djiuser_larry
lvl.3
Flight distance : 70200 ft
United States
Offline
|
Lots of interesting points about the Mountain View incident. The only power lines I found in the area indicated are primary customer lines which would be 1300 or 4000 Volts, the upper wires, and 240 Volts for the lower wires. The nearest high voltage lines are a mile away. Birds sit on these wires all the time. Neither they nor a Mavic sized drone are going to short out the wires, unless they short an insulator or parts of a transformer. The indications are that the Mountain View power outage was from something shorting out a transformer. And there seem to be no confirmations I can find that the picture is really part of a drone.
I doubt if a Mavic prop could sever a power line, especially as the props are thin flimsy plastic and also fold. I whopped my finger once catching mine. That hurt but did not break anything. Nevertheless hitting a power line will invariably crash your drone.
Moffett is class D airspace and the only FAA rule I can see violated would be failure to notify the airport (other than obviously flying in a 'hazardous' manner). I and many other drone operators fly at the Sunnyvale Baylands park which is on the other side of Moffett but well within its five mile radius. For my interest I've emailed Moffett to see if they really do want notification but my guess is that few flying at Baylands do notify the airport and that the information would be of no use anyway. Moffett flight paths are limited to one runway direction.
It would be nice to know what really happened in the Mountain View incident, but it's unlikely all the information will come out.
The issues of interference are more interesting. Bax's video power lines are the real high voltage lines and there is a lot more metal in the vicinity. The metal could affect the compass readings and there could be a lot of 60Hz electrical noise which I might affect electronics in the Mavic. I've seen one or two crash reports where flying near high power lines might have been the cause. Bak, how close do you think you were?
Anyway I don't see that it's particularly any more illegal to fly near or above a power line than it is to drive your car underneath one. Caution tells you not to get too close. |
|