10 kilo drones?<p>Man, I have 1 kilo machines and they are huge and (very)expensive and everywhere I go people say it is the first time they see such a monster.<p>What this pilot saw was probably a 120 grams toy that an aircraft engine could eat for breakfast(engines are tested for much bigger birds impact). It is an expensive repair but to say that the plane goes "near miss" is a gross exaggeration(You near miss another plane, like a Cessna).<p>With 10 kilos we are talking about professional machines, with hybrid power source, military or highly professional. Probably they are 10 of those in all UK.<p>We need drone regulation, today it is in limbo. Professional services also have to be legalized and regulated(they are not but people are using them anyway for movies, for electrical grid control, they are so useful).<p>They don't want to because those machines compete with helicopters and planes at aerial jobs but much cheaper and without pilot's risk of dying.<p>Flying 1kg in the air is much safer than flying 600kilos machines. If the thing crashes, which is really difficult now with GPS and automatic control, you lose 1000, 2000 dollars, not a life.<p>Helicopters are very dangerous near the ground, if something goes wrong, like a gust of wind you are dead.<p>So you need to get high enough, which means using big and expensive camera gear.<p>With a drone it is so much simple.
The word "drone" is such a buzzword, I used to have a radio controlled aka RC plane as a kid and the US military tends to a military remote controlled aircraft an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle UAV.<p>But drone is single word easy to say with some buzz to it and I guess it also sounds ominous.<p>My understanding is a drone in the military sense is a flying target a UAV is not.<p>It took 20 years for people to stop calling anything tech/Internet related "cyber" now calling anything that flies is a drone that word will be with us until 2034.
This is an interesting issue to me moving forward. Regardless of whether this was a "real" near miss or not, the fact of the matter is that drones/UAVs/whatever-you-call-them are going to be a much more pervasive part out our reality in the near future. Should we be regulating their use? What should the legal framework be? Should you be required to have a license with proven flying hours, much like required to become a pilot? Should the CAA, FAA and other such bodies hold complete jurisdiction? Or should it fall under the purview of a dedicated organ?<p>I think from a technology perspective this is going to be very interesting. I'm starting to work on proximity operations in space, specifically designing robust Guidance, Navigation & Control (GNC) systems to ensure safe and effective operations. I just got off the phone with a friend who's startup is in stealth mode at the moment, looking at developing GNC algorithms for UAVs that offer real-time, autonomous operations with collision avoidance etc. in the absence of GPS.<p>Going to be fascinating to see how the technology in this space develops.<p><i>EDIT: Fixed typos</i>
The reference to the unmanned large planes at the bottom:<p>"Mr McAuslan said there was an urgent need for rules to be tightened before much larger unmanned cargo planes - potentially the size of a Boeing 737 - took to the skies."<p>sounds intriguing. Are we really close to that happening? I was under the impression the CAA restrictions around unmanned aircraft were still very tight.
I have heard about so many of these "airplane nearly hit a drone" scaremongering stories that I simply don't believe it anymore, period. I think it could have been a bird, or something else that simply passed by too quickly to be identified by the pilot, and they're calling it a "drone" just because they wouldn't mind getting those things banned anyway.
I nearly got pregnant<p>GCHQ intercepts nearly all of the intern... oh wait, this one is actually true<p>More regulatory capture incoming. It is already illegal to fly RC models near airports, but hey A DRONE and NEAR MISS, lets label them airborne terrorists.