Record-Breaking 11000ft Flight Sparks Criticism In Pilot Community 233
An anonymous reader writes: In an attempt to break the world 'how high can you fly a consumer drone' record, an anonymous person from the Netherlands flew a Phantom 2 Quadcopter to a height of up to 3.4 km. That is more than 3 km above the maximum European Union legal height of 120 meters, which has applied since July 1, 2015 to hobby drones. Undoubtedly he set a new record of sorts, which also led to substantial discussions among the drone pilot community on the safe use of drones. At a height of 3.4 kilometers or 11000 feet you can indeed run into regular air traffic, or cause a lot of damage in case of a crash. Fortunately not in this flight -- but the battery had only 4% capacity at the moment of landing.
So what you are actually saying... (Score:4, Interesting)
So what you are actually saying... "but the battery had only 4% capacity at the moment of landing" ...is that these things need better/bigger batteries.
Re: So what you are actually saying... (Score:2)
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Getting a good charger can cost almost as much as the drone, but it's worth it. Batteries are rarely the limiting factor. Capacity on the other hand is a trade-off. I'd still like to fly 30 minutes without landing. Hopefully one day those lithium air batteries become viable.
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Get a slow flying fixed wing. 30 minutes is easy. Even with FPV.
Start adding gimbles and the plane will just have to get bigger. Low wing loading being key. You're already used to not flying on windy days.
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Yes, because you can change that battery while it's 11,000 feet in the air.
Re: So what you are actually saying... (Score:2)
and whether recharging would sufficiently offset the increased weight
Only for a more efficient "lifting body" design (think conventional airplane); definitely not for any sort of VTOL (not yet, anyhow).
Re: So what you are actually saying... (Score:2)
A 777lr had a 22 hour passenger flight a decade ago. It is just not worth it, too many pilots have to be on board to ensure adequate resting times.
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Sorry, yes. I meant it's well within current commercial airliner technology bounds; the lack of a London to Sydney non-stop flight reflects the relative demand/cost equation.
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Much bigger! Nuclear batteries. So they can fly even higher!
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Much bigger! Nuclear batteries. So they can fly even higher!
Higher, thus closer to the big yellow blob of a fusion power plant. I wonder if there's a technology to harness that...
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It would seem easier to use a Helium balloon to do the lifting bit, then use a parachute to do the falling bit, then the battery to do the landing bit.
Get the size of the balloon just right for neutral buoyancy, and the motors would only be needed for movement/stabilisation and not lift.
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It would seem easier to use a Helium balloon to do the lifting bit, then use a parachute to do the falling bit, then the battery to do the landing bit.
On a drone platform, out to sea, right? Because that's the smartest place to land things which have been at high altitude...
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It is not much about the capacity of the batteries which are pretty constant in the last couple of years. The flight time is function of weight and energy efficiency with the battery capacity being constant. In other words, if you add battery capacity, you add weight and then the drone doesn't necessary fly longer.
It is quite cool that DJI's line of Phantom models went from like 6 min flight time (with FPV) to 28 min flight time (with FPV, 3 axis gimbals, camera, collision detection and avoidance, much long
"you can indeed run into regular air traffic" (Score:2, Insightful)
But honestly, what's the likelihood?
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It's just a government jobs program [youtube.com].
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I'd like to purpose a big sky small drone theory.
Basically testing it involves shooting drones out of a cannon at airplane windshield. The mythbusters did something similar with birds. I'd argue that most drones are far less dangerous then a frozen bird shot out of a cannon.
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Apparently there have been nearly 30 'close calls' between airliners and drones in the UK in the last year; some people are starting to worry.
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The plane is a thousand times more likely to hit a bird.
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Depends. Is the bird trying to fly into the engine intake? You don't rhink some fuckwit is going to do this? See laser pointers.
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Not at 11,000ft its not.
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Re:"you can indeed run into regular air traffic" (Score:5, Insightful)
1 in 1 ^ 18, Less than a bird strikes (Score:3, Insightful)
A drone in a 3km cubes (say 7.28 ^ 11 positions) overlapping a plane (say 50m x 50m x 50m, 216000 positions).
