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More about Gatwick Airport Terrorists

If it turns out that it was a law enforcement drone(s) in the air, and sightings of which were being reported and causing the airport shutdown to continue, then would be spectacular incompetence. I find it hard to accept that they could be that inept but, if they did, contrary to previous reports, have their own drones up then one of them certainly could be the drone captured in the video.

Aside from the rough times, I'm not sure how you would be able to corroborate that, but it could certainly reduce the number of sightings or at least turn some in to explained sightings!
 
What this thread illustrates, what the print and TV newsies have parroted shows is that at our base or core, we will only believe what we want to believe in various degrees. As an example, 2 of the frequent participants in this discussion have deeply held beliefs about whether or not a drone was in use at the time and location of the Gatwick shutdown, causing the panic and shutdown.

It is clear that some in this discussion, from the very first “report” of a drone flying near Gatwick, were touting the very first report as absolute, indisputable fact. Every subsequent report was further evidence of said irrefutable fact. Others of us were in denial that it could be a drone, but a few wanted to see actual proof. I saw a phrase posted earlier, “evidence = proof”. I suppose that depends on the standard of proof.

If you want to make sensational headlines, you come up with a catchy title the editors will like and you go find facts to support your headline. That’s what passes as reporting the news these days. For that matter, it’s been that way for a while. George Washington used this to feed bad intel to the loyalists. Anyway, it’s also how a lot of investigations are launched, spiral out of control and how innocent people are wrapped up into firestorm, having done nothing wrong.

Richard Jewell - Wikipedia

Steven Hatfill - Wikipedia

Hatfill’s story has parallels to the drone panic seen in this event.

It’s obvious that the initial “suspects” in this case were “othered”. Othering is a significant contributor to the Salem Witch hysteria.

I have relatively good distance vision and know at what altitude and distance I lose sufficient visual acuity to determine the location of my drone without knowing where it is (because I flew it there). Ask and answer this question for yourself. How far away does my drone need to be for me to not be able to see it?

The reason here is that this is key to identifying reports that lack credibility and veracity.

So why about the posted video? That seems to show a phantom like drone, flying at a fairly low altitude in Gatwick airspace. That is potentially evidence, and potentially not relevant to the instance at hand. To fully understand whether or not this video is relevant evidence to the now infamous “Gatwick incident”, we need to know the source, the videographer needs to be interviewed, how did the outlet come upon this video and of course, when did they come into the video’s possession. After all ... it’s not like there are any videos of drones flying in bad places on the internet already.

Now, OTOH, this is not to establish such a high level of proof or skepticism that we should never be convinced. As an analogy, I will use sar104 as he’s the previous poster at the time I am writing.

I spy sar104 in the airport lounge, waiting for something while dining. the airport is very busy, but i pull up next to him, grab a quick drink, settle up while sar104 eats, and depart with sar104’s luggage. I spirit away sar104’s luggage to the latrine, put that luggage inside mine and put my luggage in my vehicle out of sight. In the interim sar104 reports the loss, describes me to the police who identify me because I went back into the airport looking for more booty. I’ve been clever enough to avoid cameras until sar104’s luggage was safely in my larger bags. The only video of me shows me with my luggage. No eyewitnesses come forward, so now it’s just sar104’s word against mine. Do the police have probable cause to search me, my vehicle or my stuff?

Surely, a crime was committed, sar104 knows it. However, nobody else (but me) knows it and there is a distinct lack of both evidence and probable cause that I have absconded with sar104’s luggage. It happened, despite the lack of pictures :) but there just no evidence to show that I am the culprit in this analogy.

It is possible that’s what’s happened here. it’s possible; unlikely, but possible that the “Gatwick Incident” drone pilot was brilliant and knew exactly how to accomplish their goal and not get nicked. Or it’s possible they were just dumb-lucky. In some cases, the absence of evidence is evidence. It remains to be seen if that is the case here.
 
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My take from this thread and a sign of the times we are in.

Is there incentive to misreport the existence of a drone for multiple reasons, including commercial gain from their eradication? Absolutely.

