Aerial Video Footage of New York Taken By RC Plane 208
kkleiner writes with this fun bit from Singularity Hub: "Expert remote control pilot Raphael 'Trappy' Pirker recently took his 54 inch Zephyr model plane on a harrowing tour of Manhattan and the surrounding area. The best part: his RC vehicle was fitted with a camera that wirelessly transmitted an amazing recording of everything it saw – Pirker was piloting his craft with this visual feed. As you can see in the video, the results were spectacular. The plane looks to be flying within a few feet of buildings and whizzing past bridges with ease. You have to check out around 2:01 when he starts to buzz right by the Statute of Liberty."
Scary? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Scary? (Score:5, Informative)
He notified authorities and had their permission. In fact, I believe they were on site during the fly.
I am wrong about that. Apparently he did not inform the authorities before hand, but they did show up while he was flying, which is why there is some video of authorities on site when the plane landed, leading to my confusion.
It seems they were alright with everything, apparently no laws were broken.
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No laws were broken but they thought the'd show up anyway? What is wrong with this country.
Re:Scary? (Score:4, Interesting)
A pound of Semtex and the fun begins. Cheap missiles to kill politicians always gets the cops running.
Re:Scary? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scary? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cops having a look and checking things out! Where will it end!
Re:Scary? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I live, everybody feels safe because the cops park in front of a statue next to a local college in the middle of downtown. What the cops are actually doing is getting on the school's wi-fi and checking out the college girls coming and going.
Cops are people too and often they're looking for a way to fuck off and make it look like they're working. They probably just thought the RC plane was cool and talked to the guy about it because of that.
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The cops show up when something strange is going on because their ostensible job is to keep things running smoothly and when something out of the ordinary is happening it is difficult to estimate its impact. They were probably mainly just looking for turbans.
F*(K the panic do something awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:F*(K the panic do something awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't mind them doing it, but this is insane, especially when doing it in an area highly sensitized to flying missiles/planes.
It only takes a few assholes in the government or the legislative to imagine such a plane flying with a dangerous payload (explosives, dirty rad material etc) to ban R/C flying planes, forcing me and so many others who enjoy this hobby to simply stop.
Think it can't happen? They did it already once with a whole class of model rockets...
Re:F*(K the panic do something awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:F*(K the panic do something awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It makes the electorate insane.
You get the government you want.
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Re:F*(K the panic do something awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It makes the electorate insane.
You get the government you want.
The electorate doesn't matter. Regardless of who we vote for we get the government the corporations and lobbyists want.
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No. It makes the authorities necessarily cautious because of the potential for scary stuff with this kind of activity.
Play devil's advocate for a moment - what if someone does something like this, and does load the plane with a bunch of explosives and kills someone, and it later comes out that the TSA/NYPD/pick-your-acronym knew about it and didn't at least check out the guy. How many people on this very thread would be jumping up and down bleating about how incompetent the authorities are and the agencies
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Think it can't happen? They did it already once with a whole class of model rockets...
What class of model rockets might this be? If you are referring to the ATF trying to regulate high power rocket motors as explosives, we took them to court over that, AND WON.
Sprawling land development, the proliferation of lawyers, and suburban soccer moms are doing a lot more to curb model rocketry than the government these days. It's getting harder to find a large enough open field to fly even A-C motor Estes-type rockets anymore. The days of being allowed to launch at town parks and school football fiel
Re:F*(K the panic do something awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
"I don't mind them doing it, but this is insane, especially when doing it in an area highly sensitized to flying missiles/planes."
As a New Yorker, can I just say: stop assuming shit about how we feel about 9/11 and 9/11 related things. As a community, we got over the terrorist attack years and years and fucking YEARS ago; it's people from not-here who keep this crap up.
We're fine with RC geeks. We don't cringe every time a plane flies overhead. We're totally, completely fine with Muslims. Stop, please, just stop making assumptions and taking actions based on how you think we think about something that happened a decade ago, and let it GO, already. Find somebody else's banner to carry.
