Originally Posted by
KC10 FATboy
The military already has had mid-air collisions between UAVs and fixed-wing aircraft -- luckily the fixed-wing aircraft survived the encounter (just barely I might add).
Do you think these amateur drones pose a significant risk to civil and commercial air traffic?
Survived? Not the story I heard. I was told in confidence, so I won't reveal my source, but yeah, totally fatal, military came in with cleanup team within minutes, hauled away all the evidence, paid off surviving family members for their silence, nothing to see here, move along. Very scary stuff.
Significant risk? Right now, probably no more than geese. But by 2014? Oh yes, bigtime.
AOPA has an air safety online course that paints a very rosy "nothing can go wrong" picture of UAVs. I don't know why - this makes no sense to me.
Too many of these critters go off link. ASRS Callback today was about exactly such things.
That UAVs supposedly stay VFR is nice, if true, but I've yet to see the flight simulator with definition to match looking out a real window for bogies at 2-3 miles, and I suspect the remote pilot's monitors are merely comparable to the best simulators.
Anyone else notice that ground observers have to have a 2nd class medical? This strikes me as typical government overkill.
I guess we'll have to use the tried and true method of letting body counts determine policy only after [more] people die.