We went out to a family “do” last night at a remote pub. My partner’s niece’s boyfriend was flying a Mini 2 when we got there, taking some photos for the pub owner evidently. He seemed to be pretty proficient and when he had landed I was chatting to him, as you do. It turned out he had no operator ID on the drone and when I started chatting about where you could fly legacy drones, the 50 metre rule and changing regs in 2022, he obviously had no idea what I was talking about. I’ve been wondering since then, are we in a bubble here on GADC? Most of us know our way around the regs but do you think the great majority of flyers out there just buy a drone and go anywhere and fly it?
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Yes
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Yes
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Hi Andrew, I think unfortunately you might be correct in assuming the “great majority of people” who buy a drone just go fly it 
and it’s the ‘law abiding’ drone flyers that end up getting blamed/tarred with the same brush when something goes wrong. And is why I suspect a large portion of the general public, councils, NT and Forestry Commission and media think that ‘all’ drone flyers are up to no good, and out to cause trouble. I wonder if there is anyway to find out how many drones were bought in the UK and how many Operator ID’s and Flyer ID’s were issured?
stephen.
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Would make for interesting reading I would think?! 
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The problem is what would happen if questioned?
Would the officer or council official know any more than the person flying?
The more likely outcome is ‘oh sorry, I didn’t realise - I will not fly here again’ - when the flight actually might be fully compliment bar any operator id etc. With the operator id not questioned.
I think it needs education on multiple levels and that isn’t going to happen overnight.
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One hopes one of the YOUTUBE “talking heads” reads this and decides to wind the CAA up about publicising the rules much more widely than they are…
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And I for one don’t wanna be paying for it with my renewals
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Sort of irrelevant really, my ID is used across 4 drones
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Personally I don’t think it matters what others are doing as long as I do it with everything in order. It’s a bit like we know it’s illegal to drive a car with no license or insurance but there’s a lot of irresponsible people out there that do, if they are going to do it they will.
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Most of the council officials I have come accross, the answer would have to be unfortunately no. Their understanding of the rules is allmost as bad as those who ‘buy and go fly’ regardless. When speaking to some council official, I got the distinct impression they ‘the council’ think there is no difference between a Reaper UAV loaded with hellfires (MQ-9A) and my DJI mini2.
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I know one Operator can have multiple drones, but some info is better than none. Which is why I suggested to get the number of Operator ID’s and Flyer ID’s issued with a FOI request from the CAA, and that it might be interesting to find out and help to answer Andrews original question. 
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That’s a very good idea, if only just for a sense of smugness!
How about, when you buy a drone, it is enabled for a period of 30 days, then you must re-activate it by entering your operator ID and test number? So if you’re a newbie, you have 30 days to pass a basic competency test.
Or is that too much nanny state?
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Self builds ?
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You don’t even need to have a driving license to buy a 2-tonne lump of metal that can whiz along at over 100mph, with no automated safety systems at all. Huge numbers of which cause nearly 2000 deaths every year and many more life-changing injuries.
So I think we don’t need to over-react about drones.
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Absolutely.
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This
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We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. It doesn’t help when the Daily Fail and BBC run stories about a bloke flying a mini 2 and his neighbour complains about him spying. The problem being that both media companies when running the story showed drones the size of alien space ships to worry people about one falling on them. Typical of these none factual organisations to try and sensationalise a story and make genuine drone pilots look like villains.
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You have to feel sorry for the many law abiding firearms licence holders after the recent tragic events.
The press are the lowest of the low and only getting lower as the years pass (and I was amongst their number for a lot of years)
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