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Private drones - rules and dangers

Much more than 10000ft has been done with model aircraft – fairly obviously in CAS.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I honestly think that there will be harsh and thorough regulation of these things.

It is not only the safety aspect, which will however be what will cause the regulation, but also the privacy aspect. Even small helos with cameras are now used to spy on neighbours, to trace people and so on. People get filmed through their windows and the stuff ends up on facebook? What the hell is that? That is not recreational flying, that is simply garbage.

Re safety, it is relatively simple. Flying a drone in airspace where they can cause damage is a felony even now, it is clearly endangering public and private air transport. Same thing as those jokers with the Lasers.

Possibly, drones which are capable of flying higher than a few feet should be banned from public sale and only be available to people who carry a permit and a license, as well as being tracable. That should stop high school kids flying the darn thing all over the place.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Peter wrote:

Much more than 10000ft has been done with model aircraft – fairly obviously in CAS.

Erm, not quite.

In the UK, I know of one person who has been up very high. It was with a purpose built model and he knew what he was doing. And it was certainly not over Heathrow, as you’ve said elsewhere. It was up north somewhere. And has been done once.

I’ve been doing model flying for about 11 years, I have worked in a model shop and now work on multirotors (drones). Multirotors like a DJI Phantom are extremely capable and are real marvels of technology. Out of the box you’ll get a few thousand feet and about 1.5 SM range. That’s all well and good, and the vast majority of owners are careful with them, not least because they are pricey.

But the problem lies with the odd idiot who buys one and does something dumb. I can’t speak for elsewhere but the regulations here that are commonly known amongst modellers/drone people are no higher than 400ft and at least 5 miles from an airport, and you’re basically fine. Also at least 50 metres from people/roads/houses etc… The majority of people stick to this and there is no problem.

A lot of the consumer level multirotors now available, and certainly newer models being released (Phantom 4 etc…) will have geofencing, so you simply cannot fly them in certain areas. I think the restricted areas are pretty much just airports (5 mile radius) and city centres, that sort of thing.

A lot of people are lobbying strongly against further regulation of these things. What they have done in the USA is to register any model that weighs over 250 grams, no matter what it is. You pay some money to the FAA and you get a code which you tape on your models. You only need to pay for it once, so you have one registration number per owner, not per model. But this is absolute bollocks and solves nothing whatsoever, because if someone wants to be a dick with one of these off the shelf drones then they will do so without registering.

Another problem is that most of the people that take issue with drones or model flying in general also know bugger all about it. For example, people worry about a drone coming up and looking through their bedroom window. Well, I think it’s fairly obvious that only a total idiot would do this. The problem is that said idiot probably won’t be very competent, so it’s unlikely that they will be able to manoeuvre close enough to a house to do this. Then, you have to actually look through the window from say 10 metres away with a wide angle lens on a camera that won’t have the dynamic range to pick up anything past the window. So that argument is crap and can be ignored.

Honestly I’m not sure what will happen next in terms of regulation in the UK. For the moment, things seem to be working pretty well, but it will change when someone does something really stupid. The main thing that’s required is to educate people on how to use them properly. As I have said before, you don’t get any kids playing with capable drones like Phantoms etc… because they are expensive. The base models start at about £600 and go up from there, so unless they have quite rich parents, you won’t see school kids playing with any capable drones. The problem lies with idiots that do have some money, and unfortunately there are many. So yeah, education on both sides (owners of them and the people who hate them with no just cause) is what is required.

One final thing, traditional model aircraft are irrelevant to this argument. Additionally, any homebuilt multirotors can be ignored as the owner/builders will have to have some intelligence to be able to build the thing in the first place.

United Kingdom

According to CAP 667, mid-air collisions of all kinds account for an insignificant 4% percent of GA fatal accidents compared with the 70 % due to loss of control, CFIT, air displays and low aerobatics (which are largely CAA-approved). Mid-air collisions with drones are as rare as rocking-horse manure. Nor do drones flock like geese, so they’re unlikely to take out both engines of an A320. A DJI Phantom weighs little more than a red kite, and by paying attention to where we fly, we can keep out of their way just as easily. No need to persecute either of them as vermin. I really don’t see a problem – which is not to say that the aviation authorities couldn’t engineer one by yet more regulation.

