Comparing bird strikes in the airspace

6 comments

The US national airspace is home to almost 10 billion birds, a very large number compared to the number of model aircraft which is estimated at a million or less. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University analyzed the data of bird collisions with full scale aircraft. The article then makes parallels to aeromodeling even taking into account that models have a much shorter flight life cycle due to battery limitations and the fact that models are far more grounded than birds. The research makes some strong conclusions about the unlikelihood of a sUAS strike with a full scale aircraft nullifying many of the exaggerated concerns.

https://mercatus.org/publication/do-consumer-drones-endanger-national-airspace-evidence-wildlife-strike-data


6 comments

  1. I think this posting of bird strikes with aircraft was very good it gives you another view of the facts some of these things you don’t think about .

  3. WOW. Looks like the AMA is really picking at straws to save model aviation.
    Never should have supported drones Mr Brown. We are paying the price now.

    1. In embracing the MRs, which the public, media, and others generally categorize as “drones,” we lost the ability to draw a clear and bright line between our member operations and those now proving to be problematic.

      1. How true. Unfortunately the public and our politicians are referring to all R/C flying aircraft as “Drones”. Instead of the AMA drawing a clear distinction between sUAS and model airplanes and embracing FPV, they decided to defend it and state that drone FPV operators must abide by the AMA safety code. WHAT A JOKE. These reckless people couldn’t care less about model aviation and OUR safety record. Now we have to deal with this because as of now, the government(FAA)and politicians are not interested in understanding the dramatic difference between model planes(including helicopters) and FPV operators. Hopefully this difference will be “discovered”, but for now we must deal with the consequences of Bob Brown’s decisions as well as other members of the so called AMA leadership.

  4. I still seem to have trouble with the faa and the fdot making it an intrusion on
    something that the congress and senate have already told them to stay away from in the resent past and would love to know who gave them the go ahead to do the intrusion in the first place , just wondering is all ?

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