Drone flown 20ft from landing Heathrow jet | Hacker News Reader

Drone flown 20ft from landing Heathrow jet

bbc.com

19 pointsjakobsbiz23 comments

Isn't drone a buzzword and this type of craft is just a radio controlled plane. This tech is ancient. I thought drone implies it's self guiding.

It is a buzzword, one that's very great at fear-mongering, and is getting RC planes grouped with UAVs that are killing people overseas.

It's unfortunate. Assholes like the guy flying this drone aren't helping, either, for hobbyists that want to fly legally and responsibly, which as you note, has been going on for a very long time.

The threat of a drone that can fire a missile at an airline seems to have the same net result as the threat of an RC plane that is flown illegally in restricted airspace dangerously close to an airline.

I don't see it as fear mongering, given that both outcomes are bad, and I believe and the public should be aware that because RC tech is becoming cheaper and more popular, more idiots will get their hands on it.

That you think a few pounds of low speed balsa wood and a high explosive guided missile are equally dangerous to an aircraft exemplifies the problem.

How about I throw a few pounds of low-speed balsa wood into your car windshield at 75 mph/120kmph and see what happens?

Now imagine what happens if you can get a car up to airline speeds.

Your ignorance of the dangers of high speed collisions exemplifies exactly why this is alarming.

Also, I recommend familiarizing yourself with Airline and Foreign Object Damage before continuing further.

It's fine that you are worried about high speed collisions. Bird strikes are a serious problem, especially for small craft, and there's no reason to allow the public to increase the frequency of them.

However, you compared them directly to guided, high explosive ordinance that are intentionally, reliably fatal for any sized aircraft. This is not a valid comparison, and is the core problem with the term "drone".

I have had a few pounds of wood hit my windshield at high speed, and while it really scared me it had no long term impact on me or my car. I would not fair so well against a Hellfire missile.

Edit: Impact of 2lb at 75mph ~= 1 Kj. Detonation of a Hellfire missile (9kg of TNT equiv) is 37.66 Mj. That's a four orders of magnitude difference, not taking into account the suitability for inflicting damage.

> How about I throw a few pounds of low-speed balsa wood into your car windshield at 75 mph/120kmph and see what happens?

I'll take that over a missile any day.

I would counter that your ignorance exemplifies the problem. We already have hordes of idiots who shine laser beams into the flight decks of moving airplanes, blinding the pilots and causing major issues for flight operations. Living, breathing birds, which only weigh a few pounds, can take down single-engine airplanes as well as large jets, much like the one that landed in the Hudson River just outside of NYC a few years ago. You can bet a plane such as the one you describe would have disastrous effects, too.

People have been flying RC planes for a very long time, but in general they were an awful lot smaller and less capable than some of the offerings on the market now - even the serious hobbyist gas-engined planes usually had a windspan of only a few feet. But if you're a serious hobby you can get large jets for only a few thousand: http://www.skymasterjet.com/index1.htm

RC Helicopters are even cheaper and the quadcopters are so easy to fly, and decent cameras so lightweight, that there are far more people using them than ever before. Suggesting that the current environment is the same as the historical one except for the popularity of the word 'drone' is simply inaccurate.

The makers of such radio controlled deviced call them drones. It doesn't really pertain to 'self guiding' anymore.

It never implied self-guiding. It was used to refer to remotely piloted target drones in World War II, and more recently to military UAVs that are remotely piloted by humans.

"Drone" in this context just means "remote controlled aircraft." The term has been used that way since World War II. It doesn't imply autonomous flying, after all, even "Predator drones" are remotely piloted by humans.

I agree with other posters that the term is problematic, but most popular drone platforms do in fact have automated flight modes - everything from just stabilized fly-by-wire, to fully automated, GPS-plotted flight, to Return-to-Home when it gets out of range.

I know people with multirotor craft that have 5-10km radio range; that should tell you something: at that range there's no way the drone is in sight range, though it is possible (and even common) to have FPV video, but that really doesn't give you the kind of vision needed to avoid all kinds of risks (especially other aircraft, closing at high speed from behind).

Fighting the use of the term "drone" is like trying to change the popular use of "hacking". It's too late, and I'm not sure why it really matters. I don't think anyone is really confused when I say I'm flying a drone what I mean - they know it's not an armed Predator.

I expected better from the BBC. Although they referred to it as a model helicopter in the article itself, the use of the D-word in the title makes it sound much more serious then it actually was.

> the use of the D-word in the title makes it sound much more serious then it actually was.

I disagree. There are a number of reasons why this should alarm folks. Radio controlled aircraft flying near an airline is extremely dangerous, whether it contains weapon systems or not.

A model/rc controlled helicopter that close to an airliner is very serious, at best causing distraction to the flight crew in a critical phase of flight, at worst causing a collision with a several kg object with potentially high velocity differential and enough energy to damage the aircraft, or be ingested into an engine.

Are the control links of hobby RC aircraft encrypted? I would assume not.

I wonder then if it would be possible for airports or planes (or both) to emit control signals what would guide RC aircraft away. From the operator's perspective, the aircraft would simply refuse to follow commands to go in a certain direction.

I'm not sure they could know ahead of time what signals would operate which motor.

Plus it'll vary per setup. 40% thrust might bring some rc models down quickly & dangerously, and might actually increase height on others.

Without being able to view the models, I don't think this is a very viable solution.

I was thinking that a smart system could vary the input signals and measure whether the aircraft gets closer or farther--teaching itself pretty quickly which signal does what.

But now that I think about it, even if the signal is not encrypted, it's certainly operating in a narrow slice of bandwidth, and might be digitally encoded. A naive search would probably take way too long just to find the input signal at all. It would only work if manufacturers were forced to share information that would allow an "authorized" system to quickly find and alter the control inputs. Seems messy and risky.

And of course this does nothing for self-controlled drones.

There are a very limited number of frequencies used for RC aircraft and I've never heard of the signal being encrypted (authenticated would be more important than encrypted anyway). I also think the control protocols are fairly standardized. The main exception would probably be the ones that are controlled over WiFi (which, as far as I've seen, are not normally encrypted either).

Or just used the mini radar system Plextek (iirc) is creating and have a guy go out there with a beanbag gun and bop the thing out the air

http://xkcd.com/538/

Traditional controllers are pretty basic, but some of the newer systems use frequency hopping (direct-sequence spread spectrum) technology. It's technically not encrypted, but it would be difficult to interfere with since the whole idea behind DSSS is to resist interference, natural or otherwise.

On top of that, at best you'd just be able to make the plane crash, which could be bad if it lands in a populated area.

A much better idea is what DJI is doing on their newer systems, where on-board GPS is used to enforce no fly zones around airports: http://www.dji.com/fly-safe/category-mc

Forget encryption: The airport operators should setup detection for the channels these UAVs transmit, and geolocate the source.

I'm all for intelligent deregulation of UAVs, but 700ft altitude directly into the approach path is reckless flying. This is close to the level of (illegal) moronic behavior like flashing lasers at aircraft.

I also think the FAA should move forward with cheap low-cost ADS-B transponders for ultralights and UAVs. With a micro transponder on the UAV, the pilots TCAS would have warned them of the UAV close by.

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