Some Jackass Thought It Would Be Amusing

[Papa_Complex]

Knowing the focal length and camera used might be able to give a distance, but obviously couldn't be used to find the height.

http://kmp.bdimitrov.de/technology/fov.html

[Trip]

I am not looking for an exact number, just an idea. You could get it in the ballpark.

[Papa_Complex]

Originally Posted by Trip

I am not looking for an exact number, just an idea. You could get it in the ballpark.

What I mean to say is that it would tell you AT MOST what the altitude would be. Any angle of declination would obviously make it closer to the ground, than that.

[fasternyou929]

Originally Posted by Trip

I am not looking for an exact number, just an idea. You could get it in the ballpark.

So you've been casting doubt on Lee's in-person altitude estimate, but YOU'RE going to get a better idea from a photo with no reference points.


I think the, uh, prestige, of running a message board has gone to your head.

[Trip]

Originally Posted by fasternyou929

So you've been casting doubt on Lee's in-person altitude estimate, but YOU'RE going to get a better idea from a photo with no reference points.


I think the, uh, prestige, of running a message board has gone to your head.

We are looking for 1000 ft. If you know the zoom, you can get distance to the camera. Make a guess at angle to the ground that would be close. If it is real low to the ground it would be pretty obvious its not 1000 ft.

The guy could easily lose his license over just this incident. So if you are going to do it to this guy, get good evidence that he is actually fucking up.

[anthonyk]

Originally Posted by Trip

We are looking for 1000 ft. If you know the zoom, you can get distance to the camera. Make a guess at angle to the ground that would be close. If it is real low to the ground it would be pretty obvious its not 1000 ft.

The guy could easily lose his license over just this incident. So if you are going to do it to this guy, get good evidence that he is actually fucking up.

How would you even do that? Guessing at the angle (with no reference points) is going to totally determine the estimated altitude. If I remember right, the guy was flying circles, so it's not like you could use level wings to estimate the angle.

Why not just believe that a) Lee thought it was obnoxiously low and b) the FAA is used to dealing with the general public giving bad eyeball estimates of altitude? The guy is not going to lose his certificate over one complaint with no evidence. If he's got a history, or does it again and someone does snap a good pic to show he's way too low, then this complaint helps keep one jackass out of the air.

[Trip]

Originally Posted by anthonyk

How would you even do that? Guessing at the angle (with no reference points) is going to totally determine the estimated altitude. If I remember right, the guy was flying circles, so it's not like you could use level wings to estimate the angle.

Why not just believe that a) Lee thought it was obnoxiously low and b) the FAA is used to dealing with the general public giving bad eyeball estimates of altitude? The guy is not going to lose his certificate over one complaint with no evidence. If he's got a history, or does it again and someone does snap a good pic to show he's way too low, then this complaint helps keep one jackass out of the air.

You wouldn't make the guess of the airplane angle from the picture. You could do a wide range of typical angles that are pictures are normally taken. You could say do a range of 30 to 90 degrees and get a range of altitudes based on that. If it's really low, it's going to be pretty damn obvious.

Math is not hard people.....

This is a discussion forum. Let's discuss it. It's boring as shit when you just have a lynch mob mentality about everything....

[Tmall]

Originally Posted by anthonyk

How would you even do that? Guessing at the angle (with no reference points) is going to totally determine the estimated altitude. If I remember right, the guy was flying circles, so it's not like you could use level wings to estimate the angle.

Why not just believe that a) Lee thought it was obnoxiously low and b) the FAA is used to dealing with the general public giving bad eyeball estimates of altitude? The guy is not going to lose his certificate over one complaint with no evidence. If he's got a history, or does it again and someone does snap a good pic to show he's way too low, then this complaint helps keep one jackass out of the air.

NO!
Lodge a complaint and move on. Fucking whiner.


Edit: I guess, he could lose his license.

Double edit: My guesstimate off of a picture is better than Lee's first hand experience.

/Trip

[fasternyou929]

Originally Posted by Trip

We are looking for 1000 ft. If you know the zoom, you can get distance to the camera.

Bullshit. You'd be making a guess, from a 2-dimensional photo.

Originally Posted by Trip

Make a guess at angle to the ground that would be close.

Guess number 2, based on zero reference points available in the photo.

Based on these two guesses, you're going to come up with something more accurate than Lee, who estimated one distance, in person, in 3-D.

Originally Posted by Trip

If it is real low to the ground it would be pretty obvious its not 1000 ft.

No shit. Too bad we didn't have someone there on the ground so we didn't have to make all these uneducated guesses from a photo!

Originally Posted by Trip

The guy could easily lose his license over just this incident. So if you are going to do it to this guy, get good evidence that he is actually fucking up.

Like a photo of the tail number and complaints from numerous neighbors?

Good grief man, if you came across any more empty-headed in this thread I'd swear you could fail a CT scan.

[Trip]

Originally Posted by fasternyou929

Bullshit. You'd be making a guess, from a 2-dimensional photo.



Guess number 2, based on zero reference points available in the photo.

Based on these two guesses, you're going to come up with something more accurate than Lee, who estimated one distance, in person, in 3-D.



No shit. Too bad we didn't have someone there on the ground so we didn't have to make all these uneducated guesses from a photo!


Like a photo of the tail number and complaints from numerous neighbors?

Good grief man, if you came across any more empty-headed in this thread I'd swear you could fail a CT scan.

No dumbass, its very easy to get the information you need and if you use a wide range of angles, you can actually make a well reasoned estimate of height.

You could easily get information off the plane itself about scaling, that combined with information from the camera itself aka zoom,lens, and such you can easily determine distance from the camera to the plane. Sometimes you can even get this information from the photo itself depending on what the camera embeds into the digital photos. Some cameras will even embed GPS info into photos nowadays.

Using that distance, you can use a wide array of angles from the ground to that of the photo taken. Then using simple trig based on those two determinations, you can get the height of the airplane

Math is not fucking hard if you aren't a dumbass like yourself.

BTW a person on the ground using his naked eye that has no education on identifying the altitude of airplanes is making an uneducated guess.

We aren't going to be looking for accuracy of inches, by probably tens of feet. Which would be a very well reasoned estimation.