I thought I'd relate an example from my own experience of the fine line between recreational and 107 pilots. We talk about hypotheticals a lot so here's a real life.
A friend of mine owns a most beautiful vineyard in Northern California, and I asked him if I could capture some of its beauty by drone video on his property. He gave me permission. I told him the truth: This is just for my own personal video collection. I may or may not post it on social media. I didn't end up publishing it anywhere online, but it is in my personal video archive and I pretty much had forgotten about it.
Fast forward about two years, and he wants to do some construction on his property and he asked me if I could send him a link to that video, which I agreed to do. I believe it may have provided some value to him.
I believe this all fits squarely within the limits of recreational flying. The key point here is that he asked me for a link to the video after I had already flown for recreational purposes. If he had asked me for the same video before I flew then I am outside the bounds of recreational flying and I could get in trouble with the FAA.
As a recreational pilot, your heart must be pure and it must be 100% about the pure fun of recreational flying solely for your own benefit and not for any other purpose, for anyone, or for anything.
A valid 107 would solve all these problems of course, but my point in making this posting it to try to illuminate that fine line with an actual real world example.
And it is of course with some trepidation and humility that I relate this and ask anyone to correct me if they think I got something wrong.
A friend of mine owns a most beautiful vineyard in Northern California, and I asked him if I could capture some of its beauty by drone video on his property. He gave me permission. I told him the truth: This is just for my own personal video collection. I may or may not post it on social media. I didn't end up publishing it anywhere online, but it is in my personal video archive and I pretty much had forgotten about it.
Fast forward about two years, and he wants to do some construction on his property and he asked me if I could send him a link to that video, which I agreed to do. I believe it may have provided some value to him.
I believe this all fits squarely within the limits of recreational flying. The key point here is that he asked me for a link to the video after I had already flown for recreational purposes. If he had asked me for the same video before I flew then I am outside the bounds of recreational flying and I could get in trouble with the FAA.
As a recreational pilot, your heart must be pure and it must be 100% about the pure fun of recreational flying solely for your own benefit and not for any other purpose, for anyone, or for anything.
A valid 107 would solve all these problems of course, but my point in making this posting it to try to illuminate that fine line with an actual real world example.
And it is of course with some trepidation and humility that I relate this and ask anyone to correct me if they think I got something wrong.