My local council has now explicitly banned all forms of model aircraft. But hey, local yobbo's are free to zoom up and down in their stolen scooters with no helmets and have been doing so for years.
Couldn't say this is a massive surprise. What with the nanny state's continued expansion and the ever increasing paranoia of drone's. Having flown there for 15 years it's never been a problem. I fly when it's quiet, mid-week when nobody is around but now it's a problem and the park wardens are getting arsey.
Just 1 park left now in an adjacent council and I'm expecting that to get the chop soon enough. Yesterday there was feller which his brand new Phantom4 flying low over the car park and changing rooms. So not surprising when you've got bellends like that around.
Grrrr......rant over.
The only solution seems to be to fly from the back of a stolen scooter then !
Sorry - this is a real pain, my little field I found for flying is due to get 3,500 houses built on it soon, so the problem of where can I fly safely away from people is a tricky one.
I'm really lucky in as much as I live out in the sticks and am surrounded by fields, I often struggle to decide which field to use.
I can see this becoming more of a problem for City dwellers though but can also understand that parks are public areas so I can imagine its a lot more difficult for pilots to fly within the law. The local councils will probably just think 'sod it, we cant be arsed to mess around...blanket ban'.
Tricky one, I can see both sides, pain for you though :(
Quote from: dogzilla on April 28, 2016, 10:59:22 AM
My local council has now explicitly banned all forms of model aircraft. But hey, local yobbo's are free to zoom up and down in their stolen scooters with no helmets and have been doing so for years.
Couldn't say this is a massive surprise. What with the nanny state's continued expansion and the ever increasing paranoia of drone's. Having flown there for 15 years it's never been a problem. I fly when it's quiet, mid-week when nobody is around but now it's a problem and the park wardens are getting arsey.
Just 1 park left now in an adjacent council and I'm expecting that to get the chop soon enough. Yesterday there was feller which his brand new Phantom4 flying low over the car park and changing rooms. So not surprising when you've got bellends like that around.
Grrrr......rant over.
Bummer for sure.
But first off the council must have passed this resolution/byelaw or whatever it is and have this minuted. They must also publish this and post notices to this effect. Just word of mouth is insufficient.
Secondly you should approach your local councillor pointing out your responsible use of the park and informing them of the irresponsible use of it by others (scooters). In the past I have found that the best method is through a local councillor whom you can approach less formally. At our local private flying site we had draconian conditions slapped on us (flying permitted only Mon-Sat 9.00am-5.00pm. It had previously been all day every day). The council refused to even meet with us but once we approached a local councillor she saw our predicament and whilst she could not instruct the council to change their minds she could insist on them meeting with us. We eventually did and discovered that there had been an internal cock-up leading the council to completely misunderstand what we were doing. Result was reversion back to the previous conditions. It was getting the meeting with the council which was the hurdle.
Just too many moany moaners everywhere who can't live and let live and choose to get furious about things that actually make no difference to them at all.
^ that is really good advice (electrotor)
Quote from: Loopdreams on April 28, 2016, 11:33:20 AM
Just too many moany moaners everywhere who can't live and let live and choose to get furious about things that actually make no difference to them at all.
No wonder kids don't play outside nowadays -everything they do gets whined about :)
I put the blame for that squarely at the door of our fear-mongering right wing media barons who peddle their tawdry rags by pandering to people's endless appetite for reading about misery and tragedy, creating the impression that there is danger everywhere. When actually things are probably safer now than they were during their parents and grandparents generations.
Quote from: Loopdreams on April 28, 2016, 11:57:07 AM
I put the blame for that squarely at the door of our fear-mongering right wing media barons who peddle their tawdry rags by pandering to people's endless appetite for reading about misery and tragedy, creating the impression that there is danger everywhere. When actually things are probably safer now than they were during their parents and grandparents generations.
Are you joking? We are living in a more left wing environment than ever before. You can't say or do anything without offending someone- and it's the left wing who listen.
Although all politicians are pretty stumped as to how to handle the drone thing.
