Anti-drone plot bunny?

Brit firm unleashes drone-busting net cannon

It seems that the "authorities" have a new tool in their arsenal against the invasion of the Drone.
Further details [URL="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/04/drone_busting_net_cannon/"]HERE[/URL]

In the light of the guy who shot down his neighbour's drone for ogling his teenage daughter, I wonder if there is to be a similar thing for ordinary citizens to use?

Ah, how to sexualize the story? Pervy operators of mini spy drones (10in / 25cm blades) infest the cities and 'burbs, poking wide-aperture lenses into bedroom windows, nude pool parties, and backyard orgies. A clever engineer designs a radar-activated catapult that slings lethal glop (it fouls lenses and motors) at hovering objects.

But a hacker tweaks her design, replacing the immobilizing slime with a certain organic mix. The spy drones survive to return home. But unless the pervs don latex gloves, touching their toys infect them with whatever: poison, disease, perverted aphrodisiac, gender-changer, flea / louse attractor, you get the idea.

Ah, a gender-changing brew! Zack has lots of fun flying his mini-drone through girls' locker rooms and around swingers' swimming pools. His drone returns as usual. He picks it up and checks it for damage as usual. He puts it away, views its transmitted images, and jerks himself to sleep as usual. But when Zack wakes in the morning... s/he has tits! And a pussy! And low self-esteem! And s/he is covered with fleas! (The hacker included the pest magnet formula.) S/he tears off pyjamas and stands naked, sobbing!

That's when Zack's studly but primitive and crude older brother walks in. Hilarity ensues.

Looks complicated and expensive. I once saw someone describe delivery drones as "skeet shooting with prizes." I rather liked that idea.

Personally, I'd like to see it defined in law how much of the airspace above our property we actually own. It seems to me that if you have a fence or foliage that blocks the view from your neighbor's windows, you should have an expectation of privacy in your own yard.

Jose_Rick said:

Looks complicated and expensive. I once saw someone describe delivery drones as "skeet shooting with prizes." I rather liked that idea.

Personally, I'd like to see it defined in law how much of the airspace above our property we actually own. It seems to me that if you have a fence or foliage that blocks the view from your neighbor's windows, you should have an expectation of privacy in your own yard.

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Take a look at the FAA's rules about balloons and minimum flight altitudes.

Handley_Page said:

Take a look at the FAA's rules about balloons and minimum flight altitudes.

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You could have posted a link. (That's the best I found on short notice.)

13. Q: What are the FAA guidelines with regard to flight safety altitudes? 600 ft above my school/house just doesn't seem to me to meet the guidelines concerning the safety of those on the ground.
FAA Response: The Federal Aviation Regulations do not prescribe minimum altitudes for aircraft when necessary for takeoff and landing. Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR) Part 91 prescribes the rules governing the operation of aircraft.
Sec. 91.119 - Minimum safe altitudes: General.
Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:
(a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.
(b) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.
(c) Over other than congested areas. An altitude of 500 feet above the surface, except over open water or sparsely populated areas. In those cases, the aircraft may not be operated closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.
(d) Helicopters...

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I assume balloons and drones are considered 'aircraft' and thus must comply with these rules. I could be wrong.
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As it happens, I have a real-life balloon story. A century-ago family member (call him Jock) was one of the first licensed balloonists in our region. He was obsessed. Jock and June married and honeymooned and vacationed in their hot-air balloon.

Their balloon sprang a leak during a flight. Jock climbed the lines and sat atop the balloon to repair the fabric. A gust of wind caught Jock and blew him off into space. But that gust also blew the basket in the same direction, and that is where he landed, next to his bride, ker-plop. Miracle!

Let's sexualize that. They were screwing or at least slurping in the basket when they heard the leak. Jock climbs naked. The gust blows him off; the imminance of death in that first second provokes an instant hardon. He lands in the bucket right atop spread-legged Jane, entering her smoothly. What an atmospheric blow-job!
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Back to drones. A clever inventor develops anti-gravity drones the size and shape of elite dildos. He flies these around for stealthy insertions. Don't bend over naked near a window!

How about delivery drones? An escort service catering to clients in remote locales like fire lookouts, offshore platforms, rough camps etc delivers hookers by drone. For the lonely faggot, "air male" takes on new meaning. ObTopic: Some nefarious geek's drone-busting net cannon snares those escort drones. Has quite a collection pretty soon. Make up a story from there.

