UK Building UAV Tracking System
- Thread starter damoncooper
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Yes, but this is the UK we are talking about here.
The system will be costed out at £2.5 billion, will end up costing the taxpayer £6 billion and will then be scrapped 3 years into the project because it will be considered too complex to manage.
In the meantime, they will all congratulate themselves on coming up with the idea and introduce an annual fee (tax) that must be payed by all 'responsible' drone owners.
Everyone in Whitehall will shout "Hoorah" and go and have another glass of port.
Welcome to the UK........
Yes, but this is the UK we are talking about here.
The system will be costed out at £2.5 billion, will end up costing the taxpayer £6 billion and will then be scrapped 3 years into the project because it will be considered too complex to manage.
In the meantime, they will all congratulate themselves on coming up with the idea and introduce an annual fee (tax) that must be payed by all 'responsible' drone owners.
Everyone in Whitehall will shout "Hoorah" and go and have another glass of port.
Welcome to the UK........
You would think they'd learn after that whole "empire" thing didn't work out....
- Joined
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Yes, but this is the UK we are talking about here.
The system will be costed out at £2.5 billion, will end up costing the taxpayer £6 billion and will then be scrapped 3 years into the project because it will be considered too complex to manage.
In the meantime, they will all congratulate themselves on coming up with the idea and introduce an annual fee (tax) that must be payed by all 'responsible' drone owners.
Everyone in Whitehall will shout "Hoorah" and go and have another glass of port.
Welcome to the UK........
Doesn't sound all that different from Congress in the U.S. Must be something in the DNA of all politicians.
An easier option would be to fit a micro transponder to them. Nearly all aircraft that operate within the Low Flying System in the UK are fitted with some kind of traffic avoidance system. A small transmitter that permanently transmits a unique conspicuity code with an altitude read out would save a lot of the problems
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Doesn't exist (not yet anyway) in the size and power output needed. It would add too much weight to the UAS.
As technology matures we should see a smaller/lighter transponder but for now, you would see very short flight times with on board!
Read the article. That's actually the plan.
"It is likely to involve fitting all new drones with chips that would emit a GPS-style signal. Ministers are also looking into introducing an online registration system requiring owners of drones to enter their details on a database before they can fly a device."
I don't think it would be too difficult to be honest. The FPV Video switch we fitted to our 550 a while ago weighed 10grams and transmits permanently. I'm not saying have a full size transponder like you get in an aircraft with all the different functionality, but just a small transmitter with a unique code embedded into the frequency that would be capable of being picked up on a TAS/TCAS system. If I were clever enough, or even knew where to start I'd have a crack at one myself!
We (The Brits) are actually planning to steal your (The Americans) idea (NASA research not the silly Google / Facebook fantasies) for a transponder system using mobile networks (among other things). There are a couple of ADS-B / TCAS systems that could be fitted to some smaller platforms already, but not cheap and still a bit too big and power hungry for most. But that's not really the issue. There are a lot of technical limitations in the way those systems work which means they are not really suited to the SUAS market. Hence the NASA programme. Besides, these platforms came out of cellphone tech, so why not use cellphone networks to run them? There are far more non-technical / media over-hype issues to overcome first, though. When you REALLY think about it, why would a drone flown within permissions be a risk to anything other than another drone or something on the ground? Have you seen the bird strike stats? Why are people worried about drones? I say tag ADS-B transponders on birds!
The empire thing didn't work out for us?
We are good at RADAR, though!
The empire thing didn't work out for us?
We are good at RADAR, though!
I think the idea is very good but probably cheaper to train kamikaze pigeons around built up areas and restricted zones!!
Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm going through a lengthy process to get my PFAW, which is expensive and time consuming. One thing is very apparent from doing this, and that is that safety is key to keeping a good name for UAS, RPAS etc. If people are flying unregulated, it just means that the CAA, ICAO etc will clamp down and we'll lose any 'equivalence' for RPAS.
Nobody wants to be regulated to the levels of piloted aircraft, so we all need to take this sort of thing seriously now to prevent being grounded in the future. A small chip and being registered is a good thing for anyone operating safely. Chances are that if you oppose this sort of measure, you probably intend to fly illegally anyway.
Nobody wants to be regulated to the levels of piloted aircraft, so we all need to take this sort of thing seriously now to prevent being grounded in the future. A small chip and being registered is a good thing for anyone operating safely. Chances are that if you oppose this sort of measure, you probably intend to fly illegally anyway.
