.

NOTE.
I was flying over the smoggy LA Basin in the summer of 1980 at ~7500' in a Piper 'Tomahatchet'. Not much to see except for an occasional airliner or GA acft popping-up thru the top of the smog... no problem, I was clear-of commercial flight-paths and had smooth-air and great visibility over-the-smog-gunk. Then I flew past an enormous [smallish] silver balloon with mickey mouse ears just to the right-side of the cockpit... startled the daylights out of me. I saw that balloon for many months to come in my subconscious... especially during pre-flights.

Regards, Wil Taylor

o Trust - But Verify!
o We believe to be true what we prefer to be true. [Unknown]
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation,Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", Homebuiltairplanes.com forum]

 

[3DDave]

At least there is some move to ADS-B, but the FAA requires they can only be used when permanently affixed to an aircraft so even though I expect a small version could be placed on a drone to broadcast the position information, the FAA refuses to allow that. Even so, the FAA refuses to force 100% of manned aircraft to carry an operational ADS-B transmitter, so even if a drone operator put a receiver on their drone with software to dodge manned aircraft, there's high uncertainty that it would make any difference.

The FAA continues to push for penalties that are applied -after- a problem has occurred instead of heading them off to begin with. They did this for cockpit doors until 9-11, where a long known vulnerability to having the wrong people in the cockpit was not addressed. I guess they thought that charging people with trespassing was a suitable response. Of all the agencies in the US Government I hold the highest responsibility for not intervening in a way that might have prevented those thousands of deaths, the FAA is it.

As it is most small manned aircraft operate at significant risk without any outsiders required. They are used for hobby and vanity and their practical requirements are rapidly vanishing. For example, there was no need to fly a touring helicopter over the Hudson, but they still managed to drown a bunch of passengers (crew/pilot survived) in an aircraft not equipped to land where a significant portion of their flight operated. And why did it crash? Because the company failed to isolate the passengers from the controls and the pilot failed to understand why he lost power even though the most obvious reason was beside him.

The only reason there is discussion on this is that a lot of money is tied to small manned planes by people who have the money to buy and operate them. Money that allowed a guy to crash a twin prop job and then buy a small twin jet and crash it at the same airport for nearly the same reason - the second time he killed not only himself, but also burned a woman and her terrified children to death as they sought to avoid the flames engulfing their house.

So add to the list - people on the ground die when the aircrew screws up.

 

[dgapilot]

3DDave, you do realize that perhaps as much as 20 to 30% of general aviation aircraft don't have an electrical system. No power to supply ADSb, not enough usefull load to carry additional equipment. It really doesn't come down to money as the cost of ADSb out equipment is coming down. It has more to do with the ability to power it, and the lack of weight carrying capability.

 

[3DDave]

dgapilot - If they cannot fly safely I don't care why. If drones can carry ADS-B, so can anything that can carry a person. Nothing prevents adding a battery. The only limit is a lack of willingness to spend the money and an FAA that demands they be permanently, structurally mounted for no reason.