Have these sightings been erroneous many times in the past? Yes.

Are there many out there, some even on this forum who would be fine with even more restrictions? Sure.

Was there a drone flown near this airport? Probably. Was there a massive overreaction. Probably.

Is it reasonable to question everything, regardless of your “source”, absolutely.

Should someone be vilified, or belittled for their news source. Nahh, because If you think yours is better or unbiased, I’ve got news for you.

Should we be jumping on the more regulation bandwagon because of it? Nahh.

Well said Robert.
 
Uk a bit bat crazy cause they have terrorist infused in the country. Saw where the police are now saying people may have sighted their police drones in the area.
 
The Chiefs Constable of Sussex police has been on the radio this morning and admitted that they found 2 crashed drones which were nothing to do with the enquiry, they had been there quite a while. AND admitted that the police had their own drone up at Gatwick, which he believes accounted for the sightings and video of a drone given to the media. Sooo STILL NO CREDIBLE SUBSTANTIATED EVIDENCE of any drone at Gatwick other than eyewitless (sic) accounts and a video of the police drone in action.
Until 100% proof........ we’ll Never Really know
 
Love my Mavic but some of you here are just complete *******, so he posted an older story. Fake news reports garbage everyday
 
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This looks like "Caution, frequent use may cause brain cancer"

That's a possibility how ever pretty remote. Look at the people with their cell phones glued to their heads 99% of the time.

You will have more of a chance to injure your brain by using the cell phone 24/7 than having your DJI transmitter 3' away from your head. After all you are only going to fly a few minutes at a time.
You can use those parabolic reflectors to help direct any RF away from you.

Fly Safe in 2019 and use common since.
 
Posted last Tuesday, in response to a claim that the drone video was proof of an intruder:

"I don’t believe I need an alternate theory to question anything, why would I?
Oh wait, I see i’ve already answered you question, the video drone might belong to the authorities searching for clues."

Ta Da !

You're back already ?! I was hoping for at least a couple more weeks - LOL.
 
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I may of missed earlier reports on this matter but ...... how come it took one stupid idiot to prove how lax the security is at our airports. Why all the guns, police etc when a single piece of machinery can cause so much damage. It reall doesnt say much for our security. Indeed hasn’t this situation arisen in other parts of the world. ?? Wow. Just imagine if real terrorises had thought of this idea first. Perhaps goodness has come out of this exercise. Maybe we should learn as if it was a fire drill and put matters right before some real idiot jumps on the bandwagon. Apologies if this thought has been aired before .
 
Okay I have to put my hand up for this. I know it's sort of irresponsible to fly over a major airport and out of sight but the truth is I was doing a range test from my house in Queensland, Australia and didn't realise my drone was over Gatwick airport. Still I was happy to get more than 32,000 km out of the thing including the return flight. The only problem was I was worried about battery life on the way back and I thought it was going to crash somewhere near Darwin but somehow it made it home on the one battery. I was very disappointed with the precision landing feature though because it landed almost 15 cm from where it took off.

So to all you doubters out there, I can assure you it was my drone over Gatwick.
 
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What this thread illustrates, what the print and TV newsies have parroted shows is that at our base or core, we will only believe what we want to believe in various degrees. As an example, 2 of the frequent participants in this discussion have deeply held beliefs about whether or not a drone was in use at the time and location of the Gatwick shutdown, causing the panic and shutdown.

It is clear that some in this discussion, from the very first “report” of a drone flying near Gatwick, were touting the very first report as absolute, indisputable fact. Every subsequent report was further evidence of said irrefutable fact. Others of us were in denial that it could be a drone, but a few wanted to see actual proof. I saw a phrase posted earlier, “evidence = proof”. I suppose that depends on the standard of proof.

If you want to make sensational headlines, you come up with a catchy title the editors will like and you go find facts to support your headline. That’s what passes as reporting the news these days. For that matter, it’s been that way for a while. George Washington used this to feed bad intel to the loyalists. Anyway, it’s also how a lot of investigations are launched, spiral out of control and how innocent people are wrapped up into firestorm, having done nothing wrong.

