Yesterday, Fstoppers writer John White shared news of an apparent close call between two irresponsible pilots' DJI Phantom drones and an NYPD helicopter. Naturally, this sparked a conversation about the safety of such drones in the hands of the public. But as with many hyped new stories, all was not as it seemed. Recently surfaced radio recordings catch the pilots in a rather calm mood as they seem to question the presence of the drones amongst themselves and take it upon themselves to chase down the Phantom to the remote pilots.
What seemed to be a more-than-reasonable chasing of drones that were flying irresponsibly and causing a serious danger to life seems so much less so on the heels of comments that can be heard in the recording. At 22:18 one pilot says, "We really don't know exactly what we have. Maybe a reckless...not sure exactly what we got."
Without trying to judge too much, as there is still no video of the incident (there likely won't ever be a video), all evidence seems to point to a different scenario: the drone pilots weren't necessarily not being reckless, but they at least weren't as reckless as they would have been had they been flying at the NYPD helicopter. Alas, there was no last-minute change of course to avoid a collision -- just a chase to find the pilots.
What do you guys think? Does this change your opinions on drone useage? Is anyone "right" or "wrong," here?
The full audio recording can be heard below:
[Via PetaPixel]
@12:20 "I'd say about 0 to about... 2000 in about... 2 seconds... I wonder what unit of measurement he is using because it can't be feet unless this thing has rockets attached to it!
Yeah. 1000/ft per second is getting close to the speed of sound. Did he think it was a NASA rocket or what? Who knew pilots were such prolific users of literary devices such as hyperbole...?
I suppose we're all guilty of taking an article from The New York Post as anything that would resemble accuracy and responsible journalism. ;-)
I knew this was coming lol
Whatever facts do come out of this case I still stand behind my previous opinion about flying above 400ft and in populated commercial/general aviation airspace. These things can cause damage in that space.
In Manual mode these things do shoot up like rockets but not 0-2000ft in 2sec. But they are at least 3x faster than what they are in ATTI Mode. People like these jokers have no common sense and will ruin legit usage for everyone.
As one of the officers stated that if he was at 1000ft he was operating recklessly. I would agree with that comment in full. Your not in contact with the tower for that airspace and your response time via video will have a slight lag not to mention peripheral vision is degraded or non-existent. See and avoid.
Interesting sound file. I'm going to take a couple of guesses here. The helicopter pilots are not expecting nor are the trained yet on little drones at night. If they were flying in one direction and the drone another the apparent speed would be a hip shot guess at best. As Kevin points out, in manual mode these things can ascend pretty fast, but not that fast. Interestingly enough though that they initially thought it was military since it wasn't being picked up on radar and moving very fast from their perspective.
Bottom line is they were very likely in manual mode, which is very easy to switch in and out of. My gut says they knew exactly what they were doing and the cops show up and they instantly play dumb. One of them had to have binoculars to keep it in sight. At 2000 ft they will flat out disappear on you. I'm not even sure the video link will work that far out. Trying to follow that small of an object at nearly a half mile even at night will be difficult, which adds to their irresponsibility.
"Alas, there was no last-minute change of course to avoid a collision -- just a chase to find the pilots."
The very first thing you hear is a request to Laguardia to change altitude. Then a request for redirect (which could be interpreted as an act to avoid). Then the mention the drone was above them in altitude (definitely a risk to them, more so if they didnt redirect).