Absolutely. Its also important to understand that the Art16 authorisations say ‘may’ be suitable. Which, of course, means they may also not be suitable. Hence the risk assessment requirement.
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Not really. The CAA examples in CAP 722 are there to illustrate the boundaries of Open Category A3, which you have to stay 150m away from. “Recreational area” is used only once in the Open regulations, in UAS.OPEN.040, and it has no legal definition. CAP 722 is just guidance.
For Article 16, flights are under the Specific category and the Open category guidance is not relevant. The term “recreational area” doesn’t appear at all in the Article 16 Operational Authorisation, which instead refers to “A built-up area which is only used substantially for recreational purposes”.
Does it matter? Yes. If you are flying in Open A3, you have to fly at least 150m away from a beach if it is being used as a “recreational area”. You can only fly closer in Open A1 or A2. Your options vary depending on how the beach is being used at any point in time.
Compare Article 16. The beach is not in a “built-up area” at all, so it simply doesn’t matter whether it’s “only used substantially for recreational purposes”. You can fly there any time you want under Article 16.
The key point is that you have to read any Operational Authorisation on its own. You get to do what it says, and definitions from the Open Category aren’t relevant at all.
The different definition allows you to fly a 4kg drone under Article 16 at the beach at any time, regardless whether its being used for recreation. But you can’t do that with a 4kg drone under A3. And that’s because they use different definitions for when “recreational” becomes relevant.
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All article 16 says is that a club can have special rules and fly with different rules from the standard drone code.
Each club could have different rules.
Just because BMFA have a rule then that does not mean FPVUK have a rule and vice versa.
Read article 16 itself here:
http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/modalapplication.aspx?catid=1&pagetype=65&appid=11&mode=detail&id=9654
Yes, but only within the umbrella rules outlined in Article 16. So a club could choose to have more restrictive rules, but it could not unilaterally decide to have more relaxed rules. In general, the 4 clubs are fairly well aligned.
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