According to BBC news today a drone was spotted at 98ft from an airliner on its approach to landing. The aircraft was at 10000ft at the time. The drone was described as having eight arms and certainly drone.
Now I, and perhaps others, might well be skeptical about this, but for interest is it possible to fly a drone, from the ground, lets say 100ft above msl to 10000ft. I am aware of the legal limits and abide by them myself, but obviously there are some who do not. Simply put, is this possible?

Who cares the drone cannot reach that altitude? BBC got a breaking news.

Aloha embay,

     This is a recurring story.  What is the date of the article?  The original was shown to be a hoax.  BTW, 10,000 feet is not on approach to landing, it is on approach to an airport or between airports.  The whole story, as much as you have repeated, wreaks of "Fake News"!

Aloha and Drone On!

Cetacean Posted at 2017-4-2 04:22
Aloha embay,

     This is a recurring story.  What is the date of the article?  The original was shown to be a hoax.  BTW, 10,000 feet is not on approach to landing, it is on approach to an airport or between airports.  The whole story, as much as you have repeated, wreaks of "Fake News"!

Here's the official report of the incident:  https://www.airproxboard.org.uk/ ... eport%202016239.pdf

And here's another at 7000 ft:  https://www.airproxboard.org.uk/ ... eport%202016229.pdf

Whether the aircrew really saw actual drones or imagined they did is the issue.

Anything's possible but the chances of real drones being up that high are very, very slim.
At 6m/sec it would take 8.3 minutes just to reach that altitude and probably longer to return to earth (in one piece).  With 20+ minutes just to get up and back, the pilot isn't likely to hang around for long up there.
Control is also a problem.  Normal R/C is going to have difficulty at 2 miles and straight up is the worst angle for signal reception.
Other issues are that winds at 10K feet are likely to blow the drone away and the low temperature will affect batteries.
The chances are much greater that whatever they saw wasn't a real drone.

A drone that came that close would have crashed from the turbulence. You notice in all of these stories no drone or drone operator was ever found.

I have flown at altitudes above 10000 feet but that is because I launch above 8600 feet.

But to do so I have to be close to the mountains I launch from.  No passenger aircraft allowed where I live anyway.  Not possible to go from ground and climb 10000 feet with DJI drones as they are limited to 1640ft / 500m height from launch point. Sure is pretty up there though.

Heathrow is at  83 ft altitude, so only 9,927 ft to go!

A Phantom 4 Pro in sports mode would take 22 minutes to get up and back down at full throttle according to the specs, if it was possible to remove the 500m height limit.  Realistically it would be unlikely to achieve the specs 100% of the time, especially with the winds likely at 10000ft above ground, so I doubt it would make it on a single battery without turning the motors off for a while on the way back down, but if you did turn the motors off it would probably get blown a long way away and still not make it back!

A 6/8 rotor multicopter as seen in this report is going to be less efficient than the P4P so unless it was built specifically for setting an altitude record it is highly unlikely to succeed.  If it was built specifically for achieving high altitudes then it wouldn't be a 6/8 rotor machine, and in any case you wouldn't attempt to set your record in the middle of the holding area for passenger aircraft queuing to enter one of the worlds busiest airports!

These are UFOs which nobody seems to be able to photo, video, track, locate or provide any reasonable explanation for why anyone would attempt to put them there with a frequency sufficient for aircraft to be seeing them regularly.

close calls only count if you are playing horseshoes or throwing hand grenades.

R&L Aerial  Posted at 2017-4-2 08:04
close calls only count if you are playing horseshoes or throwing hand grenades.

Well, nuclear weapons, also.

Labroides Posted at 2017-4-2 05:06
Here's the official report of the incident:  https://www.airproxboard.org.uk/ ... eport%202016239.pdf

And here's another at 7000 ft:  https://www.airproxboard.org.uk/ ... eport%202016229.pdf

That report says that the A320 was traveling at 220kt (253 mph / 407.44 Km/h).
(400ft every second.)

At that speed a drone 200ft below would not be "clearly identifiable as a large drone and not a bird or balloon. It was dark in colour with a T-shape landing frame, with multiple arms and rotors (6-8)", especially when you don't have a view straight down!



... Well, maybe with some exceptions:

My thoughts also, that it is "fake news" or at very best pumped up. But it reflects badly on our community again.  It is sad that such stories are out about, especially by the Beeb,
Anyway just a little something of interest for a Sunday afternoon. Thank you all for your thoughts, and calculations.

Mike

Kneepuck Posted at 2017-4-2 08:08
Well, nuclear weapons, also.

True......