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
Well said Martin both in the blog and in Youtube.
It's easy for everyone to pop up and say there was smoke at 0:57. Did you notice it with the first watch though? I am 100% sure pilot didn't have a repeat button to see that at the time and say hmmmm theres smoke at 0:57. I ll better bring it down. Things go bad end of story. I don't believe he wasn't experienced. Who buys a 10k platform and flies it in urban location without experience? I will concur that he was lucking some fundamental safety issues which he must look into and improve his safety risk assessments.
And I have some news for you....Like it or not everyone is stigmatized from this video cause we are a portion of few. Do you think the average people will conceive that there was a signal bounce of the GPS or the barometer malfunctioned? They will look at you like they are looking at an alien if you say such things to them. The large portion of people think kinda like this: If a car is crashed they will isolate the event to a stupid driver who was drunk or a speed freak... Doesn't mean all drivers are bad. If a drone is crashed: They will include all of us... These guys will kill us with these noisy flying jigsaws . Let's not pull out our own eyes then and find food on a bad moment that happened to one of us.
I find it disturbing watching that video. Aircraft, manned or unmanned, big or small, civilian or military, have a history of crashing, as pilots/engineers we have a duty minimise the likelihood and consequence of this.\\
If they were amateurs, they should have never have been there. If they were professional operators they certainly don't reflect the standards expected by licenced operators. There is demand for UAVs to operate in urban environments for commercial operations, and I do not consider the area shown in the video to be a populous area for a multirotor small UAV. What concerns me was the lack of risk mitigating controls.
Things that could have been better based upon my experience.
1. The take off and landing area should have been clear of the public (30m is standard in Australia).
2. Warning signs erected, someone assigned to controlling pedestrian/car traffic.
3. Run-up checks prior to take off (controls correct)
4. Establish a low altitude hover upon take off to check manual controls
5. Test pilot assistance functions (ie position hold, altitude hold) commencing operations
6. No flying directly over people, maintain adequate separation (30m in Australia)
7. First aid kit and fire extinguisher available nearby
Whilst the video shows that the aircraft was constantly rotating on take off (indicating either a failure in the yaw gyro, or the compass), ultimately the pilot should have landed immediately upon take off.
Wraith, the guy was definitely not a noob. He'd been operating a business for a year. However, he's also been accused before of flying where he shouldn't.
There's definitely a puff of smoke visible at 0:57.
That was unfortunate.
I always adjust my shorts when the motors are spooling downtown Atlanta when a crowd is gathering, even when there is NO reason to do so (since the rig is on the ground). That's a good enough reason for 8 spinning rotors to be "unattended". :)
@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.
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