LOL *NSFW* *The new Demote thread*

You think that's bad, try this: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/n...row-dressed-in-wig-and-lipstick-31116685.html

 

You think that's bad, try this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/...-naked-poop-masturbate-florida_n_2533967.html

 

Good God! my 5D3 is 3rd most expensive thing I own (after house and car). Why in god's name anyone thinks its a good idea to hack one up and mount it to the underside of a drone? Lunacy.

 

Not sure if awesome or demote.


Awesome idea to relate NSA surveillance to dick pictures. Demote that that sort of approach is required.

 

Pretty sure that it was not hacked up before the crash.
remote control systems are available to control almost all parameters (Tv, Av, shutter and zoom etc) without touching the camera in inappropriate ways.

 

Agreed, any camera hacking was likely gravity-induced.

 

That is certainly one hell of a catastrophic failure!
Could have been a complete loss of power (battery died, connection broken), loss of control by operator, software malfunction or something in-air happened.

Those S1000 kits start at about €4,000. €4,200 for the frame, camera assembly and IOC & flight controllers. Chuck in your motors, rotors, controller, operator screen and the camera, then you're talking well over €6-7K.

I have a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ and I pretty much always poop myself when I'm flying if the wifi signal to the RPAS (remote piloted aerial system) is broken and it says "coming home" and starts to fly back to the GPS coordinate it has for its home point. I don't think I could ever bring myself to fly an S1000 unless I get some serious air miles out of the P2V+ first.

Great pieces of kit all-round, but it certainly means that you need to take your time with getting to grips with the system and obey all the regulations that are in place. Does my head in when I see people flying them like total gobshites and causing unbelievable amounts of hassle for those of us who fly responsibly and even more so, to those of us who are trying to obtain commercial licences.

*edit* The original tweet that had the image was from someone based in Manila and they wrote off over $10K

 

i shudder to think what one of those things would do to a person if they hit one.

 

I can verify that the blades hurt like hell! Stupidly, utterly stupid decision on my part, I put my hand into the centre of the unit to correct it as it had landed poorly on a tuft of grass as I over-corrected when landing due to a gust of wind and it was at an angle. The blades were still spinning at high RPM (capable of taking off with a little push of the throttle) and it sliced open my index and ring finger and my thumb. Absolute dumbass decision. Those rotors are fairly soft plastic, rather glad I didn't get the carbon-fibre ones.

The P2V+ weighs about 1.2Kg with the battery in it, the S1000 is about 4Kg with a takeoff capacity of 11Kg. That thing comes down on you with nothing slowing its descent... it's going to hurt.

 

If you had, I expect we'd be calling you "Stumpy" by now...

 

I pretty much blame the operator if the thing drops from the sky.

Most of the accidents in "real" aviation happen by some form of human error, I believe that the same goes for RC-aviation too.

 

Well if you expect the piot to take reasonable precautions against mechanical failure (which they probably should) then yes.

 

Most of the mechanical and technical failures are recoverable by pilot, very few are fatal (and of course those cases, there is not much to do - talking about "real" aviation here). Human error during maintenance can lead to mechanical and tecnhical failure too. (Usually only fatal crashes are reported on news, because hundreds of completely safe emergency landings are not sexy on media)

In case of RC-aviation, I believe most people who are operating the craft, have also done their part on the building process, so they should be able to inspect the craft pretty well before flying it. Using wrong type of connectors that might come loose is probably the biggest mistake in RC-aviation. Rarely I see connectors that actually are the locking type all around the craft. And probably no one uses bolt-wire with RC-crafts, thou' it would probably be smart as they are so often assembled and dissasembled for transport, so bolts come loose much easier.

I wish people who use RC-crafts for professional use on public places, like quad- and octocopters for aerial photography, would really invest and test their equipment before they use it.

I hope that no bystander never dies or gets injured by civilian UAVs operated by complete tools who don't understand what they are doing.

 

Slightly related:-

The police in India are arming drones with pepper spray for crowd control.

 

I am actually approved as a commercial RPAS operator by the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority for up to 25kg systems. (fun-fact of the day)

And therefore I feel like I can do a very small correction to what you said, NaloaC;

Technically you loose connection to the RPA (Remotely Piloted Aircraft), as that is the flying part, it is first when you include the remote control that it gains the S for system

 

I stand corrected good sir

Still writing my manual for the damn thing, monotonous as hell Far too many acronyms!

 

My friend had a hexacopter of similar expense ($7000 ish). He was test flying it when a stray tiny bit of rain fell on it (it was sunny and did not look like it would rain). A raindrop hit dead on the autopilot, it shorted out some connections and the hexacopter commanded full throttle. It made a long arc through the air and slammed into the ground.

It then proceeded to catch on fire (punctured battery).

So it isn't always human error, sometimes you just get really unlucky. Especially with how new some of the autopilot systems are on these, it's not unexpected to have random bugs appear in the firmware that might not have previously shown themselves.

In manned aviation there is a good reason why test pilots tend to fly with a parachute.

 

Thread derail continued;

Yes.. and the whole risk assessment-stuff..
Next step for us (me and a friend has a small business for this stuff) is to get approval for BVLOS-operations.
Should be "easy" as we will be assisting the local police and firedepartment, and also SAR-work for the local Red-Cross on a charity-basis..
We have a RPA with FLIR camera and other awesome stuff

 

Surprised no-one has tried a ballistic chute on one.

ie:- Signal loss cuts engines & fires chute, drone lands safely (in a tree / out at sea/ on a passing truck / etc - but safely)

 

There are several on the market..
problem is that price and reduced flight times does not really make up for it..
you have to be pretty high up for the chute to fully open, and most filming work is low altitude stuff, for me/us at least..
and 90% of the filming we have done has been over seawater anyway..
in our case it would be more interesting to have a self deploying float.. I will be traveling by plane later today, maybe the lifejackets under the seats could be modded.. hmmmmm...