Battery life issue makes Gatwick drone story seem implausible to me.

[Drewbie]

Multiple quadcopters, no pilot or external control. No transmitters, just a GPS receiver. Preprogrammed flight plans/launch times and then hidden close to the airfield, possible weeks beforehand.

Wait until they do it in multiple airfields in multiple countries all at once - economically devastating.

[stj]

so the media has time/space to report an alleged, but not photographed?? drone event at a secure area covered in camera's,

but no time/space to report the treasonous signing of the u.n. global migration pact this week??
and why is UKIP so silent on this??

[beanflying]

And it's not like the now many GPS options and new ones being launched at present can be jammed or stopped easily either in particular as more and more rely on them for safety of various sorts (including planes).

There is talk already about widespread adoption of the DJI tracking system as a defacto standard for other Drone manufacturers to follow so no tracking no flying or this limit here. It still doesn't stop home brew solutions and never will as the current code and electronics out there already can do all of this and more. Just means more BS for the Recreational and Commercial fliers to deal with.

Will be interesting if they try and foolishly impose a lockout type of system on the general R/C plane community as there is currently no Geo Fencing type of system in place. I still have some gear on 29 and 36 Meg which couldn't handle it regardless.

Frustrating for all of us fliers 

[beanflying]

so the media has time/space to report an alleged, but not photographed?? drone event at a secure area covered in camera's,

but no time/space to report the treasonous signing of the u.n. global migration pact this week??
and why is UKIP so silent on this??

And the reason to drag you personal politics into this? Go make a Tin Foil Hat and write some propaganda on toilet paper then use it.

[BradC]

It also seems implausible to me that they do not have the equipment to send another drone up there with for example, a fishing net.

I'm not in the UK, but I went to a very interesting talk recently by an Australian Federal agency specifically on drones. One of the points they made with regards to use of drones in these sorts of situations is any government authority is completely hamstrung by the regulations, while the people they are pursuing completely ignore them. I would hazard a guess that the plod in the UK are similarly constrained.

So deploying an anti-drone drone requires some Vogon like bureaucratic process while the drone in question flies off into the sunset. It makes it hard.

WRT to US anti-drone ammunition. I've been watching that for years now, and while I can see it'd be quite effective, it'd also leave fucking great holes in whatever it landed on. Physics being physics and all. People probably wouldn't like being hit with a ball of depleted uranium at speed. It'd make a mess that'd be quite hard to clean up (metaphorically and literally).

We have a similar issue here with aerial support for bush fires. Loony dickheads with RC aircraft (drones included) have gone up for a "look around" and completely grounded effective fire support for hours while they waited for the airspace to be declared clear. There was legislation mooted to allow the emergency services to "neutralize the threat", but I'm not sure it ever amounted to anything.

[beanflying]

In Australia UAV's (Drones) are 'Aircraft' and as I think I put in the other thread you can't randomly shoot them down or take them out of the sky without cause, this is there for very good reason as doing it wrong poses more risk generally than letting them fly and land.

While we have legal separation of Airspace between UAV's and Manned Aviation and apart from peanuts in both camps it works well. There is specific exclusion from flying around declared emergency sites which covers UAV's and has some prohibitions on manned flights for bushfires, accidents, rescues etc but idiots are out there.

Overall our Regs work fairly well as CASA takes input from all sides including a very long term relationship with the local Model Aircraft Association (MAAA) and all aviation special interest groups. They tend not to take a knee jerk response to things like this but we will need to wait and see.

No level of regulation will stop a determined human or group from doing the wrong thing.

[edy]

Hey what about training some big bird of prey to atttack the drone? Surely they would be the best protection and much more effective and easily deployable. I've seen birds used to scare away flocks, and also attacking drones just because they were in their territory. Surely someone who is a professional bird trainer could set up a reward system to program a bird response to attack a drone in a safe matter without itself getting injured (especially a large bird). I've seen these birds do incredible things, like capture foxes to help people hunt... they sit there calmly waiting for their human companion to arrive and will not eat it. If it can take down a fox running at top speed, I can't see why the bird couldn't knock the drone out of the sky. If the operator is not within direct line of vision they wouldn't really be able to counter maneuver easily (say if it is some GPS controlled flight plan). If the drone is being watched then they may be able to more easily apprehend the operator.

By the way, a great movie:

[beanflying]

Birds of Prey Attack from the top claws out into 4+ high speed most likely carbon fiber in the case of this drone Talon slicer dicers isn't going to end well. Not to mention the instant hit with PETA and any other Animal Group on the planet. 

BOP's have taken out smaller drones and plenty of R/C planes over time and it has resulted in more than one Death where the talons don't release from the airframe.

[cdev]

And here in NYC area, the morning temperature outside, 60 degrees today.
Some bulbs (flowers) and other spring growth are already coming up, leaves bright green.

There are even insects flying about.

I saw a squirrel outside, looking nervous.

Happy Summer Solstice, Australians & Kiwis !

[stj]

so the media has time/space to report an alleged, but not photographed?? drone event at a secure area covered in camera's,

but no time/space to report the treasonous signing of the u.n. global migration pact this week??
and why is UKIP so silent on this??

And the reason to drag you personal politics into this? Go make a Tin Foil Hat and write some propaganda on toilet paper then use it.

i will ignore your verbal diarea, it's probably caused by all the earthquakes recently. 

[beanflying]

i will ignore your verbal diarea, it's probably caused by all the earthquakes recently. 

Wow oh dear I am just so hurt  The only Earthquake I get is caused by excessively laughing at the Damage Brexit and idiots behind it are doing.

Just to help out you with a little Geography the 'Earthquake' Mild Tremor for most is to me what an 'Earthquake' in Sicily or further away would be to you.

[rstofer]

I can't imagine any conventional firearm shooting it down, this is reality and not Sniper Elite 4. Though I've yet to see any video or picture of this drone, or any mention of flying height or distance from the runways.

EDIT: picture and video of the drone here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6517401/How-police-destroy-Gatwick-drone-misery.html

Bullets go up and then they come down.  Usually at a high enough velocity to kill people.  Happens every year around the 4th of July.

As to flying around Gatwick, why would the drone need an operator?  GPS and a route plan is all it would take.  It could fly unaided until the battery level reached some point and then head home.  It would be easy to build the electronics for such a thing.

[beanflying]

This is the problem with having multiple threads 

You don't necessarily need an operator now and route planning exists on a lot of commercially available Drones as does a hack to disable the DJI geofencing. No programming or PhD and could be done by a bunch of 16 year olds with Daddy's credit card for giggles.

If you want to reuse the drone and not be found you need an undercover launch and landing area which might play up with GPS lock so an operator or at least a video feed to one makes it more reliable for reuse. To avoid getting nabbed while doing either of these the operator could be km's away from it.

[cdev]

In other news, it appears that Brits living outside the UK are going to lose health coverage. That may be the real driver of the story.

[Nusa]

Jeez, talk about high-jacking threads with an unrelated topic that isn't even tangentially connected to electronics. In other words, you should be in someone else's forum.

The fact that it's your own thread actually makes it worse, making it appear that your own topic isn't worth pursuing.

[cdev]

Why else might the UK government want so very badly to push the real news out of the media?

[beanflying]

Really is time for me to make a new one.