Oh right, so most tabloids aren't right wing then? I guess that all their editors and journos never got that memo. :+
Pain / accidents / mistakes / risk / failure are character-building. You grow as a human from experiencing any of those.
Sadly most parents don't allow that to happen any more.
I'm not saying let kids go play on motorways (although I'd be lying if I said I hadn't ran across a few in my time) but they need to fall off stuff. They need to get into arguments and they need to exercise free will.
We seem to be turning into a sanitised society for the supposed good of everyone - yet all everyone does is complain.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this rant :D
I'm not saying you but it strikes me that a lot of the same people who say things like that and moan about health and safety gone mad etc. would also be the first in line to blame any parents for their perceived negligence if their kids were playing unsupervised and ran in front of their car. Or else they'd make a claim because they were walking past a building site and got injured by a falling hammer and a lawyer told them that the mandatory screens around the scaffold had not been fitted correctly or whatever. People often seem to want to have it both ways is what I'm saying.
They either need to accept the sacrifice of a few kids in the name of increased freedom (which they are almost universally unwilling to do when it actually comes down to it) or stop moaning about measures put in place in the wake of tragic incidents designed to prevent a recurrence.
I think in the past people relied on what was known as "common sense" to get by. It's a tough one - "accidents" are, and always will be a thing, but people like to apportion blame if at all possible nowadays.
Maybe the rules aren't for their protection but for ours against litigious old gits helicopter parents with nothing better to do :D
We had an angry lady come over once accusing us of filming her children in her garden, completely out of her tree with rage (there wasn't even a camera onboard the large commercial quad at the time) ... turns out her husband was kicking off about the aircraft flying nearby, so she came over all guns blazing.
We had permission to be in the field and thankfully she calmed down once all was explained, but maybe it IS for our protection - I mean, it isn't nice having someone insinuate you're a pervert just because they're angry, irrational and it's what the media loves to say we get up to. Having to put up with that while maintaining grace and decorum through gritted teeth isn't easy (once upon a time that accusation would have resulted in a swift punch! You don't go around accusing people of that type of stuff willy-nilly IMO!)
So yea... maybe it's for the best that we're being shoo-ed away from public areas. They're sometimes 'orrible :P
Quote from: Steve W on April 28, 2016, 04:01:17 PM
I think in the past people relied on what was known as "common sense" to get by. It's a tough one - "accidents" are, and always will be a thing, but people like to apportion blame if at all possible nowadays.
Maybe the rules aren't for their protection but for ours against litigious old gits helicopter parents with nothing better to do :D
People did used to rely on common sense and so cost of, say, putting up a large building could be measured in human lives as well as money. Much as it still is in parts of the world now.
The problem with just relying on common sense is that lots of folk don't really have any. So they need rules and people enforcing them or it's carnage. Whilst it's definitely true that something is lost as a resultt on balance I'd rather have it how it is now. if you really want a danger fix there's still lots of things you can do and nobody is going to stop you just as long as it's only your own neck that you're risking.
In recent years I have twice had encounters with Mr Angry.
First was a taxi driver who believed that he was the Police and objected to me parking in an unmarked space which he incorrectly regarded as his. ironically it was next to a Police car. I simply stared at him, through my side window as he ranted for a minute or two, definitely causing a breach of the peace. Giving him no ammunition he had no words left after the rant and no argument took place. It was a blissful moment watching him walk off defeated by silence.
The second time was an objector to me flying (legally) in his village. He stuck a camera in my face and was purple with rage. I went overboard to explain that I understood his concerns and I was happy to show him all my gear and explain what I had been doing. He wasn't expecting such cooperation and didn't know how to cope so could only deflate his sails and walk off.
I understand that sometimes the very obvious use of a recorder discourages people from venting their spleens, as they say. They later can't easily deny what they said, if recorded.
