back to article Dallas Cowboys to return 'dumbass' Texan's chopper

The Dallas Cowboys have located the quadcopter which a self-confessed "dumbass" pilot planted on the roof of the team's AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the local Star-Telegram reports. The unnamed operator's DJI Phantom Vision went into "return to home" mode when he "let the building get between me and the transmitter", as he …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. JDX Gold badge

    Nice

    They're into letting you do what you want in Texas. As long as it's not with another man, and you're white.

    1. El_Fev

      Re: Nice

      @JDX grow up!

    2. kmac499

      Re: Nice

      So, with training, you can carry a concealed gun in Texas; but loose your toy aeroplane and they go all seriously legal on you...?

      1. Rick Brasche

        Re: Nice

        that's because it's not Texas but the FED who is bringing in the FAA to create the drama.

      2. beep54
        Joke

        Re: Nice

        @kmac From Austin, Tx: what is this 'training' yer talkin' 'bout? 'N why 'n hell should we'all be concealing our beloved guns? Dang furriners....

      3. JDX Gold badge

        Re: Nice

        >>So, with training, you can carry a concealed gun in Texas; but loose your toy aeroplane and they go all seriously legal on you...?

        If you leave your gun lying around in a sports stadium that might be unpopular too.

    3. JimmyPage Silver badge

      Re: Nice

      Except it's the *federal* aviation authority.

      Southern states have a deep rooted mistrust of most things federal. Apart from their money.

      1. Michael Habel

        Re: Nice

        I've given up on the incredibly inflatable US Dollar.. And I'm just waiting for it to go "POP!". When the Chinese, and Russians start demanding payment...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Nice

          "When the Chinese, and Russians start demanding payment..."

          You assume the Chinese economy doesn't go pop like Soviet Russia did. The situation is the same, of vast misallocations of capital, although the Chinese have built infrastructure rather than military hardware, but the outcome will be the same. The Russians would be ****ed in a rather different manner, in that if the US economy went pop, their economy would deflate quickly with a rasping wheeze, because half of government spending is financed by oil & gas revenues. If the US or China hit the stoppers, demand falls, prices collapse, and suddenly they don't have the money to spend - Russia, like most other energy resource economies has got its government spending critically leveraged against high oil and gas prices.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Nice

          I'm with Mr. Habel.

          The US is 17.5 Trillion dollars in debt, it goes up by a billion dollars a day, and they are doing nothing to stop it. Think the government shutdown crisis is behind you? Think again. Much worse is coming.

          http://www.usdebtclock.org/

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Nice

          They can't demand payment. Gov. debt is sold as bonds, the risk is actually on the lender that the US defaults that is, it stops paying the coupon.

    4. Jim 59

      Re: Nice

      So the mention of the word "Texas" is enough to provoke an off-topic unfocussed outrage aimed at nothing in particular. And down-voters pile in, desperate to be offended by something or other. FFS. It seems that we really do miss Eadon.

  2. ElectricFox
    Black Helicopters

    A fool and his drone are soon parted...

  3. Jim 59

    Return home ?

    Unfortunately, the very building which had cut comms also prevented the chopper flying a straight line back home, and...

    Eh ? So the return home mode amounts to "crash into any object that blocks radio contact". Some mistake surely.

    1. imanidiot Silver badge

      Re: Return home ?

      Return home is intended for when you go out of radio range. Not really for when you are silly enough to ignore all standard practices and fly your quad out of direct Line of Sight, behind a tall building.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Return home ?

      "Eh ? So the return home mode amounts to "crash into any object that blocks radio contact". Some mistake surely."

      Not for kamikaze missions. I would guess that ne'er do wells around the world have been looking at this (and mooted parcel/pizza delivery by drone), and thinking "we too have packages we'd very much like to deliver".

      Maybe the drug mules and suicide bombers could go on strike against the threat of disintermediation of their bit of the value chain? That Ned Ludd, he was right all along!

      1. JDX Gold badge

        Re: Return home ?

        Do none of these drones allow you to control them through, say, mobile phone tech?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Return home ?

          "Do none of these drones allow you to control them through, say, mobile phone tech?"

          AFAIK not out of the box. But a highly competent home-brewer could cobble together a lightweight phone into the onboard control system. For the truly ambitious it might be feasible to relay the onboard camera as a video call to the controller's smartphone on the ground, given a bird's eye view. Probably not feasible at the same time as a video call, but linking the GPS to give height speed and location data would give the ground controller data when out of sight.

      2. 2Fat2Bald

        Re: Return home ?

        Nah. RTH mode meens "Fly back to launch coordinates at X altitude, and land vertically. X is something like 50 meters so would pass over trees and the like and most normal suburban structures. Unfortunately this structure was taller than the RTH altitude, so the quad hit the structure when it lost contact with the pilot and automatically entered RTH mode. The quad doesn't have anything in the way of vision systems or terrain radar so this is about the best you could do.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lift....

    Could one of these things lift a grenade?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lift....

      Easily and that includes a dropping mechanism. The lift they generate is really quite extraordinary for a "model".

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    But what about my frisbee?

    I asked them to get it while they were up on the roof getting the drone!

  6. frank ly

    The Dallas Cowboys have located the quadcopter ...

    They went into a huddle around it and are trying to figure out how to get a touchdown.

This topic is closed for new posts.