Owner knows why drone crashed into stands at bull run
Found the story intriguing. Batteries remane fickle things. Their total charge is still only estimated by stopwatches & coulomb counters, but there is no dip stick for a battery. Even a pilot experienced enough to keep 1 eye on the flight time while the other eye is on the 5000 other details still is often surprised when a battery comes up empty ahead of schedule.
Sometimes you forget to charge batteries. Battery chargers sometimes don't finish charging because they overheat or their own supply sags. Sometimes they don't start charging because of a balky button or a poorly designed user interface. Sometimes they report maximum voltage despite no longer holding a full charge.
A return to launch feature when the battery is low also remanes fickle. GPS comes & goes anywhere besides a wide open field. Is the return to launch feature supposed to count coulombs & maintain a database of every battery's capacity in order to determine when to end the flight? Should the pilot enter in the current battery ID or should the batteries have ID chips, raising the cost & complexity?
It's yet another one of the variables & details that keeping something in the air still involves keeping your mind on. There is still a lot of room in the current state of reliability to keep the price, complexity & training beyond the reach of hobbyists before the personal drone becomes as ubiquitious & hand off as the marketing campaigns depict.
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I test fly a quadcopter on the main lawn of a campus, and regardless of how reliable the stabilization is, regardless of if it's a new battery or not, if I'm at the controls or not, and EVEN THOUGH IT MAY BE A PAIN when people walk right into the area I'm flying in, I NEVER take the risk to fly over people for this amazingly perfectly demonstrated reason. It's something that I've stuck to since my Nitro planes 9 years ago, and I've never had an accident. There is NO reason to risk it people! Don't do it!
Andrew: As we all know full scale crashes also, and when it does the consequences are much worse. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/16/london-helicopter-crash-f...
But for full scale it's a matter of practicality where the need outweighs the risk and damage potential. Imagine for example if passenger planes could not fly over populated ares when coming in for landing etc. At the moment I think we are far from having a real need to fly unmanned copters over crowds that would justify the risk.
Guys the safest system for flying with prevention of crashes due to low battery is something like the FRsky system where you hook a voltage sensor directly into the main power and when your battery gets low it shows you and beeps like mad, they are very cheap and useful but mostly save many many crashes. and the signal strength indicator helps alot too!, however if you do fly 2.4g and aren't using frsky, do not be surprised if it has a longer range than your radio esprecially spektrum
the system can be used either in your radio if it takes modules with a little lcd screen that you plug into the module. or completely independently with the frsky telemetry display.
Dangerous are those who understand the capabilities, but not the limitations.
Big heavy things filled with explosive juice fly over high density population centres all the time without the (direct) consent of those below. They do have some pretty sophisticated design and operational requirements, but it's not impossible to do, nor should we throw our hands in the air and give up on doing it.
There is enough knowledge out there on safety systems to do this at an acceptable risk. We just need to apply the lessons we have already learned in other fields.
Failsafe this, LV alarm that, blah blah blah. No matter how safe it gets, there will always be risk. Flying near/above others without their knowledge /consent is wrong.
I attended a music festival this past weekend. The local radio station had a 450 heli with gopro over the crowd. Appeared to be straight RC, no autonomy. No crash, no injuries. All good.
Before the show, I had been in contact with said station, warned them of the potential danger. On Friday, even sent links to this discussion and the related youtube clips. The responses were polite, but completely ignorant to any sort of safety protocols, 'cause there are none' and arrogant, 'it's our show, don't think we'll fine ourselves.'
As I suspected, many of the bands(2day fest) wouldn't allow it during their set. The audience, didn't have a choice. Average age of attendees was ~23. I'm now the 'old guy' in the crowd. After asking around, seems the general consensus changes with age and especially maturity level. Responses ranging from 'radical' to 'that's dangerous.' One woman recounted that she was 'scared every time it got close to me.' Not cool.
I often fly @ the local bike park. It's the size of a Walmart, with dirt jumps and log bridges. It's usually empty, but l always take a few minutes to talk to all the parents at the park. Answer all questions, and assure them that I'll be staying in one area off in the back of the park. If anyone has any concerns, I simply leave and come back later. And I'm only talking about 10-12 people in a huge park. Not exactly a crowd.
@Arne, I'll try again, perhaps simplifying the message even further. Now, as much as I hate caps, sometimes...
FLYING+PEOPLE=NO
@Arne: Yup, gave the crash a "LIKE" to make this here even more absurd.
It has already been said ad infinitum, but let's repeat one more time.
Why it crashed, technical or otherwise has no relevance. If it went down and there was no crowd under it, we would never have heard about it.
Don't fly over people..
Perhaps this is the perfect time to ramp up the flight standards group http://diydrones.com/group/flight-standards as I have quickly commented there perhaps the first should not fly over crowds.
With my manned pilot hat, I constantly read NTSB reports just to remind myself of what mistakes I make. Helicopters are very unforgiving learning from somebody elses misfortune is not polite but cheaper. When i was teaching more people to drive balloons I used to have a folder of NTSB style reports from around the world and a shocking video where somebody totalled himself showing off. The Flyaway Club is the first try at such a service for our emerging industry and should be commended for it. Every time when I am manned flying and I feel like I am king of the hill mother nature reaches out and reminds me I am not as clever as I thought I was.
I don't think these guys will be hung out to dry, unless the victims see it for the cash cow it might be. I think they will be warned not to do it again and the findings of the NTSB report will lead to a wider report on the state of the union. I expect Chris is having the same time as sUAS News, many government employees are currently reaching out to us to find out about UA.
You know, I belong to the AMA and they have a broad set of safety guidelines.
Both parties in this incident basically violated almost all of them and it probably will be presented to the membership as a perfect example of what not to do.
And worse at a time when UAVs are just getting started on a road to civilian commercial use, this happens pretty much serving as the perfect storm against civil UAVs.
It is very hard for me to see how either the owner or the Leasor could have considered that this was a reasonable thing to do.
On the other hand this was to record for posterity the stupidity of people running along an enclosed area with a bunch of 1000 pound bulls.
I guess there is a lesson there somewhere.
And the good news is injury was limited and there were no fatalities.
So perhaps it can serve as a reasonable model for the imposition of satisfactory safety requirements and perhaps for operators and owners to be required to have an IQ above that of a ground sloth.
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