Soldato
Should just be shot down, regardless. Quick and easy
Drones over gatwick..
- Thread starter Screeeech
- Start date
Realistically it will have to be someone quite close.
LTE control of a drone is possible, as is automated function, but recharging and redeploying is less easy to do remotely. Not impossible, but harder.
I guess the police are searching actively, along with airport staff to find the source.
I would guess a drone deployed, recharged and operated from a moving van or car would be most likely case? Always mobile, hard to find, blends in and allows a quick exit with little suspicion.
LTE control of a drone is possible, as is automated function, but recharging and redeploying is less easy to do remotely. Not impossible, but harder.
I guess the police are searching actively, along with airport staff to find the source.
I would guess a drone deployed, recharged and operated from a moving van or car would be most likely case? Always mobile, hard to find, blends in and allows a quick exit with little suspicion.
Man of Honour
Heathrow's CEO? or perhaps Boris Johnson - claiming that if we built Boris Island airport it would be harder to get drones flying over there!
Caporegime
Again, minority ruining it for the majority as usual
Drones are ruining RC flying as a hobby in general. It used to require skill and lessons to fly a proper aircraft. Now they fly themselves, and anyone can buy them and operate without any technical knowledge or skill.
Man of Honour
Political activists regularly target airports. Greenpeace, noise complainers etc...
I would agree that it just being "somebody messing around" has long gone out of the window now. If it was just a clueless/reckless operator, they might have foolishly done it one flight, but not multiple times over a course of many hours. Given the fact no planes are taking off and landing and it's the top news story, if you were level headed, you would now be realising the gravity of what you had done and certainly wouldn't be doing it still.
I don't think it's terror related, because I'm sure if somebody was out to cause harm, they could have done so before things got shut down and by continuing to fly they are just going to end up arrested.
The other theory in the news is an activist group and that would tie in with sightings of multiple drones. However, no group has claimed to be behind it and despite earlier reports of multiple drones, in the recent interview with the Gatwick CEO, he mentions only one drone and says it's been coming back all night. And although activists have shut down airports before, this crime is likely to carry a jail sentence, so you've got to really be committed to that cause.
I suppose there is still a chance it could just be somebody a bit unhinged who is trying to stop somebody going/coming for Christmas or something.
Soldato
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2012
- Posts
- 8,334
Exactly - apparently there are also 20 police units hunting the operator right now, so I imagine there will be police officers whizzing around all over the place, so it's extremely unlikely to me - that someone just did this for a bit of a one off prank, or by accident (apparently most of these drones won't even take off, if they're within 1Km of an airport)
I suspect it might be some sort of political protest.
It will be interesting to see if they actually catch the operator - it's going to look very bad if they manage to escape uncaught!
Soldato
Is there no ability to track the controller down via some signal when they fly these things.
Anyway this is a reason to just ban these things altogether, shame for people who have sense who own them, but when complete and utter morons can buy them and use them to do things like this and disrupt thousands of people travelling.
Anyway this is a reason to just ban these things altogether, shame for people who have sense who own them, but when complete and utter morons can buy them and use them to do things like this and disrupt thousands of people travelling.
Absolutely, even if this wasn't designed to cause real harm, others will get ideas.
Hopefully the perpetrators are caught and get a custodial sentence.
Associate
I
Like the boy on tv said it must either be a hacked drone or a manual one which doesn’t adhere to the regulations.
Apparently they’ve been on off all night so must have a fair few battery’s! SOMEONE must see the drone coming in to land there not inconspicuous! I had a dji phantom and that sounded like a swarm of bees when coming in to land.
I used to have a dji drone and live close to an airport they have a built in gps that if your close you can only fly a certain height and distance no matter if you try and go out with the drone just won’t go.
Like the boy on tv said it must either be a hacked drone or a manual one which doesn’t adhere to the regulations.
Apparently they’ve been on off all night so must have a fair few battery’s! SOMEONE must see the drone coming in to land there not inconspicuous! I had a dji phantom and that sounded like a swarm of bees when coming in to land.
Soldato
So it must be a team of individuals doing this, and if that is the case then its not just a prank but a protest, or even a test for something bigger.
Either way I think airports across the country are going to be investing in some anti-drone tech after this.
Airports are huge so I appreciate the challenge, but isn't most of the perimeter rigged with cameras - so it cant be that hard to catch them now that they are actively stepping up the search.
Yeah whoever's doing it, must keep having to land it - replace the battery and go again, earlier on. Somebody made the point earlier on that it might have been somebody in a car driving around, potentially making it far harder to track them down.
Will be interesting to see if they continue doing it throughout the day, or whether they wait until it gets dark before trying again.
Yeah could well be, might be the same group that blocked all the bridges in London a few weeks back.
Associate
Yup, they have armed Police at the airports, unauthorised drone on site, trained Sniper takes it out, simples!