Gatwick Airport (UK) suspends flights due to Drone activity

[FoxhallGH]

No. At least in EU (where rules differs, too - here we have 300g limit, in DE it's 250g and so on) - you can build light miniquad, but it will be simply not competetive, so ~400g AUW is where all racing lives.
Do you understand, that you just "wipe-off" larger part of RC copter part (not counting RC airplanes, heli and so on) - because DJI stuff only small part of marked (for example myself - i have M2P, but it's one - and have >> 20 other flying copters - most of them are racing stuff, but some are big and can do autonomous flying - but nothing close to some specific DJI protocol for telemetry). At least counting stuff in forums and seeing what is flying i would say that DJI copter vs non-DJI is smth like 1/5 at least, if not 1/10.
So - hard to propose something constructive and usefull, when you have no idea what is happening on this market (or - knowing just one side of it).

I do understand where you are coming from with this, and I'm not saying there is just one solution - but if we want to be able to go on doing what I'm doing, and what you are doing (and I'd hate to see your extensive interests shut down) - my point is that pretty quickly, we need to come up with a plan to lobby those who make the decisions and propose some way out of this that doesn't involve regulating the heck out of the hobby.

I'm sort-of positive that the UK Authorities have got into an Israeli system called 'Skylock' - This was deployed at Gatwick to a lot of people's surprise! Skylock can not only detect a drone using radar, but can also take optical photo's for recognition / evidence etc. - then has the electronics to frequency jam - and if all else fails, has a laser good up to 800 metres that can shoot the drone down. We'd not seen any clues that UK Gov' had anything like this 'till Gatwick ...
REVOLUTIONARY ANTI-DRONE SYSTEM - Skylock1

 

[collins]

I do understand where you are coming from with this, and I'm not saying there is just one solution - but if we want to be able to go on doing what I'm doing, and what you are doing (and I'd hate to see your extensive interests shut down) - my point is that pretty quickly, we need to come up with a plan to lobby those who make the decisions and propose some way out of this that doesn't involve regulating the heck out of the hobby.

As far as I can see, there is nothing in this incident that speaks of a lack of regulation. I mean the airport didnt shut down because there was a drone 'within 5 km of the airport when the regulation says you shouldnt be within 1 km of the airport.' It is absolutely certain that whoever did this knew that he was breaking the regulations that exist (repeatedly) - By definition you cannot regulate against someone who is determined and deliberately acts against those regulations. If anything the existing regulations might have led Gatwick into a false sense of security that their operations could be threatened by a 'drone attack'.

 

[Jackcutrone]

Well with the release of the couple who are no longer suspects, it appears that they are back to trying to identify the perpetrators - ah, where is Hercule Poirot when you need him? At least they say they have recovered a damaged drone near the airport. Whether that was one of the drones used or just one that went down before and was lost remains to be seen.

 

[oldcelt]

We all know that even very sophisticated drones can fly for about 25 minutes. These intrusions have, allegedly, gone on for hours. So, either there is more than one operator or the authorities are being totally incompetent in tracking them down.
Of course, it could be one operator with a huge bank of batteries? However, if that were the case then why couldn't a drone be tracked by another drone back to its base? We have a "follow me" function on the Mavic Pro! Is it so difficult to use another drone to lock onto the maverick and track it?

 

[johnnybflyguy]

Gatwick Airport Limited is now offering a £50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

 

[gnirtS]

People on this forum should know (far better than the average person) how difficult it would be to pull a stunt like this off without being caught - we are certainly not talking about some guy with a Mavic and a bunch of batteries.

We could easily be talking about something as simple as that.

We don't know how many drone flights there were. It could easily be one or 2 real flights and all the other "sightings" are just people imagining things as happens in these situations.
It's common knowledge the airports generally have zero equipment to detect or track drones as chances of getting caught are slim until they've had time to adapt and prepare.
For added bonus just look at the NOTAM or listen to the VHF to see when the runway is going to reopen and do a quick flypast to keep it closed again.
It really is simple and at the time, very little risk of getting caught.

Also don't forget how poor DJI GEO is - it'll quite happily let you fly a drone inside the airport perimeter due to the poor way it currently handles NFZ radius.

That said, anyone wanting to cause real aviation chaos is better off spending $200 on a HackRF and Raspberry Pi and abusing ADS-B to produce fake aircraft, TCAS alerts and so on at all altitudes at once.

 

[gnirtS]

We all know that even very sophisticated drones can fly for about 25 minutes. These intrusions have, allegedly, gone on for hours.

Or most likely, a small number of flights were made and all the other sightings are people just imagining things or putting any object they cant identify as "drone". You only need one or two genuine flights to trigger a cascade of paranoia and false alarms.

So, either there is more than one operator or the authorities are being totally incompetent in tracking them down.
Of course, it could be one operator with a huge bank of batteries? However, if that were the case then why couldn't a drone be tracked by another drone back to its base?

PNAS was attempting to do just that and failed to find one. Another reason for thinking a lot of the so called sightings werent real.

 

[gnirtS]

Gatwick Airport Limited is now offering a £50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

Sounds like a licence for anyone owning a drone within 100 miles to get harrassed for no good reason.
Its a bit rich as well that a private company thats just received huge amounts of public cash to solve the problem is now offering to give some of that away to a private individual!

 

[sparkorc]

I just saw in the media that the police have now found a crashed drone near Gatwick Airport perimeter, but not seen any photo's yet of this drone not sure what to make of this statement, its just as likely they have found a fly away drone in some field near the perimeter and probaly its been laying there for months and nothing to do with Gatwick shutdown.

 

[gnirtS]

There are probably thousands of crashed drones stuck in trees around the country some near airports.
If its an off-the-shelf drone though its easy to see where its been via the serial number and/or flight data on the hardware. All the major manufacturers store this onboard.

