Just what we need, terriblepublicity. SO watch this and judge for yourselves. As far as I've understood (and I live close to the beach, not terribly far from where this happened, if you use "before u fly" it's very obvious that most of the beach is a warning zone, there are heliports everywhere, for hospitals tourism and police, not to mention banner planes. Common sence tells us that we cannot or should not fly 400 feet because of high traffic, traffic that has the right of way, I personally try to stay at 200 feet tops around here doring weekends and bulk of the day, traffic dies at dusk, whisch is my favorite time to fly anyway, also early AM the traffic is manegable. I don't care if he was below 400 feet, unless you have advised the faa of your flight path and altitude, in other words a flight plan, you are NOT in the right with a close call like that. Choppers are loud and easy o see if your bird is within line of sight, hey give you plenty of time to go real low till it pases!
Unbelievable close call with a helicopter IN THE NEWS
- Thread starter mixchief
- Start date
ORANGE CRUSH
Well-Known Member
Folks - and I am speaking to the minority of us here or probably no one here would do it - keep this videos to yourself - don’t post them - you know they going to stir up a hornets nest - I don’t think he was above 400 feet (the drone). I live north toward west palm beach and have flown on beaches before and realize the helicopters fly the area frequently - so I am always on the lookout but even then they fly up in a hurry - this real copter was moving and that was a close call.
The problem is that there will always be the idiot that thinks he is cool. I think this uy posted it trying to indict the helicopter pilot, like "hey look at what this stupid helicopter pilot did", he's lucky the drone didn't get sucked into one of the intakes.
Only way to know for sure is if the poster discloses his telemetry, very easy since it has already been disclosed he was flying a Mavic, and full telemetry is readily available. As this story develops I'm sure that telemetry will be made available as the FAA is seriously conducting an investigation, specially after all the publicity this has generated due to duffus posting the video.
