Questions re. new UK regulations and police powers

[Kay9]

Hi all. I'm a brand new Mavic 2 (and drone) pilot, and wanted to ask if anyone could shed light on a couple of points regarding the upcoming regulations in the UK. I've familiarised myself with the rules, but some of the definitions seem so very difficult to interpret (i.e. where exactly do I begin measuring the 150M from a congested area, what exactly classifies as a congested area etc). I feel like it is inevitable I will accidentally break a couple of rules from time to time, as I'm sure many users do.

Firstly, I understand the new regulations (i.e. the 5km exclusion zone around airports) have not actually come into force yet? They're proposed in the public consulation response, but not yet legislation?

My main question concerns the new powers being handed to police re. seizing a drone, and any data it contains. In this case, could the onboard flight logs incriminate the user, revealing any and all times the rules have been breached? I understand the flight logs can only officially be interpreted by DJI, but could the police insist they provide the details, or even just decode themselves? I know it would be unlikely they would go through all the effort for minor offences, but I'm just paranoid that old-fashioned residents in my area repeatedly reporting when the drone is up might eventually lead to the police delving a bit deeper. Just want to know where I stand, and if it's worth only ever flying it in the middle of nowhere.

Would appreciate any advice anyone could offer a beginner on these matters

 

[Point Zero]

Introduction - Dronesafe

Here is a website that might answer a few of those questions

 

[old man mavic]

Hi all. I'm a brand new Mavic 2 (and drone) pilot, and wanted to ask if anyone could shed light on a couple of points regarding the upcoming regulations in the UK. I've familiarised myself with the rules, but some of the definitions seem so very difficult to interpret (i.e. where exactly do I begin measuring the 150M from a congested area, what exactly classifies as a congested area etc). I feel like it is inevitable I will accidentally break a couple of rules from time to time, as I'm sure many users do.

Firstly, I understand the new regulations (i.e. the 5km exclusion zone around airports) have not actually come into force yet? They're proposed in the public consulation response, but not yet legislation?

My main question concerns the new powers being handed to police re. seizing a drone, and any data it contains. In this case, could the onboard flight logs incriminate the user, revealing any and all times the rules have been breached? I understand the flight logs can only officially be interpreted by DJI, but could the police insist they provide the details, or even just decode themselves? I know it would be unlikely they would go through all the effort for minor offences, but I'm just paranoid that old-fashioned residents in my area repeatedly reporting when the drone is up might eventually lead to the police delving a bit deeper. Just want to know where I stand, and if it's worth only ever flying it in the middle of nowhere.

Would appreciate any advice anyone could offer a beginner on these matters

with regards to flying in you area do you mean from your home address or some open ground near to where you live you need to download some apps like airmap or drone assist these tell you if there are any restrictions where you are thinking of flying.it would probably not be a good idea to fly over your home area as people think you are spying on them and you could find yourself getting that knock on the door follow the drone code and you should be ok

 

[Congoblue]

The only current laws in the UK are: you must not fly within 1Km of an airport boundary, and you must not fly higher than 120m.
There are supposed to be more laws coming in November where you will have to register and pass some sort of online competency test.

All of the other "rules" are just guidelines, but they are guidelines to stop you getting yourself into trouble so worth following. If you were to cause some incident and you had not been following the rules, then there are plenty of other offences you could be charged with.

The flight logs can be interpreted by anyone, not just DJI. Some people on this forum do it for others when they have crashed. So the police will definitely be able to do it, although I would suspect there is limited expertise within the UK police force on doing this and you'd have to do something pretty serious before they would bother, e.g. if you got involved in a Gatwick style incident.


My advice would be as Old Man Mavic says, follow the drone code as best you can, and fly where there are few people. If you want to fly somewhere popular, go in the early morning before anyone else is there (better pictures then too). If you fly around your house a lot, (assuming you are not in a built up area and can do that without breaking any rules), talk to your neighbours about it so they know you aren't spying on them. Some people give their neighbours aerial photos of their houses to keep them on-side...

 

[Kay9]

with regards to flying in you area do you mean from your home address or some open ground near to where you live you need to download some apps like airmap or drone assist these tell you if there are any restrictions where you are thinking of flying.it would probably not be a good idea to fly over your home area as people think you are spying on them and you could find yourself getting that knock on the door follow the drone code and you should be ok

I had originally planned to fly from my back garden, but I realised this wasn't allowed once I looked into the rules. However, there is a lot of open land very close by the village I can use (hopefully). I still think anyone passing through that spots me will assume I'm 'spying' on the village anyway

 

[old man mavic]

I had originally planned to fly from my back garden, but I realised this wasn't allowed once I looked into the rules. However, there is a lot of open land very close by the village I can use (hopefully). I still think anyone passing through that spots me will assume I'm 'spying' on the village anyway

let them assume what they like, if you can get them to look at some of the footage you have taken they will see that you are not spying i wear a hivis vest when i fly this allows people to know you are flying a drone openly and not doing something subversive just go and enjoy flying your drone it would be worthwhile joining the BFMA membership gets you third party liability cover and shows you care about others property should the worse happen and you cause damage with your drone

 

[Point Zero]

let them assume what they like, if you can get them to look at some of the footage you have taken they will see that you are not spying i wear a hivis vest when i fly this allows people to know you are flying a drone openly and not doing something subversive just go and enjoy flying your drone it would be worthwhile joining the BFMA membership gets you third party liability cover and shows you care about others property should the worse happen and you cause damage with your drone

Really good advice here, thank you!

 

[Kay9]

Thanks a lot for the advice. I'm eager to get out an use the thing, but I've not really had the chance yet, and I guess I'm just a bit paranoid there is a bit of 'anti-drone' sentiment at the moment.

Another question on the internal flight logs, does anyone know how big the memory is? I've checked the device on my PC, and it seems there is only 8GB of storage, but this is what they advertise as the internal storage for vidoes/photos, so I assume there must be some further hidden memory somewhere? I'm just wondering how long it takes, roughly, for old data to be overwritten with new, which I could figure out if I knew the amount of dedicated memory for this?

 

[old man mavic]

Thanks a lot for the advice. I'm eager to get out an use the thing, but I've not really had the chance yet, and I guess I'm just a bit paranoid there is a bit of 'anti-drone' sentiment at the moment.

Another question on the internal flight logs, does anyone know how big the memory is? I've checked the device on my PC, and it seems there is only 8GB of storage, but this is what they advertise as the internal storage for vidoes/photos, so I assume there must be some further hidden memory somewhere? I'm just wondering how long it takes, roughly, for old data to be overwritten with new, which I could figure out if I knew the amount of dedicated memory for this?

i believe that the logs you talking about are stored by DJI not in the mav similar to things stored in the i cloud but i may be wrong

 

[DesG]

let them assume what they like, if you can get them to look at some of the footage you have taken they will see that you are not spying i wear a hivis vest when i fly this allows people to know you are flying a drone openly and not doing something subversive just go and enjoy flying your drone it would be worthwhile joining the BFMA membership gets you third party liability cover and shows you care about others property should the worse happen and you cause damage with your drone

I hope it's a yellow one to show solidarity with the French.

 

[old man mavic]

I hope it's a yellow one to show solidarity with the French.

it is i also have orange day glo with drone crew on them came free with the pilot ones