London Gatwick flights begin again after drone disruptions

[HEXUS]

Airport runway closed just after 21.00 on Wed, with 120,000 people hit by disruptions.

Read more.

[jimborae]

Hmmm based on the incredible lack of facts around this news piece , I personally want that drone that can stay aloft for 12 hours, either that or the operator had a hug stash of batteries to keep sending the drone up.

The conspiracy theory in me says that this never really happened and was just a Gov plan to divert attention away from other news (probably the Brexit Disaster) or just to give them more ammunition to force through ill conceived anti Drone legislation.

[cheesemp]

Its all the talk of banning restricting them that makes me laugh. You can build opensource ones using parts from China. This isn't something that can be put back in a bag. Ultimately we need technical solutions not unenforceable banning!

@jimborae - I think the drone only flew long enough to cause disruption (be seen) then flew back. Could have easily done it with just two packs on quick charge. Agree this is a great Brexit distraction however. People might forget MP's are going on a two week break otherwise...

[peterb]

Huge stash of batteries and/or a fast charger, or more than one drone.

If it was a 'Govt plan' then the fallout when it came to light - as it inevitably would - would be politically catastrophic, and the drone was seen by several members of the public.

[jimborae]

............

If it was a 'Govt plan' then the fallout when it came to light - as it inevitably would - would be politically catastrophic, and the drone was seen by several members of the public.

So my conspiracy theory comment was half in jest but if you think that Gov. mis-direction, propaganda and espionage plots always come light then I'm afraid we'll have to leave it there & agree to disagree because they don't. And no I'm not a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist

[darcotech]

Well for starters, here in Switzerland, it is 5km no fly zone, 10 km not above 50m or something like that.
DJI software doesn't allows you to fly or warns you (can't remember any more, i didn't fly my drone for more than a year).

Maybe there is a group of angry citizens living close to the airport and hating ever growing traffic..

[Ttaskmaster]

What frequency range do drones usually fly in?

Back in my day kids could knock out the television for half a town with just one illegally tuned CB radio and a burner box... Surely there are some geeks still alive who could similarly disrupt the drones long enough to find and remove the scrotes?

[Hoonigan]

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/...jV4hV4-YiVROZA

[Smudger]

There's a rumour that it was eco-protestors. Not sure that they're going to get those people stuck at Gatwick on their side with this sort of stunt...

[Spud1]

Personally I don't care about the disruption - that is wholly Gatwick airport's fault for not bothering to put protections in place that exist at many other airports around the world...

What really annoys me is that this will inevitably lead to further (utterly pointless) regulation and likely draconian rules which will only hamper the legitimate hobbyist like myself, who enjoys flying Quadcopters, RC helis etc safely and legally.

I foresee licencing, restrictions on sale, further restrictions on where you can fly...all of which will be expensive and completely unnecessary as like with most things, if you want to break the law you will do so. It's not hard to build a quadcopter to bypass any of the legal restrictions..sure DJI may (and already do) pre program no-fly zones, but if you have built your own running a Naze32 or similar you just code those restrictions off, if they even exist in the first place (they don't for the vast majority of flight controllers and GPS units).

It wouldn't be *quite* so bad if the media/government would distinguish between Quadcopters and "drones", with the former requiring manual control and a "drone" being able to operate fully autonomously..but they don't, and it just leads to a totally unfair and misleading representation of the hobby.

If only Gatwick had invested in the right tech at the start, this would never have been an issue. Grr.

edit: I should really say "RC Aircraft" or "Multi Rotor Helicopters" above to cover tri/hex copters too since this really affects all RC aircraft, but I wont re-edit the descriptions

[Dashers]

............

If it was a 'Govt plan' then the fallout when it came to light - as it inevitably would - would be politically catastrophic, and the drone was seen by several members of the public.