Also depends how close. The crazy UK law currently allows you to fly 1km from the perimeter which is very close.

 

[Vimana]

The crazy UK law currently allows you to fly 1km from the perimeter which is very close.

As a newbie, I would be interested to know how the figure of a ceiling altitude of 400ft (120m) and distance of 1 km from an airfield was derived by the CAA.

I think I may have come across a comment that the glide path of planes has them at around 3x that altitude at that distance from the airfield perimeter. Would that incorrect and the margin of error is actually much less than that?

Thanks in advance and apologies if this is a basic dumb question to others.

 

[sar104]

As a newbie, I would be interested to know how the figure of a ceiling altitude of 400ft (120m) and distance of 1 km from an airfield was derived by the CAA.

I think I may have come across a comment that the glide path of planes has them at around 3x that altitude at that distance from the airfield perimeter. Would that incorrect and the margin of error is actually much less than that?

Thanks in advance and apologies if this is a basic dumb question to others.

A standard glide slope is 3°, so it's rather trivial to calculate the altitude at 1 km: 1000 x tan(3°) = 79 m. In other words 260 ft.

 

[the-bunker]

A standard glide slope is 3°, so it's rather trivial to calculate the altitude at 1 km: 1000 x tan(3°) = 79 m. In other words 260 ft.

But the plane takes off long before the end of the runway & pretty much all airport perimeters are well beyond the end of the runway.

 

[gnirtS]

As a newbie, I would be interested to know how the figure of a ceiling altitude of 400ft (120m) and distance of 1 km from an airfield was derived by the CAA.

I think I may have come across a comment that the glide path of planes has them at around 3x that altitude at that distance from the airfield perimeter. Would that incorrect and the margin of error is actually much less than that?

Thanks in advance and apologies if this is a basic dumb question to others.

Its an odd one. A standard glideslope is very roughly 330ft per nautical mile from threshold. 1km is just over half a nautical mile.

So in theory a drone can be at 400ft and a plane at 250ft or so..... Potential conflict there for sure. 400ft to the sides is fine but 400ft or so on the extended centre line is crazy. Obviously most runway thresholds are recessed a distance from the perimeter fence but even so theres potential conflict here. Gatwicks threshold for Rwy26L is 700m from the fence so in theory you can fly 1.7km from it. That means planes are still at or lower than 400ft at that point.

Yes the laws say its still the end users responsibility etc but people generally just read the distance.

 

[zocalo]

Also depends how close. The crazy UK law currently allows you to fly 1km from the perimeter which is very close.

It is, especially compared to some other countries, e.g. the US' 5km, but space is tight here so I'm going to take it - 5km around every poxy little airstrip in the UK is going to mean a LOT of land where RC aircraft can no longer be flown. That said, I do like DJI's new NFZ that include flight paths as that really helps responsible pilots to minimise the risk of an accidental near miss, or worse.

As to why it's 1km, I'm guessing it's based some requirement that aircraft arriving and departing airfields will be clear of their minimum altitude of 500ft (or 1000ft over built-up areas, IIRC) within 1km of airport perimeter. That should guarantee the minimum 100ft separation to RC aircraft with their max ceiling of 400ft, which is kind of the whole point. Not sure if that holds for smaller fields though, posts above seem to indicate not.

Realistically, any aircraft below 500ft beyond 1km from a runway or helicopter landing pad, is either military doing low flying exercises, or emergency services responding to a call, so the "be responsible" common sense aspect of the Drone Code should apply, and your RC aircraft should not be in the air. Alternatively, they've got a major problem and the chance of there being an RC aircraft in the same airspace at the same time is probably the least of their concerns.

 

[gnirtS]

Realistically, any aircraft below 500ft beyond 1km from a runway or helicopter landing pad, is either military doing low flying exercises, or emergency services responding to a call, so the "be responsible" common sense aspect of the Drone Code should apply, and your RC aircraft should not be in the air.

Actually not true. Any aircraft on a standard 3 degree glideslope will be below 500ft from about 3km from touchdown.

 

[sar104]

But the plane takes off long before the end of the runway & pretty much all airport perimeters are well beyond the end of the runway.

Aircraft don't climb out on glide slopes - they land on glide slopes.

 

[Lady Rover]

No. At least in EU (where rules differs, too - here we have 300g limit, in DE it's 250g and so on) - you can build light miniquad, but it will be simply not competetive, so ~400g AUW is where all racing lives.
Do you understand, that you just "wipe-off" larger part of RC copter part (not counting RC airplanes, heli and so on) - because DJI stuff only small part of marked (for example myself - i have M2P, but it's one - and have >> 20 other flying copters - most of them are racing stuff, but some are big and can do autonomous flying - but nothing close to some specific DJI protocol for telemetry). At least counting stuff in forums and seeing what is flying i would say that DJI copter vs non-DJI is smth like 1/5 at least, if not 1/10.
So - hard to propose something constructive and usefull, when you have no idea what is happening on this market (or - knowing just one side of it).

Not quite. In Germany you need to put your Name and adress on drones over 250g. Licence requirement starts above 2kg.
All drones need insurance when flying.

 

[colinfowler]

There are probably thousands of crashed drones stuck in trees around the country some near airports.
If its an off-the-shelf drone though its easy to see where its been via the serial number and/or flight data on the hardware. All the major manufacturers store this onboard.

Also depends how close. The crazy UK law currently allows you to fly 1km from the perimeter which is very close.

dji NFZ is a radius from the center of the airport.
at heathrow for instance this puts the southern runway boundary within 1K
incidentally the same at JFK

 

[the-bunker]

Aircraft don't climb out on glide slopes - they land on glide slopes.

OK - so the plane does not land at the beginning/end of the runway & the perimeter is well beyond the runway...