atmilatos wrote:
This article is interesting regarding actual vs assumed drone sightings.
You may also have to look at the 50% decline in UFO reporting even now everybody has a camera (which is actually one reason of the decline as well as the end of space race)
That’s because it’s highly likely there never was a “Gatwick drone”. It was all hysteria, and any glint in the sky or blurry object at distance was reported as a “drone”. Not just security cameras, but I have to imagine the spotters were out in force with their long lenses trying to get a picture of the alleged drone. The entire sorry episode has made a laughing stock of Gatwick airport.
As for the airprox board, some of the reports are simply unbelievable and I don’t know how the UKAB accepted them with a straight face. You aren’t going to be able to recognise a drone when doing 200 knots in an A320 and the drone is more than a wingspan away. It’ll be no more than a speck. The UKAB needs to apply some common sense to these reports and mark them as “unlikely” where they can mathematically show that the probability of recognising a drone at the speed/distance reported is low.
I agree, but I know someone who made this point to the UKAB and their reply, appearing to come from an ex RAF jet pilot (unsurprisingly! – it is all the same ex RAF people no matter where you look around the UK aviation regulatory / charity / whatever-activity establishment), said that spotting a drone is perfectly possible at 500kt.
Not just a laughing stock of Gatwick but a laughing stock of the whole “health and safety kneejerk reaction to everything” establishment. It just happens that Gatwick employs a significant % of it 
Spotting a drone is possible at 500kt (although not 100% for certain) if it whizzes right by the canopy. But a typical drone is about 350mm across (with the main body, the bit you’re going to be able to discern best being considerably smaller than this) and we have reports of airliners spotting drones 300 or 400m away, when the best case angular size of the drone at that range is going to be low enough that someone with 20/20 vision can’t distinguish what the object actually is (unless the drone is unmistakably covered in blinking lights or something “drone like”) because the mathematics show the angular size of a drone at that range is too small for human visual acuity. The UKAB could file the reports that are mathematically unsound into a “doubtful” bin.
alioth wrote:
the angular size of a drone at that range is too small for human visual acuity
At Mach1.0 or 300m/s direct encounter, you also have half second to spot it !
alioth wrote:
As for the airprox board, some of the reports are simply unbelievable and I don’t know how the UKAB accepted them with a straight face. You aren’t going to be able to recognise a drone when doing 200 knots in an A320 and the drone is more than a wingspan away
I had an airprox four months ago with a drone, doing some 140 kts at 2500 AGL, must have been the DJI Phantom because it was big enough to be well visible. Passed it at around 30 meters left below my plane.
It is quite possible to spot such a drone, even it was further away. I made an instant call to FIS and he told me he’d report it immediately. Never heard back on it, though.
@UdoR
Are the drone ADSB equipped ?
No, ok I get it, it was “just” a near miss.
kwlf wrote:
I think there are two separate issues with drones: One is the problem of ignorance. The other is the question of what someone might do with one maliciously. I’m not going to post suggestions, but it almost surprises me there don’t seem to have been any terrorist attacks yet.
An interesting article from Politico on small drone use in Ukraine. The tactics and politics belong in the Ukraine thread, but it is worth a read. A 1kg FPV drone can carry 2.5kg of explosive at 150kmh, and costs $400 (Chinese chip, local frame, Tesla battery). They’re impossible to shoot down; only nets work. China has a monopoly on manufacture, but can be circumvented by buying through third countries, and the drone can be tricked into thinking it is in Canada.
This is true, but we have not seen drones being widely used to hit aircraft. I think there just aren’t enough nutters out there – especially if the police get their fingers out and catch a few.
They are highly effective in today’s wars (a good job otherwise Ukraine would not have withstood the “russki meat grinder style of assault”) but it doesn’t seem to be a problem in general. The drones at Gatwick were in all likelihood nonexistent, although somebody could have done that at any time in the last 10+ years. Airport security runs on a “total kneejerk reaction” principle (they are not capable of any graduated response) so shutting down an airport is dead easy.
If a country faced a country-wide insurgency, or a lot of terrorism, then I am sure armed drones would be a big problem. But it takes a lot of resources and skill to construct bombs.