It gets worse than that. 4 weeks ago I was flying my MTD at a club site LOS. I had my ground station on as I was trying out the new mfd AAT which had a möbius mounted next to the antenna to capture the AAT pointing at the plane. The monitor was on and recording the video stream from the model. I had no gogs on or even out. I became aware of a full size Heli very near and in the hover somewhere behind me. So I doing a quick landing I turned and saw a police Heli doing an obvious search at about 600 feet over a nearby country house estate about 1 mile away. Not wanting to fly with that around I grabbed a coffee and waited for about 20 mins for it to leave, which it did. I powered up and launched and was flying for about 3 mins when the bloody thing came back and went into the hover behind me in the next field at well below (my guess) 400 ft. Again I quickly landed and this time just turned and watched as the Heli shot off again south.
Can you guess what happened next?
As I started to pack up a police "interceptor" turned into the track leading to the patch and one of the most nerve wracking 60 minutes of my life ensued. I had been reported acting suspiciously and with the intent of causing injury to people and property whilst flying a model airplane and these 2 had been dispatched to take a look.
All my gear was photographed and the van was searched and pnc checked, my ID was taken, I had to explain what I was doing and asked why I was flying a "drone" without a spotter, was I insured, did I have permission to be on the land, could prove it, did I know that I was flying near a police helicopter and could have caused a serious incident etc etc. Eventually I managed to explain that I was flying los and the monitor was on to provide a recording of the picture from the plane with the data displayed, the tracker was filming the plane, I am insured, I am a registered competent person with a CAA approved body, and I was operating within the ANO and CAP directive, I have video to prove I was not flying FPV but los which will be confirmed by the video taken by the Heli etc etc. At which point I produced a printed hard copy of said ANO and CAP. Plus I always carry a air navigation map that shows the controlled airspace so this was also shown. I also explained that as the model is under 7kg I can fly as high as I can see los as I am not near active airport. ( nearest is 7 miles away) All of this was done calm and collected by me, not stroppy, not cross, but very nervous!
These 2 had been at a briefing by county police HQ and new enough to spot that my vtx was possibly overpowered and even asked me what frequency my UHF was on (459 phew).
I fully expected the kit to be confiscated and me taken down the Nick but all I got was the " you will be reported to the inspector for further action if needed, we know who you are now so we know where to look if we need to" chat.
So forget parks and common land with public access. Private land is bad enough.
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You must have caught the juicy stuff on your möbius :) go on post it :)
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Big T if that would have been me I would have sh@t myself :toiletbang:
Yep - not a good situation. THankfully you had video backup. I usually keep a gopro running in the car watching me so I can catch people letting their dog piss right next to me...
(http://s32.postimg.org/92qhbtftd/dog.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/92qhbtftd/)
(http://s32.postimg.org/q94p4m8gh/dog2.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/q94p4m8gh/)
(http://s32.postimg.org/hplb6v041/dog3.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/hplb6v041/)
(http://s32.postimg.org/xla5a5qoh/dog4.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/xla5a5qoh/)
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What a piss take BigT. Flying at a club field LOS and having the police get involved with a helicopter no less.
Is this the level of intelligence of the Police force now? That would piss me right off, probably get myself arrested with the level of swearing I'd be doing.
The last thing we need are coppers getting the idea that anyone with a drone is suspicious and needs checking on.
Quote from: dogzilla on April 28, 2016, 11:58:31 PM
What a piss take BigT. Flying at a club field LOS and having the police get involved with a helicopter no less.
Is this the level of intelligence of the Police force now? That would piss me right off, probably get myself arrested with the level of swearing I'd be doing.
The last thing we need are coppers getting the idea that anyone with a drone is suspicious and needs checking on.
Plus all the tax payers money they wasted chasing a fpv,er. :busted:
I think someone has grassed you up there. You weren't even flying a traditional 'drone'. How would they know if you had a camera on the plane or not.