Re:Scary? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I am most interested in flying RC planes as a hobby. Please send details, including maximum payload.
Sincerely
Mr. O. B. Lada of Chicago
O. B. Lada (Score:5, Funny)
Mr. O. B. Lada of Chicago
So wait, this changes everything: not only is Paul McCartney alive and the head of Al-Qaeda, but he's living in freakin' Chicago? Crazy world...
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We are not 'all terrified of everything now', it is just that a lot of people have got lucrative contracts in security theatre. We *should be* terrified of the slide into a police state.
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We are not 'all terrified of everything now'
I've seen quite a few people (but not everyone, of course) that basically stated that they'd be willing to give up their freedoms for a false sense of security. They support things such as the Patriot Act, and also what is happening at airports. I find it truly frightening how many people aren't afraid of a police state and will willingly give up their freedoms to the government in exchange for such petty things.
Re:Scary? (Score:5, Informative)
Umm, a 10 sec google search of some NYC RC hobby message boards tells me that flying RC planes in NYC is actually illegal, as in most cities, except in some specific designated areas. Nothing to do with fear of terrorists, and everything to do with crashing into people, breaking windows, causing car accidents and such.
Re:Scary? (Score:5, Informative)
The "Advisory Circular" mentioned briefly in the interview video is FAA AC 91-57, "Model Aircraft Operating Standards". You can download a copy of it from http://tinyurl.com/28wko9o [tinyurl.com] . As the "A" in the name implies, ACs are advisory in nature. They do not carry the force of law, but generally if you can show that you've complied with an AC, the FAA is happy.
It's pretty clear, however, that he didn't comply with several points of the AC. The Verrazano bridge towers are 690 feet tall, and clearly he was above that, so he obviously didn't stay below 400 feet. The reason for the 400 foot limit is because "real" planes are supposed to stay above 500 feet, per 14 CFR 91.119(c). If you stay below 400 and they stay above 500, nobody swaps paint.
Given the areas and altitudes he flew in, it's unlikely he caused any hazard to jet traffic flying in or out of the three big NYC airports, but there's a lot of low-level seaplane (East River below the 59th street bridge), and helicopter traffic (numerous busy heliports all over the place) in and out of there. A plane like this is essentially invisible to the pilots of those aircraft. "Big sky, small plane" works in your favor here, even more so than usual.
It looks to me like he stayed mostly over water, so I'd guess the hazard to people on the ground was minimal. Although, I don't know what would happen if he had lost radio control. Do these things have some kind of dead man switch which cuts power to the prop if radio signal is lost? If so, then it's hard to imagine doing any kind of major damage.
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You are not correct that AIRCRAFT need to stay 500 feet above the bridge. Helicopters (which are a kind of aircraft) have no specific minimum altitude limits. The pilot needs to be sure that his flight isn't going to endanger people or property on the ground.
I have done photography jobs in NYC that required very low altitude flying. I doubt I would be able to see and avoid an RC aircraft of this size. We generally can identify when a field is being used for RC flying (the people and their equipment has a g
Re:Scary? (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you know that they didn't show up because one of them is into RC models?
An over-reaction would have been arresting the guy and throwing him in the clink until they could figure out a way to interpret a law in such a way as to say he'd broken it. Simply going and having a look isn't an over-reaction. There are a lot of risks involved in flying model aircraft around a city, and even without "security theatre" it's probably worth checking out what's going on and making sure it's not some twat who's just bought a gigantic model aircraft off eBay and is trying to learn how to fly it in a crowded park ;-)
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Yes, they showed up and he let them view the video through the goggles as he buzzed them. Seriously, they were actually cool about it.
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Yes, they showed up and he let them view the video through the goggles as he buzzed them. Seriously, they were actually cool about it.
Now, if they were smart they'd take a note of his phone number, just in case...
