Suitable for drone types: Camera Drones & FPV Drones
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Additional notes:
This is a quick, short notice meetup partly to check out the arera and also because a certain enthusiastic new member wants to fly here before he goes on holiday.
The intention is to parkon the non-yellow lined portion of the road by the TOAL point. If that is full there are plenty of car parks in the marina complex, they are free.
It's the opposite side of the harbour to where we held a recent meet, the field looks spacious enough , it is used by dog walkers and the general public.
This is an exploratory venture to find out how suitable the site may be for flying and to gauge opinions. Do you want to be a pioneer?
Port Solent has bars, restaurants and shops as well as a number of pretty boats so friends and family who don't fly could still enjoy a summer evening expedition.
At time of writing (21/07/25) OKtoFly shows favourable weather.
Sorry Rob @macspite As before, this is not possible for me to attend due to my shift work hours. However, I have flown here many many times in the past and it’s great especially if the weather plays nice!
One word of warning though …just a ‘heads up’…. The mile long straight of water (originally used to test torpedoes) to the south west of the recreation ground is still an active MOD site. They have a diving centre there and also a marine survival facility. MOD Plod will absolutely not tolerate any flying over this lake at all. Trust me, getting two MOD plods on your doorstep, complete with drone tracking printouts, on a Sunday morning, is not a pleasant experience! And woe betide anyone who doesn’t have every bit of correct licenses and paperwork in order and able to present to them for inspection…luckily, I did, and finally, after two weeks, I got confirmation that they were happy to leave the matter with an ‘educational’ word/advice in my ear and no further action needed…unless they tracked me there again!
Hope this helps anyone thinking of flying there make a better, more informed, decision.
Well that’s interesting because in conjunction with Portsmouth City Council, they have been putting signs up that only pertain to the naval base itself and active vessels.
Streetview shows HMS Excellent/MOD signage covering the area mentioned.
Also what looks like ‘No Drone’ signage.
I, personally will assume the yellow area covering Horsea Lake is inviolable, given Topscooby’ post. I don’t need the possibly of MoD Plod involvement right now.
Ill have a proper look on the day, maybe have a swift word with any officialdom on gate duty. It turns out I’ll have a relatively nice sounding rental car so i’ll be looking to take advantage of the unlimited mileage clause.
I’ve just spent twenty minutes trying to get my phone to work so I can call them on the contact number I have. Then I thought to check network status.
We’re working on fixing an issue in this area at the moment. We’re sorry for any disruption this may be causing.
We hope to have things fixed as soon as possible and will add any updates here.
As soon as I get a signal I’ll call them and ask for permission, if not at least alert them to the fact that drones will be flying to the north of them.
If we do get the bum’s rush our fallback will be Portchester Castle as last week.
Good news - I have permission from Fleetlands for OOH operations in their FRZ, subject to a prior courtesy call. That covers us for Portchester Castle and Fort Nelson meets. Any helicopter movements out of hours are notified by NOTAM so we are fairly safe to fly! I suggest you DM me for a copy of the email to print out as proof of permission to fly just in case any Ken or Karen Kalls the Kops.