Richard Jewell - Wikipedia

Steven Hatfill - Wikipedia

Hatfill’s story has parallels to the drone panic seen in this event.

It’s obvious that the initial “suspects” in this case were “othered”. Othering is a significant contributor to the Salem Witch hysteria.

I have relatively good distance vision and know at what altitude and distance I lose sufficient visual acuity to determine the location of my drone without knowing where it is (because I flew it there). Ask and answer this question for yourself. How far away does my drone need to be for me to not be able to see it?

The reason here is that this is key to identifying reports that lack credibility and veracity.

So why about the posted video? That seems to show a phantom like drone, flying at a fairly low altitude in Gatwick airspace. That is potentially evidence, and potentially not relevant to the instance at hand. To fully understand whether or not this video is relevant evidence to the now infamous “Gatwick incident”, we need to know the source, the videographer needs to be interviewed, how did the outlet come upon this video and of course, when did they come into the video’s possession. After all ... it’s not like there are any videos of drones flying in bad places on the internet already.

Now, OTOH, this is not to establish such a high level of proof or skepticism that we should never be convinced. As an analogy, I will use sar104 as he’s the previous poster at the time I am writing.

I spy sar104 in the airport lounge, waiting for something while dining. the airport is very busy, but i pull up next to him, grab a quick drink, settle up while sar104 eats, and depart with sar104’s luggage. I spirit away sar104’s luggage to the latrine, put that luggage inside mine and put my luggage in my vehicle out of sight. In the interim sar104 reports the loss, describes me to the police who identify me because I went back into the airport looking for more booty. I’ve been clever enough to avoid cameras until sar104’s luggage was safely in my larger bags. The only video of me shows me with my luggage. No eyewitnesses come forward, so now it’s just sar104’s word against mine. Do the police have probable cause to search me, my vehicle or my stuff?

Surely, a crime was committed, sar104 knows it. However, nobody else (but me) knows it and there is a distinct lack of both evidence and probable cause that I have absconded with sar104’s luggage. It happened, despite the lack of pictures :) but there just no evidence to show that I am the culprit in this analogy.

It is possible that’s what’s happened here. it’s possible; unlikely, but possible that the “Gatwick Incident” drone pilot was brilliant and knew exactly how to accomplish their goal and not get nicked. Or it’s possible they were just dumb-lucky. In some cases, the absence of evidence is evidence. It remains to be seen if that is the case here.
 
That's not entirely true either. The police have been told by powers higher up the food-chain to say that there actually were 67 confirmed sightings. And over 200 sightings reported. What the police actually said was that THEY have received no concrete proof as in photo's or video of these alleged
sightings. That's despite the police having helicopters at Gatwick equipped with infra red recording cameras, the worlds media there with broadcast quality recording equipment and the general public who the majority these days will have a fairly good means of taking photo's and video with the recording device that they carry around in their pockets. All that has actually emerged in the form of evidence are a couple of blurry photo's that have been obviously pulled from some drone library images and a couple of even more blurry video's that could have been taken anywhere that our illustrious media obtained from somewhere because they were paying money for them....

Apparently, the authorities have in their possession a crashed drone that was found near Gatwick airport. At first, I thought that it was the authorities that has found this drone but no, it was a member of the public that found it. I'm not being cynical here but does anyone think that could be an attempt to get their hands on the £50K reward? And the authorities have steadfastly (so far) refused to release any pictures of the so called crashed drone.

Other things that don't add up about this story but aren't being reported is that the weather around that area was actually heavy persistent rain for much of the time that this incident was happening. And drones don't work very well in heavy rain....

I’ve seen video if a drone passing over the terminal and car park. Of course it could have been the police drone.
 
You first need a basic idea of reality. Then you'll be able to discern information from noise. Fox is about 95% noise.
Hey thanks @Aerobatty - nice to hear your opinions on the matter too ...
 
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