Tag Archives: drone

Flame War: China’s ‘Fire Drone’ Is Worrying

As we continue our terrifying coverage into the increasing dangers of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, we look to China to move the hazard level several notches upward. Someone in the Hubei province decided to stick a flamethrower to the business end of a quadcopter and fly it around in a whirling, buzzing inferno through residential neighborhoods. Why? Well, there’s an issue with power lines being damaged by garbage, such as plastic bags, blowing in the wind. The usual method of dealing with this involves a state employee being sent up in a cherrypicker to remove the detritus by hand. As you can imagine, this is slightly hazardous work. The worker could fall, get hit by a fatal jolt of electricity, or both. One of these workers has apparently had enough, and decided to make the task a lot more safe for himself and a lot less safe for the rest of mankind. I mean, just look at it.

Whatever problem he’s solving, he just created a whole lot more. It’s an ingenious idea, but it boils down to “remote-controlled helicopter that spews fire,” which never sounds good in any situation. Why is the gun-copter not okay but flamethrower-copter acceptable? Because it’s on government payroll? Let’s keep this technology in the realm of photography and Super Bowl halftime shows. It’s only a matter of time before the man who speared a drone at a renaissance festival seems like the only sane man around.

Believe it or not, iFixYouri has plenty of experience with fixing a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from quadcopters to octocopters and everything in between. Several of our technicians are drone photographers and videographers (Andy, for example) and love to help out fellow hobbyists get their UAVs back to working condition*. Whether you have a GoPro Karma, DJI Phantom, or any make or model drone that has an issue with the camera, rotor, or anything else, get in touch with iFixYouri and we’ll be happy to get you back to the skies!

*“Working condition” does not include attaching flamethrowers or other weapons.

When Drones Attack: On the Field and in the Air

“It’s been a big week in drone safety,” a headline straight out of bad dystopian science fiction. But it’s true: welcome to 2016.

Cleveland Indians’ star pitcher Trevor Bauer had to miss game 2 of the American League Championship Series (ALCS) against the Toronto Blue Jays due to an unelaborated “finger injury.” He started game 3 yesterday with the injury still present and barely patched up. His pinkie started dripping like a leaky faucet within the first inning. Turns out that Bauer is a drone enthusiast, and while doing a repair on his device, the rotors turned on. OUCH! Indians’ management pulled him off the pitch, and although they went on to win, Bauer has been blasted on social media for potentially endangering his team’s chances. Maybe he should’ve found a company providing reliable drone repair instead. The wound doesn’t seem too bad, but the picture is pretty gory. Hope you’re not eating anything.

Drone Safety!

We’ll be conducting our own test with some dollar-store hot dogs. Keep an eye out for the results.

 

Speaking of tests…on the other side of the Atlantic, drones rules the skies. Commercial airline pilots are concerned over what might happen should one strike a drone in mid-air during takeoff or landing. British ministers in the Department of Transport have decided to answer the question the old-school way: by doing. In a landmark study employing 7th-grade-science-fair hypothesis-testing, the British government has contracted a company to fly a drone into the path of a moving commercial airliner.

Drone vs Airplane

Hopefully it’s not as bad as assumed. There have been several close calls over the past few years as lax regulation (compared to the US) has seen unmanned aerial vehicles being used in a wide variety of British industries, such as safety inspections for industrial chimneys & railways and aerial surveillance for wildlife control. Even then, it’ll take some time to match the number of collisions between aircraft and the original unmanned aerial vehicles: birds. Don’t worry, we don’t have a picture for that.