My girlfriend just read in Slovak news about experiment in Wales. I think in Snowdonia it will happen. There is a link from slowak news in slowak language. Maybe somebody want to translate or try to find information in English language.
http://m.zive.cz/britanie-chysta-netradicni-experiment-bude-narazet-drony-do-dopravnich-letadel-za-letu/a-184611 (http://m.zive.cz/britanie-chysta-netradicni-experiment-bude-narazet-drony-do-dopravnich-letadel-za-letu/a-184611)
From Google Translation
Britain prepares unusual experiment. Will drones crashing into the aircraft. In flight!
18. 10. 2016 | Jakub Cizek | 14
British skies by the local National Air Traffic Service crossed two million drones and other unmanned aerial vehicles. The government therefore decided to leave in a QinetiQ company requested a study, within which wants to learn what happens when they collide with kvadroptéra airliner.
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Heathrow Airport (Photo: Konstantin Von Wedelstaedt, GPL 1.2)
It will not go on any simulations yet, but a real collision during flight at low altitudes. Everything takes place in the Welsh Snowdonia, where there is a military no-fly an area of nearly 13,000 kilometers square. I will therefore be to experiment with QinetiQ addition to the Ministry of Transport also work the Ministry of Defence.
The tests are in place, the British authorities had increasingly faced with unruly majitelidronů who, with their planes flying in restricted areas near airports including Heathrow overcrowded, where the tarmac just last week approached, but two drones. The airport will therefore calling for much tougher penalties for such sinners.
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Thing is though, there are any number of things that can happen during a collision depending on where the hit occurs, what angle a component is at etc.
They're gonna need quite a few experiments to cover all possibilities - and that's if they can even get each one right. We're talking collision accuracy down to the millimetre here, which is usually only possible in a controlled environment .. not crashing a speeding aircraft into a wobbly quadcopter in the middle of a windy mountain range...
I wonder how much point there is to this...
Plus I think it'll be more the planes crashing into the quads than the other way around :D
In the other article about drone crash testing didn't they specifically deny earlier reports that the testing would take place in the air? This article is probably referring to one of those earlier reports.
I can resist chucking my 2 pennies worth of thoughts :-)
Back in the 35mhz days i lived very near a Military Range, when i moved there i asked them if they could let me know days they were flying as it would allow me to fly my RC aircraft if nothing was in the air...
I was staggered when they said "All our equipment can cope with a bird strike so your toy airplane will not be a problem"
The only time i wasn't allowed to fly was when they were filming the Top Gear Episode when they were trying to make a reusable reliant robin space shuttle :-)
A fellow RC'r and i would fly at each other's flying fields, we would spot for each other, at his site he would say "2 people jogging towards us from the right"... at my flying site i would say "Apache Helicopter Flying Down the Valley @ 100 feet" followed by Go Up or Down.
I think we all know that even a small RC aircraft/quad could take down a full size civilian aircraft, it doesn't have to be a passenger airliner carrying 300+ people, a small Cessna or Piper could suffer catastrophic airframe failure hitting a large bird of RPV. A bird has natures right to be there... A RPV has Non.
The reason why they wish to do these test are because some RC enthusiasts fly in areas that are not suitable, where i live now is just outside of Class D airspace but very aware that other aircraft can/do and will infringe the low level altitude limit, a local hospital (4miles away) has a helicopter pad.
When i am flying FPV my ears are on full alert and the slightest noise of a jet engine or heli blades makes me land instantly, i for one don't want to lose my right to fly.
Regards RBS
Quote from: RayBlueSky on October 20, 2016, 12:31:32 PM
I think we all know that even a small RC aircraft/quad could take down a full size civilian aircraft,
Well no, we don't know that. And by their own admission neither do the authorities which is why they are conducting these tests. Whatever the result it is obviously best to avoid any possibility of a collision but knowledge of the actual level of risk has not yet been properly determined.
Quote from: RayBlueSky on October 20, 2016, 12:31:32 PM
The reason why they wish to do these test are because some RC enthusiasts fly in areas that are not suitable, where i live now is just outside of Class D airspace but very aware that other aircraft can/do and will infringe the low level altitude limit, a local hospital (4miles away) has a helicopter pad.
When i am flying FPV my ears are on full alert and the slightest noise of a jet engine or heli blades makes me land instantly, i for one don't want to lose my right to fly.