Same goes for paragliders; all we have to do is be aware of terrain, wind and soaring conditions. If we’re enjoying a bit of “free AVGAS” in our underpowered aeroplanes from thermal, ridge or wave, it behoves us to pay attention in case we meet some half-frozen geezer who’s been dangling from a glorified bedsheet for three hours. Better still, since good soaring conditions attract the gliding fraternity like flies to a midden, we might consider flying somewhere else.

P.S. I don’t own a drone, and have experienced just one paraglider flight as a passenger. We’re trying to teach our local kite population to kill and consume their rabbits and curlew chicks away from our runway, but they’re not nearly as quick on the uptake as crows and buzzards…

Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom

dublinpilot wrote:

Imagine if you could order your groceries online and simply send your own drone to collect it at a time that suited you.

Amazon got there first…



Followed by Dominos:



Last Edited by AnthonyQ at 04 Mar 14:05
YPJT, United Arab Emirates

Indeed. But they are large companies trying to use drones for things that they already do.

As long as it’s large companies looking to use them, political pressure is ‘manageable’.

Once it becomes the great masses that want to use them for practical stuff at home, then a way will be found to allow and regulate them (and use).

A bit like how it’s easy to regulate trucks, busses and aeroplanes. (Bus, truck and aeroplane drivers need continious certification of their skills/competences). But asking private car drivers to redo their tests every few years would be politically impossible. I see it the same way with drones. Once they are useful to a household, politically, a way will have to be found to let them operate.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Some people I know have already done quite stupid things with drones. One took off behind (50m) an airliner taking off just to capture the takeoff. Another one took off in very close and in the arrival path of an airport.

When I told the guy if he knew that he was flying in an aerodrome ATZ in the arrival path he didn’t have a clue what I was saying (they must be educated).

The fact that they are so easy to fly makes them dangerous to the stupid guy.

I have built a diy drone and have learnt that many things can go wrong. They have an autopilot with accelerometer/baro etc, GPS, proximity sensors, cameras and LiPo batteries. Companies like DJI etc are putting new features all the time, and the complexity rises. Lets not forget that these things fly, they are not r/c cars. As a hobby (building, troubleshooting, flying, taking pics) it is very nice and rewarding.

The laws (actually it’s an aeromodelling law that I believe covers drones, too) in Greece are: 3km from an airport (too close, maybe the lawmaker meant 3SM and missed the translation), up to 400ft AGL (as usual), outside residential areas (too restrictive), at least 50m from people/animals/machines etc, and insured (nobody insures them in Greece sofar).

LGMT (Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece), Greece

The core of my r/c helicopter is a lump of metal weighing, off the top of my head, about 500g. The beak of a red-kite is considerably lighter and softer in comparison. I don’t think they’re really comparable in terms of what they would do to a windscreen/engine.

I think there are two separate issues with drones: One is the problem of ignorance. The other is the question of what someone might do with one maliciously. I’m not going to post suggestions, but it almost surprises me there don’t seem to have been any terrorist attacks yet.

@kwlf, I agree, but birds can and do (albeit very seldom) break windscreens, while an r/c helicopter like yours hasn’t yet – not least because there are millions of birds for every drone.

However, no mid-air collision risk is worth making a fuss about in comparison to the big GA killers like low aeros, CFIT and loss of control if what we want is for fewer GA participants to die, rather than just to stamp on other airspace users for the fun of seeing them squirm. Although GA risks may not combine like random errors (i.e. root sum of squares), the principle that only the big risks are worth addressing is similarly applicable.

Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom
I stumbled over this video on YouTube.



He climbs the drone straight up to 1000 m in a residential area and ends up running out of batteries, loosing control. The drone fortunately crashes in a wood, no thanks to this nitwit’s piloting skills.

One of the funny things are the captions:

  • “Time for another, perfectly controlled high-altitude flight. Or so I thought”
  • “Any rage posts from viewers that apparently have not read the description will be removed”

In his defense, the description does say that this flight made him realise how dangerous drone flying can be to people on the ground. He does not however mention anything about air traffic, except that he checked Flightradar24 prior to the flight, presumably to verify there was no other traffic. Sound really responsible, right? Some of the comments indicate that the flight took place in the Stockholm TMA.

Last Edited by Aviathor at 17 Apr 08:16
LFPT, LFPN
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