I do understand that aircraft work distances in Nautical Miles and Knots …
( Time all that Quaint Victorian BS was brought into the 21st century and start using Metres + Km / hour )
However, yer average Joe Dronie on the ground is going to be confused by Nautical Miles …
This is a deliberate Gotcha by whoever put together the Drone Code here.
We actually want Metres.
Here is Bournemouth Airport.
Green = 2 nm = 2.3 Miles = 3700 Metres.
Yellow = 2.5 nm = 2.88 Miles = 4630 Metres.
red = 5 Km = 3.2 miles = 5000 Metres.
Assuming measurements from the centre of the main runway.
When measured from both ends of the runway(s), things get even more complicated.
How confusing is all that ?
Why don’t the Dumb-Ass authorities just draw a circle limit around every airport, print the circle on a map, and publish that ?
Then every Joe Dronie can look on the map and know exactly where he can fly from outside of the circle.
That NATS google maps link I posted is at least totally accessible and non-confusing … and it doesn’t matter what the units are … either you’ll be in the blue bits or you won’t.
@chrisjohnbaker@OzoneVibe I didn’t see all of this google maps malarky when I replied. I meant the old Caister heliport still has a yellow circle within NATS, it closed in 2011
As an example, Heathrow has two different length runways the centre point will be from the longest runway if there is no designated centre, in addition to this the runways have a 5Km extension from the thresh hold outward and 1Km wide up to an altitude of 2000ft.
The “UAV Pilot” this is now a new description by the CAA when conducting a flight outside the 2 or 2.5nm of an RZ would be legal but should the said pilot unwittingly enter the approach zone or glide path to the runway at say within 4.999Km the flight will be deemed illegal and a criminal offence will have been committed.
This is my interpretation of the provided CAA graphics but for argument sake, if the runway was longer than the 2.5nm and say its 3nm long then the .5nm bit sticking out will still have a 1Km X 5Km X 2000ft exclusion zone to its approach measured from the threshold.
That’s how I see it.
Ha, we use miles & CHAINS as a measurement on the railway just to confuse everything.
I’ve never understood why, chains are a Roman system of measurement. I can’t remember seeing any statues of Caesar arriving on a train when he went conquering.
In aviation, distance is Nm and heights are either in feet (Europe/USA) or Meters (Russia). Interestingly Km are not normally used.
Which is all madness really considering that aviation is the one field that brings nations closer to working together than most.
Did NASA not smash a probe into Mars a decade ago because Miles were used by one company and Kilometres by another during the design?
I do agree with the sentiments above that the ‘same’ measument units should be used for distance (Miles is my preference), but I would like to see height remain in Feet.
Still ghink that they NATS have got it correct with the digital map though.
Nautical Miles / Feet will always remain in use in aviation since it would be impossible for all aviation to change - and probably catastrophic if it tried.
All planes would have to be dual equipped to enable the change to take place at the same moment in time … and when would that be with thousands of active flights at any one moment, and how would separation be ensured during the change.
But that doesn’t make it an less weird that the diagram above uses nautical miles for the radius and kilometres for the rectangles when the diagram is specifically for the flying layman / public, none of whom can be expected to know what a nautical mile is.
Most people will know what a kilometre is … but a real minority will know how long it is or the equivalent in miles.
I absolutely agree, the horizontal units of measurement should all be the same in the diagrams. Metric is something we all use today and It would be the obvious unit choice I guess.
Being the lazy oik that I am, I will just look at the maps provided and do away with the complications of measuring distances from runway thresholds - Far too much work for me
