Major kudos to Ian Hudson for his never ending work on debunking the Gatwick drone incident 
Ian was invited to present at DroneX but after pressure was applied from various authorities, his invitation was revoked 
Top all round bloke, Philip Rowse of CubePilot, stepped in and was able to surprise-deliver Ianās presentation without them pulling the plug 
We gave a few people a shout out earlier in the week for their sterling efforts on getting this voiced to the world.
Amazing ! I presume that as this is a publicly viewable video you guys are OK with me sharing it on, for example the Mavic pilots forum ?
Yes indeed.
Please share it far and wide 
Direct YouTube link in case Mavic Pilots are still banning people for linking to another forums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fFLUmvknsM
I have been convinced those drones were fictional since the very start. Very happy to see anything that holds the press and authorities to account for the mass hysteria created around drones at the time which has been ongoing ever sinceā¦
By the way, when it comes to anything to do with Gatwick or Freedom of Information topics, I consider it sharable by anyone, if people want to take clips from the video, theyāre free to do so.
Iām only bothered about transparency and only want the authorities to provide robust answers.
Itās not fully up to date but Iāve put a lot of info on here:
Again people are welcome to take info from here and reuse it on their own videos or social media content.
Who put the pressure on, can you not name and shame
The pressure wasnāt applied to me but to the conference itself, Iām told on grapevine 3 public sector departments including the DfT.
Sounds like someone has something to hide or they are just embarrassed by letting the media run riot with this story to push fake news for clicks or the police being embarrassed for falling for the ācry wolfā and letting it go so out of control.
Guess they hate being reminded of how bad an epic fail all this was.
So diabolical all of this.
Some more insight on why Philip didnāt present his own presentation as planned, and instead presented Ianās:
i mean it shows something is amiss when people getting banned from talking etcā¦
Apparently the original sighting of an alleged drone that started all the fuss off was by a security bloke. I think a bit of expert verification from people more versed in aircraft observation at night might have been in order before shutting everything down; it wouldnāt have taken long. Gatwick is the UKās second busiest civil airport, and there would be a good number of suitable people on hand.
Once the alarm had been raised, the story almost writes itself as everybody, involved in flying or not, is now looking out for drones, many without even knowing what a drone in the sky looks like, and mistaking birds, other a/c, flying paper bags, and anything else around for them. The airport police seem to have been particularly prone to this, identifying their own drone as an intruder on one occasion IIRC.
As well as itās own traffic, the airspace around and above the airport is busy with traffic from the south-east and south for Heathrow, and there is also the transatlantic traffic overflying the area; thereās a lot of lights in the night sky, and to an untrained eye, a 747 going over at 37,000ā and 600mph might look not unlike a lit hobby drone of the pre-mini era at 300ā and 20mph. Aircraft queued up behind each other on final approach can look as if the are hovering because they are coming almost directly towards you, with only the white wing lights being clearly visible. Is it a 737 ten miles out or a drone 100 yards away? Not as easy as it first looksā¦
One has to suspect a cover-up to hide embarrassment (and save careers), but the drone industry and the hobby suffered from the fall-out of this incident, and the concept of drone flying as anti-social in some ill-defined way in the UK media has itās roots in this event, I would say.
Did you watch the videos above from Phiip Rowes and @UAVHIVE 
I see you are getting another shot! Good luck Ian @UAVHIVE
Yes, I got invited to speak about Gatwick at New Zealandās commercial conference, so I said yes, this one is over Zoom.
So itāsxnot just the same talk again, Iāll focus on some different areas including financials.
It struck me today, that if as claimed the complaints were made by civil servants, individuals are stepping a close line to harassment and could arguably be committing offences under the Prevention from Harrassment Act 1997. That said hopefully such behaviour wonāt be repeated.
Today a never-seen-before Gatwick document landed with me which is going to be discuused at the NZ talk in November which Iām told will be put on YouTube.
Id say make your own video/record it then post it on your channel too! just incase it doesnt.
Seems to me the local police were playing with their newly acquired drone and lost control of it letting it drift into LGW airspace. So they tried to cover up by blaming anyone else.
A plausible explanation, especially as the weather was a bit lively that night, but a blowaway would have been more likely to have drifted northeasterly, Sevenoaks/Croydon direction. UAVHIVEās contention is that there was never any unauthorised drone at all, and an untrained security guy saw lights in the sky that he thought were a drone. If this is the case (and the evidence seems to point that way), there was no drone so no new police toy drone. The reaction of the police to bring in a couple of local well-known r/c model aircraft enthusiasts who had never owned a drone in the first place and who had no track record of flying in unauthorised airspace (āround up the usual suspectsā āwho are the usual suspectsā āthose guys with the model aeroplanes, cantā possibly be anything else, bring āem inā) gives as good an indication as any of the default Sussex Police culture dealing with the incident; bloody useless!
There were certainly police drones, and helicoptors, involved as the situation developed, but thatās a different story.
The airport closure has to be laid at the door of the airport managment, who responded to a safety threat in a knee-jerk reaction without bothering to verify it first despite Gatwick Airport having a wealth of expert observers on hand. Iām guessing that senior management were home and off-duty when the first report came in, and a junior duty manager may have been out of his/her depth and played supersafeā¦
