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What's red and black and a metre wide
1066 7 2017-2-24
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Dav 0
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Flight distance : 277585 ft
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What could this near miss be? Sounds a bit specialist for a hobbyist.

https://apple.news/A_hRmmigQRlKas6juOg-PFQ
2017-2-24
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Geebax
Captain
Australia
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Well, that eliminates Phantoms, 1 Metre long is too large and they cannot get up to 6000 feet anyway.
2017-2-24
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Nigel_
Captain
Flight distance : 388642 ft
United Kingdom
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Only 2Km up this time,  these Russian spy drones are normally closer to twice that altitude, must have come lower due to poor visibility in the bad weather.
2017-2-24
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Eric13
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Germany
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There were several reports of drone sightings by pilots of passenger planes in the past years. Most have in common talking about a VERY close encounter, range in meters below 100.
It's hard for me to vision this: A pilot, fully concentrated on airport approach (means not looking out the window but on instruments), flying 130 knots/240km minimum makes out a drone and estimates a distance of 30 meter or so? I can't do the math but my guess is that it is a verrrry small fraction of a second that this object can be seen.
No doubt that drones near/in fly zones are illegal/inacceptable but these reported sightings keep me wondering...
2017-2-24
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Dav 0
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1 metre wide? That's longer than my legs. I hope the pilot was tested for being drunk.
2017-2-24
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Labroides
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Flight distance : 9991457 ft
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Eric13 Posted at 2017-2-24 16:16
There were several reports of drone sightings by pilots of passenger planes in the past years. Most have in common talking about a VERY close encounter, range in meters below 100.
It's hard for me to vision this: A pilot, fully concentrated on airport approach (means not looking out the window but on instruments), flying 130 knots/240km minimum makes out a drone and estimates a distance of 30 meter or so? I can't do the math but my guess is that it is a verrrry small fraction of a second that this object can be seen.
No doubt that drones near/in fly zones are illegal/inacceptable but these reported sightings keep me wondering...

It's a common idea put forward in forums that pilots couldn't possibly see an object at the speed they would be travelling - and it's quite wrong.
But I don't believe that all the high altitude drones are drones.
We need to start seeing a little healthy skepticism in reporters and civil aviation authorities rather than excitedly labeling every UFO that gets reported as a drone.
2017-2-25
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Nigel_
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Flight distance : 388642 ft
United Kingdom
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Eric13 Posted at 2017-2-24 16:16
There were several reports of drone sightings by pilots of passenger planes in the past years. Most have in common talking about a VERY close encounter, range in meters below 100.
It's hard for me to vision this: A pilot, fully concentrated on airport approach (means not looking out the window but on instruments), flying 130 knots/240km minimum makes out a drone and estimates a distance of 30 meter or so? I can't do the math but my guess is that it is a verrrry small fraction of a second that this object can be seen.
No doubt that drones near/in fly zones are illegal/inacceptable but these reported sightings keep me wondering...

A lot of these near misses are up at 10,000 ft and the reports state horizontal distances up to 1Km, not many are within 100ft, even if they are described as "during landing" or "approach to airport" they are often 6Km out from the airport so given the standard glide paths used by airliners will be up at 10,000ft.  Most seem to be reported as 1m or 6ft sized drones.

Generally a Phantom sized drone couldn't get up to these altitudes and back down safely even if you found a way around the software limits as they can't carry enough battery so maybe it's not surprising that they are seeing 1m sized drones, however to have a reasonably chance of actually encountering an aircraft up there they would need to stay up for a long time, or there must be a lot of them.  I don't think there are many 1m sized drones capable of staying at 10,000ft for more than a few minutes per flight.

I can't think of many practical reasons why anyone would want to fly a drone up there, certainly not for long enough or often enough to have a chance of a near miss with an aircraft, and the few people who would want to would surly stay clear of airport flight paths.  

At 6Km out, the pilot/co-pilot are probably still reading, or browsing the internet, not much reason to look out the window since there is normally nothing to see.  In fact windows have become so unimportant to airline pilots that Airbus have plans to remove them!  At 130 knots, a Phantom sized drone would pass by too fast to recognise unless you happened to already be looking in the right direction, a 1m drone would be a lot easier to recognise since you could see it at much greater distance where the speed of movement across your field of view would be a lot slower.

2017-2-25
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blackcrusader
First Officer
Flight distance : 689774 ft
Taiwan
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Eric13 Posted at 2017-2-24 16:16
There were several reports of drone sightings by pilots of passenger planes in the past years. Most have in common talking about a VERY close encounter, range in meters below 100.
It's hard for me to vision this: A pilot, fully concentrated on airport approach (means not looking out the window but on instruments), flying 130 knots/240km minimum makes out a drone and estimates a distance of 30 meter or so? I can't do the math but my guess is that it is a verrrry small fraction of a second that this object can be seen.
No doubt that drones near/in fly zones are illegal/inacceptable but these reported sightings keep me wondering...

Yes watching for drones flying close by is hard on the eyes even when you know where they are.

Especially when we are both above 10200 feet.

2017-2-25
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