Drones ground flights at Gatwick

The knock-on effects are impacting on the other side of the Atlantic - my bro-in-law is flying from Newark tonight, landing in Manchester tomorrow morning (staying with us over Christmas), and his UA flight has been delayed by 90 minutes, and UA offered to buy back his seat (he used UA Airmiles to book it), to re-sell it on as people on other US airlines that fly into Gatwick are trying to get seats to other airports in the U.K..

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Originally Posted by Hom3r

Find out where the Signal's coming from, and send the SAS to kick the door it.

Unfortunately, if they’ve changed the transmission frequency, it could be very difficult to find the transmission and triangulate on it, especially as it takes more than a few minutes to triangulate a transmission from a mobile location, especially if it’s a low power transmission.

[Hom3r]

Gatwick is to stay shut until at leat 6am tomorrow.

Well the culprity better have very deep pockets.

[Mr_love_monkey]

Originally Posted by Hom3r

Gatwick is to stay shut until at leat 6am tomorrow.

Wow.

Do we know how many drones it is? - the BBC quoted someone as saying 'A significant number' - if I remember rightly.

[denphone]

Originally Posted by Hom3r

Gatwick is to stay shut until at leat 6am tomorrow.

Well the culprity better have very deep pockets.

The busiest travel day of the year tomorrow so if it continues well into tomorrow then there will be even more chaos.

Gatwick: Passengers should not come to the airport on Friday.

Gatwick has advised passengers not to come to the airport for the foreseeable future including tomorrow, Sky News is reporting

Ryanair flights to operate from London Stansted instead of Gatwick tomorrow

[Uncle Peter]

Originally Posted by Mr_love_monkey

Wow.

Do we know how many drones it is? - the BBC quoted someone as saying 'A significant number' - if I remember rightly.

Two apparently

"Earlier, he said the drones could not be shot down because of the risk posed by stray bullets. Officers from Surrey and Sussex police forces have been scouring the perimeter to try to catch the operators of two drones. Sussex police said there was no indication that the ongoing incident was terrorism-related."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...drone-sighting

Well, if the bullets miss, gravity is not our friend - and even if they hit it, they would have to do a FOD sweep if it was near the runway or gates.

[Uncle Peter]

Judging by the speed of the things if the video posted by the Daily Fail is anything to go by they would be incredibly difficult to hit even by an experienced marksman.

Chinook landed at Redhill a few hours ago (not something you see every day!). Looks like it came from Waddo so wonder what they're planning.

[denphone]

Lord Harris who led a independent review highlighted the potential for drones to be used to disrupt flights.

He tells Radio 4's PM programme that there has been a "complacency" towards drones, calling on the government to use current technology which "sends the drones back to the sender ...or makes them spiral very slowly down to the ground".

Originally Posted by Uncle Peter

Judging by the speed of the things if the video posted by the Daily Fail is anything to go by they would be incredibly difficult to hit even by an experienced marksman.

Chinook landed at Redhill a few hours ago (not something you see every day!). Looks like it came from Waddo so wonder what they're planning.

That’s the main ISTAR base now, isn’t it?

Interesting...

(can’t see them sending a Reaper over Gatwick, can you?)

Update - just remembered, 54SU is based at RAF Digby, a couple of miles away from Wadders. Their job is to, and I quote, "provide processing, exploitation, and dissemination of all UK air-derived electronic surveillance data".

The drone jockeys’ time is running out.

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

When you consider the many ways these machines can be misused and pose a deadly threat, I don't think it is draconian at all. We made do without them before, we can do so again.

This case is alerting us to how ill thought out this whole idea is.

I fly drones as a hobby in a totally legal way and have been doing so for a couple of years now.

It doesn't matter how many laws, rules you can can come up with, there will always be idiots who does not care about the rules.

The cheaper toy drones do not fly for longer periods, do not come with GPS position flying, so the pilot really needs to have good control for the drone to stay in the air.

