Forgot to post this the other day... Had a bit of a surprise on the ATIS coming back into Gatwick last week:
Just for the record, in case the naughty wotsit does read this - 4,000ft over Horsham is a really bad idea... Especially so when 08R is in use as a lot of planes will be descending past Horsham before turning base for a 3,000ft intercept. Basically a bad idea at all times though, just especially so with 08!
12,500 (if accurate) anywhere other than the Texan desert is pretty daft too, but in London TMA takes on a whole new level of stupid.
Play safe out there chaps!
12,500 feet? I'm not buying that!
I call Cow poo poo!
1.2km up... that's fairly high to be fair. Not sure I'm aware of anyone on here that does that kind of altitude, I think most of us are after a good video signal as low down as we can get it, even the long range nutters tend to stay below a few hundred metres.
as for 3.8km up.... not sure I'm having that... got to be another explaination, can't be one of us.
In all honestly though... I'm getting fed up of these sightings being labelled as "drones". Before "drones" became flavour of the month with the media, pilots used to just report similar sightings as UFOs (that's the literal meaning Unknown Flying Object, yet another phrase that's come to mean something else entirely). But now people are aware these things exist, they're just assuming that's what they are.
Meh, it's just terminology at the end of the day... Besides, technically they called them "dron"s lol. If you want to get really pedantic, they have technically been identified as drones too so "UFO" doesn't really apply if you want to be rigid with your definitions.
It doesn't really bother me whether you call it a UFO, a flying lawnmower or a drone, but for the record that's the first time I've personally seen a report like that in an ATIS in 7 years of commercial flying so I wouldn't go around saying that pilots are just throwing out the "drone" sightings willy nilly.
Conversely you will quite (relatively speaking at least) often hear a controller saying that they have unidentified traffic at xx location, which I guess you could call a UFO (just watch out for Mulder).
I remember a few years back we even had to hold because a hot air balloon was drifting through gatwick's approach.... No one called that a drone ;)
Anyway, point is I think it's a bit head in the sand to assume pilots are just shouting "drooooooonnnnzzzz" the moment they see something out the window. Fact is there are plenty of SUAV/Drones/Drons/UFOs out there in the hands of people that either don't care (case in point - muppets with laser pointers that revel in trying to blind pilots) or don't realise that they are doing something dangerous or ill advised.
Yeah, I think the coincidence is less to do with the media and more to do with that you can pick them up at maplin. When the sun goes down they put the drone away and break out the laser - I got zapped the other evening.
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I like to think that there's a special place in hell for people that think it's a great idea to shine a laser at air traffic.... I read with great satisfaction today about the chap getting a jail sentence for endangering a police heli because he got bored of annoying his cat with his fancy new laser and decided to try to blind a pilot instead.
Quote from: Zeeflyboy on February 20, 2016, 03:44:19 PMI think it's a bit head in the sand to assume pilots are just shouting "drooooooonnnnzzzz" the moment they see something out the window
When you see something your brain tries to identify it, in order to make sense of it. Quite often, your brain will fill in the gaps that your eyes aren't giving you the information for.... for example... has anyone stared at a patterned wallpaper or carpet and "seen" faces in the randomness? I'm guessing yes, but you didn't really SEE a face, your eyes saw randomness and your BRAIN attempted to make sense of it.
I'm not saying pilots are lying, I'm just saying that what the eyes of a pilot may actually see, may not be what the pilot's brain tells him is there. Especially if it's something that either 1) shouldn't be there, or 2) is highly unlikely to be there.
You're pootling along at approach airspeed and see something you don't expect to see... maybe sunlight glares off it, maybe you see some kind of colour, perhaps you saw what looked like lights, or the blur of spinning props. You're brain is aware of this latest craze of multirotors or "drones" and it's in the media and even your own organisation's publications that there have been reports of near misses attributed to such objects... your brain fills in the gaps that your eyes didn't tell you and you report it as a "drone" because that's the most likely explanation. Whereas what you should have reported was an unknown object at X altitude at a bearing of Y from your aircraft.
It's entirely feasible, without having to stretch your imagination.
Quote from: Zeeflyboy on February 20, 2016, 03:55:28 PM
I like to think that there's a special place in hell for people that think it's a great idea to shine a laser at air traffic
agreed, this is deliberate endangerment of human life.
some guy ignorantly flying his newly bought maplin special quad down the park, just a few km from an airport is just stupidity and lack of common sense more than anything else.
I understand your reasoning blue, but drones actually aren't that hot a topic on the flightdeck. In your example, guys are less likely to say 'drone' and more likely say 'bird'.
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In all honestly, that's really good to hear. But I guess it only takes one or two to be reported as "drones" for the media to get hold of it and make it an easy story...
