Drones over gatwick..

Delvis said:
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'.
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Indeed, but the pilots who have the skills, training and licenses are the least likely to carry out such an act.

There was a gateway to being a model pilot that stopped an opportunist from carrying out such "attacks" but this is sadly gone.

I do think that this is a watershed moment for drone protection and skilled racing drone pilots will now be able to find work as drone intercept pilots at airports in the near or perhaps immediate future.
 
Tone1979 said:
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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It's really not as simple as you think. They move fast are hard to track visually, responding to them quickly enough in a helicopter is not always easy.
They can be transported by normal car, van or perhaps even motorbike and launched and charged on the go.
Good luck finding it with conventional means.
 
chrismscotland said:
Does anyone else think there’s more to this that just “drones”.

Airport closed to 4pm seems an overreaction to a couple of drones.
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It's the fact they keep spotting them, the last sighting being within the last hour but they still have no idea where they're coming from.
 
Kenai said:
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?
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Yup.

They've been seeing them for hours, but nowhere has it said continiously.

A couple of spare batteries, send the drone up for 5-10 minutes at a time, land it, rinse and repeat and you could shut the airport down for a long time as they have to investigate every time it's seen, and I suspect will not give the "all clear" until it's been checked with no further sightings for a while.
 
Werewolf said:
Yup.

They've been seeing them for hours, but nowhere has it said continiously.

A couple of spare batteries, send the drone up for 5-10 minutes at a time, land it, rinse and repeat and you could shut the airport down for a long time as they have to investigate every time it's seen, and I suspect will not give the "all clear" until it's been checked with no further sightings for a while.
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Correct, now imagine it's three teams all carrying out the same "attacks" from different areas. It's a nightmare to deal with quickly.
 
To those commenting about the batteries. I’d refer people again to the interview from the CEO of Gatwick from earlier this morning which is up on the BBC somewhere. He said a drone had been continuing to return, never that there have been any hovering for hours.

I suspect it was difficult to trace at night and as the situation was developing. I was about to say that it seemed like there has been no further news since the sighting this morning, however Gatwick have said there has been another sighting in the last hour.

You would have thought that with the man power on it now, they could trace it. It does perhaps suggest what others have said earlier about maybe they are moving around, rather than flying from a static location.
 
They need Chloe from CTU to backtrace the wifi signal to the source.. :D

Like most things in this world its something that can be weaponised by terrorists, idiots and people with specific agendas… I know plenty of people whom use these for recreational purposes with no issues at all and who would not even consider something as stupid as this.
 
Nexus said:
To those commenting about the batteries. I’d refer people again to the interview from the CEO of Gatwick from earlier this morning which is up on the BBC somewhere. He said a drone had been continuing to return, never that there have been any hovering for hours.
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Exactly - if it appears over the airfield, only for 5 minutes - if the intentions of the operator are unknown, it's a huge risk - what if it's someone who actually wants to crash it into a plane? Unless you know the intentions of the operator, it seems like the only option is to shut down the airspace until the situation is clear..

Imagine what would happen, if they said "ah it's fine" and it went through the engines of an A380 right on takeoff potentially causing the most terrible disaster imaginable.
 
I wonder who's behind it. A local obsessive type who's annoyed with the airport noise? A general "real life troll" mischief type? Clueless kids/idiots? Something more sinister?

Hopefully we'll find out soon.
 
tracertong said:
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.
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cool to big yourself up but others here were making battery comments etc right from the start.
 
tracertong said:
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.
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how does it "build up" on a blade that's spinning several hundred RPM? centrifugal force and all that.
 
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