Drones over gatwick..

Saw this briefly earlier, I fly on sat so am hoping no more cretins remain.
Its a shame they cant somehow disable the drones they spot remotely from the airport

Ikr it's a joke they can't shoot them down.
Nexus said:
A report I saw earlier said they didn't want to shoot it down because of risk of stray bullets.
I expect they also want to trace the individuals, as if they can follow them, it should technically lead to the operator(s) unless they ditch it.
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And this Chances of a damaged Drone landing and risking life are, I'd say remote.
I think that if people realised their drones would be destroyed fast at long range then it may quickly reduce the amount of them up around airports.
 
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Bigpops said:
There's no evidence, yet, of any drones. Who flies their drone at night anyway?

I think something else is going on here.
If it was just someone flying a consumer drone (like a DJI, even though they won't take off near airports), then it would be out of battery in under 30 minutes. If it was a self built drone, then likely much sooner than that. This has been going on for hours now.
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Nice to meet a thinker rather than the majority here who just repeat what the BBC and their "experts" tell them. There is something highly peculiar with this story and I am NOT the only one to say this, Drones CAN NOT stay in the air for THAT amount of time even the expensive ones like the DJI Mavic Pro can only stay in the air for 27 mins and that’s with perfect weather conditions when in fact it was anything but , it was cold, damp and light mist in the air with "Some" rain.
 
Yeah, I too think this sounds a little suspect, surely the batteries cannot last this long and wouldn't cause this amount of trouble unless there was hundreds of them in the sky.
 
MookJong said:
The Met has said there is nothing to suggest this is terror related. Do you think they are saying this simply as the drones made no attempt to crash into a plane or....?
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It'll be based on an overall assessment of risk, what the drones are doing, and whether there's any intelligence suggesting it could be terrorism-related. Internally they'll be considering all options but as far as the broader response goes, there's no reason to just assume terrorism.

Also it was Sussex Police, not MPS.

Bigpops said:
There's no evidence, yet, of any drones. Who flies their drone at night anyway?

I think something else is going on here.
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There's no evidence of "something else" either.
 
KingOfTheDaves said:
Please tell me more about the effect 'a light mist' has on a drone
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When it builds up on the propeller blades, it increases the craft's weight and negatively affects its aerodynamic properties, particularly when flying over a body of water, where the cold air on top of the warmer water can cause evaporative fog that refreezes on nearby surfaces, including your drone.
 
As someone who is planning to take the plunge into buying a drone next year for hobby purposes, holiday filming and whatnot it will not surprise me in the least that typical government action is a blanket ban on everyone all because of two ******** who should be fined and or made to pay compensation to the tune of millions to the passengers affected. That being said, I thought many areas were becoming geo fenced?

Have the drones been spotted conclusively? Seems like something isn't adding up here.
 
Radar track with unknown callsign taken from the PPRuNe forums (pilots and aviation forum)

drone.png


some rumours there suggesting it may be a drone under autonomous control.
 
antijoke said:
Yeah, I too think this sounds a little suspect, surely the batteries cannot last this long and wouldn't cause this amount of trouble unless there was hundreds of them in the sky.
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They're not saying that they've had drones in the sky for hours on end though are they? Just that they've been spotted a few times, hours apart, and they've grounded flights while they investigate?
 
Given the lack of any protestor types claiming responsibility to draw attemtion to their cause my main concern now would be that this was a dry run to test the response. Imagine the chaos if this happened simultaneously at all major airports on xmas eve...
 
kaiowas said:
Given the lack of any protestor types claiming responsibility to draw attemtion to their cause my main concern now would be that this was a dry run to test the response. Imagine the chaos if this happened simultaneously at all major airports on xmas eve...
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They've made it quite obvious how easy it would be to shut down the entire country with half a dozen drones flying near the biggest airports at the same time.
 
Malt_Vinegar said:
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.
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Not entirely true if you fly it how the vast majority of racer pilots fly theirs, without any aids, as do I.

It's only the DJI phantoms and toy quads that ''fly themselves'.
 
There is something too odd about this to make it believable. There are no consumer drones that can fly for longer than 40mins. A drone could be tracked by helicopter back to where it was launched from or at least to where it ran out of batteries.

Also, to say there was no incident planning to cope with a drone to stop it taking an entire airport down for many hour is staggering/unbelievable.

No idea what is going on but I can't believe it's simply a drone issue.
 
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