Gatwick Airport (UK) suspends flights due to Drone activity

[Lady Rover]

and extremely illegal.

Don't see that. Of course the pilot would need to be hired by the officials who could have solved their issue fairly easy this way.
Anything else would be plain stupid.

Basically it's what the Dutch tried with their trained birds of pray. But it would break a race drone, the bad guys drone and not a bird.

 

[johnnybflyguy]

And their house, computer, life and x-mas prep have been thoroughly messed up.

Good thing they are released before x-mas.
Hope they receive a huge "we're sorry" cheque.

Apart from that, yes a race drone would have been perhaps the best way to get that thing down. Low-cost, easy to deploy and with little to no risk of collateral damage.

I think this guy could have sorted it out, skip to 3.30

 

[Clinton1]

Gatwick drone - Parents of arrested ex-soldier claim he's innocent

Wipe that smile off your faceView attachment 56577

I hope you will place a apology on here for your remark about these people. They have been cleared of any wrong doing.

 

[zocalo]

Hope they receive a huge "we're sorry" cheque.

I suspect they have very good cause for civil suits against the media that may have gone a bit too far in how many personal details they released. Lest we forget, this is one of us - an RC afficionado - who has basically been doxxed by the media for merely being suspected of involvement in a crime. That's a whole other discussion though, and extends far beyond this case - e.g. all those fake harrassment (and worse) claims that have wrecked lives.

Hopefully they can pick up the pieces, salvage an enjoyable Christmas from the mess (I can't imagine their home is too tidy right now), and eventually be able to have a laugh about it.

 

[doobry]

I suspect they have very good cause for civil suits against the media that may have gone a bit too far in how many personal details they released. Lest we forget, this is one of us - an RC afficionado - who has basically been doxxed by the media for merely being suspected of involvement in a crime. That's a whole other discussion though, and extends far beyond this case - e.g. all those fake harrassment (and worse) claims that have wrecked lives.

Hopefully they can pick up the pieces, salvage an enjoyable Christmas from the mess (I can't imagine their home is too tidy right now), and eventually be able to have a laugh about it.

You think they'll laugh about being labelled the most hated couple in Britain? having their pictures spread across the internet and armchair warriors like exist on this forum (which has a very high chance of one of them being a member of!) commenting on their looks? Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves.. You have no idea how easily this could have been you, or me. I live near a different airport and I have a drone.. That seems to be the strength of the police's evidence here..

 

[majortom]

Her eyebrows... guilty.

Lol....look a bit Bebop 2 to me

 

[zocalo]

You think they'll laugh about being labelled the most hated couple in Britain? having their pictures spread across the internet and armchair warriors like exist on this forum (which has a very high chance of one of them being a member of!) commenting on their looks? Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves.. You have no idea how easily this could have been you, or me. I live near a different airport and I have a drone.. That seems to be the strength of the police's evidence here..

Eventually, perhaps. Depends on the mindset - plenty of victims of Internet abuse or other similar trauma have got on with their lives and to varying degrees put it behind them. Others, of course, have not. That's why I said "I *hope* they can pick up the pieces, etc.; far better of they are able to move on than have it consume them.

As for the rest, yeah, haters gonna hate, and I suspect few of them are going to regret what they said, let alone apologise for it. It's a sad reflection on what the Internet, and social media in particular, has done to the way we respond to events such as this. It needs solutions, but what they might be I have no idea - not feeding the fire is probably a good place to start though.

 

[gnirtS]

Don't see that. Of course the pilot would need to be hired by the officials who could have solved their issue fairly easy this way.
Anything else would be plain stupid.

Basically it's what the Dutch tried with their trained birds of pray. But it would break a race drone, the bad guys drone and not a bird.

Illegal due to the classification of drones. And in order to us that tactic would take training, operations manuals, risk assessments and lots of other things. None of which can be done in a few days.

The birds of pray failed for 2 reasons - (i) hard to birds and importantly (ii) unreliable. Half the time the birds went for something else not the drone or went rogue. The experiment failed on numerous counts.

