Question about the quad that almost fell on skier Marcel Hirscher

[fengshuidrone]

It's OK, we can't get into a brawl or anything I am someone who spent money on a hobby that has turned into a nightmare from the actions of others. Some frustrations will certainly boil over.
I promise not to throw the first punch.
Maybe some minds might be opened up to how important safety really is in the sUAS world.

 

[Bartman]

The most easy explanation is a weak/empty battery.

this would be my guess as well as it would almost certainly require damage-control in the way of a BS press release just as they've done in order to cover up what is essentially operator error

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Reports are stating the vehicle was a "DFC-COPTER XR1". I can't find any evidence that this is a commercial system. It's likely a home-brew from the operator.

Fantastic article on the situation here:

http://www.suasnews.com/2015/12/40954/40954/

 

[fengshuidrone]

The last paragraph in the article says it all.
"One thing is for certain. The general public will not stand-by or tolerate being damaged, injured or killed by remotely controlled machines and will certainly hold their pilots accountable. Pilots must understand that they alone have the authority and responsibility for the operation of their aircraft and to fly them accordingly. That means making professional decisions that include safety over economics and understanding accountability."
Sorta what I was saying EXACTLY.
Now go back to the first paragraph in the article.
"All United States Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) pilots must, become intimately familiar with Federal Aviation Regulation (FAR) 91.3(a) which outlines pilot in command authority and ultimate responsibility. Every manned pilot knows it and understands it and because that is the standard that all pilots are held to, so must UAS pilots."
My feelings PRECISELY.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Yep. Claims that "It wasn't my fault, the robot did it." will not work.

 

[fengshuidrone]

It's simple. Fly like you are on it, and your children are down there on the ground as potential victims. Just think "If I crash I'll die and my family might too." Now go find a safe place to fly and have fun flying. If I ever crash that bad I will consider myself dead and quit flying for good.

 

[dazzab]

One thing everyone here is forgetting. This crash did not injure anyone. Perhaps the skill and the planning of the pilot/team had something to do with that? Or maybe it was luck? Everyone here is a pilot of a multirotor. Can you honestly tell me you've never experienced unexpected events? How about we get some facts before making conclusions?

 

[violetwolf]

Can you honestly tell me you've never experienced unexpected events?

Exactly the reason I think that we should not be using heavy lift machines at events with spectators. I've had a few "events" myself.

I think there is a compromise in there somewhere whereby lighter machines could be used but even then there's an undeniable risk to the public.

Closed sets, landscape, real estate, all fair game with proper safety measures. But large public gatherings give me the willies... it's hard not to hit someone

Good discussion

 

[Av8Chuck]

I've seen several crashes like this with the A2. I'm not insinuating that this is an A2 but it would be good to know the C-rating on the battery.

X8/Octo's don't draw a lot of amps at a hover if the throttle is less than 50%. It didn't appear to be a heavy camera and gimbal, but this happened at the beginning of the race so there's a possibility that the operator was aggressive on the throttle while at the same time retracting the gear and the amp draw exceeded the C-rating on the battery, especially when you consider the lower performance of the batteries in cold weather. It also appears that the batteries are in parallel and one battery might have been discharged or had a much lower charge on takeoff.

That might account for the loss in power, and I've seen several A2's that when that occurs it begins to toilet bowl, the operator gets behind on the controls and instead of punching out to put as much distance between the ground and drone they try to save it and fly the drone into the ground.

Its possible that other controllers might do the same thing but I've never experienced that with the SuperX or Pixhawk, in fact I don't think I could get either of those controllers to bank 90' with more than 50% throttle if I tried.

Also that's a black drone being flown at night, it wouldn't have to fly that high to get into the shadows and maybe the pilot just lost orientation and dumb-thumbed it? Its unfortunate that this happened at all but as someone mentioned earlier no one was injured.

