Gatwick closed by drones

[djc206]

eltawater said:

So just as an example this is Cambridge:


Here are several small lakes / ponds within the zone:




So setting aside the need to get permission from the landowners to fly and the need to keep away from built up areas etc, can you tell me what danger I am posing to air traffic from Cambridge Airport in this specific location at an altitude of 10 feet which requires me to contact air traffic control for permission? And why the surrounding trees are more of a hazard at this height?

I don’t have to, the ATZ is the ATZ, rules is rules. There’ll be birds flying around it who don’t have ATC permission the little bds. The easy answer is because a reasonable number of dick heads couldn’t play by the rules, so now we have stricter ones that you and I can see are over the top in very specific circumstances but as is the case with these things it’s easier just to say “you’re not allowed to fly anything in the ATZ without permission”.

[FiF]

What I don't understand is the rules are clear regarding the flying of model aircraft and helicopters, why can't drone operators accept that's the rules and abide by them?

[Mothersruin]

FiF said:

What I don't understand is the rules are clear regarding the flying of model aircraft and helicopters, why can't drone operators accept that's the rules and abide by them?

Entry price and ease of use.

The others you mention weed out the non-serious

[996owner]

FiF said:

What I don't understand is the rules are clear regarding the flying of model aircraft and helicopters, why can't drone operators accept that's the rules and abide by them?

I'm not happy, with the latest changes (I'm a commercial operator) for a number of reasons. Entry cost is very high (equipment £1850 for my drone, £1500 for my CAA approved course, plus insurance)
Then there's the yearly cost to renew your permissions £172 to the CAA every year as well as on going insurance.

We now have a situation where huge parts of the UK are no fly zones (making it very difficult for us to operate) just because some nob flew inside an airport. The old 1km boundry was just fine, anyone with a brain wouldn't fly that close anyway, those without a brain couldn't care less.
I follow the rules strictly. To be fair thou you can fly in those boundary's but its a headache getting permission and contacting DJI to get the drone unlocked for a period of time.

Do you really think that the new rules will stop illegal flyers? NO and that's why professional operators are a tad annoyed.

It wouldn't be so bad if the CAA who take our money actually did something to stop illegal operators but they don't.

Edited by 996owner on Monday 15th April 11:46

[Shakermaker]

Thankyou4calling said:

A stealth drone!

100s saw it but none took a picture because it couldn’t be detected.

Yeah right,

Have they seen a yeti? Loads of people have. The beast of Bodmin, aliens, the Loch Ness monster?

Loads have seen them.

Drones are the new version of poltergeists.

This is so ridiculous.

But speaking as someone who knows Chris Woodroofe (professionally, not personally) I'm far more inclined to take his side of the story than that of you, someone on the internet who I don't know.

[Thankyou4calling]

I fully appreciate that and accept his position on the matter is well beyond mine

I still wonder why we’ve not seen decent pictures

I was on holiday recently and there was a drone about 400m away. I wasn’t looking for it but it was obvious and my IPhone 6 filmed it clearly.

How far was the drone from people who “Saw” it?


Also have any of these people who saw the drone been interviewed by news media? I’ve not seen it.

I’m still sticking with my theory.

[Coolbanana]

Thankyou4calling said:

A stealth drone!

100s saw it but none took a picture because it couldn’t be detected.

Yeah right,

Have they seen a yeti? Loads of people have. The beast of Bodmin, aliens, the Loch Ness monster?

Loads have seen them.

Drones are the new version of poltergeists.

This is so ridiculous.

But after a quick Google search there was a picture apparently - https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/74918...

I've demonstrated how that is the best you'll get from your smartphone or average pocket camera albeit to the human eye, it will be a lot clearer, i.e. the experienced Pilot will have recognised the object to be a drone rather than a bird due to its flight behaviour and because he will have had a better image than his phone will have been able to produce. The new Huawei P30 Pro might have a better chance, of course, with its much greater zoom range.

You claim to have videoed a drone clearly at 400m - have you proven that range? Is there clear evidence that the 400m is accurate or are we to rely solely upon you believing you know what 400m looks like or having 'spoken to the Operator' ? If you can't show verifiable evidence, you're far less credible than the professionals who made up the sighting reports of the Gatwick drone. Hint: my drone is a dot in the sky at 400m, a video of it would only show a moving dot, so I'd be genuinely interested to see proof that you videoed one with a mobile phone at that distance that can still clearly be seen to be drone.

Check this out for a Phantom-sized drone: https://www.inskyphoto.com/strobe-lighting.html







.

[pingu393]

Dr Interceptor said:

I live in Farnborough... You now can't fly a drone anywhere in our town, or most of Aldershot.

