I read in the paper today that, ’ Packham, 64, and his stepdaughter, Megan McCubbin, a fellow BBC presenter, joined the North Dorset Hunt Saboteurs and followed the hunt with drones and thermal cameras on Saturday.’
Whether you agree with Drag Hunting or not, surely, following a hunt with a drone is flying ‘over a crowd’, could put people in danger, may not be launched from land with the owner’s permission, probably doesn’t respect privacy, …
Thoughts? We should distance ourselves from such irresponsible behaviour.
The CAA guidance defined a crowd as ~1000 people, in such proximity that all would not be able to move quickly if they needed to, or words to that effect. I’m surprised that there would be so many people there for a hunt… …where were they hunting? At a football match?
Fair point. The general principle is to keep away from gatherings of people where the risks go up were anything untoward were to happen with the drone. And of course, one also has to be careful around animals. It’s a busy environment at a hunt for sure, but that doesn’t alter the need for consideration by responsible flyers such as ourselves. At least, that’s my view.
I’m not a supporter of such activities but those saboteurs don’t respect a lot of things, they couldn’t give a flying (pardon the pun) about privacy.
Packham is not everyone’s best friend here in the New Forest where he resides . It’s not been uncommon for him to find dead animals at the gates of his property.
Are you aware of any breach of the drone code? (should be easy enough to validate - they are not shy sharing the footage)
Loads of reported hunting ‘incidents’ though - followed by convictions… I surely would not want any drone code changes so that a bunch of horse riding ‘hunters’ feel free to flout the law at will…
Do they? Not in the Drone Code or any documents I’ve seen is there any fixed number given. Can you link to that guidance please? The only guideline I’m aware of for a crowd is the inability to freely avoid a falling drone.
I think the same. My understanding, using a local castle as an example, is if the drone dropped, those underneath could get out of it’s way easily. If the castle was busy, that would be a no because there’s only one fairly narrow cobbled exit and they couldn’t all get out at the same time. On a quiet day, yes.
Based on the updated UK Regulation (EU) 2019/947 and the CAA Drone and Model Aircraft Code (effective 1 January 2026), here are the strict guidelines regarding assemblies of people and C1 class drones:
Assemblies of People and C1 Drones (Jan 2026–Dec 2027)
Definition: An assembly of people is a crowd where individuals cannot freely move away from an out-of-control drone (e.g., concerts, sports matches, political rallies).
Restriction: You must never fly over assemblies of people.
C1 Class Allowance (Interim): From 1 January 2026 until 31 December 2027, drones with a C1 class mark (or equivalent UK1) are allowed to fly in the Open A1 subcategory, which means they can fly closer to people than 50m and even over individual uninvolved people, provided they are not part of a crowd.
Safety Requirement: Even with a C1 drone, you must never put people in danger and are encouraged to avoid flying over uninvolved people whenever possible.
Clearly the definition also applies to C0 marked drones <250g,
To my knowledge there’s no such thing. When, I did my A2 C of C, an example was given where fewer than 12 (can’t remember the exact figure, was a while ago) of uninvolved people are in an enclosed space ie a fence and are unable to move out of the way. Usual multi- choice, like:
A. Its ok, if high over them.
B. Cannot fly over them.
C. Head straight for 'em.
D. Pick 'em up as you go.
Why would simply “following a hunt” equal to “flying ‘over a crowd’”?
By that cautious definition, we’d get banned anywhere because following, circling, or capturing anything with people in/near it would be meeting that. You can easily follow a moving object or a group without getting anywhere near flying over it.
It’s somewhere on the CAA website, or one of their publications. It’s 6 months or so since I read it - and sorry no, I am not going to try to find it again for you. I’ve too much on to be doing others research for them.
UKPDRA01 used to prohibit ‘flight over or within 150-metres of open-air assemblies of more than 1000 persons’ (page 182) and this is what was then replaced with ‘must not fly over groups of people’ with the new ‘dronecode’ at the end of 2020.
With the lack of anything specific to tell us what ‘groups of people’ actually meant, the old definition of ‘1000 people’ just hung about for a while.
It’s definitely a number that was given during my PfCO training (very much pre-2020).
I was hoping you would supply where you got that from as the CAA have never set a number.