Drone ceiling?

PatR · May 23, 2019

The Air National Guard has been operating large, fixed wing drones around several east coast urban areas. Just for an altitude reference, Predator/Reaper cruises at 25,000’ and above, Global Hawk at 35,000’-40,000’+. Some of the smaller drones like Aerosonde, Scan Eagle, Shadow, and RQ-21 can easily exceed 18,000’.

As for climb rate for multirotors, some of the FC systems provide for user adjustable climb and descent rates. APM, Pixhawk, PX4 are some that quickly come to mind. Some people have been “hacking” DJI code and altering previously limited performance parameters. If you have the thrust and battery capacity you can achieve 10,000’+ and get back.

In early days I used to set the climb rate on APM systems with a max climb rate of 10m/s to 15m/s. Whether or not they actually achieved that that rate in practice is open to question but they ascended very quickly. Descents were a lot slower as I learned setting a high descent rate could force the FC to stop the motors to achieve it. When that happened it wasn’t “descending”, it was falling out of control. Unless you had considerable altitude when you re-applied power to stop the tumble and right the aircraft the “arrival” was quite destructive. It required several hundred feet to stabilize. Lessons learned the hard way...

So it’s possible for a multirotor to be seen at 8,000’, but not probable unless the operator launched from the top of a high terrain feature.

PatR · May 23, 2019

Graham said:
This report has a drone at 9000'. I wonder what they saw?

Drone flown 'within 150ft' of passenger jet off Essex coast

The jet's pilots spotted the drone flying directly above them at high speed, a report said.

www.bbc.com

Perhaps the British aviation authorities need to initiate more frequent sobriety checks of their passenger aircraft pilots. They certainly need to improve their vision test standards.

Chris F · May 23, 2019

Santa and the rain dear are lucky. Probably won't have any neir misses in December but will all have to wait for the FFA to report on it.

Grumpy · May 23, 2019

Mrgs1 said:
There's no bull on there!

Need to add one.

FlushVision · May 23, 2019

PatR said:
Perhaps the British aviation authorities need to initiate more frequent sobriety checks of their passenger aircraft pilots. They certainly need to improve their vision test standards.

I think it possible that some pilots report drone sightings because they have an agenda to paint them in a bad light. Make up incidents. I doubt that a consumer level drone would be visible to someone who is traveling at near cruising speed. Still possible that a consumer level drone could get that high but it would be the last flight that drone would ever make.

Good time Charlie · May 23, 2019

I find this a much more plausible explanation. How many kids lose a balloon every day? Ever wonder where all those balloons go after a celebratory release? There's got to be thousands of them floating around up there at any given moment.

How High Can a Helium Balloon Go Before it Pops?

Balloons frequently--whether intentionally or accidentally--escape into the sky. These balloons float up into the atmosphere until they either pop or begin to deflate and return to earth. While it's not possible to know the exact altitude a helium balloon can attain, estimations are possible.

sciencing.com

PatR · May 23, 2019

FlushVision said:
I think it possible that some pilots report drone sightings because they have an agenda to paint them in a bad light. Make up incidents.

I tend to agree, and certain many reports have been fabricated by commercial pilots as they hate any concept of automated systems that can and have replaced humans in the airplane. They also know there’s no way to disprove their sighting claim.

Most commercial airliners only need humans to enter the flight plan and from just after take off they can fly in auto pilot all the way through re landing at the destination airport. Humans monitor the process and hand fly only if they want to, with the exception of the last 200’ or so of altitude during the approach, which requires piloting unless being flown as a CAT-III auto land approach.

Mz35z · May 23, 2019

Ty Pilot said:
At 5MS ascent rate or 16 feet per second, it would take a full power climb of around six and a half minutes to get to that altitude, and at full power your flight time would be cut drastically so; it is doubtful you could then make the return trip to earth without a free fall of some distance.

Sounds like those pilots were using the standard airline industry 'Drone ID Chart'

View attachment 16695

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mcbutler · May 25, 2019

Paul (UK) said:
There was a report recently of another drone near miss, this time at Heathrow airport London, pilots reported seeing a white square shaped drone (DJI?) pass under left wing approximately 20 feet below. The aircraft itself was at 6,000 feet! Can our drones reach these sort of heights?