I at one point owned 5 drones, ranging from the small to professional standard - the mid range to professional ones have GPS and the professional ones, have GPS fencing which does not allow the pilot to fly any where near an Airport but you will always have some who can circumvent the software locks and get around this.

The issue here is that the Pilot of these drones at Gatwick, can be absolutely miles away, one of the drones I have can fly 7 KM away, however, UK law says to fly legally, the drone must always be in line of sight, these pilots of these drones at Gatwick will be flying with First Person View with either a Screen or Virtual Goggles. They won't be anywhere near the Airport, probably sat in a van or some other vehicle in a forest somewhere.

[Uncle Peter]

Originally Posted by Hugh

That’s the main ISTAR base now, isn’t it?

Interesting...

(can’t see them sending a Reaper over Gatwick, can you?)

Yes it sure is. All of our ISTAR assets are there including the Reapers and that clunky old thing we bought from the Yanks

Now funny you should mention that. There's a block of airspace: TMA1 just to the East of Gatwick with an upper level of 19,500ft. Now just above that up to 25,000ft is where the Reapers normally operate.

I've been watching for the past few hours (on Flightradar24 and *cough* something else) anything around that block between FL240 and FL260 vectored further North parallel with the M25 so it does make you wonder.

So it's illegal to fly a drone further than you can see it? Why do they sell ones with such long ranges? Also what happens if something happens to the drone? I've never got one cos i'ld be afraid of it falling and hitting someone.

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Originally Posted by Hugh

That’s the main ISTAR base now, isn’t it?

Interesting...

(can’t see them sending a Reaper over Gatwick, can you?)

Update - just remembered, 54SU is based at RAF Digby, a couple of miles away from Wadders. Their job is to, and I quote, "provide processing, exploitation, and dissemination of all UK air-derived electronic surveillance data".

The drone jockeys’ time is running out.

Originally Posted by Uncle Peter

Yes it sure is. All of our ISTAR assets are there including the Reapers and that clunky old thing we bought from the Yanks

Now funny you should mention that. There's a block of airspace: TMA1 just to the East of Gatwick with an upper level of 19,500ft. Now just above that up to 25,000ft is where the Reapers normally operate.

I've been watching for the past few hours (on Flightradar24 and *cough* something else) anything around that block between FL240 and FL260 vectored further North parallel with the M25 so it does make you wonder.

What are you talking about?

Originally Posted by Damien

So it's illegal to fly a drone further than you can see it? Why do they sell ones with such long ranges? Also what happens if something happens to the drone? I've never got one cos i'ld be afraid of it falling and hitting someone.

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What are you talking about?

We have people based in Raf Waddington in Lincolnshire whose job is to fly Reaper drones over Syria and other places to ruin people’s days, which are backed up by Electronic Intelligence collection planes, such as the Sentry or Rivet Joint planes. 54SU (based a couple of miles from Wadders) is tasked with intercepting, collecting, and analysing U.K. airborne electronic information (transmissions between aircraft and ground).

Besides delivering unexpected surprise packages to insurgents, Reapers also have extensive electronic intelligence collection capabilities, which interpreted by the people from 54SU, will help pinpoint the rapscallions location.

(All this is surmise, obvs., based on previous knowledge and gossip from ex-colleagues)

So they can track both the drones themselves and the radio signals? Why wouldn't they fly these over Gatwick? It's not as if the airport is being used right now....

Originally Posted by Damien

So they can track both the drones themselves and the radio signals? Why wouldn't they fly these over Gatwick? It's not as if the airport is being used right now....

As the old saying goes, it’s not that simple (I worked with a previous incarnation of thes guys when I was at RAF Digby, and their predecessors did the same thing on the West/East German border during the Cold War, but without UAVs).

If they are using waypoints to move the drones about, there will be very little communication between drones and ground station, and what there is, could be low-powered. If they are guiding them, they could be moving around (in a van, as Mick said) - it’s unfortunately not like the movies - it takes time to find the signal (could be frequency hopping), and then you have to triangulate where the ground station signal is coming from.