"Hey, you know that radio-controlled plane you have with the camera? Want to make a contribution to public safety, and a few dollars?"
Sounds like an awfully handy thing to be able to get your hands on, when you absolutely have to see over that wall *right now*...
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Of course they showed up, because this is _awesome_. I would have shown up no matter what my job was to check out the cool stuff he was doing.
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Since when has that ever stopped the cops?
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Since whenever he made that video, apparently.
Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)
Maximum tested range is 27 miles. Maximum estimated range by their calculations is 120 miles.
Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)
Just off the top of my head, having built and flown a lot of RC craft in the past, a 54" plane could have a flight time of an hour at 80mph, so he could easily reach his 27 mile radio range and back, with time to maneuver in between.
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Heavy metals are heavy. toxic chemicals are so much lighter.
Heavy metals are heavy, toxic metals are toxic.
These RC's are better for recon. Maybe you could fly one into some asshats window. Better than some bullshit hotrod.
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What regulation are you referring to in your first question?
As to transmitter power, it is likely (but not certain) that he has a HAM license and was using one of their bands for his transmitter. It's legal, but not especially common. Go to a fly-in (R/C meetup where flying happens) with a thousand people and maybe twenty of them will be using HAM radios.
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97.215 Telecommand of model craft.
An amateur station transmitting signals to control a model craft may be
operated as follows:
(a) The station identification procedure is not required for
transmissions directed only to the model craft, provided that a label
indicating the station call sign and the station licensee's name and
address is affixed to the station transmitter.
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He notified authorities and had their permission. In fact, I believe they were on site during the fly.
Was DHS invited.
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Quite honestly, I'm surprised this didn't cause some sort of panic...
It's only matter of time before terrorists get their hands on miniature false vacuum destabilizer bomb [wikipedia.org], attach one to an RC plane, fly it to the Wall Street, and destroy our universe.
Time to panic is now, because when they eventually pull that off, you'll just cease to exist with no time to panic.
Re:Scary? (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite honestly, I'm surprised this didn't cause some sort of panic...
Well, if it had been done with this RC plane [youtube.com], I think it certainly would have!
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jeez, how much left over LCD have americans consumed? Are they that clinicly insane and paranoid ? Seriously!!!
Is America full of insane zombies?
Btw, their plane and tech behind it is really cool, im sure a lot of scientists would love to use it for documentaries.
DHS (Score:2)
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I think the phrase you're looking for is "weapons of mass destruction related program activities."
Re:DHS (Score:4, Interesting)
How about "engaging in activities which might someday possibly give someone an idea about engaging in an activity which could lead to someone imagining they could use the information to sort of create a rumor of potential terrorist activity". Let me translate, it means "we have to do something to show that the obscene budget of our department and the pork we shovel to the security companies we contract with is justified in the face of budget cuts." HTH HAND.
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Actually with his piloting skills, they should be hiring him to train soldiers on drone flight.
Re:DHS (Score:5, Insightful)
Morons, sometimes we are saved because the idiot with an islamist terrorist idea is not that smart - like the timsquare bomber. This moron has made the perfect equipment for them and is now going to sell it as well. This is not so funny.
Absolutely. No-one should be allowed to sell anything that might be useful to a terrorist.
Like cars. Or gas canisters.
Or underwear.
Re:DHS (Score:4, Insightful)
Ars Technica (Score:4, Informative)
This was on Ars Technica awhile back:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/12/how-a-rc-airplane-buzzed-the-statue-of-liberty-with-no-arrests.ars [arstechnica.com]
More Details here... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More Details here... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Terrorism? I'd be more scared of the loonies living in America right now than the damn terrorists.
Re:More Details here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, people have been killed by RC planes and helicopters. They may look like toys, but except for the ones that are literally sold as children's toys they should always be flown with caution.
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It's an RC plane, It's a toy, it's a remote controlled piece of plastic and foam.
