Posted on 09/29/2017 9:47:51 AM PDT by C19fan
Daniel Parfitt thought he’d found the perfect drone for a two-day mapping job in a remote patch of the Australian outback. The roughly $80,000 machine had a wingspan of 7 feet and resembled a stealth bomber.
There was just one problem. His machine raised the hackles of one prominent local resident: a wedge-tailed eagle.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Eighty THOUSAND Dollars??? As in $80,000?
Either that number is off by an order of magnitude, or I’m clearly in the wrong business.
Because most drones fly at something like 40k feet.
Thats a tad bit high for a bird.
Go eagles!
Eagles are tough birds. The Mongolians use Golden Eagles to hunt wolves.
The long range UAVs such as Global Hawk fly high. I’m thinking about the tactical battlefield drones that operate under 2,000 feet or so.
Or a giant pair of eyes on the wings.
I watched a flock of crows harassing a red tail hawk one day. The crows were darting in and pulling away and one made the mistake of going under the hawk. It was like a Dauntless dive bomber in a near vertical dive when that hawk hammered the crow. Nature in action.
The idiot paid $80,000 for that toy? A fool and his money...
I am inclined to think so 'foolish'. It is a business operation and probably has (had) a miniaturized steady-cam and precise GPS for mapping. This is Australia and the setup is probably, even with the drone, cheaper than a surveyor crew if the purpose was mapping. Other uses probably also cheaper than human crew. Looks like, unlike the rotor-types, it could get quite high and thus needs expensive electronics for piloting and auto-return?
Still...$80,000?
Maybe that's in Australian dollars. In this country you can buy a real airplane for $80k.
But then you’d have to pay a man to fly the plane. After about 100 hours, or so, an unmanned drone gets paid for if you’re not paying for the pilot.
Maybe, but at the end of the day, I'd still have my pilot, my $80k plane, and the survey job would be done.
This guy has a broken toy that was taken out by a bird!
Flock Leader has some interesting command and control.
Amazing starlings murmuration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOGCSBh3kmM
Eagles v drones: Dutch police to take on rogue aircraft with flying squad
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/eagles-v-drones-dutch-police-take-on-rogue-aircraft-flying-squad
They need to arm those drones with a little bitty tail gunner.
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