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Man, your comment hits home. I desperately want a drone as a toy but under the guise to check my gutters if they’re clogged.

However, next to where I live is a small airfield and, at times, we have small private jets and sesnas flying next to us.

What always stopped me from buying the drone was because I simply didn’t want to put myself in a position to have that one malfunction that causes the drone to soar and accidentally damage the plane. Regardless of how improbable or unlikely, I just didn’t want to be “that guy”.




Get a UK65/UR65 quadcopter, a pair of goggles and a transmitter and off you go.

Or a Blade Inductrix FPV RTF kit that comes with everything, even a charger!

These quads are so tiny and won't do any damage even to walls, I fly them around the house, so they won't mess up any airplane traffic!


Thanks, I’ll def check it out.

Also, with regard to some folks who are replying to you, it seems that FAA does not seem to think drones or hobby weather balloons below 500 grams is a risk to planes. At least my preliminary search hasn’t found anything.

I’m guessing that even if 100 gram drone gets sucked into a turbine, the plane will hardly notice. I’ll keep looking into it and see if my local airfield has an opinion on 100 g drones, as well.


How confident are you a 100g toy pulled through a turbofan or propeller won’t mess it up?

Sure, if it stays inside your house, quite confident.

I’m quite confident the only thing other than air a turbofan or aircraft propeller is designed to cope with is rain / fog / cloud.

Edit to add: looks like the toys you mentioned are around 30g. I stand by my point though.


Actually, they fire chickens at them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_gun


Chickens do not have stainless steel, glass, or aluminum components, nor lithium ion battery packs.

And I have well over a dozen quadcopters (not drones, because I manually pilot them) right here next to me.


Indeed!

Jet engines and aircraft windshields are particularly vulnerable to damage from such strikes

Definitely one of my all-time favourite things to watch are videos of said chicken cannons ;)

Turbofans are designed to cope with bird strikes in the the-end-didn’t-fly-apart-and-fatally-damage-the-aircraft sense of cope.


It is not your place to decide what your device will or will not damage. This is precisely why regulations on what can fly where exist. You stand to lose a $100 toy, someone might lose a life. With this asymmetry in mind, regulation simply must exist. You personally might be responsible, but not everyone is. Try to be conscious of this. These are lives at hand, not just your ability to play with flying toys.


What are you on about? I am flying inside my own house!


Like the sibling commenter, I recommend a $50 TINY7 quad as by far the most fun per buck I've had. It's indoor-only, as it's too small to fly in any sort of wind, but it's super fun and you can learn to do loops, tricks and fly over/under/through furniture.

EDIT: The UR65 the sibling commenter mention looks better, it's brushless, which means much better speed/agility.




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