We're looking at numbers of the order of 1 ^ 18 for simple instantaneous collission, say it passes 1000 of these cubes, 1 in 1 ^ 15.
But that assumes pure random chance, that the drone pilot never sees the plane. Which is unlikely.
Put this in context there are BILLIONS of birds in the sky, do you want to regulate them too?
Re:1 in 1 ^ 18, Less than a bird strikes (Score:5, Informative)
There aren't billions of birds at 11,000 feet.
And at low altitudes where planes commonly are (e.g. around airports) we scare them away with rockets or outright kill them.
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There aren't billions of drones either.
Ok let's ignore the AC for a moment and look at facts:
From wikipedia: Estimating that 80% of bird strikes are unreported, there were 4,300 bird strikes listed by the United States Air Force and 5,900 by US civil aircraft in 2003.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimates bird strikes cost US aviation 400 million dollars annually and have resulted in over 200 worldwide deaths since 1988.
Now compare that to drones:
Zero recorded strikes.
Zero recorded fatalities.
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There aren't billions of birds in the sky, especially at those altitudes, whats more birds DO cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to planes every year and a bird strike is significantly less dangerous than a hitting a drone. Birds at least have a chance of turning into mince and thei bones are light and hollow. A drone is metal plastic with batteries and/or fuel and will do serious damage in a high speed hit to a plane.
There are, in fact, billions of birds in the sky. The world's bird population is estimated to be between 200 to 400 billion.
However, as you point out, they aren't Often found at high altitudes.
The highest recorded altitudes is 37,000 feet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
I already knew that birds were fucked up creatures, but until I read that, I had now idea how how messed up they were.
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at 11,000', sorry to say, possibility of impact is exceptionally high. Best case scenario, damage to manned aircraft in the tens of thousands - Worst case scenario - injury and loss of life. Probability of merely tens of thousands of dollars of damage = low, probability of loss of life = high.
Your comment conjures numbers out of thin air with no evidence to back them up. What is "exceptionally high" to you? 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? 1 in 1,000,000? Same question to your "high" probability for loss of life. How did you arrive at these conclusions?
And when you appeal to your authority as a pilot, are you talking commercial airliner or Cessna 172?
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Sorry, I meant to mod the parent post (+1, Interesting), but mis-scrolled and so modded up the idiot AC's reply instead. So I'll just post this to say thanks for sharing some real world perspective, and to cancel the AC mod.
Re:"you can indeed run into regular air traffic" (Score:4, Insightful)
sorry to say, possibility of impact is exceptionally high.
For a pilot you have an unbelievably poor concept of risk evaluation.
You're not the New York subway. You don't have a machine taking up 100% of the available moving space every 5 minutes. You have a plane 5m x 10m (generously) trying to strike something the size of a football by random chance within an area defined by several cubic kilometers.
The possibilities of a strike happening by accident are TINY. The possibilities of a strike happening on purpose when someone actually tries to fly in the path of an aircraft equally would require a level of luck / skill that is borderline unachievable. Seriously I'm more concerned about terrorists, far more concerned about terrorists which is saying something because I don't give terrorism a second thought.
The best chance that someone who tries to strike an aircraft has is by flying on the approach path to the runway, even then there's a massive amount of luck and effort involved in actually making it happen. And I agree idiots flying a drone around an airport should get thrown into a spinning turbine.
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Including "drones" too apparently.
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The FAA was created when two planes flew into each other.
With as many reckless operators, they are ensuring it's simply a question of when, not if.
Re:"you can indeed run into regular air traffic" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just about the even being unlikely - it's also about the consequences when it does happen. A one in a million event that dents someone's pride? No biggie. A one in million event that can result in multiple deaths or a mass casualty event? That's something to be concerned about.
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If anyone and their mother start flying drones high enough, it is sadly a matter of time.
