Looking for private land around Calgary to fly my drone legally.

[Rex Peters]

Hello all I am specifically looking for someone with enough land around Calgary Alberta that will allow me to fly my drone. Calgary city bylaws makes it almost impossible to fly a drone over 250 g. Please respond if you wouldn’t mind a very respectful and responsible person to fly for an hour or so at a time on your land. I will share all videos and pictures that I take.
Thank you,
Rex

 

[Zbip57]

It's time to buy a sub-250g Mavic Mini.

www.calgary.ca/csps/parks/drones-in-calgary.html

 

[Rex Peters]

I have one but my goal is to by a larger drone with more capabilities. I just passed my Basic drone exam a while back. At the moment I’m in no rush to go out and buy the Ma 2 but when I do, I want to fly legally.

 

[Zbip57]

I want to fly legally.

It's frustrating, isn't it?

The people most inconvenienced by all the onerous restrictions are the already responsible ones who read and respect the laws and always choose to operate legally, whereas the idiots who created the consequences of all these regulations happily continue to be idiots.

I used to do all my practice flights and experimenting with my Phantom in our local high school football field. Either late in the evening after football practice and baseball games were finished and the dog-walkers were gone, or in the middle of winter when absolutely nobody else was around. No one ever bothered me or complained about me flying there.

It's certainly no more dangerous to conduct the same flights there again today, compared to back when I first made these videos. DJI Phantom-1 Instructional Videos

Unfortunately, that football field is just within the outer fringe of the Ottawa (YOW) control zone, and the Phantom is ruled as being too heavy to be allowed to operate there. I only ever fly my Mavic Mini now, and only in remote areas where I'm certain I won't offend anyone.

 

[Rex Peters]

It's frustrating, isn't it?

The people most inconvenienced by all the onerous restrictions are the already responsible ones who read and respect the laws and always choose to operate legally, whereas the idiots who created the consequences of all these regulations happily continue to be idiots.

I used to do all my practice flights and experimenting with my Phantom in our local high school football field. Either late in the evening after football practice and baseball games were finished and the dog-walkers were gone, or in the middle of winter when absolutely nobody else was around. No one ever bothered me or complained about me flying there.

It's certainly no more dangerous to conduct the same flights there again today, compared to back when I first made these videos. DJI Phantom-1 Instructional Videos

Unfortunately, that football field is just within the outer fringe of the Ottawa (YOW) control zone, and the Phantom is ruled as being too heavy to be allowed to operate there. I only ever fly my Mavic Mini now, and only in remote areas where I'm certain I won't offend anyone.

Hey Zbip57,
I wonder how long it will be until they move the weight restrictions even lower than they are now. I guess for now, all we can do is enjoy the Mavic mini‘s without all the other restrictions as long as possible.
have a great day and stay safe my friend.

 

[Zbip57]

I wonder how long it will be until they move the weight restrictions even lower than they are now.

I wonder that too, considering that Canada provided no justification whatsoever for the 250 gram cutoff, other than conveniently choosing to harmonize by copying the FAA's existing 250 gram limit, as did most nations around the world.

The FAA's justification was even more flimsy. The 250 gram limit was recommended by a committee determining the minimum weight for compulsory registration. That report is very interesting to read. It never even addressed the supposed dire risk to manned aircraft. The 250 gram limit was entirely limited to a hypothetical calculation given a bunch of extremely suspect assumptions.

How heavy would an object need to be if, given the shape of a brick but the coefficient of drag of a baseball, when dropped in free fall from a height of 500 feet into a densely packed urban environment, would carry 80 Joules (59 ft-lbs) of energy which has a 30% probability of being lethal when striking a person in the head?

Note that drones typically have arms and propellers and shapes that never come close to resembling the drag coefficient of a baseball, are not allowed to fly higher than 400 feet, and should really not be flown over densely packed centres of population. So the chances of every one of the committee's questionable assumptions occurring all at once are pretty slim to begin with.

"Solving for mass and velocity, this equates to an object weighing 250 grams travelling at a terminal velocity of 25 meters/second or approximately 57 miles per hour."

Further calculations established the "probability of such a lethal event occurring per sUAS flight hour" as being:

" P = 4.7x10^-8, or less than 1 ground fatality for every 20,000,000 flight hours of an sUAS "

This report was published in 2015. Surely there have already been substantially more than 20,000,000 flight hours in total realized by the millions of sUAS around the world. How many ground fatalities have actually resulted in that time frame?

" Considering that the acceptable risk levels for commercial air transport are on the order of 1x10^-9, and general aviation actual risk levels are on the order of 5x10^-5, this level of risk at 4.7x10^-8 seems to present a reasonably acceptable risk level to the Task Force for sUAS that meet the aforementioned assumptions. Some members of the task force questioned why sUAS risk level would ever be required to exceed the current general aviation risk level of 5x10^-5. "

Read the report. It's fascinating.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)
Registration Task Force (RTF)
Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC)
Task Force Recommendations
Final Report
November 21, 2015

www.hsdl.org/?view&did=788722

I don't think anyone will ever succeed in moving the weight restrictions lower to include the Mavic Mini based on some hypothetical safety risk. But then again, the new European registration requirements include even the Mini simply because anything carrying a camera needs to be registered. Obviously the risk of being photographed far exceeds the risk of ever being hit in the hit by a falling drone.

 

[Rex Peters]

I agree with you 100 %. In the risk analysis, someone forgot to look at the probability factor and just concentrated on the worse case scenario. I wonder how many hours of flying drones if any, that the engineers and policy makers had logged before coming up with these unjustified rules and regulations?

 

[Lionfish]

Howdy. Rex .
If you’re ever up in the Drayton Valley area , you are very welcome to come fly on my land and I don’t have any restrictions in my area.
I’m about 4 hrs from Calgary , so it’s a bit far to drive for 1 hour of flying time .

Well like I said you’re welcome any time if you are about the area .

Take care and I hope you find somewhere to fly closer to home .

 

[Rex Peters]

Hello Lionfish,
Thanks for the offer. I used to do some service work at a gas plant just north of Cynthia four times a year so I’ve been in your neck of the woods many times. I’ll keep your offer in mind next time I’m up there.
Cheers and stay safe.

 

[Lionfish]

Hello Lionfish,
Thanks for the offer. I used to do some service work at a gas plant just north of Cynthia four times a year so I’ve been in your neck of the woods many times. I’ll keep your offer in mind next time I’m up there.
Cheers and stay safe.

Howdy Rex .
If you have been to Cynthia you have been very close .
I’m just off the hwy 621 , the Cynthia road to hwy 22 .
Just on the west side of the Pembina Bridge .

 

[Thanev]

If you ever make it to Lethbridge, I have numerous access points.

 

[Rex Peters]

Thanks, I appreciate the offer.

 

[Helpnout]

If you ever make it to Lethbridge, I have numerous access points.

Hello, I have a Mavic mini and will be in the Lethbridge area next week, would you happen to be near the river valley by any chance? Is the offer to be able to fly in your area still there?