Martin Whybrow

Evidently this all took place very local to me! Looking at the video, this flight din't appear to be within VLOS, unless the observer was in an aircraft themselves; the article connected to the above states they can currently deliver within 15 miles of the fulfillment centre.

Posted by GrahamC on 09/12/2016 18:18:32: This story suggests that a DJI Phantom 2 could make it all the way up to 11000 feet - but only just and it could only remain there for a moment if there is to be any possibility of a controlled descent. I think that story was busted when he claimed to have climbed at a rate 5 x faster than DJI claims the Phantom 2 can climb.

Let's calculate this: If 1 minute uses 16mAh, then 1 hour will use 60 x 16 = 960mAh, so the LEDs are drawing 960mA. So multiply 960 by the number of minutes divided by 60 to calculate the capacity used 960 x 5/60 = 80mAh. QED

Looking for an emoticon for banging my head against a wall. Why, why, oh why must you insist on recommending he does it incorrectly Denis? Besides, that circuit you're showing is not for running LEDs!

Posted by Denis Watkins on 22/11/2016 14:00:25: You are spot on B, just that button cells would drop off being left switched on the full time. They are good for short bursts. One resistor would be required, not three, when wired up If you're putting 3 LEDs in parallel, which you would have to with a 3V cell, each LED needs its own resistor; putting 1 resistor for 3 LEDs in parallel will only work if the forward voltage drops are identical, which they won't be.

This popped up whilst I was watching a youtube video earlier; not sure if it's for real or not, but I can see some 'issues' with the idea!

Sounds more like an inner tube than a UAV! Question, how do you get a truck inner tube to 9000ft?

Seems the report was updated yesterday: On Nov 21st 2016 the Canadian TSB reported the aircraft was descending through about 8300 feet 29nm east of the initial approach fix when the crew noticed a solid object, about 5-8 feet in diameter and shaped like an upright doughnut, directly ahead. It appeared there was no relative movement and the object came rapidly closer to the aircraft. The captain overrode the autopilot in order to quickly descend the aircraft under the object, there was no impact.

Posted by TinPot Pilot on 17/11/2016 09:54:50: Allegedly a DJI Phantom has been flown to 11,000 ft so 4,900 ft is now feasible . Story here. I suspect that report is based on pure fiction! It states the Phantom 2 got to 3400m in 3 1/2 minutes, that's a RoC of over 16m/s, almost 3 times what DJI claim it can do.

The official report states they reported it as a UAP, measuring between 5 and 8 ft in diameter and dark in colour (UAP = unmanned aerial platform apparently)

Posted by Chris Walby on 13/11/2016 20:43:19: Martin - Only date I have is 18June2016, not sure if that's correct though. Well, 5 months does seem like the recent past nowadays! Yes, that will be the event I'm thinking of, although being a Saturday, I clearly didn't see it from my office window.

Posted by Chris Walby on 13/11/2016 19:14:36: How about this! Landing/crashing in the middle of Stevenage town centre, next to the East Coast main line and a dual carriage way...just down from the police station. Clear and blatant disregard of the ANO? Was that the flight that temporarily close Luton's airspace a few weeks back? I watched the balloon passing by our offices very low and thought at the time that Luton won't be happy about it!

Well, I'm now somewhat disillusioned about the reporting process. The CAA website is a complete mess of broken links and missing pages at the moment, but I did eventually find an email address to report suspected illegal SUA activity to; I dutifully composed an email and sent it to the given address, only to receive an automated response that the email address doesn't exist! I decided that I should contact the police; after hunting high and low, I couldn't find an email address for the local police, but did locate a web form; I filled in the form with the basics of my enquiry, the following day they called me and left a message to call them back, quoting an incident number. Today, I called them and after much toing and froing, spoke to someone who could assist, only to be told that operating a 'drone' commercially without the correct permissions is not an offence! They suggested that if I wanted to pursue it further, I should talk to the CAA. So there you have it, an extensive process exists for training UAV pilots to operate commercially and for licensing operators, and it's all a complete waste of time as 'they' won't investigate anyone who ignores all the rules! Edited By Martin Whybrow on 27/10/2016 13:36:35

The appraisal scheme can be abused as well. About 5 years ago, I joined the R&D department of a very well known international company; after I'd been there just under a year, they company decided to sell off their R&D to a very large company from South Asia; when it came to the 1st appraisal, my line manager was very happy and gave me an 'exceeds expectations' grading; when my pay award letter arrived, my grading was 'needs improvement', when I went to HR to complain, they told me they applied a levelling algorithm which meant that I'd been moved down by 2 steps in the assessment grade and didn't even receive an annual pay increment, effectively resulting in a pay cut. Given that only a few % get given the highest grade, I couldn't see how they could move people down by 2 grades; I asked HR to see the algorithm they'd used and the distribution of grades across the workforce, but they refused stating it was confidential (this is now legally required to be given to any employee who wants to see it I believe). I handed my notice in a couple of days after that!

