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DW1 update: 08/12/17

From WA's Perth Now:

Global Drone Solutions drone pilot and instructor Mahmood Hussein teaching student Ella Simmonds, 9, and her mother Tiffany Simmonds. Picture:Richard Hatherly

Drone pilots face new laws
Trevor Paddenburg, PerthNow
December 4, 2017 3:01AM

DRONES are at the top of kids’ Christmas wish lists but authorities are warning they should not be used by children under primary school age, while every owner may soon need to join a national register.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority is reviewing regulations around drones and a Senate inquiry is examining the benefits and pitfalls of the boom in miniature un-manned flying devices.

It comes as a NSW prison recorded CCTV footage of a drone apparently dropping contraband to a prisoner over razor wire. And in South Australia, police are investigating, with a group of women being “drone stalked” late at night through the windows of their homes.

Perth-based Global Drone Solutions owner Mahmoud Hussein, who runs commercial drone courses for adults as well as basic two-hour training sessions for children and adults, said he’d seen an “absolute boom” in parents buying drones for their children and he expected that to increase at Christmas.

Mr Hussein said children were often better than adults at flying drones. “If they’ve been playing video games, they’re naturals. Young kids are great. The challenge comes in flying it at the right spot where there’s not a lot of other people around,” he said.

Children are often better than adults at flying drones, according to instructor Mahmood Hussein. Picture:Richard Hatherly

Mr Hussein said the smallest, cheapest drones started at $30 but he recommended buying a drone with auto-pilot, starting at about $350, for extra safety.

But KidSafe WA boss Scott Phillips said parental supervision was essential and he recommended children should “at least be primary school-aged and ideally into middle primary school” before being given control of a drone.

“If your child is using one of these things they really should be supervised. This isn’t a give-and-forget present,” Mr Phillips said.

He said drones’ in-built safety standards were high but there was a danger of cheap, inferior imports. “When something gets very popular, you often get copies coming in that don’t have the same safety standards,” he said.

Princess Margaret Children’s Hospital does not keep figures on drone-related injuries and a hospital spokeswoman said doctors had not reported any drone-related injuries.

The WA Local Government Association said it was still working on a “sector-wide policy” on drones for councils.

It is illegal to fly a drone higher than 120m and flying within 30m of a person is banned unless it’s essential for controlling the machine, according to aviation law.

Glenn Sterle, the WA politician chairing the Senate inquiry into drones, will hand down his findings this month but he said recommendations could include more strenuous rules about drones and who could operate them.

“We’ve been inundated with examples of drones landing on cars, being used for surveillance through people’s windows, zapping around public spaces,” Mr Sterle said, adding there had been almost 200 reported “interactions” between drones and aircraft.

He said they could be used by terrorists to drop dangerous itemson to crowds, and hinted at the possibility of owners being forced to join a register.

“In the wrong hands, what could that do over the MCG on grand final day? This is the sort of stuff that ... should be in the forefront of our minds,” Mr Sterle said.

“We don’t even know who owns these drones.”

Via the Herald Sun:

Live in the Casey Council area and want to fly a drone outside your property boundary? You’ll need a permit.
SOUTH EAST
Drone users face Casey Council crackdown with new law aimed at nuisance operators[/size][/color]
Megan Bailey, Cranbourne Leader
December 8, 2017 12:00am

CASEY Council has created an ambitious new law to help protect people from drone-related crime and nuisance — but the federal aviation authority says it will be almost impossible to enforce.

In what is believed to be a state first, a radical new law will require drone operators to obtain a permit to operate outside their own property, or face a $300 fine.

Casey safer communities manager Caroline Bell said people would still be able to use drones on their land.

RELATED: Prisons a no-fly zone for drones


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She said the council was “working with the drone industry to ensure private and public drone operators were not a detriment the community”.

“The council has already collected and destroyed two drones that crash landed, but has not issued any fines,” she said.

CASA says the new law will be difficult to police.

According to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, people using drones for fun must fly below 120m at all times, must not fly within 30m of people or over people and drones must be visible to the naked eye at all times.

They also cannot fly at night or through cloud or fog.

RELATED: Schoolboy drone ace flying high

Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson said drones could not be tracked and any drone-related crimes were reliant on witness statements, admissions of guilt, and evidence taken from the drone’s camera or chip.

He said people who used drones for fun did not have to register them as registration was only mandatory for people who used drones for commercial reasons.

“That may change in the future but at the moment there is no registration requirement for recreational drones,” he said.

“There is no way of tracking drones — we do not have any technology at the moment that allows them to be tracked and that is something that is being looked at not just in Australia but around the world.”

Penalties for drone operators breaking the CASA rules include fines of up to $10,000.


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Mr Gibson said technology similar to automatic dependent surveillance — broadcast (ADS-B), which is an aircraft surveillance technology that uses satellites, could one day be used for drones but such technology didn’t yet exist.