 

[fengshuidrone]

One thing everyone here is forgetting. This crash did not injure anyone. Perhaps the skill and the planning of the pilot/team had something to do with that? Or maybe it was luck? Everyone here is a pilot of a multirotor. Can you honestly tell me you've never experienced unexpected events? How about we get some facts before making conclusions?

The point with safety is, you need to keep safety first and foremost in every flight. The fact no one was hurt is irrelevant. Unexpected events, yes. Unexpected events over crowds of people and famous sports athletes? NEVER.
That will never happen to me because I refuse to set myself up even for that possibility. That just dumb luck no one got hurt. Its easy to make excuses for those who do what you might not consider to be too dangerous. The pilot is ALWAYS responsible. I said it once but I'll say it again. Fly it like you are actually physically on board. This will give you a more realistic attitude on what it takes to fly safely. I think the fact that we are not on our craft lets us get careless, because "no one will get hurt." B.S. Someone will eventually die from being struck by a crashing MR. The reason? Because someone thought "no one will get hurt."
Unfortunately, this fatal accident will most likely happen because of an unexpected event. This is inevitable because the systems we fly as sUAS pilots have none of the redundancy of systems that a full scale has. When a system fails, there is no fail-over to the backup system put there because some engineer understood safety and Murphy's law. This is the reason no one should fly over people or sporting events with their sUAS.
Thank your lucky stars that this "pilot" does not fly a real plane for hire. Just think if all professional full scale pilots did whatever they wanted, never had to stay out of restricted airspace, and threw common sense safety and reasoning out the window. That would seem to be the mindset of some of those who's life's are not at stake because they pilot from the ground. That needs to change. I'm done here and will no longer follow up on this thread.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

One thing everyone here is forgetting. This crash did not injure anyone. Perhaps the skill and the planning of the pilot/team had something to do with that? Or maybe it was luck? Everyone here is a pilot of a multirotor. Can you honestly tell me you've never experienced unexpected events? How about we get some facts before making conclusions?

I disagree. That crash was way too close to be anything other than luck that it didn't hit the skiier. Yes, the pilot actions may have improved the odds that they didn't hit him, but they never should have been in that position anyway.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Its possible that other controllers might do the same thing but I've never experienced that with the SuperX or Pixhawk, in fact I don't think I could get either of those controllers to bank 90' with more than 50% throttle if I tried.

Arducopter has specific code which will always cut back on total throttle, in order to provide overhead necessary for stabilization. This was done because it's very obvious to us, that, we can't magically create power where none exists. If the copter doesn't have enough power to fly, it's going to come down. Ok, so what can we do to manage the situation best? If the copter doesn't stabilize, and it rolls over, the thrust vector is no long pointing down, and you lose ALL lift. If we sacrifice some of the total power to ensure stabilization, it will still come down, but whatever thrust it is capable of providing, will be downwards. Thus, the copter will fall slower than it will if it rolls over.

We have had cases where people complained their copter won't fly on Arducopter, but it will fly on other systems. What we found is that they were operating in the danger zone, where our program was cutting total power to ensure it had enough to stabilize. We're happy to not help these people get airborn.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Ok, some of my Italian friends have spoken directly with the pilot and found out what happened.

The aircraft is using a DJI Wookong-M flight controller. He must have painted the GPS black, I don't know on that yet. Pilot states that it began what appears to have been a "GPS Flyaway", while at the same time he lost remote control of the aircraft. It's not clear at this time if it was a simultaneous loss of RC Control and GPS signal (which would be odd) or if it was another instance of these DJI systems seemingly getting into a state where they are flying somewhere and ignore the pilot's inputs attempting to retake manual control.

If it was a true loss of radio control, why didn't the copter return to the landing point? If it was a true loss of GPS, why didn't the copter respond to manual controls? If it was a true loss of GPS and RC control simultaneously, why didn't it land straight down as they are supposed to? We're always left with these questions. DJI data logs don't provide enough information.

Now, in Italy, commercial operation require the aircraft to have a completely independent flight termination system which cuts motor power. This system operates on an independent control signal.

