I thought it was George W Bush for a second there.
Coming within 800 feet of a cop is now grounds for arrest..
Too bad, officers, get over it. You fly over houses in the middle of the night below legal altitude and then you arrest kids flying a drone? Hypocrites
Some miscreants “just having fun” apparently forcing an NYPD chopper to take evasive action at midnight near the George Washington Bridge. I shudder to think whether they were trying to bring down the chopper. No word on whether they had suspicious middle-eastern names.
The perps were using the roof of a van as a convenient mobile urban takeoff and landing zone.
Last week in the comments section of a WaPo story on the increasing incidence of accidental (or not) drone near-misses with aircraft in US airspace this dji quad-copter brand was mentioned as having standard software installed that prevented flying near US airports.
One would think that for US sales altitude might be restricted to below 400 feet but that would rely on the user honestly setting the elevation or barometric pressure wouldn’t it? I am a retired CPA, not a pilot...
Exactly where is the line between an RC plane and a drone?
There's NO WAY that thing flew up to 2,000 feet. Not at that size, not with those small propellers and not at that weight. The radio control for that thing can't be more than 500 milliwatts at the most (half-a-watt) and wouldn't reach that far either!
Someone's lying --- and it's the Cops.
They aren’t drones, they are R/C aircraft. AFAIAC they are wonderful.
A R/C fan near Portland posts wonderful YT vids. Wait about 30 seconds for the music. Many times he flys around his neighborhood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJUQQWpFRvs&list=UU2RRNLsF0jMKZ4keG38JEPg
Then there is this Swedish guy who has done AMAZING things like fly over Niagara Falls. Here’s one of his freaking going into near space AND BACK!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpBnurznFio
R/C craft, drones aren’t the problem. People are
the problem.
Anything below 1200’ AGL is fair game until you get within 5nm around Class B,C, or D aerodromes.
Turns out the cops were chasing the drone: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/07/10/1759249/police-recording-confirms-nypd-flew-at-a-drone-and-never-feared-crashing
The cops take that kind of thing very seriously.
They take everything seriously.
They are always serious, angry and aggressive. How dare those men fly a toy in their sky.
They had to take evasive action. Almost had to call in an MRAP and the SWAT Team. Probably had to wear camo for this very serious operation.
Cops don’t like no drones.
Oh, and dogs. Dogs make cops angry too.
Drones. Dogs. Eye contact.
Know your place slaves.
Multi-rotor models have been flown off peaks in the Rockies (out of ground effect), but they won't be carrying much of a load at that altitude. My full-size light plane would top out around 12,500 msl on a summer day with nearly full fuel and the quad copters are probably similar with a camera. Radio range enters in when flying from a lower elevation (~two miles; variable).
I heard that B&H in Manhattan is selling 200 of these things a day. That’s a lot of drones.
There are a LOT of cautionary tales in the Amazon product reviews for the DJI Phantom drone Quadcopter products, it seems...
