this gets me back to the ol' college days when we would sit around and scheme how you might do this or that - all kinda crazy scenarios.
we would also watch American Gladiator and hypothesize the best strategy to win each challenge.
hypothetically, there would be 2 ways to clear the air.
One way to deal with a drone would be to fly another drone and drop some lightweight stringy stuff into a propeller / rotor blades. I don't know anything about drones, but we all may need to know more about them pretty soon.
I guess a drone has four or more helicopter-type rotors/blades that blow air downward. So, they would be drawing air in from the immediate vicinity above them. Any stringy stuff that does not sink too fast could be wafted just above a fan. I am thinking like the ribbon on a birthday gift.
Once one strand got wound around one prop, the deal is pretty much done.
I guess you could develop a new kind of shot shell to shoot confetti strands in the air once the drones showed up.
The other way would be to interfere with the radio signal - jam the frequency. i have seen stories of people using drones, and it seems like the drones have some way of handling things when they get out of range - somehow they drone themselves back home and get themselves back into range. So, if a drone can drone itself back home if out-of-contact, you would have to jam the frequency for a fairly long time - like a minute or more - to discourage the operator. If you knew the frequency, you could fly a drone up there with a jammer to interfere/jam for a while. A jam of a few moments would not work cuz the drone would turn home, then pick the signal back up, then get back to work.
We fell for the helicopter toy scam at Christmas, and got one of those small RC helicopters that a well-trained person can fly really well. It seemed like once it got out of range, the blades spun slower and it just descended. If you were quick, you could catch it in your hand. It was a fun time for the 3 or 4 flights until yet another crash landing jacked it up for good. That was a fun $50.
Shooting at a drone would be incredibly amazing or stupid--
Getting a bird on the wing is well within the ability of many a dove-hunter within 100 yards. The bird shot is not going to travel much farther than your target zone. So, you can pretty much follow the shooting rule abt don't point the gun at anything unless you plan to destroy it.
A rifle could certainly open the drone range up a lot - if you were lucky enough to be challenged by a hovering drone. Many riflemen could certainly hit a drone at 300 yards and farther if conditions are right...
If the game is moving predictably but quick, a good hunter might get it at how many? maybe 300 yards. If the target is walking, a hunter or sniper, with great skill and favorable conditions, and one shot, might peg a target at what? 500 yards? Sure, there are 1-mile kills, but we are talking a drone here.
But imagine you are trying to get a drone at 500 yards. You shoot a .308 into the air. You really need a lot of clear real estate to be confident abt where that bullet is going to come down. Plus, no insult to snipers, but the air currents 20 yards up are different from ground level up to 10, then 20, yards - if you are trying to hit something at an altitude of 400 yards, you have no tree limbs to look at.
Imagine 500 yards is the hypotenuse. The drone might be 300 yards away from you, and 400 yards up in the air.
And it is moving a bit, even if hovering. You would have to totally know that a great deal of real estate beyond the drone was free of anything you might not want to destroy.
i hate to rain on the parade. Shooting a drone out of the air sounds like fun. As long as you have enough money to use them instead of clays. That is the zone of the wealthy friend who brings you and a couple buddies along for some fun you could never afford.
It is great to have friends like that. Go ahead and practice shooting drones if your friend is independently wealthy and thinks it sound like fun.
Overall, I think the specialty confetti-string round would be the best.
You could fire such a round out of potato gun. Once the drone operator saw that the air was strewn with stringy stuff, they would back off. You could figure out a way to do this that would pose little danger to those in the vicinity, if a shell or debris landed on them. I have had debris from an official firework display land on me - including neighborhood display, with the stuff still ember-orange. No real harm from that ember or cardboard.
--On top of all of that, I have heard ppl say that drones really operate out of rifle range, anyway. To conduct any kind of surveillance, or drop a load on you, they can do this from a distance beyond 1,000 yards. It is scary to think about. Satellites in outer space have the resolution to allow you to see your house and car, so a drone can have the resolution to survey your property with a lot more accuracy than your $150 Walmark digital camera.
So, in my sci-fi imagination, jamming the frequency or temporarily polluting the airspace with strands of something -mylar? wold be an answer.
I have no idea how to jam a frequency. i am just drawing on the movies and such. You would have to have a drone on an unlikely frequency, then use a broad-range jammer.
then Id say it might be a good place to start until good radio jamming techniques can be learned. One could then use this as a combined Electronic Warfare effort. AAA would obviously be welcome as well. A good crew on a BMG M2 with high-angle ability might even be able to do the job with specially selected terrain.