The pilot, realizing he had lost control and it was flying away, activated the termination system, which is why it crashed so heavily. He did not know that the skier was actually coming down the course at the time, so the timing of this event was just unfortunate.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

I've been very much against "flight termination systems", and this is a perfect example of why. This is not safety! It's flying, and you drop it?! The whole idea is predicated on the idea that you're flying in a safe area, and it suddenly starts flying away, and you drop it before it leaves the safety zone. But what about when the safety zone is only 200 feet wide?

How about instead of mandating these auto-crash system, they instead look at DJI's systems and, to quote The Donald, "figure out what the hell is going on over there!"

 

[scotth]

The point with safety is, you need to keep safety first and foremost in every flight. The fact no one was hurt is irrelevant. Unexpected events, yes. Unexpected events over crowds of people and famous sports athletes? NEVER.
That will never happen to me because I refuse to set myself up even for that possibility. That just dumb luck no one got hurt. Its easy to make excuses for those who do what you might not consider to be too dangerous. The pilot is ALWAYS responsible. I said it once but I'll say it again. Fly it like you are actually physically on board. This will give you a more realistic attitude on what it takes to fly safely. I think the fact that we are not on our craft lets us get careless, because "no one will get hurt." B.S. Someone will eventually die from being struck by a crashing MR. The reason? Because someone thought "no one will get hurt."
Unfortunately, this fatal accident will most likely happen because of an unexpected event. This is inevitable because the systems we fly as sUAS pilots have none of the redundancy of systems that a full scale has. When a system fails, there is no fail-over to the backup system put there because some engineer understood safety and Murphy's law. This is the reason no one should fly over people or sporting events with their sUAS.
Thank your lucky stars that this "pilot" does not fly a real plane for hire. Just think if all professional full scale pilots did whatever they wanted, never had to stay out of restricted airspace, and threw common sense safety and reasoning out the window. That would seem to be the mindset of some of those who's life's are not at stake because they pilot from the ground. That needs to change. I'm done here and will no longer follow up on this thread.

Exactly, and the reason the 333 exemptions are so restrictive is because there are no established standards for airworthiness and pilot skills as in with full size. Had this been in the U.S., this flight would have required a 333 exemption with closed-set approval... meaning an essentially empty course.

 

[Blue Collar]

The real question for me is why they didn't use a much smaller system when doing something like this. Everyone complains about the DJI Phantom crowd (I'm not a big DJI fan myself) but I'll give credit to DJI for making a fairly capable quad that is light, has a somewhat break away hull, and props that will fail before causing serious lacerations. The big rigs have there place but for a live TV downhill ski event I would have used a much smaller custom rig with a Connex and a GoPro or some other small mirrorless cam.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

You sure about those breakaway props?

 

[Blue Collar]

Have you ever had your hands on a Phantom? That video is nothing but entertainment and proves little if not nothing and if we are discussing something a serious as safety I would think someone with your knowledge of these machines would understand that posting a video of a multi cutting up carrots doesn't help when trying to determine what's safe. The props on the Phantom 3 are definitely designed to break before they cause a serious laceration. They maybe able to break the skin but they're never going to take a finger off.

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/can-drones-kill-people/

Although their tests weren't perfect they were much more accurate than dropping a yogurt cup into spinning phantom blades.

I still don't understand why many of you don't see that the smaller Phantom sized class of multirotors are inherently safer because they are under the threshold of being able to do significant damage to people or property.

 

[Av8Chuck]

If it makes you feel good to carp on this guy great. I guess in your own way telling the rest of us that we should be safe is cathartic.

None of us were there and although its very apparent how close this was we don't know what happened. I'm not making excuses for what happened but every time something like this does happen people online are quick to judge.

You do realize that everyone who has a 333 exemption has a pilots license? We get it.

 

[Av8Chuck]

You sure about those breakaway props?

That was awesome [until the end]...