Summary
A firefighting super scooper battling the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles collided with a privately-owned DJI drone, causing significant damage and delaying operations.
The FBI is investigating to identify the drone’s owner, as unauthorized drones near wildfires pose risks to firefighting efforts.
Temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) are in place, but violations can lead to prosecution, fines, and jail time.
The damaged aircraft, one of only two available, is out of service until Monday.
That is identical to mine. It’s wicked cool, but I wouldn’t even dream of flying it anywhere near an event like this. I enjoy zipping around my property for sure but that’s it.
Whoever this is is bigly fucked. They will move heaven and earth to hunt them down.
Owner of that drone :
Deservedly so. No-fly zones exist for a reason and many, many people just don’t care about that stuff. Where I live there’s a lot of them and I regularly see people fly drones there.
I wish they were more strict about fining people here as well, we have an ambulance chopper stationed close by and I don’t even want to imagine it colliding with a drone and crashing in a densely populated neighborhood.
Great week for drone dumbassery in California. This one also happened in our local paragliding community:
Updated link (looks like the first one was updated): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrbpRtxqlbM
Oh. its a DJI. that thing should have serials stamped all over it; one phone call and boom. they got a name.
DJI?
The largest brand for commercial drones.
Oh, gotcha
The drone manufacturer. There’s serial numbers and whatnot on all those parts.
Thanks :)
Just to add, there are far more than 2 planes in the area now. The Canadians sent at least one, and the US military surged it’s entire aerial firefighting fleet to Los Angeles. So there’s something like 3 water bombers, 10 helicopter water scoops, and several fire retardant bombers.
“of this type”
I didn’t see it say that anywhere and there’s already conspiracy theories about the Democrats not helping. So I figured the extra knowledge couldn’t hurt.
I merely meant that type of plane is important since they have different roles.
In fact the air resources on the LA fires are significantly greater than you outlined. I haven’t been following it at that level but for the Palisades fire alone Watchduty says there are 5123 Personnel, 540 engines, 66 dozers, 60 water tenders and 44 helicopters. I haven’t seen a list for fixed wing but it’s way more than 3 tankers - they’ve been drawing S2s, LATs and VLATs from all over the state. And there are of course more aircraft from other states.
BTW if you are interested the Watchduty app is great for this info. I also use FlightAware and/or FlightRadar24 to see aircraft in the sky. And yes I nerd out on this stuff - I used to do fire reporting for my community.
That is fascinating and yeah I’ll probably bookmark that.
“I’d just like to stress, that technique, using that super scooper aircraft, are our most effective technique to fight fires like this, and when this happens, it puts everybody’s lives at risk,”
Sure, but just think of the cool footage that person was getting! /s
Ngl, I’m kind of surprised the owner hasn’t already posted the “sick closeup footage” they shot online.
I feel like any law enforcement official that says anything to the effect of ‘if you do X, you WILL be prosecuted’ is doing a disservice to the entire process.
Exaggerating or oversimplifying just makes your statements fall flat. When what they mean is ‘If you do X, and we catch you, and we have enough evidence, and the prosecutor decides it’s worth pursuing, and you can’t afford a good lawyer, we WILL (probably) try getting you thrown in jail’.
Say something simply like ‘We have a x% prosecution rate for this type of crime’ and it makes the risk more real instead of ‘if you do this you WILL be prosecuted’ while everyone who was actually considering doing the thing has either done it a dozen times already, or sees others doing it with apparent impunity.
“We have less than a 50% prosecution rate for murder.”
You sure that’s the argument you want to broadcast?
Broadcasting police ineptitude does seem like something good to make known. Might motivate them to do their job.
I thought DJI drones software locked the no fly zones? How did they manage to make it go into the area?
To enforce something like that you would have to force the drone to connect to some online database on a regular basis, and I don’t think that’s a thing. There’s certainly no requirement that drones only fly where there’s cellular or WiFi service.
I also know of at least one company using higher end DJI drones specifically for providing services to police & fire departments, so they’d have to have some way of opting them out of such geo locks.
DJI drones are paired with and controlled by a smartphone app. The app downloads a map database to local storage, and the position of the drone is tracked via onboard GPS and reported back the controller app.
Of course there are exceptions for law enforcement. American police can get full auto rifles and armored vehicles. Getting an authorization for restricted airspace is nothing.
Even hobbyists can operate within certain restricted areas if they get pre-approval from local air traffic control.
That drone owner is fucked. Hope he gets to serve time.
Can DJI not pull flight data for an area/time frame and see who was flying it?
DJI doesn’t track every one of the hundreds of thousands of drones they sell. And there’s no requirement that a drone even have an internet connection of anything like that.
Most modern drones, (yes, DJI) are required to be registered and support Remote ID.
It does what the name suggests. The drone broadcasts its position data and registered FAA ID over Bluetooth and/or WiFi.
I have had 2 dji drones and they require Internet and account to set up. I believe they force you you to register with faa as well because I remember I did this many years ago
Emphasis on the C in Super Scooper. Terence Hill is fine.
Edit: Why am I getting downvoted for a Supersnooper joke?
The pearl clutchers are getting their dopamine hits.
A Canadair CL-415 to be exact.
