Lol. Whatever you do, don’t bash on about conspiracy theories on the site across the pond…they don’t like it up em.
Oh…too late.
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Having kept half an eye on the outcome at Gatwick, there appears to have been next to no evidence at all.
I cant believe that an airport such as Gatwick can be shut for 36 hours due to a drone(s), with the worlds media there pointing their lenses to the sky and no photo evidence at all has been offered. The Army were called in, the Police suggest a possible drone no show, even DJI’s own drone tracking kit was whipped out too. Then a strange distraction in the arrest of 2 innocent people and now utter silence apart from the loud patting of backs that can be heard many many miles away from the drone defence companies.
Surely if there many people asking ‘Where is the evidence?’ how come the press are not chasing this? .
It just doesnt smell right to me.
Oh christ…endeth rant here…,gets off his horse and drinks his milk… 
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Every bit of this correct, it’s a daft suggestion but with the sheer lack of evidence and the cockups it almost looks like the whole thing was planned (and not by a nutjob pilot).
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My thought was that if some idiot was able to get Gatwick closed for that long. Then a number of drones would have to have been used, there was suggestion of a industrial sized drone. so what 15-22 minutes flight time? to keep out the way from prying eyes thee idiot(s) in question would have to be a minute or two away at least, nailing the battery right? so pilot flies back possibly mate sends in another drone whilst other gets a battery swap.
We’re talking 36 hours here and in that time the drone(s) wouldve had to have gone back many times for battery swap or drone relay. Is it beyond the realms of possibility that after even 12 hours, some bright spark in a helicopter couldnt of got airborne as a spotter to try and track where the drone(s) were going back to? of course if it happened at all?
Again, it just baffled me the whole cruddy affair.
I had a chat with my wifes uncle over Xmas who said there was plenty of evidence of drones at Gatwick . He’s one of those guys that believes he’s ‘in-touch’ and no matter what I told him he wasnt having it… Drones are a plague in his eyes and thats the problem. He knows nothing and yet we’re already blacklisted in his book. Frustrating to say the least.
Hang on…am I ranting again? OG
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I would say it’s 99% keeping joe public happy(/happier) and diversion from the fact that they have no Gatgate evidence.
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Totally agree with you. Where’s the evidence for a drone…thousands of cameras and all we get is a video of a helicopter and a police drone… If someone can spot & film the police drone easy enough , where is the film of the culprit drone. But as long as your average public is kept happy
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Bang on the money! 
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What worries me these days is the sway ‘social’ media has over common sense. The constant barrage of messages getting drilled into folks minds is astonishing. People are believing the noises coming out of twitter, FB et al and are becoming less and less able to workout whats true anymore. It used to be obvious but theres that much BS being spouted through these (anti) social channels and folk passing on hear say to those that dont use these platforms its bloody scary. News channels trying to keep up with all the crap desperate to get peoples 10 a penny photos, vids and comments about feck all and people are gobbling it all up as fact.
No wonder the likes of Trump are winning these days.
Time to wake up and switch off you aimless twazzacks!!!
Been a ranty kind of day! hahahaha
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I’ve seen the proposal to expand airport exclusion zones to 3.1 miles (5km), so I changed the settings in UAV Forecast to match.
There’s an awful lot of airports and heliports in this small country of ours.
One look at the resultant screengrab and you could be forgiven for wondering how the hell we’ll ever find anywhere to fly again.
I stirred the pot on social media a little by pointing out the sheer illogicality of such an expansion by asking: If people are trespassing on your property, how do you prevent it by expanding your boundary? Surely you’d make trespass more likely not less!
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Assuming, for a wee moment, that there actually was a drone buzzing Gatwick …
There’s one fundamental flaw with the legislation.
It will NOT actually do a single thing to prevent a repeat of Gatwick. Not the slightest little thing!
Why? Very simple … because there’s absolutely nothing they can do to prevent a repeat of Gatwick.
5km from airport?
- Who’s to say someone didn’t Waypoint Mission the drone in from that distance?
- Someone wanting to do what supposedly was done at Gatwick won’t give a damn about distance! And they won’t use a drone (or waypoint mission software) that won’t let them penetrate that NFZ.
They have as much chance of stopping a repeat of Gatwick with legislation as I’d have stopping the stampeding bulls on the streets of Pamplona by waving parts of my anatomy at them! (There’s always a chance they’d be laughing so much they wouldn’t be able to keep stampeding, I guess.) Several hundreds of tons of tomatoes, and a load of near suicidal humans, don’t stop the bulls … and you can replace “tomatoes at Pamplona” with “police at Gatwick”. Same result.
The 1km from an airport was a decision steeped in lunacy, imo! But nobody seemed to criticise that decision, though.
A plane on a 3° instrument approach is only 52m above the ground at 1km!!
Legislative lunacy!
The DJI extended NFZs in line with runways make good logical sense … in theory, at least.
The only trouble is, they make things almost impossible for anyone else to comply with … and, if they were law …
a) it would be almost impossible to “remember” or “work out” where the limits are … not every drone has a nice little map in the operating software.
b) Who (that’s not seriously into aviation) remembers which directions the runways are orientated at any airport - let alone one with multiple runways at different orientations … and then you have parallel runways that makes the “shape” of the zone even more weird!
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Gets even more complicated if you include military airfields. Visual circuits or joining downwind will need to be taken into consideration!
Judging by that map, Rugby will soon be populated totally by drone pilots. 
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Let’s annexe Rugby and declare it a Drone Zone – non-flyers verboten! 
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Power to the people…I can just see it now. Rugby becomes annexed, we set our own tariffs and passport control. Anyone remember Passport to Pimlico?
I love that film
Don’t know if anyone has heard yet but they’ve increased the no fly zone around airports to 2.5 Miles. 
And 5km out each end of the runway and 500 meters each side from the end along the centreline of the runway within the 5km.
Moved your post over to here - since it relates to the same subject.
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Well,looks like they have decided against FINS for now so impromptu flights at any time still ok.FINS would be a killer to me,so think i would move to sub 250 g race drones if too many regs!