I think the Heli had seen the monitor and other kit, he was in a stationary hover and less than 1000 m away scoping me out with the big camera. I had the ground station on a tripod plus the AAT on a tripod, and all my other kit and planes in the pits. This is a flying site registered with nats so it's not as if I was going commando. I think this is more an example of the chief Constable flexing muscle. Where I live there are 15 or so model clubs all of which are within 10 miles of Luton airport and quite a few airstrips as the model flies.
To me it's just an indicator that I need to re think whether I want to do this now or not in this very crowded part of the U.K.
For the record, all of the local parks and council controlled open spaces in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire (that I know of) specifically ban radio controlled airborne models, except an area know as Nomansland Common, where RC is allowed and is posted up on signs saying beware to the general public. Personally I would never fly there as it is much to busy with horses and dog walkers, ( nearly said doggers).
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I know it's never going to wash in court, but since your aircraft is classed as .. an aircraft .. doesn't the helicopter have a duty to stay out of the way once they know your plane is in the air?
How come our gear is classed as an aircraft, but is also given less priority? The bags of meat inside the full-size? But I thought it was easier for them to avoid conflict due to their better situational awareness...............
:)
It smacks of stupidity to me. Any police chopper pilot should be fully aware of the model flying clubs in the area.
1. See a man flying a model aircraft
2. Notice he is flying from a designated flying club
3. Realise there is nothing out of the ordinary, move on and catch some real criminals.
Wonder what the park keeper would say about this
https://youtu.be/eCZfL29aorU
be fun trying to fpv it
Take my money now :)
Quote from: Steve W on April 28, 2016, 10:42:48 PM
Yep - not a good situation. THankfully you had video backup. I usually keep a gopro running in the car watching me so I can catch people letting their dog piss right next to me...
(http://s32.postimg.org/92qhbtftd/dog.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/92qhbtftd/)
(http://s32.postimg.org/q94p4m8gh/dog2.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/q94p4m8gh/)
(http://s32.postimg.org/hplb6v041/dog3.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/hplb6v041/)
(http://s32.postimg.org/xla5a5qoh/dog4.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/xla5a5qoh/)
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:rofl: :haha: That's epic Steve lol
On advice I won't be posting those videos or for that matter any other airborne videos for the foreseeable future. Too many nosey parkers around my area with too much time and too much money. The 2 police officers had cameras strapped to their shoulders, each camera had a sticker saying video recorded on this device may be used as evidence. I have no idea if that is admissible as evidence or not.
It is my belief that police helicopters can operate outside normal separation regulations if they are " on a job" same as the military. They often bomb over my house at stupid low heights, in fact we had one circling last week looking for a burglar so low I could clearly see the camera turning. My guess is he was at 400 to 500 feet, although it is very hard to tell accurately.
Anyway I don't want to get into a pissing contest with the police or the CAA.
Quote from: BigT on April 30, 2016, 01:50:20 PM
so low I could clearly see the camera turning. My guess is he was at 400 to 500 feet, although it is very hard to tell accurately.
Anyway I don't want to get into a pissing contest with the police or the CAA.
I have felt the same mainly because I live in a Training area with Preddanick air Field just down the road And Culdrose only about 6 miles from me in a straight line, jets and Merlins fly over the area well below 400 ft and its seems to be far more frequently than in the past also, Plenty of nosey people around with nothing better to do I been approached a couple of times with the remark you fly these drone things don't you :-X
My answer is no! sold them, I only fly fixed wing now. The media hype is the thing that I don't want coming my way.
I still fly and enjoy my FPV but not going to give any body any ammunition to try to nail me I fly as safe as I can using common sense, unlike a particular local who breach's every imaginable rule that a licensed operator should abide by :+ This particular guy is a proper know it all with money :( Funny thing is I don't see a CAA license number on his octocopter :laugh: I,m just waiting to see the S--- hit the fan at some point :(
dizzy ;)
You may find that many public spaces and parks already have a byelaw in place to stop RC aircraft flights. Its not like RC is anything new, its been popular for decades. When I started 3 years ago with a tiny 3 channel foamie, I asked Southampton City Council if I could fly from the Common. I stated the size of the plane which had a wingspan of about 1.5ft and they said that was ok, but larger aircraft were not permitted (although they didn't stipulate what larger was). As it transpired, Southampton Common does get quite busy so common sense (no pun intended) prevailed and I never flew there regularly.