It all depends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmKdA6L_MWk [youtube.com]
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The RC doesn't have to be a weapon, it could just be about large scale surveillance either before an attack or during one of those armed gang rampage attacks which seem to be becoming more popular compared to just a suicide bomb.
It doesn't even have to be terrorist, good old fashioned bank robbers would kill (hopefully not literaly) to get that sort of intel during a robbery.
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No large amounts of plastic to be found in real RC planes.
Cheaper ones are made of balsa wood, expensive ones of carbon fiber.
Look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0zpvckToZ0 [youtube.com]
The distance they fly is 150 meter, 4 times, speed at which they fly, well over 100km/h. Weight of the plane, around a kilo. If you would get hit by these on it's final run you would end up in the hospital, if you are lucky. There are strict rules during these competitions, and getting to close to the crowd during these runs is
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I'm glad they didn't stop him, but I'm also surprised. This has more terrorist potential than a lot of things that are being stopped (like photographing in some locations).
Don't get me wrong, I really want people to be able to do this sort of cool stuff, provided that some reasonable safety rules are followed. I'm just (pleasantly) surprised that he wasn't stopped by a knee-jerk security response.
This does point the way to some potentially quite dangerous technologies. OTOH if we banned doing things because
I did this in Hong Kong :) (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a danger to it, as this video illustrate but that's before I got my 2.4GHz Tx.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtN1AtShkk0 [youtube.com]
Here's one closer to buildings :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrWyOJmEvY4 [youtube.com]
I don't do FPV either, too scary not seeing the plane :) I fly it until it's a pixel in the sky, and before I do that I made sure I master orientation of a pixel object in the simulator first.
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There's 3,000+ very similar FPV RC airplane videos on youtube, why did this one make it to slashdot? Cool music? [youtube.com]
Nice... but (Score:4, Insightful)
Way to many edits. Destroyed the flow
If only... (Score:2)
...there was a perfectly timed Estes model rocket. My money's on the rocket.
Statute of Liberty? (Score:2)
LOL What's a...
"Statute of Liberty"
Is that a statute about liberty?
How does one buzz it?
Did he just print it out, and fly his plane over it? If so, that seems like something anyone could do.
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Is that a statute about liberty?
How does one buzz it?
Did he just print it out, and fly his plane over it? If so, that seems like something anyone could do.
Yes, something about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Judging from the concerns voiced in the comments, he definitely buzzed it.
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How does one buzz it?
You post it to Google Buzz?
Expect him to be arrested any second (Score:2)
Cool tech (Score:2)
Guess he'll be getting a DARPA contract soon. Amazing that he was able to do that with all the lag involved (assuming that there was lag).
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No lag with line of site 2.4ghz camera at only 27 miles max.
I flew Ravens... (Score:2)
...in Ramadi in 2005-2006.
You have to get airspace clearance just like every other aircraft, I don't think this guy did.
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You don't need airspace clearance to fly a model in most classifications of airspace. General rule of thumb is don't fly over any airports or military bases. I've gotten visits for flying inside an army base's radar coverage, but they were just curious.
Argh! (Score:4, Insightful)
What sheep Americans have become! A guy does a cool, harmless thing like fly a model airplane over the East River and suddenly everybody on this board is biting their fingernails about whether the government will *allow* us to do such a thing. The government does not *allow* us to do anything; in this country, it's what we, the People, allow the government to do that's important. We allow them do very specific, limited things at our sufferance. Everything else we do at our pleasure and the government can fuck off if it doesn't like it.
Re:Argh! (Score:5, Insightful)
I like your version of reality better than the one I live in. I'd sign up in a heartbeat if I felt you could deliver. :(
-FL
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Okay, so I'm looking at this article with 39 responses, including those beyond my threshold. I can assure you that 'everyone on this board' is not fretting about the government allowing us to fly model airplanes. We seem to be responding pretty normally, really. A lot of people are saying how cool it is, some people are saying 'how could he do that?', and the rest are saying 'that's dumb'. It actually looks like a pretty good bell curve, to me.
