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Transportation Idle

Major League Baseball Games are Experiencing 'Drone Delays' (cbssports.com) 31

CBS Sports reports: Wednesday's game between the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays was stopped in the bottom of the first because of a "drone delay." After the second base umpire pointed to something in the sky and motioned for teams to leave the field, the cameras picked up an identifiable flying object hovering over the field during the game.
CBS reports it's the third drone delay experienced by Major League Baseball this year: The first came in a Twins-Pirates game in early August, and the second happened just a week later in a game between the Red Sox and Rays...

This move isn't just a hazard for those on the field, it's actually outright illegal. The Federal Aviation Administration's rules state that drones and other "unmanned aircraft systems" are prohibited from flying within a radius of three nautical miles of any MLB stadium starting one hour before a game's scheduled start and ending one hour after the game's end. This isn't just exclusive to baseball, as it also applies to NFL games, top-tier NCAA football games and auto racing events.

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Major League Baseball Games are Experiencing 'Drone Delays'

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  • by Cyberax ( 705495 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @01:10PM (#60477054)
    Delays in a baseball game? How do you tell it's a delay?
  • by Wycliffe ( 116160 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @01:18PM (#60477078) Homepage

    It seems like a net or a shotgun would work just fine. Even a well placed paintball could likely bring a consumer drone down.
    They also have trained falcons to take down drones or they could hire a sharpshooter or use a water cannon.
    Start destroying or capturing their expensive drones and this will quickly stop.

    • High energy lasers
    • It seems like a net or a shotgun would work just fine.

      I can see you've fired neither a net nor a shotgun at a distant target before.

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      Or a bat and a bucket of practice balls.

    • by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @06:28PM (#60477706) Journal

      It seems like a net or a shotgun would work just fine. Even a well placed paintball could likely bring a consumer drone down.
      They also have trained falcons to take down drones or they could hire a sharpshooter or use a water cannon.

      What goes up ballistically (at less than orbital velocity) must come down. Baseball stadia are generally situated in cities. While fine birdshot may come down as a harmless rain, the substantial pellets or rifle bullets you'd need to be more than a harmless rain to the drone come down almost as fast as they went up.

      The people with cars in the surrounding parking lot, and those living within a mile or so of the stadium, might object to having the local sports team shooting them out of a clear sky on game day.

      • Don't miss. On a more serious not, there are plenty of technologies like lasers or an EMP gun that would not have falling projectiles. You would just have to make sure that you did it where the drone itself wouldn't fall and hit anyone.

      • Also: The venu would need the city/county/state to add a legislative loophole to the typical prohibition on "discharge of a firearm within city limits / X-hundred feet of an inhabited building".

        While fine birdshot may come down as a harmless rain, the substantial pellets or rifle bullets you'd need to be more than a harmless rain to the drone come down almost as fast as they went up.

        Interestingly: That's why home-defense shotguns are typically loaded with e.g. #40 birdshot rather than, say, #00 buck. At

    • Triangulate the remote frequency, and send a police car or stadium security to that location.
  • Most major league sports is a legal monopoly. They profit only because they do not have to compete. Schools are conned in paying trying expenses, candidates are conned into working for nothing, outlets are forced to pay inflated prices for content because there is no alternative product. These drones are like social media a decade ago. Sports team sees it only as threats to revenue. There were policies, even at the college level trying to ban ticket holders from social media. It was a threat to revenue. Th
    • There's nothing stopping you from starting your own competing sports league. No one owns the game if baseball and many towns across the US have a local team that plays in some of those very same leagues. Claiming that the MLB has a monopoly over Major League Baseball games is like stating that Samsung has a monopoly over Galaxy Fold phones.

      A baseball stadium is private property and if they don't want certain behavior their that's their right. To suggest you should get to do whatever the hell you want is
    • What are you on about? Most consumer drones can stay in the air 20 minutes at most, due to battery limitations. Also, unless ants playing baseball is the look the pilot is going for, they’ve gotta fly very low (due to consumer drones having wide angle lenses, similar to a smartphone), which, as already stated in TFA - interrupts the game.

      Nobody flying over a game is doing it because they want to watch baseball. It would be significantly less legally risky just to pirate a stream of the game. They

  • FAA rules?

    Tell them where to shove their Rules and Guidance for it is just that, Rules and Guidance for those unable to think for themselves.

    The Yankee "touchless war" would be out of business if there were mere Rules and Guidance for the operation of drones.

  • The simple solution is to give everyone attending the game a fully-loaded shotgun, and let them bang away at the intruder. It might be the one thing that could make baseball exciting.

  • ... a reason to watch baseball.
  • Here I thought that perhaps the drones were dropping bags of weed into the stands or onto the field and now I find out they're just hovering over the stadium.
  • Happened to the LA Dodgers game last night, delay until the guy flew the drone away.
    Funny thing is, that there is no way to get rid of it, or even track it, or tase it out of the sky.

    • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      More like they figure the perpetrators will get bored (and/or careless so the drones can be tackled). It's practically a tradition in L.A. to bounce a beach ball around in the stands, and pretty much every game (pre-CONID) they rolled out onto the field and play had to be stopped. The only thing that keeps this from being a crippling problem is that even after 60 years, there still aren't enough beach balls being smuggled in, and that's on the people doing it choosing not to do it too much. But it only take

  • by t4eXanadu ( 143668 ) on Saturday September 05, 2020 @06:08PM (#60477676)

    As if baseball couldn't become any slower and more boring. What exactly is the threat, that someone could be recording the game and illegal streaming it? Or maybe the drone could drop hundreds of bags of marijuana onto the field?

    • What exactly is the threat, that someone could be recording the game and illegal streaming it?

      Yes, that. Also: Recording the batter/catcher and coachs' signals for analysis by competing teams (a MAJOR issue). Recording the behavior of the players (beyond what's visible from the sidelines and TV feeds) ditto. Distracting the players from the game, reducing their performance. Interfering with their vision when trying to catch a fly ball. Etc.

  • So funny to see comments about danger to the "crowd" and stuff about the "stands". Of course during the time frame in TFA fans were not allowed in the ballparks, due to COVID. News for nerds, indeed! ;-)

  • by SuperDre ( 982372 ) on Sunday September 06, 2020 @01:28AM (#60478254) Homepage
    This has got nothing to with safety, but all with exclusive rights to the recording of the game.

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