You probably couldn't have before, as you would be within 150m of a congested area or 30m from people who hadn't given their consent.

[Tuna]

djc206 said:

I don’t have to, the ATZ is the ATZ, rules is rules. There’ll be birds flying around it who don’t have ATC permission the little bds. The easy answer is because a reasonable number of dick heads couldn’t play by the rules, so now we have stricter ones that you and I can see are over the top in very specific circumstances but as is the case with these things it’s easier just to say “you’re not allowed to fly anything in the ATZ without permission”.

OK, the problem here that is wasn't a "reasonable number of dick heads". It was one dick head out of hundreds of thousands of sensible drone owners that have been flying for years without incident.

That one dhead was already breaching all of the existing rules, and probably a whole bunch of civil offences as well. Extending the rules does not address either the problems of policing the existing rules (in fact, it makes it worse by requiring the CAA to now police vastly larger areas), or prevent people from wilfully ignoring them.


If we were to agree that people break the speed limit, and as a result move to a blanket 20mph across the entire road network, do you think the result would be increased compliance with speeding law, or a general disregard and distrust of the law?

(Oh, and as an aside, if you're around Cambridge next week, there is a monthly drone meetup - search for the Cambridge High Flyers).

[djc206]

Tuna said:

OK, the problem here that is wasn't a "reasonable number of dick heads". It was one dick head out of hundreds of thousands of sensible drone owners that have been flying for years without incident.

That one dhead was already breaching all of the existing rules, and probably a whole bunch of civil offences as well. Extending the rules does not address either the problems of policing the existing rules (in fact, it makes it worse by requiring the CAA to now police vastly larger areas), or prevent people from wilfully ignoring them.


If we were to agree that people break the speed limit, and as a result move to a blanket 20mph across the entire road network, do you think the result would be increased compliance with speeding law, or a general disregard and distrust of the law?

(Oh, and as an aside, if you're around Cambridge next week, there is a monthly drone meetup - search for the Cambridge High Flyers).

No it wasn’t one dick head. Heathrow has been disrupted, Gatwick has been disrupted, Dublin too. Someone flew one through the BIG hold. There has been a massive increase in drones being flown inside controlled airspace and in dangerous proximity to aircraft. The government couldn’t just wait for one to be ingested into an engine before making the rules a bit stricter that would be pretty negligent. People were given too much rope with which to hang themselves and they took all of it and more.

I wholeheartedly agree that stricter enforcement should be part of the process but you can’t ignore the threat posed and not take precautionary measures that upset a few hobbyists and make life a little more bureaucratic for professionals to appease such a tiny minority.

The legislation is not at all unreasonable. So you have to seek permission to use the airspace? Welcome to aviation drone users, everything is licensed, everything involves paperwork and there are some very strict rules, it’s why flying is so safe.

[Piha]

FiF said:

What I don't understand is the rules are clear regarding the flying of model aircraft and helicopters, why can't drone operators accept that's the rules and abide by them?

Isn't this stating the bleeding obvious? A bit like saying "ne'er do wells" know they must not misbehave so why don't they accept the rules?

[fatboy18]

So someone goes out and buys a Drone, Not a massive commercial one but the type you can find at Car boot sales and Airshows.

Oh, Im now going to read all the rules about where I can fly it........Really!

Now I'm sure members of a local model aircraft flying club are up on the rules, but I really can't see everyone who owns one of these "toys" bothering. I bet there are loads of kids out there messing about with them.

There are certain demographics out there that do not obey any rules. Car insurance being just one in a whole line of other rules they break, Fly tipping another etc.....

[skwdenyer]

fatboy18 said:

So someone goes out and buys a Drone, Not a massive commercial one but the type you can find at Car boot sales and Airshows.

Oh, Im now going to read all the rules about where I can fly it........Really!

Now I'm sure members of a local model aircraft flying club are up on the rules, but I really can't see everyone who owns one of these "toys" bothering. I bet there are loads of kids out there messing about with them.

There are certain demographics out there that do not obey any rules. Car insurance being just one in a whole line of other rules they break, Fly tipping another etc.....

Speed limits?

[FiF]

Piha said:

FiF said:

What I don't understand is the rules are clear regarding the flying of model aircraft and helicopters, why can't drone operators accept that's the rules and abide by them?

Isn't this stating the bleeding obvious? A bit like saying "ne'er do wells" know they must not misbehave so why don't they accept the rules?

But they argue, ok some and not 'ne'er do wells' argue, the rules shouldn't apply to them, drone users, because... insert excuse, eg more manoeuvrable within confined areas, better control etc.

