Forget the zombie apocalypse, here's the real danger coming: DRONES!

[Rockin Robbins]

Unfortunately, on December 21, all the model airplanes I've flown since the late 70s were instantly transformed into drones by the FAA.

Any eagle that swoops down on my 5' flying wing is in for a rude surprise. A VERY rude surprise as I will have complete freedom of action to outmaneuver him, avoid by simply cranking on 80 mph of straight line speed or turning toward and colliding. The eagle will take the worst of it and I will fly away.

My normal course of action would just be to hit the jets and leave him wondering why some idiot sent him out to catch something that flies much better than he can.

Of course, the idea of what a drone is usually doesn't involve fixed wing radio control planes in most people's minds, in spite of our FAA classification. But you have to wonder why people are all up in arms about the quadcopters. Their maximum duration is usually on the order of ten minutes. Their cameras are wide angle. They make a lot of noise that means that they cannot be used stealthily.

My flying wing has a duration of about a half hour and with larger batteries I could get more like 45 minutes. Gliding silently I can truly be stealthy. My single electric motor is more silent than any quadcopter, even when running. I am still hampered by cameras having too wide a field of view to do any real spying, as if such a thing were even interesting, which it is not.

What you should fear is the new generation of SLR's with 100/1 optical zoom! Put those turkeys on top of a 20' pole and do photography where you can tell the color of someone's eyes at a quarter mile away with unlimited duration, no noise at all! People who are worried about drones need to just get a life.

And the string idea won't work. There is one rule you find out very quickly when flying a radio control airplane. Depth perception isn't. Past about 50' it's about as reliable as betting 00 on a roulette wheel. You can't tell me within a couple hundred feet how far away your plane is. The only rule that works when avoiding obstacles is that if you see blue sky under your plane and over the obstacle you'll most likely miss it.

So it is impossible to entangle the other drone's props with the string. It just can't be done. And why would you spend $500 to dangle a string from a drone?

It occurs to me that proof might be nice. In Utah there is a crazy bunch of fliers from whom I buy my flying wings, CrashTestHobby.com. These batsoid people get 50 people together with their flying wings, take off en-mass and try to knock each other out of the sky. The flier who has the largest number of kills minus deaths wins. Yes, just about every time a plane which has suffered a high G collision and then crashes to the ground is picked up and tossed back into the air with no damage. Here are 50 of them flying simultaneously TRYING to collide. Notice how rare collisions are even then. One quadcopter trying to target another? Forget it.

but RR, unlike your planes, drones have cameras that let you see everything in real time right up to being able to perform intricate tasks and run blind obstacle courses from the onboard eye of the camera through remote viewing.

its like a video game and yes you can have the control you need to run into other drones or carry twine into them to tangle the propellers.

its very possible and can be done quite easily if one were so inclined to is all im saying

[Rockin Robbins]

Cameras are not all they're cracked up to be. These guys also have FPV wings that they fly to try to collide. That is even more difficult to do than controlling from ground view. You have no depth perception and in order to get enough wide-view to be useful you introduce a lot of field curvature.

Let me hunt down . Frankly, you can't see squat, even with a 90º field of view. Those guys piloting with Mark I eyeballs stuck on the ground have it all over you flying with a camera. Remember this is 58 independently piloted planes TRYING to hit one another.

The mythology of drones is totally at odds with their true characteristics.

[Wolferz]

These guys just blew holes in a couple of the presented drone defense strategies....
http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/wonde...cid=spartandhp

[Platapus]

I feel that the difference between RC aircraft and Drone operators is that

1. RC operators have a reputation (deserved or undeserved) for self policing and responsible operations

2. Drone operators have a reputation (deserved or undeserved) for not self policing and irresponsible operations

I think the best thing the RC community could do is distance themselves far away from the drone community.

[August]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

The mythology of drones is totally at odds with their true characteristics.

At present that's true but it will change as the technology improves. Drones are going to get quieter, smaller, easier, faster, they will fly longer and they'll work out that depth perception problem too.

[Mr Quatro]

Warning for drone pilots

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...203-story.html


32-mile-wide 'No Drone Zone' surrounds Super Bowl 50 site on Sunday

Starting at 2 p.m. and lasting until 11:59 p.m. Sunday, the FAA has issued a temporary flight restriction for most aircraft -- including drones -- in a 32-mile radius around the stadium south of San Francisco.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by August

At present that's true but it will change as the technology improves. Drones are going to get quieter, smaller, easier, faster, they will fly longer and they'll work out that depth perception problem too.

Drones, as the public thinks of them, are multicopters. Now multicopters have a minimum of three motors and three props. Most have between four and eight motors and propellers. And that's where the problem comes in.

Most drones have a duration under ten minutes. As they get faster, their payload capacity gets greater they have to consume more power, which automatically lowers duration. So faster and more duration are mutually exclusive. Pick one please.

Also smaller and faster are mutually exclusive. To go faster or get more duration you need more power, which means heavier batteries, which automatically scales the multicopter up, not down.

Then noise and speed are mutually exclusive. Since with a multicopter of given size there is a limit on the size propeller you can use, the only way to go faster is to spin that propeller even faster than the 20,000 RPM or so that they already rotate. At speeds over 6,000 RPM propellers get very noisy, MUCH noisier than the motors which power them. In fact, just about all the videos you see of multicopters are without real sound. These guys are VERY noisy and stealth is not on the menu when you use a multicopter.

