Drone pilots, please advise….

Please don’t shoot me down as a kill joy.

My neighbour (who is not the most pleasant of people to live next to, and certainly doesn’t like being told they are doing something that bothers others) has just taken delivery of another new toy, this one is a fairly sizeable drone, DJI Phantom by the look of it, and has been flying it over other peoples homes and gardens. These are all back to back gardens. I’m hoping this was just a moment of childish excitement and he couldn’t wait to give it a try and that’s the last we’ll see of it.

I’ve read the CAAs Drone Code, and it says that within 50m of others properties is a no-no, more specifically ” should be avoided”. Looked like a camera was on it too. Theres no way he was ever more than 50m from lots of houses.

Is he being a knobber?

Just to paint the picture of this bloke, He tried to make out that his dog escaping his garden was my fault for not having a bigger fence? Massive commercial size firework display in his back garden? Taking it badly when I asked if he would ask the builders working on his house not to cut bricks next to my car without letting me know so that I could move it out of the way (multiple times). That sort of stuff.

Certainly not a neighbour from hell, but still a t**t.

Definitely breaking law as well as being a bad neighbour. I’d probably give him a bit of time as the novelty will wear off or he’ll break it pretty soon.

You need an air rifle and a good sniping position.

Sounds like you need a nerf gun – no backstop needed then

Radio jammer is less obvious.

(Though if it is a real DJI and not a cheap clone then it can fly autonomously anyway)

g/l successfully jamming 2.4GHz
that’s also illegal and will pee off more neighbours than just one

he’ll be bored of it by spring

He’s the kind of person who can’t not share stuff online. I’ll wait and see if something gets posted about the new plaything.

…. as predicted, he just posted a photo on facebook of the back gardens se can see from 90 feet up… dork.

…… and you’re friends with him on FB ? ….

Link any relevant legal stuff and leave him an FB reply.

If you personally don’t want the fight, how about a chat to police on 101…?

Catapult with a length of string tied to two reasonable size washers. And if he’s using his camera to take videos, make sure you do the same. 😀

It looks like at least some models of drones use an open WiFi network.

It may be possible to remotely get a shell on the drone, and then do:
rm -fr --no-preserve-root /

If it’s using WPA, you can still eventually crack the passphrase by repeatedly forcing it to reconnect and capturing the 4-way handshake. There’s software around that does this (I think it does a brute force attack, which takes a modern GPU no more than a few days).

I have no idea how legal any of this is. Probably no more illegal than shooting it down.

You need to borrow one of those birds of prey trained to take them down.

12 months jail and a fine for oldnpastit’s advice, I can imagine it would constitute unauthorised access under the computer misuse act.

the cheapest ones are definitely open wifi, and are definitely easy to hack mid flight. even if it’s at the level of spoofing wifi force disconnects with kali linux every second.

DJI phantom won’t be though. Some of the smaller toy ones (parrot?) are for sure.

Notify the CAA. It’s them that create and oversee the rules. You’ve obviously read the rules and he’s (from what you’ve said) clearly in breach. I’ve owned a few of these things including a Phantom. There’s nothing surer to get peoples hackles up than overflying their property.

You could also report him anonymously and let it be known you heard him bragging about how he can fly his drone up close enough to airplanes to get some great footage.

Grow a set and go knock on his door and tell him not to fly his drone over your property?

If it’s less than 50m without permission and near people/properties not under control of the pilot, he’s risking it. And also privacy issues too. If it’s a congested area , he needs to be 150m away.

It’s very unlikely the CAA will do anything actually. We were told when getting our UAV permissions that they are so overwhelmed (with big stuff) – it takes an age to do anything.

He will more than likely crash it eventually. Hopefully not into somebody else.

Use a laser pointer on the camera, fry the image sensor.

Get an empty Pringles can, or similar metallic cylinder.

Get a microwave, and dismember it. Take out the magnetron, and point it through your cylinder at the drone.

Switch it on (very carefully, you probably don’t want 850W going into your own body and boiling important organs).

No danger of causing wifi interference to your neighbours, and should kill the drone (and any passing birds).

A drone is legally an aeroplane and so bringing or attempting to bring down a drone is the same offence as bringing down a real plane. In other words not a good idea as suggested. As Rone says, if congested area needs to be 150m away. Sounds like it would be classified as congested I think if houses close together. I would be inclined to phone 101 as suggested and see if they would get someone to pop by next time they are in the area.

They are all stupid ideas. You need an eagle

Watch a Trained Police Eagle Take Down a Drone

*edited due to sweary you tube username

No, I’m not friends on FB, but his posts have NO privacy settings. The kind of person who likes walking down the street using a megaphone to hold convesations.

I’m hoping our local gang of grumpy crows will take against it.

You need to buy your own drone and weaponise it. Take to the skies for drone wars. Like robot wars but with more air time. Try and convince Craig Charles to commentate live.