Is This A Drone ?

I think this is maybe a Drone filming another Drone.

However i can't be 100% certain it is. So i ask your opinions.

Apologies for the brief post.

a reply to: alldaylong Lens flare (or similar artifact). Drone gimbals are notoriously "jerky" if not set up correctly.

a reply to: alldaylong

My gut says it's another drone. The video is clear enough to almost identify it as a DJI Phantom. The object has 4 points where the rotors go.. ( from what I can see.. however I could be wrong )

Screen scabs of an object in motion doesn't look great but I tried..



DJI Phantom for reference

S&F

a reply to: Bigburgh

I agree. The " fuzzy " edges give the interpretation of rotors.

Thanks for the screen shots and your input.

The distortion on top makes it appear to be a prop of a drone. It almost looks like a remote controlled helicoptor style drone. It is nice and smooth.

In the first part of the video, I am trying to determine if that animal is a dog or deer.

a reply to: alldaylong

Most welcome

originally posted by: Bigburgh
a reply to: alldaylong

My gut says it's another drone. The video is clear enough to almost identify it as a DJI Phantom. The object has 4 points where the rotors go.. ( from what I can see.. however I could be wrong )

Screen scabs of an object in motion doesn't look great but I tried..

I agree. We have overflown several drones in the chopper and thats pretty much what they look like. Its blurry because of the closure rate. He may also have known it was there because he suddenly pans to get the shot it seems.

Looks like a drone to me, now they are filming themselves?

originally posted by: alldaylong
I think this is maybe a Drone filming another Drone.

However i can't be 100% certain it is. So i ask your opinions.

Apologies for the brief post.

To me, this looks like a real object flying straight and level at an altitude obviously lower than the drone doing the video capture. It also looks to me, as a private pilot, that the object is flying at least as fast as a medium performance single engine propeller aircraft (maybe 200 mph?). This is based on the time it takes to cross those farm fields it is crossing which I estimate to be at least a few hundred meters across. The max speed of a DJI Phantom is about 45 mph. So, I think it is moving much too fast to be a small quadcopter drone. Also, It's hard to tell just exactly how far the object has moved during the time it was on camera, but the max radio range of a DJI Phantom is about 7 km. At the kind of speed it seems to be moving, it would only have about 10 seconds of flight before it was out of range.

I don't know what it is, but I don't think it is a quadcopter drone.

originally posted by: FredT

originally posted by: Bigburgh
a reply to: alldaylong

My gut says it's another drone. The video is clear enough to almost identify it as a DJI Phantom. The object has 4 points where the rotors go.. ( from what I can see.. however I could be wrong )

Screen scabs of an object in motion doesn't look great but I tried..

I agree. We have overflown several drones in the chopper and thats pretty much what they look like. Its blurry because of the closure rate. He may also have known it was there because he suddenly pans to get the shot it seems.

That pan in was rather convenient. I'm simply operating on what I've seen personally. Never seen one in my MEDIVAC or Careflight environment... but what I've seen toying around.

Two things make me think the object is CGI.

1. the slight blurry motion trail behind the object seems inconsistent with the high res HD the video is shot in. This is something you'd expect to see on a lower quality camera such as a smartphone.

2. No shadow. I'm quite sure if it was a real object at the height it was at would have cast a tiny but detectable shadow quite far over to the right of the screen briefly before it went out of shot as the object was near the middle of the screen. (note the shadows of the trees around the edges of the fields it flies over) So the thing must be either wafer thin or computer generated.

Also as another poster just pointed out, that pan around was a little too convenient and perfectly timed.

a reply to: 1947boomer

It was the apparent speed of the object that made me think otherwise. I'm no drone expert but it does annoy me sometimes that a drone is now the go-to explanation. I am sure some people vastly over estimate just how fast the average consumer drone can go and how long they can stay in the air, although I realise there must be vastly expensive and military drones that are much more capable.

For people saying it moved to fast to be a drone...

The object is moving towards the drone and the drone is moving towards the object (albeit on an angle to each other). As such the speed it would appear to move would be greater than its actual speed.

It also appears to pop into frame while being obscured by a rather light colored field in teh distance behind it, this doesnt mean it was at that field, just that the object from the point of view of the drone appeared to be between the drone and that field in the distance.

To me its a drone simply filming another drone... hell id say the drones were only about 40ish or so meters apart at their closest.