Originally Posted by
ECHO24
The manikin-on-a-drone theory (from a jetpack pilot) is laughable. "Jetpacks are also loud so people near LAX would’ve have heard it
and taken pictures or videos." Yeah right, louder than a full-size airliner. As for taking off from the ground, the guy could have jumped from
a plane miles from there at 10,000'.
From an aircraft it's easier to see and make out objects in the air than people think. An airline pilot in France who reported a close call with
a drone on landing could tell the exact model of DJI drone it was from the grapics. You've got two airline pilots reporting the same thing, in
one case with the jet pack guy going faster than his aircraft, as I recall. That's no drone. What's the point of arguing about it?
A modern airliner has a remarkably low noise signature, especially on final. Regardless of size (small, medium or large), a typical transport aircraft will put out about 60-65db at 3000' (stage 3 noise requirements, required since 2000(?)), and will not climb that much in intensity with a loss of altitude (as per standard stabilized approach criteria). So the idea that the sound of an airliner on final approach would drown out the noise of several large model-sized turbines running at essentially full thrust to either lift, fly or land a jetpack/flyboard is pretty far off base. It would be remarkable that nobody heard this thing in the air or the neighborhood.
As far as dropping one of these jetpacks with a person in flight, several issues occur to me. The first is that, unless one had the engines running while INSIDE the dropping aircraft, obviously one would have to start them while in freefall. Now I'm not sure about a typical model turbine, but generally it takes about 1 minute from starter engagement to stable idle with every turbine I've ever flown. Now multiply that by what, 4 engines? 6? If the person flying this thing jumped out at say, 15,000', 60 seconds of freefall would put them at about 4,000'. So they got the first engine started, with about 30 seconds to impact.....And there are other factors about starting turbines at altitude that I haven't brought up. So the idea that the pilot would jump out, get the engines started, get the thing stable then fly down to the final approach path to 25L/26R at LAX is not likely, even if one cut the engine start cycle in half.
As much as this seems to be a really cool piece of technology, speed probably has this one right; this was most likely an R/C flying wingsuit type of thing. It simply makes more sense.
R_Strowe