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I could make a 2 meter wingspan drone (plane) for under 1000 dollars. That drone will have a range of about 200km. An avarage airspeed of 100km/u and payload ca

I could make a 2 meter wingspan drone (plane) for under 1000 dollars. That drone will have a range of about 200km. An avarage airspeed of 100km/u and payload capacity of 5kg. It flies autonomously using GPS. It still can (to a lesser degree) without by using barometer and compass. You can use special equipment to spoof or disrupt GPS signals. But no way that will work on long distances. My point is. If you want to fly over an airport and drop a bag of eggs it's perfectly possible. Even with all the counter measures taken at such places.

michaelt 7y ago
Sure, but if only 50 people in the country ordered a rare Model X drone with a Model Y flight controller and a Model Z battery, the net could close in pretty quickly. Especially if your environmentalist views are on record. On the other hand, if you used a mass-produced bestselling drone, tracking you down will be a heck of a lot more difficult.
- detritus 7y ago
  What controls do state actors in Britain have over otherwise banal tech orders from China, in order to trace them post hoc?
  - dTal 7y ago
    Depends how much they cared, I'd wager. GCHQ operate a "full take" surveillance apparatus, so the data is certainly there.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    Honestly, I assumed you'd order the parts from a UK retailer.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I think you could quite easily make something out of generic parts. The traditional material for remote control planes is tissue paper and balsa wood. The controller could almost certainly be made with a generic micro-controller, and battery cells are more or less the same whether they come from a phone or a drone (afaik).
nolongerlowres 7y ago
I know you’re trying to drive home a point and i agree, but is this really feasible for under $1,000? I’d estimate something with these capabilities would be in the $20,000 range at a minimum.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  I used to dabble in model aircraft. A 'drone' is just a computerized one. I could regularly cobble one together for a few hundred, most of that being electronics. The body was balsa wood with shrink film covering, super cheap. Not everything has to be titanium and carbon fiber. Nowdays, the electronics are cheaper than ever, and can be strapped to many homebuilt craft with little issue. This all ignores vto style crafts, which I am unaware of. The hard part is training your control system, but once calibrated decently you are good to go. The problem is the bar of effort. Bombs are even easier to build, yet few with the will to build one for nefarious purposes seems to be effective in doing so, even with provided materials (without training, see IEDs). Same with guns, tanks and other complex items. Anyone can make a gun from hardware store items, but most criminals will steal one instead. The impulsive instinct that drives most crime seems a burden on complex tasks.
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    I'm not much of a chemist, but I don't think bombs are particularly easy to build. I do a bit of metal plate etching, and I've found multiple times that useful chemicals (specifically nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide) are pretty tricky to get hold of, because assholes use them to make bombs. I had a friend who was making black powder as a schoolkid, and he actually had the police turning up at his house to ask questions about his purchasing history - which is a small sample, but it fits with the basic intuition about how you'd stop people from building bombs: make non-household bomb-making stuff impossible to get hold as a private individual, then just monitor people that make weird purchases of the chemicals that remain.
- holoduke 7y ago
  Yes it is. For about 150 you get an empty airframe. 200 for batteries. 200 for all electronics (flight controller, GPS, receivers etc) . 100 for servos. 100 for wires, connectors etc. 200 for motors and esc. You need a radio sender and a laptop as well. I have build many long range uav's. Compared to 10 years ago the landscape changed a lot.

michaelt 7y ago

Sure, but if only 50 people in the country ordered a rare Model X drone with a Model Y flight controller and a Model Z battery, the net could close in pretty quickly. Especially if your environmentalist views are on record. On the other hand, if you used a mass-produced bestselling drone, tracking you down will be a heck of a lot more difficult.

detritus 7y ago
What controls do state actors in Britain have over otherwise banal tech orders from China, in order to trace them post hoc?
- dTal 7y ago
  Depends how much they cared, I'd wager. GCHQ operate a "full take" surveillance apparatus, so the data is certainly there.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Honestly, I assumed you'd order the parts from a UK retailer.
pasabagi 7y ago
I think you could quite easily make something out of generic parts. The traditional material for remote control planes is tissue paper and balsa wood. The controller could almost certainly be made with a generic micro-controller, and battery cells are more or less the same whether they come from a phone or a drone (afaik).

nolongerlowres 7y ago

I know you’re trying to drive home a point and i agree, but is this really feasible for under $1,000? I’d estimate something with these capabilities would be in the $20,000 range at a minimum.

Jamwinner 7y ago
I used to dabble in model aircraft. A 'drone' is just a computerized one. I could regularly cobble one together for a few hundred, most of that being electronics. The body was balsa wood with shrink film covering, super cheap. Not everything has to be titanium and carbon fiber. Nowdays, the electronics are cheaper than ever, and can be strapped to many homebuilt craft with little issue. This all ignores vto style crafts, which I am unaware of. The hard part is training your control system, but once calibrated decently you are good to go. The problem is the bar of effort. Bombs are even easier to build, yet few with the will to build one for nefarious purposes seems to be effective in doing so, even with provided materials (without training, see IEDs). Same with guns, tanks and other complex items. Anyone can make a gun from hardware store items, but most criminals will steal one instead. The impulsive instinct that drives most crime seems a burden on complex tasks.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I'm not much of a chemist, but I don't think bombs are particularly easy to build. I do a bit of metal plate etching, and I've found multiple times that useful chemicals (specifically nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide) are pretty tricky to get hold of, because assholes use them to make bombs. I had a friend who was making black powder as a schoolkid, and he actually had the police turning up at his house to ask questions about his purchasing history - which is a small sample, but it fits with the basic intuition about how you'd stop people from building bombs: make non-household bomb-making stuff impossible to get hold as a private individual, then just monitor people that make weird purchases of the chemicals that remain.
holoduke 7y ago
Yes it is. For about 150 you get an empty airframe. 200 for batteries. 200 for all electronics (flight controller, GPS, receivers etc) . 100 for servos. 100 for wires, connectors etc. 200 for motors and esc. You need a radio sender and a laptop as well. I have build many long range uav's. Compared to 10 years ago the landscape changed a lot.