Safety is no accident

[DennyR]

As I read with dismay a report that a young child was killed and it's father seriously injured when a model went out of control it brings home the fact that almost every MR manufacturer is guilty of not having any form of creative development ideas. They copy each other and replicate the same mistakes over and over. When Holgar first strapped four motors to a X frame and got it to fly the masses followed with attempts to make it stronger and more crash resistant without any regard for the consequences of a failure. With the likes of DW, DJI, Tarot, DIYDrones and all of the rest churning out modeling mayhem in the form of mechanical flying insects that look more like a demented peewit wobbling about of legs that they call an undercarriage. After a little work these things almost fall over and then take to the sky .........is it any wonder that legislators in the FAA and the CAA want to keep you on the ground.

I have will have no hesitation in recommending to all legislators that technology exists that can accommodate the following requirements.
No vehicle shall be used that has any exposed blades.
There shall be no exposed hard points on any surface of the model top, side or bottom. This would include any CF gimbal parts, undercarriage parts, prop. hubs or any other components that is not covered by at least 4 cm of protective rubberized foam. Anyone tasked with the job of overseeing any commercial aspect of model flight is going to err on the side of caution. the time will surely come when every model used will be the subject of approvals and inspection by authorized engineers.
I think DJI should be congratulated on the Phantom as it heralds the arrival of smaller and better craft albeit that it still needs work on the safety aspect.
Obviously I do have such a vehicle that can also float on water and has a camera contained inside the foam board hull. It is not that I want to upset all of you guys who have hobby models and enjoy flying them and getting them to work but for the ones who want to fly in a public place for hire and reward then this heavy lift **** has got to stop outside of a properly controlled environment.

 

[kloner]

17 people died in the US from alcohol related deaths in the 2 hours between you posting this till i replied. 9 people died in car related deaths in the same 2 hours here.

while loss of life isn't excuseable, to worry that much to even suggest outlawing anything within our industry is wreckless. be like a marksman outlawing bullets

 

[DucktileMedia]

Denny, don't you fly SRH ? Ten times more lethal than a prop. If you're posting this you either decided to throw in the towel or you found a way to add a thick rubber coated hula hoop around your blades. We can't make everything illegal because of a few accidents. People will always be the problem regardless. Are the manufacturers of white vans going to stop selling them because they are always the ones used by terrorists and rapists?

 

[Droider]

+10 Kloner.

Sorry Denny. Please write a risk assessment / method statement for driving down a motorway at 55mph in a 44ton truck in torrential rain with other 1 ton boxes travelling at 70+ miles an hour around you on a three lane piece of tarmac 22m wide that makes it safe. Then maybe Ill listen to you. Life is a risk, its down to professionals to limit the risk and prove competency which I have with the CAA. Things may change in the August 2013 edition of CAP722. As far as I am concerned I look at it like this, IF I would not put my family under my copter then I would not put anyone else there. If I have a doubt I don't fly. That is all that can be expected of any pilot of any aircraft wether it be a 747 or PHANTOM. Anyone who flies with out conscience I agree should be shot.
I dont want a craft that floats on water, or is limited to flying in this or that environment.
Show us your bomb proof 1 million percent safe camera platform.
I fly a heavy lifter commercially abiding by the rules, that all we can do. If and when the rules change then I will adapt but not before.
I really respect your input on here Denny but this one I have to disagree with.

Dave

 

[gadgetkeith]

how safe is safe we all agree more care needs to be taken with these things

enclosed prop guards foam bumpers and no pointy potrusions will come with out a doubt in the not to distant future

but if you think about it an inflatable beach ball thrown from a 2 storey building has the potential to knock a person to the floor and cause injury

anything that can fly can fail and fall from the air and cause injury

so where does one draw the line ?

keith

 

[DennyR]

Yeah sure I fly a SR helicopter because I have proved beyond any doubt that it is the best Heavy lift option available anywhere. You wouldn't recognize it as a TDR anymore with it's five rotor head with fixed rake head blades and no tip weighting etc. But this is not about that. What I am about to reveal is something that is a massive departure from what we all know as Multi Rotor. It has six motors and can float on water but that is about all that it has in common with what you all know.

Completely different flight control algorithm and mechanics with a image capture device that has built-in stab. zoom and object tracking. Advanced aerodynamics also play an important roll in the flight efficiency. So where do I start, if I show you the model the next question will be lets see it flying and then what is inside it.

I don't yet know if I want to make these things as Cyprus is not a good place to manufacture anything. I am not yet sure what materials are currently available for the molding of the main hull. The prototype took far too long to create for it to be a viable production item. I also can see that within hours of showing it the Chinese will be working on a knock off.

My point was that in all the years that these things have been around nobody ever comes up with something new and the current thinking is far removed from what is needed.

 

[DucktileMedia]

China doesnt invent, they steal. Then the rest of the world rewards them for their ability to sell the knock-off for less. Although this is not always true it is 95% the case. I agree with you on the note that the industry is more about who can make the same for less than the next best thing and doing it better/safer. Or maybe "they" have reached a wall using what we have. If youre idea is as great as you make it sound Denny, you should get it out there. Hoarding advancements in technology often leads to resentment. It's like waiting for a stock to gain another few dollars when you already have a profit. China will steal everything, count on it. the plus side is that you know it is pointless to patent anything in this China driven world.

