Nasty weather in Arkansas tonight. A couple of guys are using the little helicopter rigs to get video of the damage & to chase the tornado / storms. Actually getting some pretty good pictures.
Now, little hovering platforms with 1 to 12 electric motor driven propellers are being called drones. ??? Hummm
I always heard a drone was an unmanned airplane.
But there was the V1 & V2 of WWII
The drones being used by the military now. ( Predator etc. )
So, should we consider these really small controllable platforms as drones or something different or a different class of remote controlled airplanes, RC- model for instance.
There are some very good & life like RC helicopter models now and they are not called drones but RC helicopters.
A video camera can be used on one of them very easily.
So are they drones, unmanned aerial systems or RC models of lifting devices or just RC model helicopters?
Where do you think the lines should be or should there be lines at all?
I would say a drone is an unmanned aircraft that’s controlled from the ground via an operator who’s not steering the craft by line of sight.
So a V1, V2, or cruise missile isn’t a drone because they’re pre-programmed and not being controlled by an operator.
An RC helicopter isn’t a drone because the operator is steering the helicopter by watching it from the ground.
If you have an RC helicopter where the operator is steering it from a television screen hooked up to a camera on board the helicopter then it’s a drone.
I’m no authority of anything, but I’d define a drone as a pilotless aircraft. The vagueness comes with examples like hobbyist RC planes or one-way cruise missiles or even tethered helicopters.
In any case, pilotless airplanes have been in use for almost as long as piloted airplanes. Arguably the first cruise missile was a biplane with an autopilot and a bomb that the US messed around with in the first World War (they couldn’t get it to work right), though the German V1 was much more famous (and far more successful). They also had various remote-controlled drone planes, usually converted bombers controlled from other planes, that they used on various operations to varying degrees of success.
People just assume this is a new thing because UAVs came into more widespread use in the 21st century.
Most of these dictionaries just define drones as “pilotless aircraft”. One says the usage goes back to the 1940s, but doesn’t explicitly cite a source.
As with all English terminology, definition is via consensus. It means whatever the hell you and a billion other people want it to mean.
Whether or not quadcopters and their cousins should be called drones or not, more and more I see them being referred to as drones. The lines start to get a little blurry for the larger and more sophisticated ones.
The only civilian drones authorized by the FAA are only allowed to operate in the arctic at this point (source of that being the FAA). Remote controlled model aircraft are a different matter, but those are not allowed to engage in commercial operations. Apparently, they may be referred to as “model drones”, at least, that’s a phrase I’ve seen used in FAA documents. I gather the preferred technical term is “unmanned aircraft” or “pilotless aircraft” depending on capability.
Basically, as long as the guys videoing damage or chasing tornadoes with their remote-controlled aircraft are not doing it for commercial purposes they’re in the clear (provided they respect all other applicable rules) regardless of what they call those little aircraft.
A buddy got a quad copter that is RC and carries a video camera. He can view the feed from the camera on his phone in real time. I’m so gonna tease him about his drone, which to him is an expensive toy.
The companies that make the RC quadcopters don’t like the term “drones.” I believe the preferred term is UAV, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.
“Drone” is a good shorthand for the public for something very new and in the News a lot, to give them a picture of what they are. I’ve also seen about five episodes of TV dramas that involve them somehow. But I think it will shake out and be more accurately defined as they start to differentiate their purposes and ubiquity.
I was always dismayed that the US government kept calling them drones after they admitted that they were arming them; but then for the longest time they denied that they were armed and seemed to claim that they were only used as surveillance and targeting purposes for other aircraft. After all, a true drone is a bee without a stinger. So basically the CIA perverted the definition of drone so that they could perpetuate a lie that they were telling the public. The word drone more directly relates to a single purpose surveillance flying object; much like a male bee that doesn’t do anything other than mate; no honey gathering, no stinger; just flies around and observes. A Predator drone would more accurately refereed to a s yellow jacket.
V2 = ballistic missle. V1 = more like a really, really crude cruise missile (like a Tomahawk).
Neither were drones; AFAIK, the term came about when the USAF would use older air-breathing missiles and planes under remote control or internal guidance to either be used as targets in weapons tests or as reconnaissance gathering devices. This has been done since the 1950s.
Not much of a step from there to purpose-built airframes, really. The big kicker was the development of global-scale control systems really- that didn’t come about until the last decade of the 20th century really.
I don’t know that there’s much difference really between a drone or a UAV; one sounds more ominous is all.
For a while, the military was trying to insist that they were called RPVs (Remotely Piloted Vehicles) rather than UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) because “Unmanned” indicates that there are no humans involved in the process, while Remotely Piloted more accurately states that the plane is under human control, just remotely. The name change didn’t stick, largely because most people didn’t seem to care.