Further to what Ian said, the only flashink bicycle lights that are legal are ones that have an even on-off rate and flash between 0.5 to 1 flash per second (basically the same flash rate as a car indicator); anything else is illegal to use, not thta you'd know it by what I see every day; some of the lights I've seen flash at about 5Hz causing a visual disturbance that makes it impossible to work out where the cyclist is when it's dark, I was behind a cyclist a while back using one of these and I had to cover my eyes with my hand to block his rear light from my vision! Edited By Martin Whybrow on 17/10/2016 23:37:00

Posted by Megawatt on 17/10/2016 09:43:47: Im interested in how a mirror reverses your face left to right but not top to bottom - how does it know? Edited By Megawatt on 17/10/2016 09:44:04 Edited By Megawatt on 17/10/2016 09:44:28 I've pondered this and came this conclusion - if you're facing the same way as your reflection would be if you were viewing it, i.e. you have your back to the mirror, then you rotate yourself 180 degrees left to right to see your reflection; if you were instead to rotate 180 degrees about your waist instead, your reflection would now be reversed top to bottom instead!

I hope you're not planning to use any of the flash modes! Edited By Martin Whybrow on 16/10/2016 20:05:23

Posted by Piers Bowlan on 14/10/2016 10:35:24: Get a Mac is my best advice. Are Macs immune from viruses then?

Posted by Andy48 on 13/10/2016 18:25:31 If the plane stays still, then somehow the conveyor belt must be applying an equal but opposite thrust to the plane's engines through the wheels. How can it do that when all it does is make the wheels revolve faster? Spot on Andy. The question is ridiculous anyway as it assumes the 747 obeys the laws of physics but the conveyor doesn't; at what point in the system does magic take over from physics?

It looks like the domain squatters have got to the domain and put in a redirect; the domain registration expired last week, but there's a cached web page on google that indicates there's a new website - but it just goes back to the expired one. I saw Lee at Old Warden a couple of weeks ago, no mention of packing up then. His ebay seller name wasn't pyramidmodels last time I bought something from him, but of course that may have changed. Note that his son also runs an RC model business, but I can't for the life of me remember the name of it; he was at OW so the business name will be on the traders list from last month - he was located close to the RC flightline end of the trade stands. He may be able to help contact Lee.

Last year, our parish council posted a link to a you-tube video of our village, filmed from a multirotor; the video looked very professional, except for the fact he overflew a number of people during the video. The video made me think the operator wasn't trained; it mentioned his name and it turns out he's a local professional photographer; I checked his website, but I couldn't find any mentions of video, so I let it drop. Yesterday, the parish council sent an email telling us that they're going to be filming with a 'drone' over our part of the village as part of an action to attempt block an unwanted planning application; the same photographer's name was mentioned. I checked his website, and he now has a page with a number of sample videos and advertising his 'drone photography' service. I couldn't find any mention of a license though, so I looked at the CAA register, and sure enough he's not on it. I sent an email to the parish council to tell him that they needed to check if he's licensed; the response was laughable, they just told me he was an ex-policeman! I've also contacted him via his website to suggest he adds a bit to his page to show he's corrrectly licensed and perhaps display his license number - I haven't heard back. The CAA aren't interested in reports of unlicensed operators, so I guess it falls to the police to look into it. Edited By Martin Whybrow on 10/10/2016 20:11:59 Edited By Martin Whybrow on 10/10/2016 20:12:34

Posted by David perry 1 on 30/09/2016 22:40:31: Wow martin that really is twrrific. The quality looks exceptional. Do you know whether itll run off any old CAD software? My lads use solidworks. D Not entirely sure to be honest; my friend was using a separate package to convert the CAD files to G code which is, I believe, what the 3D printer needs.

A friend was using one of these when I saw him recently. I have to say I was quite impressed by the quality of the output and it seemed very well built; at the price, I think it would be very hard to beat!

Phew, it's on at midnight; PVR set

Fantastic! Oh wait, that's today