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The near misses are happening frequently enough that there will eventually be a hit, likely several. Do you really want to stick your head in the sand and pretend there's no problem until there's loss of life? Aviation regulatory agencies like the FAA are frequently criticized for being too reactionary - not addressing problems until after there's been loss of life. They are attempting to
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These are all near airports. That's where no-drones regulations make sense.
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Far too much hype (from the media, the FAA and a bunch of pilots who realize that drones may eventually take their jobs). How about we consult a real "straight shooting" former US military pilot who now works for a major US airline as a passenger jet Captain?
Airliners vs drones, calm down [wordpress.com]
I think this guy (who puts his life on the line every day) is a far more credible source of information than a bunch of FAA bureaucrats and a media focused on creating click-bait headlines.
Re: "you can indeed run into regular air traffic" (Score:2)
One estimate is that 24,000 people are killed by lightning strikes around the world each year and about 240,000 are injured.
That's a hell of a lot of planes
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Would it really matter? (Score:2)
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There is speculaton that the lithium batteries could explode if sucked into the jet engine, with unknown effect.
Geese rarely explode under similar conditions.
Re: Would it really matter? (Score:2)
Blendtec already tested LiPo batteries. Nasty smoke.
Re: Would it really matter? (Score:2)
The batteries in these things have the energy of a stick of tnt. Not sure whether a goose has that amount of chemical energy in it's system but a small bomb in an aircraft engine would be substantial.
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Airplanes are made from relatively thin aluminum, and travel at hundreds of miles/hour. Thus, a hovering 2 kg drone struck by an airplane flying at 200 mph would generate a force of 640 kiloNewtons (5x the thrust of an F100's jet engine.
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that assumes that a) it's a head-on collision
The stated assumption was hovering 2 kg drone struck by an airplane, so by definition it's head-on, since otherwise it wouldn't hit the drone.
the drone would be deflected into the airstream and flow with it (being far lighter than the plane)
Possibly. But even a glancing strike would do damage to the very thin aluminum.
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Air is very compressible, there "air cushion" ahead of an airplane is really short and not very significant compared to the speed of the aircraft, the wake behind is another story entirely. It might move slightly off center so hitting the tip of the nose is unlikely but the relative impact velocity or angle of strike won't change much. That said, I'm not sure the relative difference between bird flesh and drone metal is all that significant at these speeds, with 200 mph difference hitting anything is like a
Re:Would it really matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google Image search of "birdstrike aircraft": https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Now explain to all those birds that they should have been deflected around the aircraft.
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What happens when something goes into the engine that shouldn't?
Duck meets jet engine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
granted the Phantom 2 weighs much less than the average duck but what about the drones that weigh more? Or are made of tougher materials?
Now that the Internet chatter is about "record breaking" you can bet people are going to start trying to break the record. And they will start using bigger drones to do it.
Re:Would it really matter? (Score:5, Funny)
granted the Phantom 2 weighs much less than the average duck
It's a witch!
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Jet engines are designed to withstand the ingestion of a frozen turkey (at least not to explode and send blades flying through the aircraft). That's how they test them - there's a chicken cannon that is used to test that the engines can withstand bird impacts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I agree. Just look at the videos. They're impressive from a VFX perspective, but having a $150 million piece of high-precision engineering turned into several tonnes of scrap metal that is likely to fall off at any moment is not a good situation for the pilot, passengers or airline.
lots of wrecked planes in the second video (Score:2)
SOME planes are rated for bird strikes at takeoff speed. You'll notice in the second video a bunch of planes with major damage from bird strikes.
This confusion led to a humorous moment on Mythbusters. They wanted to test the story about frozen chickens vs thawed, but even their thawed chickens kept going right through the aircraft. It turns out the junked aircraft they used for testing was not rated for bird strikes. Many (most?) general aviation planes aren't.
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Many (most?) general aviation planes aren't.
