Wow your right Chris! I stand corrected!
Here’s the facts:
Jan 6th 2017 - Boeing 737-700 was hit by a drone on approach to Tete, Mozambique. If a UAV is confirmed as the cause of the damage in Mozambique, it would mark one of the first official drone collisions with a passenger plane.
There was a report of a possible collision in the UK, but it’s still unconfirmed.
The FAA lists 1,274 drone/commerical aircraft incidents for 2016. 874 for 2015. Just in the US.
This is the report summary from the first quarter of 2017
https://www.faa.gov/uas/media/UAS_sightings_report_Jan_Mar2017.xlsx
Mozambique Jetliner Did NOT Collide With A Drone
Check your sources: http://aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=a3a3ce54-8837-4ae8-9bcb-b88a058cc7bb
Helicopters can “glide” to a landing just like an aircraft.
In the perfect conditions, with the right failure, with a highly skilled pilot, sure. Otherwise, they drop like a stone. And they only have one of everything, so are a flying single point of failure. At least quads are technically capable of coping with the loss of a motor/prop/bearing etc, and they are mechanically extremely simple. In years of intensive flying quads built from cheap off the shelf (mostly chinese) parts, I’ve never had a mechanical failure. Quad pilots should be banned far sooner than the quads themselves.
Based on the number of FAA incident reports of UAV’s being spotted at altitudes they should not be flown at I would have to agree 
The FAA has it in the works to require ADS-B transponders on all UAV aircraft. They are currently pretty expensive (~$1,000 and up, depending on if you get a FAA TSO-certified GPS). This is the NextGen ATC system that is supposed to replace secondary radar. In theory, it would provide position reporting information, altitude, SOG and heading to manned aircraft for collision avoidance purposes. Of course, this wouild not be necessary if they weren’t currently being flown where they’re not supposed to be.
No, they don’t drop like a stone. Only if you stall the main rotor.
A heavily loaded 600-class can be flown ~800 feet from the point of failure @ 400AGL. About 2:1 glide ratio. Sure, it requires training and practice. But that’s part of being a pilot.
All helicopters, both RC and full-size, have what is known as the “dead man’s curve”. It is based on a combination of altitude and best autorotation speed, below which successful autorotation to a gentle damage-free landing is not possible without stalling the main rotor.
If you’ve ever been to IRCHA and watched the autorotation limbo contest, highly skilled pilots can do a 3D flight routine in autorotation. Like this example of Mitch Morozas coming in under the limbo stick in an inverted piro, rolling upright and landing soft as feather in autorotation with a 700-class helicopter.
No multi-rotor aircraft is capable of this type of unpowered flight performance, making helicopters by far the most redundant rotary wing aircraft type. Helicopters have been used successfully for over 75 years for everything from heavy lift applications to air ambulance service. Multi-rotors are not practical above a certain size because there is limitations on how fast you can throttle motors and make props speed up and slow down.
Even with hex and octo machines, a failure of one drive usually leads to a cascade failure due to overloading the remaining drives on the side where the failure occurred, since the thrust vectoring and stability of the aircraft is severely compromised with loss of a drive. While they are mechanically simple, they are electrically complex. And electrical failures are far more common than mechanical failures in aircraft of all types, both full-size and RC.
Fully autonomous autorotations are possible with helicopters. I’ve been experimenting with custom code that does autonomous autorotation. Texas A&M did it with a 600-class with a APM running the old firmware. The Skookum Robotics SK900 and SK1000 helicopter autopilots have autonomous autorotation feature.
In the world of UAV’s multi-rotors are safer for many things where the aircraft is flying around people because if somebody gets hit by it they likely won’t be missing body parts or be killed. Helicopters are popular for larger scale applications because of their much higher performance capabilities, greater efficiency and redundancy for carrying heavy, expensive payloads. They both have their place, since helicopters scale up nicely into the full-size world of practicality, multi-rotors do not. The biggest markets on earth for UAV helicopters is agriculture, forestry and open pit mining survey work where long flight times, heavy payload and range is required. The biggest market for multi’s is aerial photography and videography.
Multi’s get all the bad press because people do dumb things like land them on the Whitehouse lawn.
Or a bearing or gearbox has seized, rotor breaks, newbie at the controls panics etc. This isn’t supposed to be a helicopter vs multicopter thing, I was just trying to point out the absurdity of the original premise 
I hope this isn’t forced on the rest of the world (I’m in Europe). I do agree there should be responsibility and accountability, but there’s also civil liberty and privacy at stake. Just like the general public would not take kindly to a transponder in your private car uploading all of your movements to the government, same goes for a ‘toy’ or ‘hobby’. Personally for larger commercial UAVs I’m all for that, or for a TACAS or similar alternative, but there should be a sensible weight/size/use limit. There are all sorts of manned aircraft around me that fly without transponders, recreationally (small planes, microlites, gliders, parasails etc). Mandating that I put ADSB on my little 250 quad would be ridiculous.
