Elephant in the room - Quadcopters...

Synthetic Helium anyone?
Ohhh... had to look that up:
https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100308073643AAoVGj1

... I'm more a fan of hydrogen. Works great... if ya don't shoot at it and watch out for lightening. :) Currently plugging "Zeppelin" short range flights around my town, using an old downtown airport built to fly warplanes in WW1. Still in operation today but planes using aviation gases smell terrible. At one time in Germany their Zeps were in regular "bus" service:
xssncgsme7a8n7uvcijr.jpg
 
You can get me a ride in a local zeplin if visited?
 
liveforphysics said:
You can get me a ride in a local zeplin if visited?

Hehe... Sure. Gotta convince 6+ million neighbours it's "safe", and should be a money-maker for Porter Airlines (that currently flies from/to this Toronto Islands airport using Stinko-Mobile airplanes).
https://www.flyporter.com/Flight?culture=en-CA

... then ya gotta start building modern "zeppelins"... "ships" like this:
Vladimir-Putin-Russia-warcraft-Atlant-587913.jpg


I'm actually OK using "lighter than air" gases for lift versus `copter blades...
 
Seen here:
[youtube]AsJruGxyHBE[/youtube]
 
just coincedence but last night i was looking at the old movies of the zepellin disaster, they were doing massive water dumps on landing, having problems getting the zepellin down, you can see the water dumps in the old movie of it,
if you atomise water into droplets from a flowing stream you can get massive charge buildup ( eg kelvin water dropper experiment),
the amounts of water they dumped would have created huge static charge, perhaps no coincidence the fire appears to have began above the area where the water was dumped.......just a theory.
 
Hehe... Been chuckling... in ES Thread "More E-bikes found in NON-ebike media"?... or somewhere... `bout the "craze" of articles that list the "*Top* X"... "*Best* Y Bikes" (one or more with electric assist. Or all.) X *Most* *Awesome*...etc... all battery-electric traction related.

So presenting now [insert drumroll here] "9 Totally Cool Uses for Drones":
http://www.livescience.com/28137-cool-uses-for-drones.html
fire-scout-drone-02.jpg
 
"Alphabet X to create 'Wing Marketplace'":
http://seekingalpha.com/news/322903...ifp=0&utoken=cbb3308647f0d57dac85045a61fbecf0

Amid troubled Project Wing efforts, Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) X division plans to create an online exchange named "Wing Marketplace" where people can get drone deliveries from retailers and restaurants within minutes, WSJ reports.

X would charge customers a $6 drone-delivery fee and has already met with Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFM), Domino's Pizza (NYSE:DPZ) and a series of other companies about the project.
 
OK......So I guess I just need to keep my eyes open for that little hard to see thing? Who has the right of way, a human being , me for instance, flying a light plane, or Amazon drone delivering some crucial piece of crap to my neighbor down the road? Meaning, at times I fly that low, like on final when landing. The first human fatality caused by a drone will be one for the lawyers. It WILL happen. Other then that, cool.
 
Manned AC (aircraft) always have right of way over non-manned AC.
 
Well, that's the way it's been to date. And I should say I'm really not too concerned, ( I'm too rural/remote) but IF the day comes, where a drone is (ironically enough) making a drop off to my shop, well hell that's in "my airspace", where I have the totally legal right to be, at 1' above the ground if I choose! So, in a way, it's an airspace grab. It will be interesting to see how it works out. There has been more then once when I have been coming back, and saw the Fedex lady (at the time, she quit them, darn it) or the UPS guy at my place, but those trucks are easy to see!

The thing I LIKE about the concept, is my latest UPS delivery just today : they drove what is probably a 6 or 8,000 lb van up the mountain, to the end of the road where my place is, to deliver an item that weighs (and I'm not making this up) 2 ounces! I had tried to get this 2 oz. item via US Mail, but the shipper was locked into using UPS, and I had no choice. In this case, a drone flight makes sense. If I was wanting to mess with the concept..... I'd order something right at the outer limit of what it could handle, and then using my 40 years of weather experience in this area, try and pick a real windy (headwind) day for the poor little drone. And then bitch like hell when it didn't show up on time!
 
Ykick said:
Manned AC (aircraft) always have right of way over non-manned AC.

Hmm... try explaining that to a drone that's about to collide with you. I saw on the local news about a self-driving car from Uber that was running red lights. "You can't put a robotic car in jail" was one argument against them. But you can impound the car. Something about driver's licensing came up too and who was going to regulate it. Clearly the rules have not been thought out very well at this point.
 
fechter said:
Ykick said:
Manned AC (aircraft) always have right of way over non-manned AC.

Hmm... try explaining that to a drone that's about to collide with you. I saw on the local news about a self-driving car from Uber that was running red lights. "You can't put a robotic car in jail" was one argument against them. But you can impound the car. Something about driver's licensing came up too and who was going to regulate it. Clearly the rules have not been thought out very well at this point.

