I had wished I had never bought my drone. Nothing wrong with my Mini 3 Pro, it is simply the environment I fly in in Gloucestershire.
First, the numerous ‘No Fly’ zones in place, some are outdated. I produce video films of shipping at the Port of Sharpness, the G&S Canal and Gloucester Docks, plus the River Severn. Take the Port of Sharpness and across the Severn, Lydney Harbour, both covered by a ‘No Fly’ zone linked to Berkeley Power station, long closed down and encased in thick concrete. Both Sharpness and Lydney are miles from the redundant power station. The same goes for the redundant Oldbury Power station, further down the Severn.
More seriously is the anti-social behaviour I am suffering each time I fly. Two weeks ago, I was attacked by a nasty boat owner on the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal. That was really serious, luckily my kit and myself survived to tell the tale. Is it me … each time I remove my drone from the bag someone nearby will object to drones in general.
Today another incident. Just me, a man and his wife on the bank of the Severn at Arlingham Passage. I am sat on a seat away from them flying my drone out across the Severn when he suddenly shouts at me to stop flying. I questioned his logic, but he continued to rant loudly threatening to smash up my kit. As he stood up to carry out his threat he slipped and fell down the bank. He was lucky as there was a strong incoming tide racing by. Fortunately for me a young couple witnessed all of this, when I said I was packing in flying the drone they said not too as they enjoy seeing aerial films created by them.
The footage I took today looks good so will carry on, but do we need this hassle?
I hope you reported this to the Police?
There is no such thing as a No Fly Zone… 
Only flight restriction zones, permission to fly there is all you need and the clubs very own dronescene has most if not all of the contact details that you will need to seek said permission. 
Thanks for that tip. I watched an interesting film by Geeksvana on this subject which got me thinking I could fly. However yesterday a dock employee at Sharpness warned me that the local farmers have ganged up against drones flying on the foreshore of the Severn and the police came recently to warn off a drone pilot. No doubt the police were ignorant of the rules too.
Yes and Canal & River Trust, who incidentally have warned there staff and volunteers not to work on the towpath of the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal, dressed in their official tee shirts, when alone. They too get threats mad against them!
Probably didn’t have the correct permissions.
Crown estate and foreshore actually grant open access permissions for drone pilots to use their land. again their foreshore boundaries are also marked on Drone Scene
Whist that is correct there’s also a caveat to that…
" On occasions, third parties such as Government agencies or local authorities may restrict the flying of UAD’s on Crown Estate land. We therefore recommend checking with the appropriate authority to ensure that no such restrictions are in place."
Interestingly I never knew the CE don’t permit flying on the Crown Foreshore and Estuaries during the hours of darkness.
I’d say don’t give in to them. I must be fortunate as I’ve never had any bad interactions since my first flight back in 2017. I was up at Caernarfon Castle yesterday, flying from the council car park, plenty of people around and the only interaction was an inquisitive couple who wanted to see what I could see.
Pinch of salt anything he says, has anyone ever seen him fly a drone ?
Has anyone actually seen him? Is he an AI character planted by the CAA?
Daddy pig 
To be honest either I’m very lucky or due to flying in locations when it’s early in morning or during the hours of darkness (even coastal) I’ve never had a run in with angry people. Just because of few interactions with people who “think” they know the rules, carry a copy of the rules with you and doing a bit of pre flight checks to see if everything is ok to fly from, you should be ok. Think you’ve just been unfortunate with clashes
I’m clearly lucky to live in a more tolerant area. Your guy at Arlington who fell over was prolly drunk, which is a different issue of course, and my experiences with cycling have shown me that the police have a rather tenuous grasp of the finer points of the law (I was once booked for speeding by a cop who did not realised that bikes are not required to have speedometers; unconditional discharge).
I’m new to the game, but nobody has interfered with or questioned my activities yet. The advice seems to be:-
.Stay away from people. People are bad, m’kay. I believe that the rule for drones over 250g is to maintain 50m except for people with you and involved in the flying, such as observers for fpv flying, and what I’ve done so far is to observe that for take-off despite my Mini 2 SE being under the 250g limit. If the 50m perimetar is intruded upon while I am flying, well, hey ho, but you might want to give folks a headsup when you are landing if they are very close…
.Think about your site. Drone Assist is something I have found useful here, showing FRZ in red, temporary FRZ NOTAMs in blue (we’ve had two in Cardiff over the last week for the Taylor Swift and Foo Fighters gigs at the Millenium, sorry, Principality, and another one on Friday for a laser show), and areas to be aware of such as parks, schools, hospitals, SSSIs and the like in yellow. Also hazards such as railways, pylons, windfarms, and NOTAMs such as cranes. A lot of this is common sense but I am sure some people see the yellow areas and think flying is prohibited; it isn’t, but it shows areas to take extra care in. You don’t want to be buzzing nesting birds in an SSSI, and as well as Slimbridge in your area the entire Severn Estuary is an SSSI and an important feeding area for migrating birds. If you were a chaffinch or a sparrow, seeing a drone in the sky out of the corner of your eye will trigger an instinctive ‘beware, raptor’ response and hovering looks just like a kestrel (the old name for these is 'windhoverl, which could prevent nesing birds going out for food and lead to failure to raise chicks. Horses are to be avoided as well, easily spooked by prop noise.