Having some way of tracking down the cretins that fly their phantoms in front of passenger airlines however, I do agree there should be some way.
Yes I wanted to add that to the equation too. No doubt in my mind this will also happen, but I figured much later than quad bans. Now maybe it will happen before…
I don’t know what’s going on in Europe at present. The UAV ADS-B transponders currently available only weigh about 100 grams and are about the size of a MavLink radio. I think under the current proposals any flying at RC clubs or established flying fields are exempt. Everything else would have to have them.
The government is not actually tracking you with the ADS-B Mode S transponders. It is a system that provides real-time collision avoidance for all aircraft. Yes, you will show up on ATC’s radar screen. But you also show up on the collision avoidance radar in manned aircraft.
So it’s not a privacy issue at all. Every certificated aircraft is required to have a Mode C transponder squawking 1200 for VFR above 10,000 MSL and are only exempt from the requirement flying below 2500 AGL.
I love your optimism If you’re flying a duck with an ADS-B anywhere within the US or Europe, not only will the government know every movement you make, so will an army of enthusiasts (flightaware, flightradar etc), and published live on public websites. Yes, it’s a privacy issue (the clue’s in the name - Automatic Dependant Surveillance Broadcast).
No quads are going to get banned. The ADS-B requirement for 2020 currently DOES NOT apply to UAV’s. It’s in the NPR. The problem is that ADS-B out requires a TSO’d GPS, which is currently quite expensive. And with ADS-B ATC and manned aircraft do not need their screens cluttered up with a bunch of drones flying around in the city park.
So I don’t think it will actually ever go thru, except for commercial UAV operators that want to operate UAV’s at high altitudes with the manned aircraft and integrate them into controlled airspace. And this is eventually coming.
Municipalities can, and already have, enacted laws that restrict you from flying your drones in certain areas. But that is not a ban. It is currently not even illegal in the US to fly your UAV over somebody else’s land, as they don’t control the airspace over their land. That doesn’t mean a land owner can’t bring a civil suit for invasion of privacy if you do, but it likely won’t hold up in court any more than it would trying to bring a suit against somebody for flying a Cessna 152 over their land.
The main issue that exists is interfering with operation of manned aircraft. And when the things are being spotted regularly at high altitudes and around airports, it’s a real issue. I don’t know how it’s going to be dealt with but an outright ban on “drones” is not in any NPR I’ve ever seen.
Exactly what right to privacy do you have operating an aircraft in the National Airspace System? None. If you want privacy you can fly it in your living room all you want, knock holes in the walls with it, terrorize the cat, buzz the dinner table, and nobody can do anything about it… But out in public where your aircraft can cause personal property damage, injury, or interfere with other aircraft, all your privacy is voluntarily given up just like driving your car on public roads. You have to obey laws or your privilege of driving your car in public will be taken away.
Edit:
I should not say nobody can do anything about it in your living room. I got banned from flying my little MCPx helicopter in the house. Wife.
Despite Transport Canada’s new equipment requirement for geese, they do have a more sensible NPR for commercial UAV’s operated in rural vs urban areas than the FAA does in the US. Part 107 in the US is a bad joke.
DOH! I guess it’s back to my original question:
Sorry, I’m still trying to figure out forums reply’s on this forum …
This doesn’t show any collisions that brought down an airplane with a drone.
Me too. I had to go outside to play.
No. The FAA reports show how many drones are being flown illegally. And is the primary reason for the NPR on ADS-B transponders. The FAA’s thinking is that if all aircraft are required to have them, when one is spotted flying illegally we can track down who’s doing it. Slap them with a $25,000 fine and make an example out of them to get the message out that you don’t do that.
The problem with their thinking is that if somebody wants to fly a drone illegally they’ll just build one without a transponder and do it anyway. That’s why I don’t think it will actually be signed into law, because surely somebody who writes the laws in Congress is smart enough to figure that out. Right?
My little humorous comment on ‘‘Goose on Screen’’ was an illustration of the magnitude of the problem. Mid-air strike is a risk that will always be present, and any pilot will have to cope with it.
IMHO a drone strike is imminent, its just a matter of when, but on the other hand the same risk exist, if not higher, of having a drone crashing in a truck windshield and causing a major accident on a highway. In this case, no transponder will prevent this to happen.
Using technology to optimize and accelerate air traffic is a good idea, using technology for substitute for lack of knowledge and stupidity is an endless story.