How about dronejacking? Duplicitous Chinese chipmakers design a stealthy backdoor in an ubiquitous microcontroller used by all commercial-recreational drone makers, allowing agents to seize control of drones at will. Hilarity undoubtedly ensues. Even more hilarity when a foreign geek hacks their system, re-diverts the diverted drones, and does weird stuff.

I could drone on and on...

Hypoxia said:

As it happens, I have a real-life balloon story. A century-ago family member (call him Jock) was one of the first licensed balloonists in our region. He was obsessed. Jock and June married and honeymooned and vacationed in their hot-air balloon.

Their balloon sprang a leak during a flight. Jock climbed the lines and sat atop the balloon to repair the fabric. A gust of wind caught Jock and blew him off into space. But that gust also blew the basket in the same direction, and that is where he landed, next to his bride, ker-plop. Miracle!

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Real-life in some parallel universe, maybe.

First of all, pilot certification didn't exist a century ago, not even for airplanes. That started in 1927 and did not include balloon pilots.

There were no hot-air balloons a century ago. There were what they call "smoke balloons". They didn't have airborne heaters. They had to be held over an open fire to fill with smokey hot air. They were released, flew to whatever altitude the heat differential and weight allowed, then cooled and descended at terminal velocity. Think big old fashioned parachute like you see in WWII movies. This was nothing a honeymooning couple could have done unless a crew of a dozen were along to make it happen.

The modern hot air balloon, the first with airborne heater was developed for the U.S. Navy to train blimp pilots by the late Ed Yost of Tea, South Dakota. He made the first untethered free flight in a hot air balloon with airborne heater in 1960.

There is NO WAY anyone could climb the rigging and get on top unless they like sitting on something that is going to cool very rapidly and go into a terminal descent. Modern hot air balloons reach terminal velocity of about 800-1000 feet per second, so Jock would probably die before he could thread a needle...and why in hell would he be carrying anything to repair the envelope.

BTW a balloon capable of lifting two people and itself would have to be around 60,000 cu feet displacement or more. Probably around 6 stories high sitting on the ground. And there are no lines going from the basket to the top of the envelope. Those with a net over the outside are lighter than air gas balloons (helium or hydrogen), not hot air.

Talk about droning on. I could write a book on hot air and gas balloons. Actually, I almost did, but I did write a number of articles about it and logged over 500 hours in hot air balloons and 200 in LTA gas balloons, commercially and recreationally.

I call bullshit on your family for filling you with stories like that. I'm beginning to see where you got your tentacle obsession.

rj

rjordan said:

Real-life in some parallel universe, maybe.

First of all, pilot certification didn't exist a century ago, not even for airplanes. That started in 1927 and did not include balloon pilots.

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Federal certs, no. I'm told he was licensed by the state of California. And somewhere around here we have the newspaper clipping reporting the incident. Maybe they lied.

In case you haven't guessed, the tentacle thang is a riff, not an obsession. My only obsession is for the perfect zither. Believe that if you will. Hmmm, maybe tentacles playing zithers...

Hypoxia said:

Federal certs, no. I'm told he was licensed by the state of California. And somewhere around here we have the newspaper clipping reporting the incident. Maybe they lied.

In case you haven't guessed, the tentacle thang is a riff, not an obsession. My only obsession is for the perfect zither. Believe that if you will. Hmmm, maybe tentacles playing zithers...

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Well, the certification doesn't really matter one way or the other. It's possible a century ago that there might have been one, maybe two people in California playing with smoke balloons (by the way, FAA still defines smoke balloons in the regs), but I'd be surprised if there were any. Certainly not enough where anyone would have considered licensing them.

The story itself is the problem. There isn't a single point in it that has any basis in fact.

But if I have a point, and probably I don't, it would be that any story, even a story about honeymoon sex in a balloon has to follow the laws of the known universe, don't you think? If you were to tell a tale like this in a parallel universe, fine. But virtually all the points I brought out could be googled in a very short time if someone were to write a similar story about balloons or drones.

BTW, balloons require certification as aircraft. They have N-numbers just like any U.S. registered aircraft and have to obey the same regulations.

However, drones, for purposes of the law, are not defined as aircraft. Just because something mechanical flies doesn't make it an aircraft in the eyes of the law. Laws are not always logical, but they attempt to be consistent.

