I suspect shooting drones down with a “gun” of any sort (that you might want to use around an airport) is not easy, otherwise it would be the obvious choice. A shotgun has a useless range; the thing would need to be almost above you. And a moving drone will be almost impossible to hit with a rifle at a few hundred m. Plus you can’t have the projectile hitting something behind. So maybe this is why they don’t fire at them. The RF solutions are going to be the way but I bet they aren’t cheap. The ones which actually work will obviously be “priced for the market” i.e. a few hundred k upwards.
At the rate this is happening, something will have to be done.
Shooting down drones with anything (projectile or even RF) is a bad idea as they then form a fairly dense missile which will quickly reach terminal velocity, which would be deadly should it hit anyone. Drones are generally NOT efficient flyers – they are brute force machines. I would be willing to bet a few of them would even sink in water. Compare a drone to a traditional RC fixed wing plane and the drone will be much heavier and have a power requirement about the next order of magnitude up. Drones are brute force even compared to aerobatic RC helicopters.
It’s more likely build regulations will be more effective, requiring the receivers have:
1. mandatory geofencing.
2. ability to accept a cryptographically signed transmission that tells the drone to return back and land at its takeoff point. (Most drone CPUs right now are ARM Cortex processors that have enough power to be able to do crypto. The radios are usually 2.4GHz code division multiplexing)
Unfortunately it’s probably also going to end up with a requirement to license operators, too, at which point my RC helicopter (not a drone) is going on ebay. I have enough hobbies that require government paperwork as it is (flying and radio) and I just don’t have the patience for yet another licensing scheme – and it’ll be a shame because the traditional RC flyers will get caught up with this (they’ll never write the regs to just cover RTF (ready to fly) drones) and they’ve operated perfectly safely without the heavy hand of bureaucracy for decades.
mandatory geofencing.
That’s already coming but it will be easy enough to get around it, with replacement electronics from …. China.
I am certain that anybody flying one around say Gatwick knows perfectly well what they are doing.
alioth wrote:
Unfortunately it’s probably also going to end up with a requirement to license operators, too, at which point my RC helicopter (not a drone) is going on ebay. I have enough hobbies that require government paperwork as it is (flying and radio) and I just don’t have the patience for yet another licensing scheme – and it’ll be a shame because the traditional RC flyers will get caught up with this (they’ll never write the regs to just cover RTF (ready to fly) drones) and they’ve operated perfectly safely without the heavy hand of bureaucracy for decades.
This is already being put in place in Germany for drones above a certain weight limit. Luckily, the PPL is regarded as a superceding license and includes the privilege to fly drones.
Peter wrote:
I am certain that anybody flying one around say Gatwick knows perfectly well what they are doing.
But they also probably lack the technical skills to replace the guts of their RTF drone with electronics from China.
Same as region free DVD and Blu-Ray players. Kits will be DIY-able where possible, or there will be a little industry to do it for you.
And re. shotguns – in three out of the four demonstrations of fancy expensive kit in that video, a shotgun would have done nicely, and in two out of the three, the thing fell out of the sky like a rock, too…
It all depends on what / where.
If I had to protect a prison, I would just have guards on the roof with shotguns, and a big net across the yard. Problem solved. They have to come close, and the perimeter is fenced in and devoid of people.
Different if you have to do something overhead Trafalgar Square. The Eagle might be a good idea there, and it might also take care of the pigeons in its spare time, it if can be bothered.
Peter wrote:
I am certain that anybody flying one around say Gatwick knows perfectly well what they are doing.
You need to get out more. There are some spectacularly stupid and uneducated people. I mean really stupid, IQ < 60, who are capable of acquiring a drone but completely unable to understand the responsibilities that go with it.
A recreational drone was landed, without permission, on the deck of the new Royal Navy carrier – and took off again unhindred. The pilot then contacted the Security guys, who didn’t show interest, before going to the news media.
