More problems heading our way I fear!

[John Vella]

Maybe when the police catch the idiot a 5 year jail sentence will be a message to all.

[Martin Gough]

There is footage circulating of the alleged drone at Gatwick with a bright light on it.
If you were going to fly a drone at an Airport and try and get away with it, why light the thing up?
Looks like a malicious act to test the response before its done country wide, maybe!
Lock them up for good its the only deterrent. This will more than likely affect us in the long term
which non of us want.

[Martin G]

I think their drones should be shoved up their rear ends whilst the props are still spinning!

[Barry_Cole]

We should at least form an orderly queue..



BC

[jimbo]

Pretty simple to create a huge amount of chaos with minimum risk to the pilots if you were so inclined, no one will admit that any terrorists are involved, are they sure this isnt that?

[MDev]

This has the same feel about it to teasing authorities with hacking, speeding in front of police, false 999 calls etc etc, I'd be surprised if some person somewhere didn't want some fame or aknowledgement from this at least in his own sphere of influence, a web forum or similar? Someone somewhere knows something and secrets don't stay that way for long.

This episode has rung a very loud bell for the authorities and our hobby will change, no doubt.

[Mark Erwood]

Hi all,
According to the media the authorities are looking for an operator. However it does not require any special skill or equipment to program a drone to operate autonomously. It can be set up to take off, fly a particular path at any height and then fly back to its starting point or anywhere else within the limits of its batteries. How one combats this is anyones guess but an answer has to be found before someone is killed.

Mark

[Barry_Cole]

Why not just knock it down with another drone, or follow it home.

Assuming it is being flown FPV, it must be transmitting video of what it sees. Surely it is not rocket science to monitor that.

Seems to me those "in charge" do not have a clue what they are doing.



BC

[spike spencer]

... It can be set up to take off, fly a particular path at any height and then fly back to its starting point or anywhere else within the limits of its batteries. How one combats this is anyones guess but an answer has to be found before someone is killed.

Mark

There is no problem that cannot be resolved by the correct application of high explosives . To be slightly more subtle, it only takes a few Milliwatts to jam the GPS signals, denying the drone all navigation senses. Unfortunately, such action would rapidly demonstrate that 95% of civilian road traffic has forgotten how to use a map ! The resulting chaos would probably dwarf the human pile-up at LGW terminals.
The offending drone may not be flying today simply because the wind strength is too high for it to make ground upwind.
When the offender returns (Tuesday ?) I would go with Barry and watch its video signal to see where it goes. Even better, if the Police drone operators have learned how to use their 'track & follow' software, the perp might be caught red-handed. Ultimately, task an armed Reaper to follow it !

[Martin Gough]

Im sure if enough of us got together and headed down to Gatwick with our hobby equipment
we could soon find the culprits. Need to get organised but who better than us lot. Wonder
if the BMFA has offered help?