Complaints about drones can be made at casa.gov.au/webform/unsafe-drone-operations-complaint-form

The permit requirement for Casey residents will come into effect on January 1, 2018.

Residents will only need to apply for a permit if they plan on using the drone beyond the bounds of private property.

It is not known how much permits will cost.

Meanwhile in another hemisphere the FAA gets on with the business of aviation safety...

Via GA News:

What happens when a drone hits a plane?
December 3, 2017 by General Aviation News Staff 2 Comments

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Initial research by a consortium of leading universities, through the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE), have begun to bring better understanding to the physical damage associated with small unmanned aircraft — or drones — colliding midair with commercial and GA aircraft.

The ASSURE research team set out to answer the question of what happens when — not if — there is a collision between a sUAS and an airplane.

“While the effects of bird impacts on airplanes are well documented, little is known about the effects of more rigid and higher mass sUAS on aircraft structures and propulsion systems,” said Mississippi State University’s Marty Rogers, the director of ASSURE. “The results of this work are critical to the safety of commercial air travel here in the United States and around the world.”

Researchers’ efforts began by first determining the most likely impact scenarios. This was done by reviewing operating environments for both sUAS and manned aircraft. The team then selected the commercial and business aircraft and sUAS based on these impact scenarios and their likely exposure to one another.

The commercial narrow-body air transport selected was characteristic of a Boeing B737 and an Airbus A320 aircraft, which represent 70% of the commercial aircraft fleet.
The business jet model represented a Learjet 30/40/50. Similarly, the team selected a small quadcopter and a light fixed-winged unmanned aircraft as representative of the most-likely threats to manned aircraft.

Researchers determined the areas of manned aircraft most likely to be impacted as being the leading edges of wings, vertical and horizontal stabilizers, and windscreens.
ASSURE researchers also performed engine impact simulations on the fan section of an existing business-jet-sized, turbofan-engine model that the FAA previously used for fan blade-out testing.

The FAA/ASSURE team conducted this research to better inform the scope of the next phase of research, as well as the critical variables essential to their continued research and engine ingest testing, according to officials.

“Computer simulations, supported by material and component level testing, were conducted to determine the effects of sUAS impacts on manned aircraft,” said Gerardo Olivares, Ph.D., Director, Crash Dynamics and Computational Mechanics Laboratories at Wichita State University. “Conducting this study through full-scale physical tests would not have been possible from a cost and time perspective due to the immense complexity of the task. On the other hand, simulation enabled us to study over 180 impact scenarios in a 12-month period. To ensure results accurately predict the actual physical behavior of collisions, we have spent a lot of time developing, verifying, and validating detailed models of manned and unmanned aircraft. Once the models are validated, we can use them in the future to investigate other impact scenarios.”

Researchers observed various levels of airframe and engine damage in all sUAS collision simulations. They confirmed that energy (projectile mass and velocity) and the stiffness of the sUAS are the primary drivers of impact damage.

This research showed that the severity of the collision is also dependent on the design features of the sUAS and the dynamics of the impact.



Bird Strike.

Commercial aircraft manufacturers design aircraft structural components to withstand bird strikes from birds up to eight pounds for the empennage and four pounds for windscreen.
ASSURE simulations show sUAS collisions inflict more physical damage than that of an equivalent size and speed bird-strike.



sUAS components are much stiffer than birds, which are mostly composed of water.

Therefore, bird-strike certification regulations are not appropriate for unmanned aircraft.

Additionally, regulators do not require and manufacturers do not design commercial and business aircraft to withstand collisions from other aircraft.



Drone hitting wing.

The ASSURE research team also conducted both physical testing and simulation on sUAS lithium batteries. Typical high-speed impacts caused the complete destruction of the battery, therefore, in these cases, there was not an increased risk of fire due to a shorted battery.

However, during some of the low-speed impacts, associated with landing and takeoff, the battery was not completely destroyed. In some of these simulations, the battery remained lodged in the airframe and there was potential for increased risk of battery fire.
The findings show the importance of properly researching and regulating the use of sUAS in a crowed national airspace system, officials say.

While design features can decrease the severity of a drone impact, sUAS pilots and the public must be aware of and abide by regulations for safe sUAS operations. It is critical that everything be done to keep these collisions from occurring through the safe separation of all aircraft, both manned and unmanned, the researchers note.

The FAA will depend on the sUAS community to help develop the technology for proper detect-and-avoid so that these aircraft do not meet in flight.

This is the first in a series of research projects conducted to understand and quantify the potential severity of airborne collisions. Future studies will research the severity of collisions with general aviation aircraft, rotorcraft, and high-bypass turbofan engines representative of those found in airline fleets today.

Because of the scope and magnitude of this research, and the impact it will have on industry and national airspace safety, the follow-on studies will be broken into multiple phases beginning this year and running through FY21.

The complete report is available at
ASSUREuas.org/projects/deliverables/sUASAirborneCollisionReport.php

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