Fireworks from a drones POV...

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Yep, West Palm Beach, FL. Not that it makes it less stupid, just a location without the jangled nerves of NYC.

Although in NYC, two guys allegedly were involved when:

An NYPD helicopter nearly collided with two drones over the George Washington Bridge yesterday, resulting in a matching pair of felony reckless-endangerment charges for two men. The chopper pilots said in a police report that they were patrolling just after midnight when they "observed flying object at 2,000 feet in vicinity of the bridge," reports the New York Post. After swerving to avoid a collision, the pilots trailed the drones north and alerted NYPD officers, who found Remy Castro, 23, and Wilkins Mendoza, 34, near Fort Tyrone Park. Castro and Mendoza, who paid between $500 and $700 each for their drones, dismissed the seriousness of their offense. "It's just a toy," Castro said in Manhattan Criminal Court yesterday afternoon. "The copter came to us." Mendoza, meanwhile, called the incident "crazy," and the men’s lawyer said that their drones can’t even go above 300 feet, adding, "They did nothing more than fly a kite." But a friend of the pair says they've bragged about flying at least at 5,000 feet and have been posting Instagram photos of their nightly flights.
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http://www.newser.com/story/190615/nypd-chopper-nearly-downed-by-2-guys-with-drones.html

I just got a Phantom 2/Zenmuse 2 weeks ago, and trust me, I won't be flying at night over densely populated areas at night.

To paraphrase Hannum saying of PT Barnum, "There's an idiot born every minute..."
 
Mitch Gross said:
Think about the situation. It's night. This is specifically a no-fly zone. It is New York City. Y'know, the place where 9/11 killed almost 3000 people. There are hundreds of thousands if not a million people gathered on the shores of the East River in both Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn to watch the event. There must be a vast police presence. And their greatest fear is that someone could turn this into an opportunity to unleash something horrible.

Suddenly someone in law enforcement spots something up in the air where absolutely nothing is allowed to be. And they have to think fast because so many lives are at stake. How much time do they spend analyzing what that thing is before reacting?

Or people in the crowds spot it up there. And they are not professionals, do not know what these things are, do not have the experience to judge the relative size of such a thing up in the nighttime sky, and are likely a little drunk so have poor judgement. They just see it buzzing around up there. And in a world full of conspiracy theories, someone panics. In a crowd of a million people packed together like Times Square on New Year's Eve.

It doesn't matter what a rational person might think of a DJI Phantom in more mundane situations. But in this instance, it could have very easily started something that all would have regretted.
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So slightly drunk, irrational, uneducated people and police who must react instantly might think blinking lights up the sky could be ______________?
 
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Wouldn't take much to rig a Phantom up with anthrax or similar chemical weapon.

Come on guys, you are filmmakers, think of the ominous possibilities... There are plenty!
 
Jay Birch said:
Wouldn't take much to rig a Phantom up with anthrax or similar chemical weapon.

Come on guys, you are filmmakers, think of the ominous possibilities... There are plenty!
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Exactly. Mysterious white powder. Yeah. that's it! Or maybe a death ray. Or perhaps Al Qaeda is flying a magic carpet carrying a dirty bomb..oh, wait a minute, maybe there is radioactive dust in those aerial shells! Better ban those too! You can NEVER be too safe.
 
Dave Allen said:
Exactly. Mysterious white powder. Yeah. that's it! Or maybe a death ray. Or perhaps Al Qaeda is flying a magic carpet carrying a dirty bomb..oh, wait a minute, maybe there is radioactive dust in those aerial shells! Better ban those too! You can NEVER be too safe.
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Being from Boston one would think you would be a little more sensitive to what could happen.

Might I suggest we refrain from this type discussion before this thread is locked down.
 
I asked a pilot friend of mine about the worry of drones for him. He said a Phantom could possibly take down your typical 6 seater plane if it went into the engine/props. An S800 could take down something quite a bit bigger.

It does concern me alot. Even our AD4 seems lethal, in the wrong hands (hell, even in the right, but unfortunate, hands)
 
The difference now is the drones are way more affordable so more people are getting into this field as a hobby not related to filmmaking. Soon something terrible will happen, and very strict rules will be put into place.
 
David W. Jones said:
Being from Boston one would think you would be a little more sensitive to what could happen.

Might I suggest we refrain from this type discussion before this thread is locked down.
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That is why I am championing banning manufacturer and possession of home food pressure cookers, ball bearings, nuts and bolts, or at least forcing people to go through a 15 day cooling off period, then applying for a permit and license to purchase a pressure cooker after demonstrating proficiency and swearing under oath that they will only cook foods with it.
 