 

[jamienz]

To be honest, I can understand the issues that the FAA and CAA are facing to a certain point. Flying a full size Schweizer 300 a couple of weeks back I was surprised to see a "toy" helicopter flying at 1200' (1100 ft AGL). Looked like a 2 channel single rotor to me as we passed it at 70kt but was enough to give me a fright. Its just got so easy for the uninformed to get hold of small flying machines and send them into the atmosphere.

 

[PeteDee]

17 people died in the US from alcohol related deaths in the 2 hours between you posting this till i replied. 9 people died in car related deaths in the same 2 hours here.

while loss of life isn't excuseable, to worry that much to even suggest outlawing anything within our industry is wreckless. be like a marksman outlawing bullets

In the year after the Sandy Hook School shootings there was over 4,000 gun related deaths in the US, surely no one will be concerned with a few "drone" related deaths, surely........

 

[Silverburn]

Yeah sure I fly a SR helicopter because I have proved beyond any doubt that it is the best Heavy lift option available anywhere.

Pretty sure the one that killed those poor people was a SR. I doubt the public will distinguish between acrobatics or heavy lift unfortunately.

 

[kloner]

as Americans we tend to tollerate the risk but we also accept the responsibility of our actions so it kinda goes both ways when it comes to deaths from anything.... nothing in life is garunteed. I didn't catch what Denny was trying to do off the bat an i appologize for responding the way i did. To hear he wanted to enact laws in mine from other countries regarding my livelyhood felt like a sock to the jaw and i reacted.

 

[DennyR]

When I see the fiasco at the British GP today with tyres blowing out all over the place it reminds me that everything in life is a compromise to some extent, despite the endless money that goes into such research.

The situation with any control over MR ops. has to be based on technology that is available to everyone and that technology can change at anytime. Because something exists that could alter the way legislation will be written in the future does not mean that it can be adopted until it has passed the test of time. I see my inventions as something that I use for my own personal satisfaction in the way I do my job and if someone else can benefit from it in the long term then so be it. I see two very different approaches to AP. On one hand you have a heavy lift SR machine that can fly at speeds far higher than conventional MR's and these can only be used in a controlled filming environment. Huge advances have been made in the rotor technology that greatly effect safety and stability. Then you have the traditional MR which is trying to cross over into that environment and can only do that with substantial loss of safety features and performance. The MR solution that I have is going to be significantly more stable and lighter with a different flight control system. It can fly over water and also operate in the desert in harsh environments. The use of materials such as EPP foam and end grain balsa filled sandwich plate is used to create a much more rigid frame that integrates with an aerodynamic shaped hull. It does not rely on slowing down any motors to induce a turn. Most of the unstable flights we see crashing on this forum are all caused by partial blade stall during the descent. The degree to which this instability occurs is a function of how much oversizing of the prop. is used and how much overweight the model is. Without giving too much away at this stage here is a couple of shots of one of the prototypes. View attachment 12546View attachment 12547There are two yaw vanes that control that function whilst the motors 3 and 6 are set higher to allow some prop dia overlap. It is a compact machine that is currently being used to monitor vulture nests on some unstable cliff faces that can only be accessed from a small boat. the use of a SR could not do that job without some additional risk.

 

[kloner]

a guy over here makes foamie 3d planes, has for years called DW foamies. I've been through alot of them. couple months back there was a multirotor expo here in town and i swung by just to peak at what all was happening and dw foamies had a lighter looking version than what you have there for sale and it caught my eye, but it didn't look like a professional ap platform.... make that a brushless gimbal up there and ya got something

 

[DennyR]

I don't need a brushless gimbal as it has enough movement in the camera system which has auto tracking and 20x zoom. For vertical downwards shooting it can use a separate GP3 in the bottom if I ever need it. (unlikely). I have other machines that do that. The heaviest part is the yellow oil based paint for the foam. The frame is very much lighter and stronger than any carbon tube arm as the thin sections are cross linked to all six motors. This also provide a better airflow below the craft. (stators)

 

[kloner]

what camera is that? how big is it the rig?

 

[gadgetkeith]

sorry but it sorta looks like a giant pretzel

 

[DennyR]

Kloner

The camera is not yet available, The size of the model is very small and compact, those props are 8x4 and it is only 18" across the center motors. The motors are a special multistrand rewind on the nice iflight 2212's. The center motors are not a part of the same stabilisation controller as the rest. I will try to put together some video stuff later but at the moment I am too busy with a couple of contracts that use this model. It fly's like a Phantom on steroids.

The limited camera movement is much more accurate than is possible with a brushless motor it uses a kind of coil actuator x 4.

The specific requirement in this instance is that it can zoom in on the birds nests without flying too close.

 

[DennyR]

sorry but it sorta looks like a giant pretzel

Unlike your mechanical flying peewit a pretzel, large or small wont kill you if it falls on your head.