 

[SpinItUp]

Gatwick drones pair 'no longer

sorry they've recovered the drone used somewhere in the news
Had the breaking news ticker on my screen say the drone has been recovered but when I clicked on it I was directed to the old story?

 

[zocalo]

Gatwick drones pair 'no longer

sorry they've recovered the drone used somewhere in the news

The BBC article mentioned Sky News. Their story says that they've apparently recovered *a* drone from near the perimeter close to Horley. Whether it was one used in the last few days seems like it's yet to be confirmed as forensics are still on going according to the police. Even if it is, there seem to be two or more drones involved so there is at least one more drone and their pilot(s) still at large. Hopefully it is one of those involved, and it'll provide enough info like GPS logs (who hasn't powered up their drone at home?) that an arrest of those actually responsible is imminent.

 

[gnirtS]

Or someone at some point in history has lost a drone which has now been found because everyone is looking for the things.

 

[SpinItUp]

Or someone at some point in history has lost a drone which has now been found because everyone is looking for the things.

...which happened to be owned by a double glazing installer

 

[Lady Rover]

Illegal due to the classification of drones. And in order to us that tactic would take training, operations manuals, risk assessments and lots of other things. None of which can be done in a few days.

The birds of pray failed for 2 reasons - (i) hard to birds and importantly (ii) unreliable. Half the time the birds went for something else not the drone or went rogue. The experiment failed on numerous counts.

Hard to be reliable. Ha, that one would be easy to overcome for a skilled race drone pilot.
As to the other items regarding the red tape, I agree, I have lived for several years in the UK and know that UK bureaucracy is a nightmare, especially when it comes to Health & Safety....

 

[choo choo]

Or someone at some point in history has lost a drone which has now been found because everyone is looking for the things.

At least Plod will know what one looks like now, let’s face it, there’s not been one single substantiated photograph,from the thousands of cameras, and some very high tech cameras, of a drone flying at Gatwick airport despite the airport director being on the news saying “ there’s a drone flying directly above my runway as I speak”

 

[Slim.slamma]

$100k a minute$

Gatwick Airport is a complete joke.
If they weren’t prepared for goofy & lady brows then that’s on them.
Hit em in the pocket

Police have arrested the wrong people in order to take the heat off them.
Paul and Elaine Gait are innocent.
Lazy plods drew a 6 mile radius around Gatwick and correlated Facebook reviews of drones.
Paul unfortunately was picked on just because he met the above two criteria.

Meanwhile the real perpetrators have got away with causing massive disruption.
This is really bad in light of upcomming legislation. Politicians are now calling for stricter rules around drones and model aircraft. So, making an illegal airport incursion more illegal is not going to stop people doing the same again.

 

[collins]

Yep, thought it didn't add up when his boss gave him such an easily verifiable alibi. Seems like he was probably just a pilot with a bunch of drones who happened to live in the area. More info at the BBC.

Of course, this means the real idiot(s) behind this are still at large.

Is there any evidence that the people behind this attack were 'idiots'. From the reports I have seen they would seem to be pretty 'smart' with a 'very well planned operation'. While security might not be the best at Gatwick, I find it hard to believe that 'idiots' could close down the airport for 36 hours (especially while evading arrest.)

 

[Slim.slamma]

Is there any evidence that the people behind this attack were 'idiots'. From the reports I have seen they would seem to be pretty 'smart' with a 'very well planned operation'. While security might not be the best at Gatwick, I find it hard to believe that 'idiots' could close down the airport for 36 hours (especially while evading arrest.)

Still not apprehended
It takes a wolf to catch a wolf

 

[ABLomas]

Maybe I'm mistaken, but my understanding was that the racing drones were under the weight class that CAA will be asking us to get licensing / registration for?

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).

 

[collins]

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. I am sure that a degree of incompetence from Gatwick security may have played a part but seriously noone smart enough to pull this off would base a plan on the utter incompetence of the 'Gatwick security'. The arrest of some Jon Doe rather implies they - even now - have virtually no clue how this was done over such a long period (with all the indications that the perpetrator was fairly certain he wasnt going to get caught.)

 

[bonox]

False Flag.