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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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How far away have you actually seen the Mini 4 fly

The mini doesn't fly as far as the air or pro. My own tests in perfect environments get it about 2 miles easily, but RF interference degrades it significantly. Normally at around 0.5m

2.4ghz for the Mavic 3 gets you about 2 miles, 5.8ghz mode in a low-RF saturation environment can push up to 5, 10 with a patch antenna.

All of this ignores 4G/5G teleoperation kits that can be mounted onto even Mavic Pros now, which do exist and can be controlled via a sim card, or full autonomous drones. Range is definitely not the limiting factor for these drone sightings.

The boring answer for the drone sightings is likely mass hysteria and false attribution, since small aircraft are not noticed by people most of the time and when they are now being paid attention to they seem so different from the big liners that they cause confusion. Drone shutting down airports like what happened at Gatwick a few years ago started with dickheads flying a drone for that sweet shot, then general incompetence during the monitoring phase. A common problem is observation drones used by one agency without notifying other agencies, causing other agencies to scramble their own observation drones etc etc etc.

Most LEO have DJI aeroscopes in their inventories, which can track all DJI models up to 2022 that were in the air, and a fair few newer models using legacy firmware. By now someone would have figured if it was a rogue DJI drone in the air. If the flight lights can be seen its a low altitude drone. Its most likely some trolls fucking about and piling on for shits and giggles.

But its much better if its ayys looking for their dropped nuclear fuel. Lets hope the greys land and demand to see the manager here.

Drone shutting down airports like what happened at Gatwick a few years ago started with dickheads flying a drone for that sweet shot

There is to this day no evidence there was any drone at Gatwick that did not belong to law enforcement.