Probably because most general aviation planes are going slow enough that even a blind cripple of a bird can still avoid them. How many cars hit birds each year? How many cars are hit by birds targeting them? ;)
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Jet engines are designed to withstand the ingestion of a frozen turkey (at least not to explode and send blades flying through the aircraft). That's how they test them - there's a chicken cannon that is used to test that the engines can withstand bird impacts:
In this case, the turkey is on the ground.
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Jet engines are designed to withstand the ingestion of a frozen turkey
Nope. Not frozen.
There's a joke about this somewhere.
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For jets, the maximum speed is frequently it's maximum rating for the windshield to withstand a bird strike. Once you're above roughly 8000 feet airspeed can frequently start climbing well past safe speeds from this perspective. This is because most strikes occur at or near airports. And once you're clear of the airport the odds of bird strike is dramatically reduced. At these speeds, you can easily kill a pilot and perhaps two. You can easily kill everyone on a jet. Control of an aircraft is difficult once
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I would imagine that a flimsy construction of metal and plastic would simply vapourize (or glance off if just hitting the exterior) and do no harm.
That's what they thought about the foam plastic insulation on the fuel tank of the shuttle Columbia, and we know how that turned out.
Energy is proportional to the square of the (relative) velocity.
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Aircraft are designed to survive bird strikes with minimal damage, and engines are designed to survive ingesting birds. Drones might present a problem because they contain small hard metal parts in the motors. Its not clear that a jet engine could survive that.
The odds of hitting an aircraft are pretty low but mid-air collisions do happen with aircraft, and they show up on radar and pilots who are actively trying to avoid collisions.
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Aircraft are designed to survive bird strikes with minimal damage, and engines are designed to survive ingesting birds.
No, they're designed to not fail catastrophically and cut the rest of the plane in half with incredibly energetic chunks of turbine blade flying out. What they're not generally designed to do is survive in an operational manner.
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You can be even a bit less worried too. Jets do not typically fly at such low altitudes. Except for very short flights (almost short enough it would be easier to drive), most private jets cruise above 40,000 feet ( over 12000 meters) and commercial jets are around 35,000 feet (almost 11000 meters). What you would find around 11000 or likely lower than 13,500 feet would be single engine aircraft. Anything over 13,500 feet sort of needs a pressurized cabin (or supplemental air supply) and engine enhancements
In related news... (Score:2)
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/... [techcrunch.com]
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How to learn Dutch (Score:2)
Idioot brengt hobbydrone tot hoogte van 3,4 km
Today I learned the Dutch for "idiot."
Quadcopter enthusiasts want quadcopters eliminated (Score:5, Insightful)
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What About An Air Launch? (Score:3)
3KM or so is impressive enough I suppose. But now I'm waiting for someone to take a C-130 up to 25,000 feet or so, lower the tailgate, and toss a drone out the back :-) Then start orbiting (the C-130), and let the drone climb as high from there as it can. I wonder what it would max out at? Might be better to make more efficient high altitude props on the drone for the thin air up there.
I'm also wondering if a drone can autorotate if its batteries went flat.
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I bet it can use it's props for autorotate, but unless you can generate some power from it, you don't have any form of control as the battery is flat. Those drones don't look like they're exactly aerodynamically stable enough for this.
What I do wonder is how much difference it makes for the final impact when falling from 120m or 3400m. I expect the 120m to be enough to reach terminal velocity.
I don't know! (Score:2)
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Would not the fans on a drone go into autorotation just like a helicopter if the propulsion failed?
Auto-rotation requires changing the collective pitch from positive to negative.
How many drones are on sale with variable-pitch propellors?
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Turning the thing upside-down would do the trick, no?
Get a permit/file a flight plan (Score:5, Interesting)
Air-traffic authorities should provide for this sort of thing by allowing trained (licensed?) hobbyists to file a flight plan ahead of time, to give the authorities time to say "no, the airspace is busy at the time you requested" or "yes, go ahead, we've put you in the system and will alert other airspace users of your presence. Please use transponder code ABCXYZ."