Talk to the "drone" all you want but the point is that whoever's flying/responsible for the UAS would legally be the one to do some explaining. Of course finding and prosecuting said operator is must easier said than done.

Seriously though, no mid-air collision is to ever be taken lightly but I have some practical doubt collision between a 2-5lbs UAS and full scale AC would automatically bring down the full scale AC.
 
All depends, if it goes through the prop (worst case scenario) and THEN into the windscreen, like birds have done (they can take the prop out while still remaining intact enough to go through the windscreen) it could be a problem. Or, if it just takes out the prop, and now the out of balance prop rips the motor off it's mounts, and besides coming down you are also left with a out of limits center of gravity, usually leading to an unrecoverable spin. That has also happened after large bird strikes.

I have "interactions" with birds often, the last was a couple months ago. A turkey buzzard, I saw him in plenty of time, I was going the usual 80 mph or so, and he seemed to see me. But sometimes, these large soaring birds get territorial, they can get ignorant, this one did. He quasi attacked me, just basically letting me know it was his sky and I was intruding (true enough, but hey I was just trying to get back to MY nest), making a point to eyeball me as we passed each other about 40' apart. Getting the pig eye from a large soaring bird is awesome, done it before, there is no doubt they are the masters and you are not, it's an honor to get eyeball to eyeball with them. But this day, the bird's response struck me as kind of pissed off. For some reason, I heard myself say as we passed, and I actually said these words, "HEY MAN....WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?" It wasn't scary, as we both knew each other were there, he was just messing me, flipping me off as we passed as it were. Then I realized how funny it was, me talking to this bird, with no one else in the plane, like it was some kid on my lawn. Drones are spookier, birds got their act totally together and are super good in getting out of the way, drones are butt stupid.
 
I’m not discounting “anything” is possible. Merely looking at “practical assumptions” as sort of a devils advocate to help temper any “tailspin” of unreasonable fear and oppressive, possibly ignorant, regulations.

UAS (drones) may be “butt stupid” but they’re getting smarter all the time. I cannot fathom commercial UAS not incorporating some requirement of collision avoidance in conjunction with location data sharing for ATC purposes.

IMO, the PRACTICAL problem here is ATC. It’s a severely overloaded and technologically archaic system which really needs to be brought into the 21st century.

But why not resent your neighbor for having his shit dropped off by a truck which “might” suffer a failure or operator error and cause a vehicle crash, death and injury? Oh yeah, we have system and regulations in place to minimize those possibilities and assign liability, don’t we? Which is all I’m saying about potential commercial UAS operation.
 
Good thought. The technology is there. Everything in the sky can have GPS so there could be a network that lets everything know where the others are and predict when things are on a collision course way ahead of time. Getting the government to implement something like this is another story. Could take decades.
 
United States Patent 9,305,280
Airborne fulfillment center utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles for item delivery

Abstract

Described is an airborne fulfillment center ("AFC") and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles ("UAV") to deliver items from the AFC to users. For example, the AFC may be an airship that remains at a high altitude (e.g., 45,000 feet) and UAVs with ordered items may be deployed from the AFC to deliver ordered items to user designated delivery locations. As the UAVs descend, they can navigate horizontally toward a user specified delivery location using little to no power, other than to stabilize the UAV and/or guide the direction of descent. Shuttles (smaller airships) may be used to replenish the AFC with inventory, UAVs, supplies, fuel, etc. Likewise, the shuttles may be utilized to transport workers to and from the AFC.

0e5699970deb1187a4b50c7f3f1c9da1.jpg


Seen here:
http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=...&SectionNum=&idkey=NONE&Input=View+first+page
 
[youtube]w8yaaaAZ4r4[/youtube]
 
How to not spill yer drinks on the way to work:
[youtube]1ZD7Wd3mgxU[/youtube]
 
Who needs the cavalry? US Army calls in the hoverbike
("The Army's prototype quadcopter passes its first big test and takes to the air."):
https://www.cnet.com/news/who-needs-the-cavalry-us-army-calls-in-the-hoverbike/

us-army-hoverbike.jpg

("The Joint Tactical Aerial Resupply Vehicle Model P-200 stands by for a demonstration.")

The electric-powered drone has been in development since 2014, and now it really works. The Army still has ambitious development goals. Eventually, it'd like the drone to be able to fly low to the ground at 60 miles an hour to be able to deliver supply orders within 30 minutes. The Army said Tuesday that it will also look at hybrid forms of power to see if they can extend the range of the JTARV -- also called a hoverbike -- to 125 miles while carrying an impressive 800 pounds.

[youtube]NirDyboEZUg[/youtube]
 
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