.Think about your timing. A local park or canal walk might be crowded on a summer weekend, especially now when we have some decent weather after a long spell of carp, but quieter on a weekday afternoon. Golden hour for filming, but vacate the premises quickly after before the drunks and junkies move in. Sporting events, gigs, fairs, markets, &c that attract crowds are to be avoided.
.FRZ are FRZ; don’t fly in them. Airports are clearly somewhere you should stay away from, prisons are going to attract attention, and the military’s business is their own.
.Nobody owns airspace but the CAA is responsible for controlling it. But you will need landowners’, local authority, NT, & similar permission to take off and land your drone from them. Overflying them is grey-area legal but you must comply with privacy and nuiscance rules, and it is the compainant view that decides if privacy has been invaded or nuiscance caused, not yours. Again, the 50m rule is probably a good general guide, and has the advantage of being out of range of water cannon fired from drunken barbecue gardens.
.Da roolz is da roolz, by which I mean the CAA ‘Drone Code’. Plenty of criticism of drone hobbyists, and the meeja love to exploit it. Sum fule posted a flight video on FB and got himself fined recently, went up to 5,000’ and flew fpv for about 4 miles, clearly with no VLOS. There was press reporting about drone flying on the Mach Loop, a low level RAF training route in Mid-Wales, popular among photographers and aircraft enthusiasts as the show is spectacular; fast jets being hurled around at insane heights and speeds having to Luke Skywalker it through narrow valleys (actually, Luke had it easy bombing the Death Star, he only had to fly in a straight line at the same height above the ground). It is legal to fly drones here, the RAF do not own the airspace, and publish a timetable of when they will fly there, but this is not always kept to and good weather will provoke impromtu training flights just as bad weather will see them called off. Now, these things come at you from around a corner in the mountains about a quarter mile away at not far short of Mach 1, so you don’t hear them coming and you only have a few seconds LOS on them anyway. I would not want my drone to be anywhere near this sort of acitvity; no way would I be able to get out of the way quickly enough and even if it’s just a ‘near miss’ there must be considerable turbulence behind these jets, sounds like a guaranteed crash for your drone to me! And I don’t want to be responsible for a fighter jet-shaped burned patch on the side of Cader Idris even if the crew managed to bail out in the two or three seconds availabe to them. There are notices in the car parks requesting drone flyers not to do it, but there will almost certainly be those who know better.
Those who know better are more likely not to be participants here, but their activites rebound on us anyway. Hey ho, life’s a bitch and then you die, but try not to make it worse!
If challenged, and as I say I haven’t been yet, I would try to avoid confrontation and show my GA ID card, which has my CAA Flyer ID number and other information on it. This refers the complainant to the CAA to report me, a situation where I want to know that I’m in the right. The CAA are not to be messed with; chum of mine has a part-ownership of a light a/c he keeps at Swansea Airport, and one of the partners was fined £5k and his license suspended for 6 months because he’ d taken a golf club mate up for a jolly, and the golf club mate had taken photos which he used to promote his caravan park on Gower. CAA decided this was commercial activity, and came down heavy despite his not even being aware that this had happened. The CAA is momma, don’ f*ck wid momma!
My opinion, find some other locals to fly with sometimes.
#SafetyInNumbers
These trumped up “officials” back off when they’re outnumbered.
Then you’ll build your confidence to fly anywhere you’re legally allowed.
Although you can
DroneScene is your friend for all the information you will ever need.
As with all these things a little knowledge can be of more danger than use (especially to a Karen)
Agree with @milkmanchris - With permission granted, FRZs are very safe to fly in and it’s usually very easy to get permission too. Drone Scene has the phone number of every ATC for easy access.
Most, if not all, ATCs are very accommodating to us drone users. We get so few negative reports of dealing with an ATC that I can’t even find a bad post here on the forum about it.
I must say I’ve been rather lucky here. I do a fair bit around the area, and most people have actually been rather engaging about the drone. They love the photos I take, and I’ve done a few 360 ones of Wareham Dorset and shared to the community. I did have an issue with one person who thought I was watching him as clearly my drone was hovering but also spinning and moving to take the 360. I explained what I was doing and he went off happy
He called and asked me to remove the photo of which I declined as I checked the photo and yes could see him, no he wasn’t identifiable, and no “you couldn’t see what he was doing which may have been questionable”. Never heard anything back.
Living near Swanage Railway, I thought I was going to have the worst issues with the train spotters taking camera photos there. I flew out of their way, and most actually engaged with me and were interested in the photos I was taking.
It’s a great hobby to be into, I’m now looking at the Avata 2 and currently heading towards obtaining my A2 Licence. Don’t give it up mate based on a few people. Some of us need to fly to keep peace of mind.
He’s one of the auditors. I’d actually love him, if that turned out to be true!
Well Sadden by Your Story , There’s A Lot of Sad People out There in the world ,and Not Just Drone Flying Its The Way Small Minded People Act ,
Wishing well ,As The British Would Say Keep Your Chin Up ,
Kind Regards , Alex Yorkston North London , ( DJI Pro 4 DragonFly )
Sounds horrid
I live locally and looking to learn where is good and bad
Is Minch Common ok as long as no animals or crowds ?