'DJI Mavic' drone seen menacing London City airliner after takeoff

Re: Idiots

They should make it a legal requirement that all drones broadcast their serial number. Equipment to record that would be relatively cheap and with a sensitive antenna could easily pick up everything near an airport.

Re: Idiots

An interesting question this raises regarding the time taken to descend from altitude is the time and energy required to climb that high. It's going to take at least a couple of minutes to get that high. At 900 meters altitude (3000 feet approx) you'll be near the limits of most radio control systems even assuming you are stood relatively nearby almost directly beneath. Once at altitude and after allowing for 2 mins climb and 8 mins descent time you will have very little flying time in which to do much flying around.

I have to wonder if this was a 'flyaway' and whether or not the pilot successfully recovered his drone afterwards.

Re: Idiots

They can descend close to terminal velocity if you're not careful. While tuning my home-build quadcopter I wanted to get it on the ground quickly, and just started descending. It started to look like it was simply dropping with a loud buzzing noise and my helicopter aerodynamics lecturer sprang to mind "shit - vortex ring".

Fortunately I had enough time to increase thrust and managed to fly it out of it's own downwash. From then on I learned to descend in a nice coordinated spiral.

Re: Idiots

> We don't need new laws for this: we just need to enforce the existing ones.

Absolutely correct.

> Quadcopters can't descend fast in a controlled way - the descent time from 3,000ft would typically be over 8 minutes.

> It's going to take at least a couple of minutes to get that high. At 900 meters altitude (3000 feet approx) ... ... Once at altitude and after allowing for 2 mins climb and 8 mins descent time you will have very little flying time in which to do much flying around.

Somewhat true, the Mavic Pro can ascend at a max rate of 5 m/s and descend at 3 m/s, this is limited in the firmware to help prevent VRS, it still gets a bit wobbly but the flight controller handles it well. So, with those figures in mind, it would take 3 minutes to reach 900m and 5 minutes to descend. It has a MAX flight time of 27 minutes, so once at altitude, it could fly for 10-15 minutes with ease, assuming there isn't too much wind.

> you'll be near the limits of most radio control systems even assuming you are stood relatively nearby almost directly beneath.

Not at all. The radio range on the Mavic is insane. I have experience with 2.4Ghz control link systems and UHF (493 Mhz) and the Mavic is somewhere in between.

> I have to wonder if this was a 'flyaway' and whether or not the pilot successfully recovered his drone afterwards.

That would be interesting to find out, but we never will.

Re: Ban the lot of them

Ban the use of drones entirely? Somewhat reactionary, no?

Re: Ban the lot of them

I'm not surprised you're anonymous with such a stupid statement. Why is "ban it" peoples first response to everything !!!

Re: Ban the lot of them

Why not ban planes? 100% effective against plane crashes.

Re: Ban the lot of them

It would be safer to ban Boeing.

Yes, but the damage will be costly to repair and disruptive to passengers. Pieces of debris falling from that height could be deadly, particularly over a populated area. Existing laws to ensure the safe separation of drones and people / aircraft need to be followed. No drone being operated within the current law should present a danger to anyone.

Re: Meh, the risk to planes from drone strikes is overblown. El Reg already told us so.

Are these the same people who estimated that there would be an incident leading to a loss of a Space Shuttle once every 100,000 flights?

Re: Meh, the risk to planes from drone strikes is overblown. El Reg already told us so.

""We estimate that 6.12 x 10−6 collisions will cause damage to an aircraft for every 100,000 hours of 2kg UAS flight time. Or to put it another way, one damaging incident will occur no more than every 1.87 million years of 2kg UAS flight time," the authors note."

That is an *estimate*, and the error bar on it is huge. Studies are ongoing regarding the probability and effects of drone strikes, and that particular study is definitely not the final word.

Re: That is dangerous.

If they'd turned slightly earlier the outcome would have been very different.

Why would you assume that?

Hint: Aircraft are not as fragile as you think they are.

Re: That is dangerous.

So 33m difference while flying probably at 250knots and going up at 200fpm at least, probably much more.

It is very difficult to judge that distance in my opinion. And the drone described is less than a kilo.. but the drone described CAN pull that.. it does a theoretical 984fpm, so as others have pointed out, three minutes to go up, about five to go down.. and 16 more to fly at most.

I agree in the principle of registered drones, so the idiots amongst us dont do these things, but please dont panic... the damage to the plane would be minimal, and birds continue to be a way greater risk.

And correctly identify it as one of the models that has reasonably working geofencing?

Me thinks El Reg is being a little hard in DJI in this case.

'and pilot/observer was able to spot grey drone, 30cm in size, while travelling +300km/h ?'

Why not? It does require you to be looking in the right direction but it's not impossible, you'd only see it for a split second but depending on the circumstances that's all you need. Obviously you're not always going to see something that size but I don't think you can dismiss it out of hand, it's analogous to seeing a shoe by the side of the motorway while travelling at <cough>70</cough> because your eyes happen to be looking just the right way as you go past.

and pilot/observer was able to spot grey drone, 30cm in size, while travelling +300km/h ?

As it so happens, visual acuity is a job requirement for a pilot. The whole reason that flying is in general safe is that there are multiple layers of protection, and no instrument can quite replace ye olde Mark I eyeballs.

So yes, I think it's credible. As for the exact identification, there's no reason pilots should be assumed to be ignorant of drones - maybe he/she even owned one too.