It's often the case where introduction of new technology outpaces the ability of legislation to keep up, e.g. introduction of flashing lights on bicycles. When they were first introduced the bikes were technically illegal, but more visible. Law now changed, but without power limits, now you get bike lights that can hand out serious disruption to night vision.

Though I agree with your point knob heads will be knob heads.

Another concern is legislation is being passed without the capability to enforce it in any meaningful way. Result usually being some folks who weren't originally an issue now being criminalised, determined problem children just flick the V's and carry on, e.g. mobile phone use laws.

[Dr Interceptor]

It’s on BBC Panorama now....

[schmalex]

The Chess Dynamics kit was a pile of pap. They couldn’t guarantee they could jam the drone in an airport and could only inhibit the type of drone they knew in the lab.

Drones are close to impossible to inhibit unless you know the make, model and / or frequency

[Burwood]

schmalex said:

The Chess Dynamics kit was a pile of pap. They couldn’t guarantee they could jam the drone in an airport and could only inhibit the type of drone they knew in the lab.

Drones are close to impossible to inhibit unless you know the make, model and / or frequency

Of course the technology is there. They just didn’t have it. I would hope they do now. And by ‘they’ I mean the armed forces.

[schmalex]

Sadly, the technology is not there and “they” don’t have the ability to knock any drone out of the sky.

It’s simple physics. If you don’t know what frequency the drone is flying on, you have no ability to be able to jam it. You could undertake some electronic surveillance to identify all the frequencies in a given location, but then you’d have to write the necessary countermeasure waveforms for all those frequencies (some of which will be radios / car key remotes / 4g phones etc, etc, which takes a huge amount of time and you wind up jamming everything in all those frequencies. In an airport environment, that could include critical communication equipment.

Its a tough conundrum.

I’ve been to many counter drone demonstrations and trials both here and abroad and no-one one has successfully managed to safely inhibit a drone that they couldn’t identify first.

Edited by schmalex on Monday 15th April 21:40

[Tuna]

djc206 said:

No it wasn’t one dick head. Heathrow has been disrupted, Gatwick has been disrupted, Dublin too. Someone flew one through the BIG hold. There has been a massive increase in drones being flown inside controlled airspace and in dangerous proximity to aircraft. The government couldn’t just wait for one to be ingested into an engine before making the rules a bit stricter that would be pretty negligent. People were given too much rope with which to hang themselves and they took all of it and more.

I wholeheartedly agree that stricter enforcement should be part of the process but you can’t ignore the threat posed and not take precautionary measures that upset a few hobbyists and make life a little more bureaucratic for professionals to appease such a tiny minority.

The legislation is not at all unreasonable. So you have to seek permission to use the airspace? Welcome to aviation drone users, everything is licensed, everything involves paperwork and there are some very strict rules, it’s why flying is so safe.

You are stretching (or simply don't know) the facts here. The existing airspace rules were quite sufficient to prevent drone strikes. Extending the NFZs doesn't make it "more safe", it simply stretches the area ATC has to cover beyond all reasonable measure. Take a look at the NFZ for Cambridge on the previous page - it prohibits flying of drones in an entire city and the largest three recreational parks nearby. Compare that with the separation rules for aircraft around Cambridge airport and you'll see the ridiculous disparity in what is being asked of ATC, the CAA and their enforcement.

It's notable that two groups are more than happy to look down on drone use - aircraft pilots are more than happy to play up the dangers of drone strikes, and the model aircraft group are disappointingly unwilling to include drone flying in their special club. Both saw the huge rise in drone use as a threat to their business. Both have actively tried to marginalise drone pilots who are often committing serious time and expense to their skills and qualifications.

[Biker 1]

schmalex said:

Sadly, the technology is not there and “they” don’t have the ability to knock any drone out of the sky.

It’s simple physics. If you don’t know what frequency the drone is flying on, you have no ability to be able to jam it. You could undertake some electronic surveillance to identify all the frequencies in a given location, but then you’d have to write the necessary countermeasure waveforms for all those frequencies (some of which will be radios / car key remotes / 4g phones etc, etc, which takes a huge amount of time and you wind up jamming everything in all those frequencies. In an airport environment, that could include critical communication equipment.

Its a tough conundrum.

I’ve been to many counter drone demonstrations and trials both here and abroad and no-one one has successfully managed to safely inhibit a drone that they couldn’t identify first.

Edited by schmalex on Monday 15th April 21:40

Having been caught up in this nonsense in December, I am not best pleased that there's still no definitive answers as to exactly what happened, that there's seemingly no photographic/video evidence & nobody held responsible. The Panorama show last night told us almost nothing new.
Quoting the above post, how come airports such as Tel Aviv have not experienced this sort of disruption? I would've thought that hamas etc would have attempted this on multiple occasions....