Let's give a concrete example. Here is a flying wing with just one motor and one propeller travelling at about 100 mph. That means it has a duration under five minutes (even with one motor and much more cargo carrying capacity than a multicopter!). Watch and reflect on how stealthy this is.

It's Dr Bob with his SweepWings Behemoth, about the same size as my Grim Reaper. As a matter of fact the plane that flies with him in the latter part of the video is a Grim Reaper. This guy is an amazing pilot and even with the sound detoxified you can get a feel for just how loud it is. What you are hearing is pure propeller noise. Note the short duration with that kind of power. Also note that this a bigger, and hence quieter rig. Smaller ones are more than twice as loud.


So no, they are not going to get "quieter, smaller, easier, faster, they will fly longer." They will be quieter OR faster, faster OR fly longer, smaller OR faster, smaller OR fly longer, just about all these options are mutually exclusive. In aeronautics you play a zero sum game. Optimizing one characteristic always is deoptimizing other characteristics. When you mix in photographic, navigation and control systems, you get an even toughter deal with the design tradeoffs. You can't have it all.

[Rockin Robbins]

Why would you even THINK about drone danger when there is this:


Drones will never be able to do that. They are difficult to use, too expensive and can't give you photography like this. When you are shooting from half a mile away you are undetectable, can't be shot down and have perfectly steady high resolution video.

Fear something else. Drones aren't worthy of our fear.

[Oberon]

Military drones are good long range observation units, and pretty good anti-ground units, although the cost to target ratio of the average AGM-114 perhaps skews things a little.
If and when the ARSS unit gets going, then it's going to get a lot more cost effective to use a group of drones to quickly neutralise an enemy infantry group rather than expending a Hellfire missile. It will also help to reduce splash damage, which is a good thing in my opinion.

[August]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

When you mix in photographic, navigation and control systems, you get an even toughter deal with the design tradeoffs. You can't have it all.

Well we'll just have to agree to disagree because I think you're severely underestimating the potential for technological advancement. If you look back even the last 10-20 years the tradeoff margins you mention have narrowed considerably already and there is no reason they won't continue to do so.

Regarding drones being defined as multicopters didn't you just say in this thread that the FAA has now defined your RC planes as a drone as well? Apparently their definition is more inclusive than yours.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

My own rule one 1: If I can think of it; some jihadi already has... EDIT: I would imagine or at least hope that all RC frequencies are jammed in Washington DC and around the Superbowl

OOOOOPS I forgot about NYC: AN ISIS target for sure...now that the first two are gone http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/NYC-Man-Arrested-After-Drone-Hits-Empire-State-Building-367766311.html Not the first inadvertent domestic 'terror' attack on this all-American icon 14 killed and a Guinness record set: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-25_Empire_State_Building_crash

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by August

Well we'll just have to agree to disagree because I think you're severely underestimating the potential for technological advancement. If you look back even the last 10-20 years the tradeoff margins you mention have narrowed considerably already and there is no reason they won't continue to do so.

Regarding drones being defined as multicopters didn't you just say in this thread that the FAA has now defined your RC planes as a drone as well? Apparently their definition is more inclusive than yours.

So you don't have anything to say, just a nebulous and indistinct faith that the laws of physics are subject to technological advancement. And I've been clear on the definitions of the word "drone."

How about let's get specific. Tell me how we're going to get smaller, quieter, faster and get more duration at the same time. Tell me how to get more speed and less noise from a smaller diameter propeller.

Time for you to be as specific as I have been. Hint: next I talk about Reynolds Numbers.

[Onkel Neal]

Will ISIS Launch a Mass Drone Attack on a Stadium?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...a-stadium.html

This would be so easy for a terrorist group to pull off.

A team of British intelligence analysts has drawn up a chilling scenario in which terrorists launch a swarm of small drones in an attack on a major sporting event like the Super Bowl, unleashing multiple explosive devices on the crowd in the stadium.

“If we do not act to prevent it, it is only a matter of time,” Chris Abbott, the executive director of a think tank called Open Briefing, told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview.

Abbott’s group, which calls itself “the first civil society intelligence agency,” includes former military specialists and intelligence agency operatives. They have been tracking the development of drones for several years.

What they now see is a cheap and easily accessible technology that is particularly suited to the limited resources and ability of the small, widely dispersed terrorist sleeper cells that are known to exist in Western Europe and the United States—or lone wolves indoctrinated by ISIS or al Qaeda, like the San Bernardino attackers.

The experts believe that ISIS has already recognized the opportunity provided by off-the-shelf drone technology in its planning of attacks on Western cities.

EoE alert

[August]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

So you don't have anything to say, just a nebulous and indistinct faith that the laws of physics are subject to technological advancement. And I've been clear on the definitions of the word "drone."

How about let's get specific. Tell me how we're going to get smaller, quieter, faster and get more duration at the same time. Tell me how to get more speed and less noise from a smaller diameter propeller.

Time for you to be as specific as I have been. Hint: next I talk about Reynolds Numbers.

Sorry I missed this reply but the truth is I don't have to do anything. You can attempt to narrow the definition of drone all you want but time will tell which one of us is correct. I'm content to wait and watch technology advance like I have for the past half century and you've not given me any reason to doubt it will continue.