Re:Get a permit/file a flight plan (Score:5, Informative)
They do, actually. Rocketry enthusiasts routinely submit NOTAMs (Notice to Airmen) to the FAA for distribution notifying that areas of airspace are to be closed off for rocket flights. Granted, these vehicles routinely reach anywhere from 1000' to 30,000' so they just close it all off.
And I believe in the areas allowed, it's actually marked on charts as restricted airspace so you must fly around it or get permission from the controlling authority.
Of course, the problem is this usually takes place far away from civilization into basically deserted areas (also far away from popular air routes). which takes a lot of fun out of the whole thing when you have to drive 2-3 hours to get to the cleared area, but it means no one is even close to being put in danger.
Right now, we're relying on big sky theory ("see and avoid"). It works, most of the time, until your big sky gets a little crowded. Near misses happen pretty routinely, even under control of ATC. It's also why ADS-B is a new and exciting technology - before that, smaller aircraft don't usually have TCAS systems, while the bigger airlines do. (Proactive pilots routinely purchased "PCAS" Personal Collision Avoidance Systems - basically a portable transponder receiver that works identically to a TCAS except it can't do a TCAS negotiation). A TCAS to TCAS link means two aircraft converging would communicate for a non-conflicting resolution - one will climb, the other emergency descent. A TCAS advisory is considered so important, they are to be immediately obeyed even if it goes against ATC. (In the early days of TCAS, this did cause collisions).
ADS-B tries to provide same but is available to all.
And let's just say TCAS advisories, PCAS advisories and ADS-B traffic displays have been praised by many a pilot.
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This won't be the last such attempt (Score:2)
This surely won't be the last such attempt of going for height records. People always like to seek limits and surpass them. The only thing I can really fault this person for is not notifying air traffic control about the attempt.
A more sensible idea over an outright ban would be a mechanism to allow for such attempts. Weather balloons routinely go way higher than these drones, and don't cause problems, so why can't drones be treated like them? Get similar regulations/licenses/whatever as there are for ballo
Birds (Score:2)
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I was in an aircraft that ate a goose during takeoff. The plane turned around and landed no problem, but we still had to change aircraft because they wanted to do a full check of the engine. Not a "meh, looks good to me" scenario.
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A pilot for a small commuter turboprop airline was on a pilot's web board talking about his companies experience with bird strikes. A 'big jet' pilot jumped into the thread and posted "But all of your bird strikes are in the rear."
Record altitude (Score:2)
Why not take your drone to a high mountain and launch it there
Quite a few mountains are more than 11,000 feet
Not 120 m, but 150 meters (Score:2)
No testing of UAVs collisions (Score:2)
An UAV could be constructed being frangible after 200 km/h speed collision. And by this not causing any harm to the manned aircraft.
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You realize some consumer drones are huge and can actually carry cargo, right? There's a reason for the ceiling and there is a reason there are no-fly zones around airports. I'm pretty sure we don't need testing to know that an aircraft slamming into an 8 rotor drone with an aluminium body carrying a camera, a bunch of batteries, and a delivery package would not be a good scenario.
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I suppose any UAV manufacturer could step up and pay Boeing or GE to conduct certification tests on some airframes or engines with their product.
Metric/Standard (Score:2)
Choose one, not both.
Why is this an issue ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Before someone counters with " omgthinkoftheplanes " the only reason this is even IN the news is because it contains the word " Drone " somewhere within it.
How many photos have you seen of folks strapping various items to balloons with a Go-Pro attached taking selfies of said items with the Earths curvature as the backdrop ?
I would think they are just as much a hazard to aircraft as any drone, yet no one is running about in a panic or demanding legislation requiring folks register their balloons when purchased :|
Seriously news types, drones are nothing new. RC craft have been around quite a while so find somthing else to sensationalize if you wouldn't mind.
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A source you can trust!
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Because, you know, it's not like foreign aid money actually does anything more useful than a wall of bigotry.
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Half billion? Try two orders of magnitude higher. 50 billion might be too much, but closer to the actual figure. More like 30 billion or so.
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Re: And it still won't get over trump wall (Score:2)