Ops-Normal.org

Not having operated a drone I may be missing something, but in order to do so, I imagine the operator would need to have visual contact and those red/green lights would provide that.

If visual contact is not necessary the lights could be disabled/removed/masked, which would make it far more difficult for the authorities to locate the thing.

On a related matter, presumably the controller emits RF signals which could be detected by scanners and by triangulation, the location of the controller and the arsehole operating it could be found?

Would have thought a chopper/police drone with IR camera would have been a choice to locate the drone operator - surely not that many human sized heat sources wandering around at 0300hrs. Job for Caco maybe.

Gatwick still shut with flights going everywhere - Virgin 787 ex LAX just dropped into Dublin - really handy for the pax and crew - not. A long coach journey home for them.

If the intent is to disrupt, as is clearly the case in the current LGW case, then the arsehole might want the thing to be seen at night.

I do wonder though, whether the surface movement radar has been how this thing has been observed. LGW has a Scanter 5502/5602 SMR which has a 3cm wavelength, so it ought to be able to see and track a decent sized drone at a scan rate of about 1 Hertz.

With Litchi software I can pre-program my Phantom with waypoint routing, speed, altitude, camera angle and direction.

CharlieOneSix - that any good? I’ve also got the DJI Phantom 4 Pro. (Responsible owner )

Wouldn't the local Clay Pigeon Club with 12 bores be a better bet than policemen with 'sniper' rifles?

I am amazed that the combined ?intellect? of the Police, CAA, BAA, Army etc has not sorted this out yet. It is looking like at least a 24 hr closure for LGW with heaven-knows what disruption to schedules tomorrow - with crews and aircraft all out of place/roster, a hideous 'busssing' problem for all and a huge roll-on into the weekend/Christmas.

Why not something really simple - send up the police or army choppers with lengths or rope/net hanging down and fly over the buggers? Catching the crims should surely come later in the list of priorities.

110,000 people inconvenienced, to put it mildly, so far.

ian16th wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 20, 2018 1:26 pm

Wouldn't the local Clay Pigeon Club with 12 bores be a better bet than policemen with 'sniper' rifles?

Hereford's local shooting club have been seen inside the peri fence at LGW, in mufti and carrying carrying Remington 870s.

Tomorrow 126,000 plus all those who's sleep will be disturbed with 24/7 movements around the UK.

Boac wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 20, 2018 6:58 pm

I am amazed that the combined ?intellect? of the Police, CAA, BAA, Army etc has not sorted this out yet.

MoD hasn't been entirely asleep in the last few months, at least according to Jane's Defence Weekly.

There was a holdup in deploying that gizmo, and a millimetric wave counter battery radar system, due to potential frequency conflicts with medical kit.

The plods already have a DJI gizmo onsite which logs a bunch of parameters from any DJI drones within radio range in real time .

Yes, Plum, but...........................so what?

(Did you get my PM the other day?)

Something which makes me wonder is why the gumment has been so emphatic that there is no terrorist link.

How did they know that so early on in this episode?

Interesting very selective release of information - me thinks we are not being told the whole story

Because the terrorists didn't issue a warning?

My money is on it being a dry run of some kind. It's too coordinated to be a couple of yobs playing with their Christmas presents.

THE REAL DRONES.
The responsibility for this disaster lies with the 650 drones in the House of Commons who are currently performing their Christmas panto entitled "Carry on Brexit".

They and the security and aviation authorities have known about this risk for years and have done NOTHING EFFECTIVE to pre-empt the current transport chaos.

The only consolation is that there isn't a smoking hole full of people and aluminium near any of our airports, YET. But this episode has just increased that risk because it demonstrates how easy it is to get away with such a manoeuvre.

It's odd that the UK plod can run around inside the terminal buildings armed to the teeth with powerful laser-sighted weapons and be ready to discharge same in a horizontal trajectory at a moments notice with subsequent serious risk to all within the building. And yet the risk assessors shrink from the possibility of a vertically discharged round outdoors falling back to earth and causing collateral damage.

Hopefully this scientifically orientated forum will yield up someone who knows the muzzle velocity of these weapons and their round mass and then it's simple applied maths to work out how bad a headache it would be from its terminal velocity on return to earth. Decent liaison between Swanwick and the shooting team could advise of the clear area above the villain so's they don't poke a hole in an overflight if the weapon used has that vertical range.

And I don't think that the plod helicopter needs nets and other exotic expensive tools as I believe they stay aloft by reason of large amounts of downwash.

However, we can all sleep securely (except for the unfortunate delayed/diverted SLF & crews) whilst our leaders assemble a committee to carry out a study to look into the problem a little more enthusiastically than on previous occasions.

But that cannot possibly happen before the "festive" season is over.

And how long before the copycats start up elsewhere?

LGW ATIS has been advising recently of significant bird activity, their successes against aircraft are well documented but still the operations went on as planned.

Before I'm accused of a devil-may-care attitude towards safety I did an elfin safety assessment before stepping out of bed, before driving and before crossing the road and completed the day without event.

Sisemen wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 20, 2018 1:21 pm

With Litchi software I can pre-program my Phantom with waypoint routing, speed, altitude, camera angle and direction.

CharlieOneSix - that any good? I’ve also got the DJI Phantom 4 Pro. (Responsible owner )

Yes, it’s better than DJI Go in my opinion. My Phantom is the 3 Advanced. I’ve only done a few flights with Litchi but am impressed. I haven’t yet tried the height integration with Google Earth data - but nervous about that as I doubt in this relatively remote area it’s that detailed. Plenty of YouTube videos about Litchi.

It really saddens me to see the Kingdom of my antecedents, which once, almost literally ruled the world, reduced to quivering helpless jello by a couple of overgrown kids toys. Having an airport in a capitol city closed not for hours but days, disrupting hundreds of thousands of lives with no more effective response than if they were gibbering natives on a remote island somewhere, is the kind of reaction I would expect to see in DCA, LGA, LAX, ATL or JFK, but surely not in the youkay. Wonder how it would play in Moscow or Beijing.

Can you imagine how the Israelis would have dealt with this - if it even got as far as happening?

Maybe the UK needs to call in Mossad.

and when those 120,000 plus passengers are eventually allowed to fly... they'll still have to take their shoes off, lose their nail clippers, and discard any liquid over 10 cc before boarding.

Undried Plum wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 20, 2018 12:26 pm

I do wonder though, whether the surface movement radar has been how this thing has been observed. LGW has a Scanter 5502/5602 SMR which has a 3cm wavelength, so it ought to be able to see and track a decent sized drone at a scan rate of about 1 Hertz.

In days long gone bye Bendix manufactured an airport taxing radar, aircraft based, that operated in the "Ku" band. Never really came to anything, but suspect would be a lot more effective than "X" band.

Alison