Regards RBS
I think its because of the kneejerk reaction to drones being dangerous that these tests are a good idea. A car is way more dangerous with over 1800 deaths per year in the UK, but the risk is deemed acceptable by us all it seems. The taxes raised are also a good reason why one might offer a cynical view on why governments accept such statistics. There have not been any deaths in this country (yet) due to mid air drone strikes and in fact there have been no reported mid air drone strikes in UK airspace.
A recent study based on FAA data suggested that many of the reported "drone" near misses in the US were likely to actually be something else, such as a bird or debris ie. a plastic bag. I think that perhaps "drone" has encompassed anything that we cannot identify rather than officially identifying a mini-aircraft. UFO has taken a back seat and Drone is centre stage!
There were 2467 bird strikes reported in 2013 within CAA regulated UK airspace.
It is such a silly experiment. If a single steel bolt/lipo went through a jet engine, it would likely throw some blades, go out of balance and shut down...a serious emergency... Similarly if the jet hit a bus/mountain with its wingtip, it would likely carry on flying with hardly any variance in flight characteristics. The nature of the strike and its location would 100% create a different outcome 100 times in a row. What will probably happen though is they will fly a drone into a plane, it will crash, they will send the pictures to the press and all FPV activity will be banned except for military applications from the likes of QuintiQ, who unsurprisingly are performing the unbiased and impartial tests... yeah ok.
Quote from: Loopdreams on October 20, 2016, 12:35:21 PM
Well no, we don't know that. And by their own admission neither do the authorities which is why they are conducting these tests. Whatever the result it is obviously best to avoid any possibility of a collision but knowledge of the actual level of risk has not yet been properly determined.
Do they really need to conduct tests to prove this? The opposite of Could is Couldn't
Personally speaking I would not want to be a pilot in an airplane with a 1 kilo quad coming at me at 500 MPH
Best Regards RBS
Quote from: RayBlueSky on October 20, 2016, 12:52:30 PM
Do they really need to conduct tests to prove this? The opposite of Could is Couldn't
Personally speaking I would not want to be a pilot in an airplane with a 1 kilo quad coming at me at 500 MPH
Best Regards RBS
It's vanishingly unlikely that a civilian aircraft is ever going to hit a 1KG quad at 500mph.
It's more to with finding out what happens when the more likely kinds of collisions occur so as to inform the legislation. So finding out what happens if all those airspace conflicts that have been reported had resulted in actual collisions. e.g. a PA 28 on finals sees a small quadcopter. At the moment we don't really know what would happen if the two had collided. If the answer is probably nothing much at all then current legislation is surely adequate. If it's that the PA28 immediately explodes then they should probably just ban all drones right now.
Similarly would a small quad really shut down the turbofan engine of an airliner or would it just end up getting flung out to the edges and then spat out the back? How big would the drone need to be for this not to be the case?
You can't really sensibly legislate to mitigate a risk without first quantifying it in this way. To take another example if you were to proceed on the assumption that any stray golf ball could quite likely kill a bystander stone dead then you might end up banning golf. With no data to go on this wouldn't seem like an unreasonable assumption, a small but weighty 200+mph projectile sounds very dangerous.
However we know from the fact that people get hit by golf balls all the time that most of these collisions result in either none or relatively minor injuries and so most people don't see it as especially hazardous to walk along a path which borders a golf course. And whilst reasonable precautions are taken to prevent accidents from occurring nothing so draconian as banning the sport entirely is necessary.
So yes, I do think some actual testing is very much needed.
Why do they need to do it in the mountains though? For spectacular effect? If so, what's the agenda there - to show people how terrible drones can be? [cut to carnage and flames]
They do bird strike testing by flinging dead birds into engines and wing leading edges on special monitoring rigs so that they can record precision data - NOT by endangering an actual aircraft. I'm curious as to the data they're hoping to collect.. "yes, it crashed" "no it didn't crash but there is a dent", "the cockpit filled with poo"
I don't think they are. I think that the tests are happening on the ground and that this report is wrong.
I'd be inclined to agree - it'd be bizarre for the CAA to approve something like that with all the liability they'd expose themselves to.
This, I very much suspect, is the testing which has already been posted about in another thread.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13314916/drone-crash-airplane-test-uk-dangers (http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13314916/drone-crash-airplane-test-uk-dangers)
Unfortunately it has gone through the Chinese whispers school of journalism. Best read again the Verge article.
It should be possible to,get the info from the caa or EASA via freedom of information act. Thing is I cannot arsed, I can't stop it or influence it in any way, so if it is true, let em do it.
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