Comment by Daniel Hibben on October 4, 2011 at 4:24pm

wow i remember that now i feel old

dose any one remember the episode of, i think it was mission impossable, where thy flew a small silver saucer through the ventalator ducts? it had six fans around the edges for lift ( although it was obvously hanging by a wire)

it may have been the mod squad but i think it was mission imposable i don't remember if it blew up or was just spying on them  still i thought is was totally cool

Comment by Paul Marsh on October 4, 2011 at 4:40pm

Nice clip, Gary!  Thanks.  I didn't know you could get badges!  :-(
At the time this show aired I was flying U-control.  I thought a radio controlled plane was just the coolest thing (still do).  I remember I couldn't wait for the rerun, but doubt I ever saw it.

Moderator Comment by Hai Tran on October 5, 2011 at 2:36am

Seriously, you better have knife and fork control, I'm sure someone's be stabbed to death with steak knife or fork.  Could build a catapult and launch IEDs at the pentagon.  How about load a Cessna with C4 and fly it into the pentagon.  Easier than using a model aircraft.

Comment by Brandin Sloms on October 5, 2011 at 11:14am

I think most of us know that a day will come when owning an RC vehicle that flys will not be as simple as we are used to. I can see it being much like owning a car or truck, licenses, vehicle reigistrations yadda yadda and not only that but laws, fines, and government infastructure to enforce all of this. But I think that will be the extent of it. The great part is government is slow, and not likely to spend money until people get hurt, so we do have some time before that day comes. I also think the more we embed ourselves in society the harder it will be to uproot us entirely. IE commercial applications like crop dusters, surveilance, photography etc.

Comment by G Nunez on October 6, 2011 at 7:09am

I think we all should not lose sight of the bigger picture...and that is that there are people out there that seek to harm us and that there are also people trying desperately to prevent that.  We have to be honest with ourselves and accept the fact that this rechnology that we have come to love, can be missued as others have noted in this forum.  I agree with S.G. Sutter: "We should be as open and transparent as possible, showing people all the good things this technology can do."  We should use thi sincident as an opportunity to come together as a community to preserve not just  our freedom to do the things we love and enjoy, but also shoulder the responsibility that comes with that freedom.  How can the community come together and figure out ways to mitigate the legitimate fears and concerns about the accessiblity and uses of UAV technology?  We should help ourselves and those charged with keeping us safe by "self regulation" which could reduce the potential  for further misuse of this technolgy and prohibit knee-jerk reactions from policy makers.  Oveerall, we can be part of the problem or part of the solution...I like having the choice and therefore choose the latter.  Any suggestions/comments? 

Comment by Daniel Hibben on October 6, 2011 at 9:48am

well said G nunez people that want to hurt others are everywhere as are those that would use our UAV's to peep at people if only they could build and fly one, when i fly my multicopters i get the usual questions, what is it, are you looking through the camera, how high will it go etc. but i always get two other questions and they come from the same two groups or maybe demographics is a better word, the first is, "can you spy on people with one of those",( eg; girls) this question will allways come from teens age 13-20. i will tell them no that most people would notice a large quad copter hovering outside there bedroom window. the next group is more disturbing, they are almost allways men in the age group of 35-60 and allways without fail are the homeless that live in parks, and the question is remarkably uniform among them " can you strap a gun on that and blow stuff up" i never get this question from any other group maybe once or twice from teens that play video games but the last 5 times i have been asked it it has been this group of disaffected homeless that want to hurt anyone they can i find this disturbing that these people think this way so consistently. here in seattle we seem to have a lot of homeless and i get approached by them when flying, every time i go to a local park, i try to only fly when the parks are empty and these are often the only people there at the time. hanging around the edges of the park they watch and one will amble over to talk, oddly i have never been asked for money only "how hard would it be to put a gun on that"

i am not making a statement about the homeless only an observation that there are a lot of them and i think that given the means to do so would hurt a lot of people without a second thought.

just food for thought

Comment by Michael Pursifull on October 6, 2011 at 10:34am

If we did live in a world where terrorists were as poor at math as to consider a small UAV a viable platform for either explosives or a gun, then perhaps it would be a better place. I shoot regularly. I understand firearms. I would quite happily square off against a gun-equipped quadcopter, or take my chances with the idiot who tries to pack a couple of pounds of anything into an RC plane and considers himself any kind of threat to the Pentagon.