Another point about drones. The FAA requires that commercial drone operators be licensed pilots of real aircraft. And balloon pilots qualify! The reason is that balloon pilots are trained in the "rules of the road", i.e. regulations that govern U.S. airspace.

Anyway, any time I see balloon silliness I can't help saying something. Like when you see a wind come up and the basket/gondola trails the envelope as it zooms off. Never happens. The balloon is part of the airstream and just gets pushed along. I've been in a gas balloon at 15,000 feet in 60 knot winds and in the balloon it is dead calm. We have charts laying on a small table that swings over the side and you don't even have to weight them down. They don't blow away or even flutter.

OK, back to tentacles...

rj

Around 1970-71 I was stationed at the USMC air station at Santa Ana, Calif. The two hangers there are a quarter mile long and 6-700 feet tall wooden Quonset hut looking things. The FAA brought in 2 hot air balloons for testing in stable conditions for future licensing. Before that I don't think there was any FAA regulation governing Hot Air balloons.

The Goodyear Blimp looked like a toy when they moored it in there during a storm.

TxRad said:

Around 1970-71 I was stationed at the USMC air station at Santa Ana, Calif. The two hangers there are a quarter mile long and 6-700 feet tall wooden Quonset hut looking things. The FAA brought in 2 hot air balloons for testing in stable conditions for future licensing. Before that I don't think there was any FAA regulation governing Hot Air balloons.

The Goodyear Blimp looked like a toy when they moored it in there during a storm.

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We have a couple of hangars like that at what was RAF Cardington.

TxRad said:

Around 1970-71 I was stationed at the USMC air station at Santa Ana, Calif. The two hangers there are a quarter mile long and 6-700 feet tall wooden Quonset hut looking things. The FAA brought in 2 hot air balloons for testing in stable conditions for future licensing. Before that I don't think there was any FAA regulation governing Hot Air balloons.

The Goodyear Blimp looked like a toy when they moored it in there during a storm.

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That could have been a certification test, but it wasn't the first. The hot air balloon that Ed Yost and Don Piccard flew across the English Channel in 1963 was a U.S. certified aircraft with an N-number. Many purely recreational balloons were certified by a handful of manufacturers by at least 1965.

I didn't get involved until 1980. Many of the pioneers were still around and accessible.

rj

rjordan said:

That could have been a certification test, but it wasn't the first. The hot air balloon that Ed Yost and Don Piccard flew across the English Channel in 1963 was a U.S. certified aircraft with an N-number. Many purely recreational balloons were certified by a handful of manufacturers by at least 1965.

I didn't get involved until 1980. Many of the pioneers were still around and accessible.

rj

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There is a Hot Air Balloon Museum in Normandy:

http://www.chateau-balleroy.fr/home/

oggbashan said:

There is a Hot Air Balloon Museum in Normandy:

http://www.chateau-balleroy.fr/home/

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Obvious question: Where are the drone museums?

And nobody has followed up on my suggestions of snaring / hijacking delivery drones, especially people-carriers. For a short hop, would you rather take a commuter hop, or be packed in a tube for fast delivery? Would you fear sexual dronejacking? Could two highly sexual midgets stuff themselves into one drone? With the introduction of such will short people have a sudden surge in hookups?

.....

A bit off topic but found in your link HP.

German lodges todger in 13 steel rings

I must admit I clicked it to find out WTF they were going on about.

A Munich man has set what may prove an unassailable record for the number of steel rings lodged on a penis after presenting himself at a local hospital with no less than 13 engorgement aids encircling his swollen member.

Die Welt explains that the unnamed 52-year-old had endured four days of entrapment when he rolled up at accident and emergency on Tuesday. Doctors prescribed the traditional remedy - a group of firemen bearing cutting tools, on this occasion a couple of angle grinders.

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I'll bet he doesn't try for a new record soon!

JackLuis said:

A bit off topic but found in your link HP.

German lodges todger in 13 steel rings

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Envisage the scene at an airport check point. Walk through the scanner. Eyebrows raised. Escorted to a private room for examination. Whip it out. Oik. Put it away, sir. But then the terrorists will start wearing explosive cock rings. Oh, the humanity!

Hypoxia said:

Envisage the scene at an airport check point. Walk through the scanner. Eyebrows raised. Escorted to a private room for examination. Whip it out. Oik. Put it away, sir. But then the terrorists will start wearing explosive cock rings. Oh, the humanity!

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Imagine the expressions on the faces of the 72 virgins as they notice his absent todger. . .