I knew it was coming…

[adyParticipant @ady]

Model planes are tewwwowist weapons.

 

Undercover FBI agents allegedly supplied Ferdaus with a model plane

 

 

A 26-year-old US citizen has been arrested for plotting to fly explosive-packed, remote controlled planes into the Pentagon and the US Capitol in Washington DC.

Rezwan Ferdaus was also charged with attempting to supply materials to al-Qaeda and aid attacks on US soldiers.

The Northeastern University physics graduate is accused of planning to commit “jihad” since early 2010.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15101449

Soooo…

If there’s anything that’s “hard to get” for modellers and you can’t knock it up yourself, I suggest that you stock up before they make it too difficult.

Electronics is probably the most obvious subject.

Edited By ady on 29/09/2011 01:10:38

[adyParticipant @ady]

[Chris TriceParticipant @christrice43267]

Unless they’re going to ban balsa wood, tissue, batteries and electric motors, they aren’t going to stop an aeromodeller from making flying models. There are so many radio sets out there that even if they banned RC tomorrow, RC models with second hand radios will still be flying in twenty years time. That doesn’t take into account all the ready to fly models coming out of China.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

The payload of a small model aeroplane could only be a few ounces!

Unless it was one of these behemoth planes that are being built with 12′ wingspan.

Believe me, if they want to stop model aeroplanes they will jam the frequencies that are used, simples really!

In any case the operator would likely have to be within about a half mile to keep control of the model in flight and have line of sight as they are not fitted with guidance systems are they.

 

Clive

[David HanlonParticipant @davidhanlon38496]

BBC World now talking about ‘remote controlled airplanes’ and ‘GPS control’ and appear to have dropped the photo’s of the nice F-4 and F-86 (or Fury?) models in their live coverage ( at leats in the article on tv two minutes ago.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Watched a vidio on line of a model aircraft being flown in the UK, on board was a TV camera, and transmitter, the pilot on the ground was flying it via the signal sent back from the aircraft.

If you want to carry a load, just put in a bigger motor. If you want to sneak up on a target fly electric. If you target is 10 miles away, I’m sure electronic control is not beyond an enthusiatic amatuer. Ian S C

[adyParticipant @ady]

The ones that impressed me were those jet engine models, one of them on utube could almost be called a subsonic missile.

[Chris TriceParticipant @christrice43267]

Posted by Clive Hartland on 29/09/2011 07:58:29:

The payload of a small model aeroplane could only be a few ounces!

Unless it was one of these behemoth planes that are being built with 12′ wingspan.

Believe me, if they want to stop model aeroplanes they will jam the frequencies that are used, simples really!

In any case the operator would likely have to be within about a half mile to keep control of the model in flight and have line of sight as they are not fitted with guidance systems are they.

 

Clive

 

Er… they can carry a great deal more than a few ounces nowadays. You don’t need line of sight for the radio to operate or to see what the model is doing because you can get lightweight on board cameras and the range is well over a mile. Battery and motor technology now means you can hop out of a car and have the thing in the air in about ten seconds rather than the old days of glow engines which needed a lot of pampering before you started. With a bit of thought, you could carve a wholly polystyrene model (high lift wing section delta wing) which weighs next to nothing giving it a capacity to carry a lot of high explosive with a wingspan of only six feet. Where there’s a will as they say……

 

Any effective defence would rely on a bit of early warning. Problem with jamming is that radio control sets today are on the same fequency as bluetooth devices so detecting an attack in order to jam is problematic.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

ady, what about the Kiwi bloke who was (is) building large pulse jet engines, and had a cheap cruise missile ready to go, I think even the CIA was a bit worried about him, our security force certainly was. Cost a thousand or two dollars and you’v got something like a V1 buzz bomb. Ian S C

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

What made me laugh was a TV report about an American defense scientist funded by DARPA who had succeeded in making half an electronic dragonfly go round a pole in circles. The aim was to produce tiny controlable flying machines, at the cost of several millon dollars.

 

Next Christmas I was flying a £30 chinese remote control helicopter around my living room.

 

Just like Kurt Schrekling et al. and their gas turbines, amateurs can still lead the way when it’s ingenuity that matters.

 

Neil

 

PS: buzz bomb was unguided , someone with wits and luck could make one from scrap, if they were stupid enough.

[Richard ParsonsParticipant @richardparsons61721]

There is a saying “if you have a problem give it to the armatures. They will solve it”.

Stub The ‘Doodle Bug’ (V1) was guided in a way. My old man did a bit of agricultural engineering. In the late 40s and early 50s there were still German and Italian POWs in the UK. The old man was allocated two to help with the ‘humping and heaving’. One of them had been part of a ‘Doodle Bug’ launch crew. He decided to ‘stay behind’ when they were ordered to retreat. The V1 was guided by a magnetic steering gear which ‘tweaked’ the yaw gyro. Before launch the machine was placed on a wooden stand where it was turned round to orientate it and bopped with mallets to change its internal magnetic deviation. The Doodle Bug was nasty. It was small, difficult and dangerous to attack from the air as it had several hundred pounds of bang stuff inside it.

The point is that anyone with evil intent and the ability to use tools can do it, but the lower levels of security are suspicious and dim. And remember to them anything you make could be part of a weapon –even a 3 ½” flat truck.

Rdgs

Dick

[Chris TriceParticipant @christrice43267]

There’s a well known saying about making equipment secure. You can design in systems that make accidental dangers virtually impossible but you can’t guard against deliberate acts of sabotage. All you’d need would be a balloon launched up wind of the target and some kind of bomb release based on a clockwork timer. You couldn’t react quickly enough before it was all over and no electronic jamming would work.

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

“some sort of ballon” google japaneese fire ballons… apparently ‘discovery’ of jetstream before anyone knew what it was… Also as to control / vision/ payload control for bomber…two words android phone.

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