So, let me get this straight. My Fimi x8 is 790g so goes into the A1 C1 legacy cat until 2022 then it’s A3 which means it’s pretty much useless? Urghhh.
A3 is really not much different from where most of us can legally fly today: it has the same 150m separation from a congested area that already applies, although the wording is a little different as it talks about “residential, commercial, industrial or recreational areas”, which is clearer and simpler than “congested”. It also says:
an area where the remote pilot reasonably expects that no uninvolved person will be endangered within the range where the unmanned aircraft is flown during the entire time of the UAS operation
To me, that doesn’t say you can only fly in areas with no people, it says you must be sure nobody will be endangered. Is that much of a change from today?
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Cat A3 for recreational flyers offers plenty of good safe flying. As a recreational flyer don you need to fly over people. If you are flying commercial and your drone operations don’t meet the Open Category requirements then you will fly under specific category. Your drone isn’t useless at all and can still be used.
I think this is correct, but someone else feel free to jump in if not:
Both drones have a MTOM of over 250g and less than 25kg, so you can fly them forever in sub-category A3.
During the transition period (until July 2022) you can fly them both in sub-category A2 if you take the A2 CofC qualification, because they both have a MTOM less than 2kg.
You can also fly the Mini in sub-category A1 (not over uninvolved persons) for the same transition period, but this requires an additional qualification “to be defined by the Member State” (or in our case, ex-Member State). If the CAA have confirmed what qualification they want for that, I’ve not spotted it.
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Well if you were flying commercially you would be doing so according to your operational authorization with standard permissions
There are detailed specs for each machine category in the Delegated Regulations, but no drones that we currently own comply, so all existing drones get treated as legacy devices. For future drones, they have to demonstrate compliance with the regs and bear a special indented label C0, C1 etc. It will be interesting to see which drones start coming to market with those labels first, and to be honest I was surprised to see the Mavic Mini didn’t do so.
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I think I read somewhere possibly expected 2021
It is not just about the drones MTOM, it’s also about what you intend to do with the drone and where you intend to fly the drone.
Open Category is about zero or low risk to uninvolved persons and should be pretty straight forward.
Straight from the horses mouth (CAA)
@callum how can I highlight this?
the one thing we are forgetting. is that this matter is being handled by politicians and as such its going to be a cockup
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Aviation regulation and guidelines are always changing and often include many grey areas open for interpretation.
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Yes
You obviously did not look at UAV8.
No where are you getting those prices from 695 + vat
Too late I believe to get it done and submit all paperwork to CAA in time for their set deadline
yes you do
2 Days for course, handbook and flight test, allow 6 weeks for CAA, that takes you till the end of March.
For £1200 ,someone was pissing up your back !.
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Googled drone training Norwich, that’s what I did out of interest.
I can see now that uav8 is less but since I do not intent to do either as a hobbyist it’s no matter.