 

Maybe in a decade these will be "legitimate fears and concerns", but right now they are only the overactive imaginations of people who have too limited experience with the physics of small aircraft, the defensive capabilities of the Pentagon against modest sized aircraft (in a post 2001 world) or too little understanding of the threat posed by an unstable, vibrating small arms platform or a two pound payload (outside of "dirty bomb" or fissionable material, neither of which is substantially benefited with a UAV delivery system to begin with, and would only make it a less reliable weapon.) 

 

As for the RC community, it is already difficult for new hobbyists to get involved, especially in urban areas. Local AMA clubs require as much as $200/yr in AMA and local club dues, place annual caps on membership, and require extensive "student training" before a member can fly without an instructor pilot. In my area, available fields are either too close to one or more of the local airports, have rules against the use of RC aircraft, have local ordinances or home owners rules banning RC aircraft, previously kicked the AMA club out of their field due to noise complaints, are the aforementioned selective and closely AMA clubs, who also require new member commitments to perform road and field maintenance, or are simply too far away (over one hour) to attract new casual hobbyists. 

 

Be careful what you ask for in any form of regulation, self-imposed or otherwise. 

 

If there is a serious threat here, I suspect it is the risk of a small UAV being used, accidentally or intentionally, colliding with a larger, manned aircraft. We have rules in place to address this risk, and more rules coming. No rules we put into place will ever be followed by terrorists or criminals, so it is accidents that these will hope to address. And I suspect this risk is no greater than the risk of any large bird, most of which are about the same or larger mass range and movement speed of the class of UAVs which 99.9% of us operate. 

 

Let's not fool ourselves. SUAS are not a legitimate threat to the general public. There is a very remote possibility of an individual injury, and that is far more likely to happen to the operator than anyone else. The intentional use of hobby-built SUASs as destructive devices is misguided, inefficient, expensive, requires extensive and time consuming testing, and I have yet to find any scenario that is even remotely "destructive." 

 

The technologies which terrorists are likely to find attractive are the GPS chips, the accelerometers, the gyros, these things which are ubiquitous in our toys, cell phones, cars, navigation systems, and are by no means exclusive to UAVs, and also all the traditional weapons and delivery systems, from pedestrians to automobiles to missiles, and everything in between.

 

I don't buy it. Not this decade. And it would be a very sorry thing to see the benefits which can come from UAVs, in agro support, in emergency rescue, police work, aerial photography, videography, building inspections, and so many other areas never get realized because of irrational, unfounded, impractical fears. 

Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on October 6, 2011 at 11:09am

UAS are here to stay, people have been horrid to each other since forever.

If you are flying a UAS try your best to adhere to the best safety standards and pass that knowledge on.

 

The atrocity in my mind is that there seems to be a lack of imagination and wonder in the modern world.

 

@Paul having the communicator pen would have been cooler, and how easy would that be these days!

 

 

 

 

Comment by Daniel Hibben on October 6, 2011 at 12:19pm

i am not saying that i think any one of the people i have talked to that ask how hard it would be to put a weapon on a multi copter could do so, i am just worried that they might do anything at all to hurt others if they got the chance. none of the people i talk to about UAV's or UAS"s that ask such questions, or for that mater the people that ask good questions, have the means or ability to build and fly them but that does not mean to say that they can not pick up a knife and go crazy we had a guy do that on a bus up here a few years back and took the bus over the edge of the Aurora street bridge into an apartment building. what i think needs to be focused on is not the means they employed to do harm, but on the reason that they decided to go out and do harm in the first place.

so instead of banning knifes on city buses lets find a way to keep them from wanting to do so in the first place then you don't have to worry about banning everything that can be used as a weapon

BTW cool pen Gary

Developer Comment by Mark Colwell on October 6, 2011 at 12:35pm

The FBI has profiles for these folks, it may identify a waco or two, but the important thing today is that the "noob" needed real support, I  thank God he found it with the undercover al Qeda agents, Kudos  FBI !!. When a well financed proficient "noob" starts down this path without outside support how will he be detected and stopped? We as a community need to keep our eyes and ears open and read between the lines. When you do suspect something is not right make the call !!

 

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