The New Forest has a byelaw banning RC planes from all spaces except designated flying sites, namely Beaulieu Aerodrome, the home of a WWII airfield for Spits and Hurricanes. That's been in place for quite a while, at least as long as I've been flying (3 years).
In reality, I've flown in the New Forest and outside of the Bournemouth ATZ and within 400ft altitude so way below the height of the feeder corridoors and not had too many problems, as long as I'm careful and considerate. Most people are inquisitive and friendly and the odd one gets a bit shirty.
I've had one incident 3 years ago where a ranger asked us to pack up but only after some horse riders complained that one of our craft had spooked their horse and she'd been thrown. In reality, the thrown rider was actually out of visual range and no where near any of our gear, but because her horse bolted past us and she walked by some 10-15 minutes later, we were the vent for her rupturing spleen!
Interestingly enough, we were able to offer help to the ranger and the rider by mounting an aerial reconnaisance for said horse after explaining what we were doing and he was quite impressed and a little apologetic that he had to ask us to pack up.
So I agree with Electrotor, if you can, let them vent, then try to turn them around. No point in a spleen vs spleen faceoff and hopefully at the end of it you might have someone more likely to extol the virtues of our hobby.
If that doesn't work, smack them over the head, scout out a deserted site using your quad copter and bury their body where it'll never be found.
Agree with you Dizzy RE: the multirotors - I very rarely fly my quadcopter now, I get close to zero hassle when flying planes... as if they're somehow more innocent (when in reality they can fly higher, further and carry more powerful + expensive gear - plus weigh more and travel faster :laugh: )
Reading this is just depressing me more about the hobby I 'used' to love! It seems everyone is trying to stop it.
I haven't really flown (except for 1 day three weeks ago) properly since about September last year.... it seems it's not worth the hassle!
Keukpa
We've got around it by tapping up a few friendly local farmers. It's amazing how a few bottles of cheap scotch will make them say "yes you can fly, just make sure the gates closed"
On the plus side some have asked for crop inspection later in the year.
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Quote from: keukpa on May 01, 2016, 06:56:18 PM
Reading this is just depressing me more about the hobby I 'used' to love! It seems everyone is trying to stop it.
It certainly seems that way. That said... I still think there is a lot of fun to be had from the hobby though. Just look at Dogzilla's latest vid for example...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GEANNQVlZbo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GEANNQVlZbo)
Looks awesome fun and no real danger or rules broken. I very much doubt you'd get much objection to that type of flying as long as you are completely away from people property or livestock.
Fast and low is where its at... I've always said that.
The sooner fixed wing is band and mini quads rule the world the better. :sparta:
;D
For me, it's about avoiding people - stealth flying. I want to be able to park up somewhere and not look like I'm flying (or better yet, not be seen).
The plane flies away from me for the most part - it's the dog walkers etc who just wander up and expect a conversation that I can't be bothered with. Or worse, people who are bored and ask stupid questions.
Yea, yea I'm anti-social. That's my choice. I wish people would respect it :laugh:
Quote from: Steve W on May 01, 2016, 09:24:03 PM
For me, it's about avoiding people - stealth flying. I want to be able to park up somewhere and not look like I'm flying (or better yet, not be seen).
The plane flies away from me for the most part - it's the dog walkers etc who just wander up and expect a conversation that I can't be bothered with. Or worse, people who are bored and ask stupid questions.
Yea, yea I'm anti-social. That's my choice. I wish people would respect it :laugh:
Just make a sign saying I'm deaf so don't try talking to me. Or pi$$ off and leave me alone..Depending on what mood your in is your choice on which one you use.
Yeah its very unnerving when you hear a dog sniffing around you whilst you're goggled up trying to concentrate. It's the main reason I don't fly alone.