You may or may not agree with my thoughts here
http://www.suasnews.com/2012/10/19348/multirotor-hits-skyscraper-and-burns-downtown-auckland-nz/
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
You may or may not agree with my thoughts here
http://www.suasnews.com/2012/10/19348/multirotor-hits-skyscraper-and-burns-downtown-auckland-nz/
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments
@R_Lefebvre, thanks for the common-sense voice. There's a lot we don't know about what happened here..
If anyone knows these guys, it would be great to have a crash report.. it would be an incredibly valuable piece of info, for critics and proponents of (wildcard) alike.
Deep urban flights is not where you go to "practice". I operate in Atlanta, Ga and you have to bring out the big guns for these kinds of flights. As Gary mentioned - relying on any GPS-based control/stability is a crap shoot - it now becomes a failsafe mode (a very poor one) and not a primary piloting tool.
The speed at which he gained altitude, and hw quickly he approached the rig with the blades still spinning is either 1 of 2 things (or a combination of both). 1) confidence 2) cockiness. It's a fine line between the 2.
Additionally - the launch site looks questionable as passers-by could interfere with the operator. When I get permission to shoot downtown Atlanta - I always have building security, Atl Police Department, or a my AGE guy (Aircraft ground Equipment) keep the spectators away. If the target building was the one he hit - then this was not a great launch location or trajectory bc he didn't maintain 100% visual w/ the target building. If the target building was the one he was flying towards after launch I could buy that it was an okay launch, provided that I can't really see 360 degrees from the camera's viewpoint.
I can't quite tell if that was a UHF system for control - but it appears to be some 2.4gHz antenna - and if it's so, EL OH EL for taking that to any metropolis for even LOS ranges.
We all get to learn a valuable lesson - he only lost a client and a some hardware - could have been worse had it came down on someone's windshield or head.
I suspect the magnetometer...in that environment combined with an attempt tot do a position hold with GPS...you may as well have hit the thing with a sledge hammer. If this was the cause the you need time and space to correct manually as well as knowing what you are doing none of which they had...
R_Lefebvre,
I hear where you are coming from, but you could easily see when he took off he had no clue what the heck he was doing. No one jump off the ground and flys out to say 100 feet in 2 seconds with a Copter in the middle of the city. Secondly, you could easily see he lost orientation instantly. Simply speaking, he didn't know front from back, that is why he accelerated and pushed forward but the copter went backwards towards the building. Not try to be fingerpointish, but this one is a no brainer. I have seen so many of these ooopsies at a typical day at the RC field its almost second nature. This pilot had limited flight experience on RC at best. As well there were no orientation markers on the copter, so back looks like front, and front looks like back. Check the video and watch it closely, this guy is not even a seasoned RC pilot. Should never have been on the sticks IMHO.....
I wouldn't pin this on pilot error until we know more.
In traditional R/C there is something called dumb sticks (yes, I know it is also slang for something else). And it is when a pilot for some reason freezes up and is unable to cope with an unexpected situation. A situation that if he had time to think about it, could have dealt with easily. And yes it happens to any pilot now and then, no matter the level of experience.
Yeah, that's instantly recognizable as a pilot who thought he was in care-free mode and turned out to be in manual mode or vice versa. These guys are over-confident, under-expeienced....
Jason
"Maybe he had a Turnigy radio. ;)"
...burn
Boston, yes, I'm assuming the camera/gimbal operator had the goggles.
Apparently this is the crew:
http://highspy.co.nz/
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