Ukrainian drone footage of 6 pointed star

[jarlrmai]

hmm, that FoV of 120 and 2624ft altitude results in a lot of optical distortion that doesnt match the video, so I'm not sure its right.

Yeah when you set the drone to the height given and the FOV to match the lake size then the view when the drone looks at the fields doesn't match

 

[jarlrmai]

120 degrees is a common FPV drone angle, but maybe on these FPV drones used for non racing purposes they use a narrower lens, which would mean the drone was higher than stated

 

[jarlrmai]

FOV 60 degrees at 7200 feet fits the views a bit better

 

[Giddierone]

The problem with a hexacopter is the orientation it seems fairly clear that the 6 sided pattern appears when the drone is looking level which means a hexacopter would need to be on its side directly

Tilt-rotor hexadrones that can hover at an angle have existed for a while.

Source: https://youtu.be/Sgd0i87r9-0?si=DTlFfiHoVXzMXGYb

 

[teloiv]

It'd be nice to narrow down the size of the thing with the sitrec magic. I'm not sure conventional drones would give off that exhaust though and agriculture drones are pretty limited in altitude.

Considering the context of a recon drone scouting russian territory, I could see counter measures like russian parachute flares to light up the sky in order to make the tiny recon drones visible.

I'm not sure how they'd look in infrared but if it's drifting down slowly with the drone then maybe it would appear to maintain the kind of pov we see. It'd also give off that exhaust type thing in the video. Though even in the picture attached, you can see the exhaust trails are erratic and not a smooth motion.

 

[jarlrmai]

Tilt-rotor hexadrones that can hover at an angle have existed for a while.

Source: https://youtu.be/Sgd0i87r9-0?si=DTlFfiHoVXzMXGYb

And it just coincidentally rotated with the filming drone?

 

[Giddierone]

And it just coincidentally rotated with the filming drone?

Now you're just moving the goal posts.

 

[Giddierone]

Some old footage of drones in IR referenced here:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/wh...foia-release-from-the-drive.12465/post-272294

 

[jarlrmai]

Now you're just moving the goal posts.

How? A hexacopter was my first thought as well but I don't think it fits what we see, the goalposts are the same, the camera rotates, the object doesn't. A hexacopter would have to rotate exactly matching the filming drone to be possible

 

[Andreas]

A hexacopter would have to rotate exactly matching the filming drone to be possible

Well, it could be a hexacopter, but the "star" is still a camera artifact. I just don't see how it could be anything else, since extra "spikes" seem to appear from nowhere when the camera moves, and the "star" stays level on screen throughout the whole film. I don't think we need to speculate about star-shaped flying objects.

 

[Giddierone]

How? A hexacopter was my first thought as well but I don't think it fits what we see, the goalposts are the same, the camera rotates, the object doesn't. A hexacopter would have to rotate exactly matching the filming drone to be possible

I agree it looks weird, like a 2D sprite in an old shooter that follows you as you turn.

 

[FastIndy]

And honestly, what does it really say on the screen? There's an indication saying "Low battery" and two symbols showing empty batteries. Someone doesn't seem very interested in getting his drone back home…
View attachment 90441

And at the end of the video, we get some weird screen that looks like something from a video game, summarizing the "mission."
View attachment 90442

*Edit, looks like I missed jarlrmai's post with pretty much the same info here:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ukrainian-drone-footage-of-6-pointed-star.14880/#post-368924

These are parameters from a On Screen Display (OSD), commonly used on first-person view (FPV) unmanned aerial systems. Most of the systems in use today were developed from recreational FPV quadcopters. These use a processor on the drone that takes in the video feed from the camera and overlay critical things like battery status onto stream that gets transmitted back to the operator. It's like a heads-up display. Specifically, this is probably from a drone using Betaflight flight controller firmware, and this is the post-flight statistics screen.

"Total ARM" = ~ probably active armed (on) time or something like that
"MIN BATTERY" = Lowest battery voltage (18.14V)
"MIN RSSI" = Minimum signal strength (for the user's transmitter TO the UAS flight controller)
"USED MAH" = Used milliamp hours. 5462 indicates that this is not a large drone.
"BLACKBOX" = Blackbox logging buffer. I believe this would mean that the rolling buffer of blackbox data that can be stored on the flight controller is completely full.

I'm not sure what battery voltages they are using over there, but to me, the OSD indicates a small quadcopter sized FPV drone. ~18V depleted would be a 5S or 6S* battery configuration, and 5400 mAh is not a lot.

Edit to mention that you never really want to see the post-flight statistics screen unless you're done flying. Also here's the link to the Betaflight OSD page:
https://betaflight.com/docs/wiki/app/osd-tab

Final comment is that I really want to see where the ecliptic plane falls on the video. Is it possible that this is extreme glare from the sun and reflections from the ground?

*Another edit to correct battery voltage

 

[Ann K]

since extra "spikes" seem to appear from nowhere when the camera moves

It looks from your first clip as if that's not a radial spike, but one from the "nose" instead, seen in a somewhat sideways view for a brief moment. Might that be connecting The Thing (for want of a better name) to the drone or camera housing?