British Airways flight faces 'near-miss' drone collision near Heathrow

A British Airways flight carrying 300 passengers came within just feet of striking a drone that was flying near Heathrow Airport.

inews.co.uk

Just search YouTube for high altitude drone you will see plenty of evidence of them reaching extreme altitudes and landing safely!

FlushVision · May 25, 2019

mcbutler said:
Just search YouTube for high altitude drone you will see plenty of evidence of them reaching extreme altitudes and landing safely!

6000 ft is 1 mile and 240 yds. also 9000 ft is 1 mile and 1240 yds...the better part of 2 miles!. I've seen youtube vids of high altitude drone flights where the poster has claimed some extraordinary heights achieved, but almost two miles? Nahh. Over a mile without crashing is doubtful at best, and almost two miles is just wishful thinking.

In my very early experience of flying drones before I got responsible, I used to fly a drone up to about a thousand feet on a couple of occasions. No problem getting to that height but it seemed to take for ever to get the drone back down again. With that experience just a simple multiplication by six of the time it took to fly up and descend again (there is more to it than that when you account for lower air density and stronger winds at altitude) tells me that flying to 6000 would be foolhardy even without considering the law. When I flew up to 1000 ft I was using a drone that had a 'real world' flight time of 20 minutes when flying in normal conditions...a pretty high flight time compared to the H, say. But 6000 ft ain't normal (9000 ft is very not normal). IMHO flying a consumer level drone to 6000 ft will very likely result in a free-fall event at the end of the flight. Not entirely impossible to get to 6000 ft without crashing, I'll give you that, but lashings of good luck will need to be on the side of the pilot. 9000 ft on the other hand will definitely have a free-fall element in the flight no matter how lucky the pilot is.

Ty Pilot · May 25, 2019

100% Agree. Are there commercial drones out there that can reach those altitudes? Absolutely, but those are far out of the economical reach of 99% of hobbyists and by nature of their cost there comes a responsibility factor that; in and of it self put them in the hands of those who would not do it unless properly cleared (and therefore safe) to do so.

Rouge drones being flown illegally are almost always commercially available hobbyist types like we fly and the only way they will see a six or nine thousand foot climb and return safely to land is onboard and aircraft that is capable of doing so.

PatR · May 25, 2019

Tend to agree. The higher altitude stuff is usually DIY or high end commercial products with power system flexibility. Add or subtract batteries as needed. Some of the early Phantom high altitude videos did end in free fall.

Guido Cangelosi · May 26, 2019

Graham said:
This report has a drone at 9000'. I wonder what they saw?

Drone flown 'within 150ft' of passenger jet off Essex coast

The jet's pilots spotted the drone flying directly above them at high speed, a report said.

www.bbc.com

Yeah and the drone was flying faster than the plane, right ?

Guido Cangelosi · May 26, 2019

Guido Cangelosi said:
Yeah and the drone was flying faster than the plane, right ?

Unfortunately, drones can make a bad repute to UFOs.

PatR · May 26, 2019

Nobody reports UFO’s as they tend to make the reporting party appear to have a couple screws loose. Drones make it easy to report something as “everyone” knows drones are operated irresponsibly by most users.

Back in the early ‘90’s flying a Cessna 182 at 9500’ over the Grapevine one dark night something smacked one leg of the landing gear and caused it to vibrate loudly. Bang! Thrum for a moment. Not a clue what it was or could have been. Upon landing a little later my passenger and I inspected the gear and found nothing wrong. I certainly wasn’t going to report a collision with a UFO so reported nothing. Had drones been available to blame it would have been mighty convenient.

Santa · May 27, 2019

Anyone remember the movie "October Sky" about a group of kids in the late 50's who launch a model rocket and get blamed for a forest fire caused by a military flair? The boys prove their innocence by applying trig to the trajectory of their model. Maybe the authorities should be made to watch that movie and learn something...