FYI, a whole bunch of witten responses to the consultation (NOT the online survey) have now been published on the Parliament website. I expect the evidence from the hearing held today will be posted in a few days time.
U.K. Registration petition
- Thread starter colinfowler
- Start date
FoxhallGH
Well-Known Member
Thanks for posting that @zocalo ... An interesting transcript is now included from today's hearing! - and it's a good read!
http://data.parliament.uk/writtenev...reational-drone-use-in-the-uk/oral/102959.pdf
I'm disappointed that Martin Docherty-Hughes continually took the line of questioning toward paranoia regarding Chinese spying and the weaponising of Drones. If those were the questions he wanted to ask, then he should have had MI5 there rather than the CAA. I'm also amazed that the CAA seems to be OK with this idea of an organisation registering as an 'Operator' and paying one £16.50 charge to cover its members! That's going to knock one heck of a hole in the annual operating budget for the Drone Reg' scheme!!
One thing that seems to be coming out of all this, is that there will be a push to get an 'Unmanned Traffic Management' (UTM) system in place, and we'll have to lodge flight-plans before we fly our drones.
Only had a quick skim so far, but some bits that jumped out that people here might be particularly interested in, some of which were already mentioned previously so are just getting reaffirmed here:
- Doesn't look like the competency test is going to be a challege if you know the Dronecode; watch this video, answer some questions (probably multi-choice) at the end. Try not to laugh/fall asleep during the video too, probably.
- Decision on the proposed £16.50 registration fee and funding is due by July. One fee per operator, regardless of number of aircraft they operate seems to be on the cards though, which could be good for club membership but lousy for the CAA's funding goals...
- Registration scheme still aiming to go live from October 1st, mandatory by the end of November, not the 1st. Failing to register and getting caught includes a fine of up to £1,000.
- Enforcement falls to the police. They will be expected to ask for registration if they come across a drone user (this assumes they can be bothered). Stephen Metcalfe sums it up thusly: "So the likelihood is that, on a random basis, no one will get checked. Where a pilot is causing a nuisance and the police become involved, there might then be a check."
- Registration number must be affixes to the drone.
- They're sticking to their guns on model aircraft pilots and registation; many BMFA members are not going to be pleased, especially those with replica historic aircraft that will be required to display a non-authentic registration number on the aircraft.
- They at least acknowledge there is *nothing* they can do against a terrorist cell capable of self-building an RC aircraft from a kit or from scratch.
- Requiring transponders on SUAVs is being considered, but that's definitely further down the road - ultimate goal would be transmitters, not just receivers like DJI is introducing soon.
- There is a fair bit of concern over the threat posed by sub-250g drones, both for privacy and disruption (potentially as part of a swarm). There does not seem to be a firm strategy for this yet.
- Zero mention I noticed about tourists bringing drones into the UK... Expect that to be a problem in 2020 unless you don't have to be a UK citizen to register under the CAA's scheme.
- Apparently the EU has implemented legislation that has yet to make it onto the UK's statute books. Not sure how that will play out with Brexit, but they want to remain aligned as much as possible (and obviously with anything from IATA).
There's also a lot of discussion about how they feel drones might develop in the years to come, especially commercialisation and crowded airspace. A US' style LAANC system seems to be on the cards, and filing flight plans might become compulsory too (this was shelved for adoption this year, but they're talking about it as just a matter of time). Geofencing seems likely to beefed up too; and I wouldn't be surprised if it become mandatory at some point since it came up that not all manufacturer's do this.
Lots of talk about the data security implications of China being the main manufacturer of drones; far more than the actual threat posed by the drones themselves, which is an interesting ordering of priorities. To be fair, they were talking about Chinese made drones being used to survey sensitive locations, but still.
FoxhallGH
Well-Known Member
I thought it was funny that Martin D-H threw his toys out of his pram' about seeing somebody flying a drone near a Nuclear reactor (coupled with concerns about flight data being fed back to China) - when most of our power grid, including Nuclear, is being actively bid for - if not already supplied by - China.
jagraphics
Well-Known Member
Thank you for confirming that cass G space is controilled. As your quote from NATS says
Quote from NATS website:
“Class G. In class G airspace, aircraft may fly when and where they like, subject to a set of simple rules.”
There are rules on Class G airspace, just not as many for other classes. These rules will increase for sUAV's.
"Simple set of rules" is not the same thing as "controlled". Controlled in the context of airspace specifically relates to airspace managed by a central location, such as a control tower, that manages (e.g. controls) your flight, requires a flight plan be filed, all that kind of stuff we generally associate with manned flights. If you don't need to contact a tower, or whatever, to fly, then you are NOT in controlled airspace.
To avoid confusion, it would probably be better to say that the CAA is "responsible" for all the airspace from the ground up; it just chooses to make the area of it we are legally permitted to use our drones Class G so that we don't need to contact a tower before we fly, and towers are not inundated with requests from SUAV pilots looking to take their bird for a spin with near zero potential for conflict.
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