Phalynx said:
Guys, RC aircraft have been around since the 50's. All of these have the same capabilities. Birds cause more damage than RC aircraft in planes. Look it up. We don't need drama in this industry. We need safe, reasonable operation, free from drama.
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Yes, RC craft have been around since the 50's. But I will add that they were mostly flown at club fields and not in the general population at large. At the club fields there were flight rules, experienced operators to learn from and decorum in place that taught responsible operation. No one flew at night. The advent of RC copters pretty much negated the use of club fields and they are now flown everywhere.
 
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Dave Allen said:
That is why I am championing banning manufacturer and possession of home food pressure cookers, ball bearings, nuts and bolts, or at least forcing people to go through a 15 day cooling off period, then applying for a permit and license to purchase a pressure cooker after demonstrating proficiency and swearing under oath that they will only cook foods with it.
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3 people died and 250 people were injured in this bombing and you think this is funny? I'm sorry but you need to take this attitude off of DVXuser and go away!
 
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Mark Williams said:
Yes, RC craft have been around since the 50's. But I will add that they were mostly flown at club fields and not in the general population at large. At the club fields there were flight rules, experienced operators to learn from and decorum in place that taught responsible operation. No one flew at night. The advent of RC copters pretty much negated the use of club fields and they are now flown everywhere.
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Actually, they created an entire new market called "park flyers" specifically for flying in public parks. They were quieter, smaller, and cheaper....... like quad copters. There are RC clubs.... but I would bet that over 50% of rc aircraft are not flown at clubs. They do fly them at night as well. All I am saying as I don't want to tick any of you guys off is lets just keep to the facts and support sensible regulation but not over regulation. We all desire to be safe. Some people don't think about the safety as much and those people are the ones that have the questionable videos on the net. The fact is every time people get in their cars, they don't think about the safety of what they are doing either. Cars weigh 4000 lbs. Let's keep it all in perspective and stop trying to stop industries.
 
I saw a photo of a Phantom on the same evening destroyed going through fireworks, it doesn't seem particularly responsible. I suspect laws will end up getting stricter as not a month goes by without at least one controversial incident, here in the UK the Tour De France resulted in no-fly zones being set up with notices months in advance as there were low flying real helicopter, there was at least one, possible two illegally flown Phantoms who's users took it upon themselves to fly over the cyclists.
 
Sorry for my errors, I didn't follow the story closely enough so should not have commented in that way. But my main point is that (a) such use is irresponsible because this event was paid for by someone else and this guy is intruding on it, to the possible detriment of the event itself, and (b) if I was at any venue and found a drone buzzing around that took away my personal enjoyment of the event, then I'd be pretty pissed.
 
So an event held in public, open to the public, for the public, at night, was intruded upon because a radio control toy was slowly moving about in the darkness at an altitude of 200-300 feet in proximity to temporary brilliant flashes of light?

Let's say hypothetically that the multirotor was instead quite large, like a DJI S1000, and rather than hovering inaudibly at 300 feet AGL, was instead at 75 feet up in the inky black darkness notwithstanding the tiny bright and colorful LED lights. Would the sounds of the electric motors interfere with ones personal enjoyment of the public outdoor event if the electric motors could be intermittently barely heard over the vocal chatter, the ahs of the approving crowd, the honks of car and boat horns, and booms of the black powder lift charges and the incessant, huge booms of exploding pyrotechnics?

Is such an outdoor public event normally considered a place of quiet like an indoor performance theater as an example?
 
P13 said:
I saw a photo of a Phantom on the same evening destroyed going through fireworks, it doesn't seem particularly responsible. I suspect laws will end up getting stricter as not a month goes by without at least one controversial incident, here in the UK the Tour De France resulted in no-fly zones being set up with notices months in advance as there were low flying real helicopter, there was at least one, possible two illegally flown Phantoms who's users took it upon themselves to fly over the cyclists.
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Aerial shells can blow right through thick plywood. Their lift charges are extremely powerful. A multirotor radio control craft wouldn't stand a prayer in hell of surviving. In the instant matter, the tiny Phanom would fall to the water in pieces. There is no realistic possibility of a shell being deflected off course.

As to the Tour, motorbikes with cameramen and especially spectators are far more likely to harm riders, but those are allowed because it has to do with revenue generation so safety is thrown to the wind.

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." -Plato

"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." - Ayn Rand
 
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