Commercial pilot John Marking tells his story of a small drone taking down his helicopter while working at an off-road desert race in Mexico. A simulation shows what a drone could do to the wing of an airplane upon impact. Even a small drone crashing into an airplane can do major damage, a test video shows. Kevin Poormon, a University of Dayton engineer who has performed numerous bird strike tests on airplanes, mimicked a midair collision between a 2.1-pound DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter and a Mooney M20 airplane. The drone bore into the plane much farther than a similarly weighted gel "bird" and damaged the plane's main spar, which carries the weight of the wing.