It seems that you're the sheep: the guy who insists that eve
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Now, some idiot with some islamofascist idea, can buy a readymade tool (he says he's going to sell it ) with some petrodollars and God knows do what.
Last I checked, you can easily buy a semi-auto AK in the 'States. To "some idiot with some islamofascist idea" planning on doing "God knows what", this would be a far more useful ready-made tool compared to an RC plane.
Cool, however... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Where in the USA is FPV flying illegal?
"Harrowing?" (Score:4, Insightful)
See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/harrow [reference.com]
Re:"Harrowing?" (Score:4, Funny)
If that plane had crashed into a building, it would have been like 911 divided by 100
Yes. Nine point one one!
Best FPV of all time. (Score:2)
This one owns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgWIdpegfuc&feature=related [youtube.com]
Unwatchable (Score:3)
The guy may understand flying, but he sure as hell doesn't understand cutting footage into a comprehensive, watchable piece of film
Innocent people (Score:2)
Huh. How could he possibly tell who's innocent at that distance?
It's "cool" but... (Score:2)
I'm going to go against the general concensus and say that I wasn't at all impressed. The idea itself is cool, and has a huge amount of potential, but the execution was poor. The choice of lens is too wide (don't use wide angle when you're going to be panning / tilting), the camera has part of the plane in shot (again due to the lens being too wide), and apparently there was nothing done to avoid rain drops on the lens (would have been easier to avoid with a less-wide lens). Honestly, nearly everything that
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That the authorities there did not immediately confiscate it is also news for nerds - very good news.
There will be another endless court fight coming, however - the right of private citizens to fly cameras over other people's backyards.
Sigh.
IMO if the government wants to spy on it's citizens, then it should also grant the right for citizens to spy on citizens, including citizens who are government employees. It's only fair, right?
Yeah, it's pretty fucked, either way.
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Yet, bragging rights don't apply unless you prove it. Where's the link describing how? The radio range for something like that, never mind the range for video, is daunting. Granted, he's operating above the horizon, but still!
I, for one, want to know the specifics of that side of the setup. I could care less about the other components of the event (no interest in flight); the radio communications holding out over that distance, on minimal power, is notable, however.
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Worse than that, I think this story might be a dupe.
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know how every few months someone posts yet another video of guys taking video from high altitude balloons, and we all yawn because we've seen it a dozen times or more?
This is the exact opposite of that.
Re:how long will *that* hobby last? (Score:4, Informative)
They are made of balsa wood and foam. They are very light. They have a useful payload of about a pound. Yes a 1-pound bomb can cause damage, but really it would just be so much easier for a terrorist to throw a hand grenade or something, rather than go through all of this shenanigan.
Re:how long will *that* hobby last? (Score:5, Interesting)
You seem to know what you're talking about. And yes, no danger to society, but it is a danger to people. Don't let people think they can just fly model planes in population dense areas. Without thinking about it.
I fly model glides myself, balsa wood is found in the cheaper range (that I fly). But in the 'sport' range you have carbon fiber planes, which can reach speeds well over 100km/h. And these are gliders we are talking about, you won't hear them till they hit you. With 2kg of carbon going at 100km you can hospitalize someone with ease.
Also, I envy you Americans at this point. They regulated the hell out of the model flying sport here, making photographing a city like that most likely illegal.
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You think that is bad? I heard the other day that many people don't grow their own food! OMG, they totes buy food prepared in huge factories operated by minimum-wage scum! It wouldn't take much effort to infiltrate the production line and put Allah knows what into the food. Will nobody think of the children???!!!!!
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Why do you think you have to go to certain areas to fly RC planes?
The obvious safety solution is a parachute that deploys if radio contact is lost or the plane impacts anything while still in the air. They exist, but almost no one uses them.