Originally Posted by
jelge
You are absolutely correct. What a lot of non-aviation types do not understand is a cheap drone can kill a pilot and/or those unfortunate enough to be at the crash site. Small birds damage aircraft nearly every day, large birds have brought down aircraft, even airliners. Cheap drones have more mass than a small bird plus steel parts to help penetrate into an aircraft. It seems like I see new report about drones and/or RC aircraft being places they do not belong 2 or 3 times a week and I am not even looking for the stories. I work in aviation so my normal reading habits have me reading magazines, emails and news sources where something like shutting down aerial fire fighting or having an R/C camera platform close enough for a pilot to identify the make and model is big news.
Jeff
I once saw a small pillow break a prop. The story, a Cub had taken off about ten minutes before a small Cessna. The cub had it's door open on take off, in which a small pillow flew out. The pillow was the pilots added padding he placed once airborn, why then I don't know. But ten minutes later the Cessna was taking off and the pillow came into contact with the prop, the (I assume) resistance caused the prop to crack, in which the pilot apparently felt or something. He immediately powered down and came back in, inspected the prop and thus seeing the crack. Most people do not realize just how fragile aircraft are, including most r/c'ers.