Drones over gatwick..

Soldato
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Not quite sure how you came to that conclusion. In the UK, there were less than 2000 confirmed strikes in 2016.
That figure increases slightly year on year with the increase in movements.

You tend not to see it in the media because they don't know and probably wouldn't care.

World wide, seeing as the whole world is having a fit over drones, which a vast majority are owned by responsible law abiding citizens.
 
Man of Honour
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I'm interested in knowing what drone it was, it would need to be a pretty expensive drone to cover the range needed to enter the airspace. Your typical £30 drone from Argos is unlikely to fly 100ft let alone several thousand feet to disrupt air travel. With the increase from 1km to 5km for the air port exclusion zone, it would need to be a £1000+ drone at the very least.

My mavic 2 (2lbs) would manage it (8km range, limited to 5km in the UK) and that cost £1300 with a 30 minute flight time, my other drones a £30 (~170g) mess about drone that gets blown about in a slight breeze and can just about manage 300ft distance and maybe 100ft up. My final drone is my 4S FPV (~£200 and ~450g) which can cover about 1km range very quickly but then its battery will be dead in 2-3 minutes anyway

The thing is bird strikes happen daily in the air and nothing ever really happens, wanna know what a 30lb goose does to a jet liner when struck at altitude. Nothing. Besides a bloody mess all over the air craft.

There is a possibility that a bird could enter the engine and shut that engine down, but then jet lines are able to fly with an engine out anyway.

There are a millions of bird strikes a year. Never see that plastered all over the media.

There are plenty of drones inbetween your two examples though that can manage like 300-500feet altitude and 0.5-1km range and someone messing about without any geofencing, etc. to stop them could get close enough to use a drone like that.
 
Soldato
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400ft is already the legal maximum so anyone flying above that should be penalised. Likewise a drone that can go 1km is likely to be out of sight which is also against the law.

I can barely see my Mavic 2 at 1500ft away and that's a pretty decent size drone, but then my eyes are naff.

The exclusion zone for an airport was increased to 5km so those cheap drones will not be enough. Then again new legislation means nothing if it will only be ignored and not enforced.
 
Man of Honour
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400ft is already the legal maximum so anyone flying above that should be penalised. Likewise a drone that can go 1km is likely to be out of sight which is also against the law.

I can barely see my Mavic 2 at 1500ft away and that's a pretty decent size drone, but then my eyes are naff.

The exclusion zone for an airport was increased to 5km so those cheap drones will not be enough. Then again new legislation means nothing if it will only be ignored and not enforced.

That is the problem here - these people probably either have no interest in following the law or are inept in their ability to follow it and enforcing it is easier said than done.
 
Soldato
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That is the problem here - these people probably either have no interest in following the law or are inept in their ability to follow it and enforcing it is easier said than done.

So basically new laws are pointless, they need to enforce the existing ones. Drone technology has a long way to go, the likes of DJI etc already have the features necessary to comply with the law, the cheap crap does not
 
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Soldato
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Birds can still royally bugger up an engine and cause delays, we just don't hear about it as much in the news. This vid says it costs the industry over $1.2B a year, that's from cancellations and delays in addition to mechanical damage.

This vid is worth a watch just for the amazing graphics of birds getting totalled in jet engines :D


To anyone with a mission to cause issues, a £1k high end consumer level drone is pocket change compared to the damage it can cause.

These laws are pretty pointless, some real money needs to be dropped in drone prevention and control.

I watched a great vid a while back from a pro drone filming company where they had footage of someone on a super yacht taking over the signal of a drone circling it and nearly capture it. They were obviously able to intercept/take over the signal somehow. The tech is definitely out there. Will post the vid if I can find it, it was great as the operator was able to break free of the yacht's control and still recover the drone, so the interception method wasn't perfect.
 
Man of Honour
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I watched a great vid a while back from a pro drone filming company where they had footage of someone on a super yacht taking over the signal of a drone circling it and nearly capture it. They were obviously able to intercept/take over the signal somehow. The tech is definitely out there. Will post the vid if I can find it, it was great as the operator was able to break free of the yacht's control and still recover the drone, so the interception method wasn't perfect.

Problem is if you are intent on no good and not worried about the law then drones are reasonably easy to make very hard to hijack and fairly immune to brute force disruption even via fairly crude techniques like pre-programmed time based frequency hopping and actions triggered by loss of a control signal like flying a pre-programmed GPS track.
 
Soldato
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Yeah, I keep reading that. Makes sense to a certain extent, I find it hard to believe that even if the drone is on a pre programmed GPS route it still isn't susceptible to some kind of electrical interference though?

Even if it's something highly targeted direct line of site from the ground up into the sky to affect the internal electronics as opposed to just the remote signal?

Could be even more intensive if those on the ground know there are no planes in the sky at the time of action.
 
Man of Honour
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I think this is the kind of stuff that has got them paranoid:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-46822429

There has been increased noise from certain parts of the internet in respect to ISIS drone stuff, etc. and potential threats to Europe and I suspect they are realising how exposed we potentially are if something like this did get through.

Yeah, I keep reading that. Makes sense to a certain extent, I find it hard to believe that even if the drone is on a pre programmed GPS route it still isn't susceptible to some kind of electrical interference though?

Even if it's something highly targeted direct line of site from the ground up into the sky to affect the internal electronics as opposed to just the remote signal?

Could be even more intensive if those on the ground know there are no planes in the sky at the time of action.

I mean you can try and disrupt the electronics using various means but in the realworld it generally isn't like the movies where you can just magically use a focussed EMP, etc. and/or the realities of using something like that which works to an effective level has significant side-effects or other problems to contend with which might make it unsafe to use around built up areas, etc.
 
Soldato
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When I think of a drone, I think of things like the MQ-1 Predator, when I think of the tiny drones people use for fun. Well they are quad copters.

I have encountered people questioning what I what I was doing with my drone, I refer to it as a quad copter and 9 times out of 10 they move on. Would that be the case if I said it was a drone?
 
Soldato
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Britain’s Next Air Disaster? Drones

excellent programme on last night showing uk and usa/ratheon anti drone tech

- infra-red+visible optics in the systems impressive (can read clock tower across the channel)
- radio beam 'gun' and the laser too.

edit: they also appeared to show new autonomous drones not needing gps that had inertial navigation, so could not be jammed. ?
 
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Associate
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Britain’s Next Air Disaster? Drones

excellent programme on last night showing uk and usa/ratheon anti drone tech

- infra-red+visible optics in the systems impressive (can read clock tower across the channel)
- radio beam 'gun' and the laser too.

edit: they also appeared to show new autonomous drones not needing gps that had inertial navigation, so could not be jammed. ?

Watched this - the laser gun was great.

The part with the sniper rifle indicated the difficulty in shooting down with conventional means, and the quote that a missed bullet could travel up to 10 miles.
 
Soldato
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Britain’s Next Air Disaster? Drones

excellent programme on last night showing uk and usa/ratheon anti drone tech

- infra-red+visible optics in the systems impressive (can read clock tower across the channel)
- radio beam 'gun' and the laser too.

edit: they also appeared to show new autonomous drones not needing gps that had inertial navigation, so could not be jammed. ?

Saw this, good overview of the issues. The next big thing being the AI ones are going to be a significant challenge. Presenter somewhat glossed over the comments of that US tech guy who really didn't seem interested in who got hold of them, much like guns don't kill people attitude.

Also doesn't seem right that airports stump up for this anti drone technology, I think those installations should be national infrastructure.
 
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