So my conspiracy theory comment was half in jest but if you think that Gov. mis-direction, propaganda and espionage plots always come light then I'm afraid we'll have to leave it there & agree to disagree because they don't. And no I'm not a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist

I can't see the government doing something like this directly, but I wouldn't put it past them to drag on with excessive carefulness and blow something out of proportion if it worked in their favour.

[TeePee]

Needs more brrrrrrrt..

[[GSV]Trig]

On the news just now it said that there was a statement released by the Police saying that it wasnt a "State Sponsored" incident...

I thought they had birds of prey that were trained to go take drones out of the sky these days, remember seeing something about it a few years back.

[Corky34]

Hmmm based on the incredible lack of facts around this news piece , I personally want that drone that can stay aloft for 12 hours, either that or the operator had a hug stash of batteries to keep sending the drone up.

The conspiracy theory in me says that this never really happened and was just a Gov plan to divert attention away from other news (probably the Brexit Disaster) or just to give them more ammunition to force through ill conceived anti Drone legislation.

At most you'd only need two batteries as a drone within an airports airspace deemed a danger to aircraft would be enough to ground planes for 2-3 hours, you can't take risks with people lives.

There's an awful lot of conspiracy theories flying about with regards to this but it's probably best to apply hanlon's razor in such situations.

I thought they had birds of prey that were trained to go take drones out of the sky these days, remember seeing something about it a few years back.

I'm not sure shipping a bird of prey over from, i think it was, Sweden wouldn't have been very piratical, It's the same for all (most) of the other anti-drone technologies. Can't shoot them down due to debris flying all over the place, something that if you don't clear up completely could damage a plane in a catastrophic manner, and then there's stray bullets, don't want one of those getting sucked into an engine on takeoff.

Jamming the signal would also be impractical as you'd first have to isolate the signal, no mean feat around an airport with thousands, perhaps millions of those.

[peterb]

What frequency range do drones usually fly in?

Back in my day kids could knock out the television for half a town with just one illegally tuned CB radio and a burner box... Surely there are some geeks still alive who could similarly disrupt the drones long enough to find and remove the scrotes?

2.4 GHz is the band for controlling UAVs, (model aircraft, helicopters, drones) with a digital code linking to a specific receiver. Downlink is usually around 5.4 GHz. Both are in or near the Wi-Fi band.

However as this appears to be a commercial 'heavy lift" drone, those frequencies may be different, or the uplink/downlink channels may be multiplexed in the same frequency band.

[Saracen999]

....
edit: I should really say "RC Aircraft" or "Multi Rotor Helicopters" above to cover tri/hex copters too since this really affects all RC aircraft, but I wont re-edit the descriptions

Being picky, I wouldn't class quads, hex's, oct's etc as helicopters at all. It might fit the classical routes of the word but the flight model is totally different.

Heli's, other than cheap and basic toys, typically spin the rotor blades at a fixed speed and lift comes from varying blade pitch. Quads, etc, achieve lift by varying blade speed, and movement by varying blade speed of one or more rotors compared to that of the others, but blade pitch is fixed.

Multi-rotor aircraft might be better, but that does also catch twin-rotor heavy helicopters.



Anyway, back to Gatwick shennanigans, in a funny (strange, not comical) way, the numtpy or numpties flying the drone/drones, MIGHT actually have done us all (except affected travellers) a huge favour.


Personally, I've been expecting something like this. somewhere in the world, for several years. And if I have, governments and airport authorities surely must have, too.

The "favour" is that this stupid, selfish stunt has highlighted, worldwide and with no place to hide, just how vulnerable airports, and aircraft, are to this form of attack. After all, they didn't ground planes because they were totally safe, but because a decent size drone could quite plausibly bring an airliner down.

So at least the objective of the numpties seems to be disruption and mischief, not massed dead bodies.

But surely now, having heads their heads dragged unceremoniously oyt of where politicians generally keep them, they MUST take active measures to protect airports, not jyst cross fingers, whisper a prayer and hope it don't happen again. Because my bet is, sooner or later (probably sooner) it will, and next time we might suffer more than massive travel disruption.