I read a fair bunch of the airprox reports of 2015 attributed to "drones". In one of them, the pilot reported an object several hundred metres away, said it was roughly 18 inches across, white with red markings, balloon shaped with 4 coke can sized objects at each corner.
1) how can anyone approximate the size of something that is several hundred metres away, without something else to compare for scale? (i.e. other objects of known size nearby)
2) similarly, how can anyone approximate the distance away something is without knowing what it is in order to compare for scale? (i.e. one could approximate the distance from ones self to a car, because we have a rough idea of how big a car is supposed to look at differing distances)
I think my real question is this (aimed at you full size aviation pilots) what exactly are you basing your distance/size approximations on? (honest question, I'd really like to know, not trolling you I promise)
the above object could have been much bigger but a lot further away... conversely it could have been smaller but closer? do you see my point? how can a pilot say something he's seen out the window is "roughly 18 inches across" (which evidently is the size of a 450 quad lol)
back on topic (sorry)
In summary, I think the first one could definitely have been either a dickhead with a DJI Phantom or an FPVer with a skywalker or similar
The second one... flying that high up in this hobby is reserved to a very few individuals, so in my opinion LESS likely to be FPV or quadcopter related.
Quote from: elmattbo on February 20, 2016, 04:09:11 PM
I understand your reasoning blue, but drones actually aren't that hot a topic on the flightdeck. In your example, guys are less likely to say 'drone' and more likely say 'bird'.
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Totally agree!
I did have to mention drones as a threat in the approach brief though (tongue in cheek ;) )
Blue - Scale is certainly tricky at long distances, although may I suggest that you are thinking too.... Two dimensionally.
In a dynamic environment where things are moving relative to each other and to the ground it becomes much easier to determine how far away something is. Certainly I could tell you for example whether a bird several hundred meters away was a large bird or a small bird, probably even have a fair guess at its wing span if asked and that is not because I am an expert ornithologist.
There is a tendency on the websites I frequent as part of the hobby to be overly dismissive of pilot reports and say how could they spot this, how could they determine that etc etc.
Simple fact is that given my own experiences and knowledge, I can hand on heart say that all of my fine colleagues are more than capable of calling a bird a bird, a flying saucer a flying saucer, and a small unmanned aerial vehicle a drone with what I would estimate a very high level of reliability.
Conversely I can also happily say that as Matt posts out, it's really not a hot topic "on the line" and I've not yet had the pleasure of flying with anyone that is living in fear of a drone strike shuffling them off this mortal coil.
Spot on Zee. Funnily enough I was thinking the same, it's not the size of an object that tells you how far away it is, it's the relative speed to you.
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1 drone pilot
1 full size pilot
300 self-loading cargo ;)
1. Media gets wind of a possible sighting of a drone by a pilot ... attempts to create event that will sell a newspaper to the 300 people who were "endangered" along with other minions in society.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Case closed.
Totally off topic:
Glad to see youre still about Zee. How is the scale build going? Juan must be looking to be reassigned by now. ;D
Quote from: Ratty on February 20, 2016, 06:29:41 PM
Totally off topic:
Glad to see you're still about Zee. How is the scale build going? Juan must be looking to be reassigned by now. ;D
+ 1
PS On topic - I once got caught short while driving past Gatwick in the middle of the night. Is that being naughty enough?
:laugh:
I only have 100 hours, 75 of which are PIC in GA. I haven't come across any drones, but plenty of birds!
But to read a pre-flight like that is pretty interesting and not something they'd have done lightly.
As a matter of interest I wonder what the public opinion would be with a glider landing in a field came into conflict with a drone. Both would have the same right to be there...
Haha, work totally stopped on the AH-6 :(
Good news is my new workshop is very nearly done (just a few finishing jobs to do like shelves and drawers) and then I have a proper place to work on my projects.
Wgt - yes, definitely naughty enough.
Hmmm.
Whats to not say someone went to maplins.
Someone brought a UFO (Unmanned flying object)
Put battery in
Pushed throttle to max
Stood there and watched it go whosssssssshhhhhhhhhh out of sight lol.
That's how it got to 12500ft then battery died and it dropped like a stone.
I say that because someone I know once done the same when teaching himself to fly a heli in the local park.
I'm still not sure how I kept a straight face when he said "Even the little kids couldn't see it"
Bearing in mind said person was in he's 60's maybe 70's
is a quad actually able to get to 12500 feet?
I would imagine that any prop and motor combination which is suitable at sea level would be severely underpowered at that kind of altitude- regardless of how many massive batteries they stuck to it.
the 1.2km I can believe. Although how a plane sees this at 200mph (assuming it's approaching landing speed, not its 450mph cruise speed) I don't know.
Regardless- I still think it's a hot topic. If the off the shelf guys made firmware updates mandatory it would stop most of these issues.