I have owned my Dji Mini 3 pro for the past 3 years and I have to admit, I was and still am nervous when flying the drone, mainly because of jobs worth types, interfering while I am flying, or crashing the thing and losing it all together. But my question really relates to VLS, visual line of sight! I think my eye sight is reasonably good. I wear glasses and my drone is shrink raped in bright orange and yellow plastic, so it’s much more visable to the eye, my eye! Having watched several videos on here and other sites, it seems blatantly obvious to me that the operater has not got VLS of his drone. Not all videos, I hasten to add, but a few some that I have watched.
With hand on heart I have to admit I am guilty, some times. How many members are willing to say the same? Am I right to say that it is part of drone law?
Having watched some more video, I have now gained a little more confidence. Oh, last question, is there any other way of loading drone videos on the site without using You Tube?
The forum also supports videos uploaded to Vimeo.com
On a public web site that’s accessible to anyone?
Yes.
That’s a rather large assumption
There are some factors to consider:
The country the flight was taking place in
– And the airspace regulations there
The physical size of the drone
– I can comfortably see a DJI Inspire two miles away
The eyesight of the operator
The number, and locations, of any spotters they are using
Any BVLOS permissions the operator might have in place for that flight
Considerations aside, some people will of course be flying BLVOS illegally. If they choose to put post those videos online then 1) More fool them and 2) Perhaps you could educate them on the error of their ways
There are a lot of threads on this subject already, try a few searches
VLOS is a contentious subject for sure. I think we are all very guilty of having lost our drone in the sky be it for a min or two when we glance down to check a warning on the display or change a setting etc and we look up and we don’t zero in on the drone right away. This is unavoidable I feel and I expect most, if not all, of us have had this issue.
I think what your on about are the guys who are flying miles away. In some countries this is OK - cent for the life of me think why it should be if a Police / Ambulance chopper was in the area how do these guys know they are not a risk ? Crazy that one.
I do feel in general the VLOS rule is more to do with mitigating risk. If you know where in the sky your drone is and you’re aware of the area around it and are keeping eyes and ears open for other aircraft in area then your doing the right thing, as it’s not possible to be 100% to the letter of the regulations here.
In general I do not worry about what others do, and do my best to be as safe a pilot as I can be within the rules that governor our flights and 99% of pilots on this site I am sure subscribe to the same ideology on this one.
As with most things, some people don’t follow the rules.
I watched someone operating a drone last week. They were standing next to a “No Drones” sign on private property and I know for certain that they did not maintain VLOS during the flight.
The drone was flown beyond bushes that they could not see over, down a cliff face out of sight and into a valley so far away that I could no longer see it.
It didn’t really matter to the operator that they lost VLOS as they were looking at the screen on the controller the whole time. The only time they looked at the drone was during TOAL. The flight lasted about 20 minutes.
Did I challenge the operator? No, I didn’t want a confrontation.
I could quite easily see my old Mini 2 at least 500 - 600 yards away over open land, but I also lost it when it was 50 feet away from me (directly in front of me) when there were trees behind it. Fighter jets are painted in “low visibility grey” so they can’t be seen easily, so why do drone manufacturers make them out of the same colour plastic?
Any drone pilot, anywhere in the world, that tells you they have had 100% VLOS at all times is talking shite. End of. It is completely impossible to use our drones for their intended purpose and maintain VLOS. I have never purposely flown blind, but yes there have been ocasions where I have needed to look at the screen for various reasons. And on looking back up, my drone is not quite where I thought it was, but a quick flick of sticks up or down and there she is. I do a quick risk assessment before every flight, one of the first things I ask myself is “what would happen here if I lost VLOS and things go Pete Tong?” More often than not the answer is, “fly into the side of that hill and have to walk accross a muddy field to retrieve it”. I’d be more careful in built up areas, close to airfields, prisons, town centres etc. I personally think it needs to be changed from VLOS to under control. And as for being able to tell the orientation? That’s a big pile of poo as well.
Absolutely. I reckon if my drone is 50ft up in the air, the risk to manned aircraft is next to non existent. If an air ambulance / police helicopter approaches I’m certainly going to hear it long before I can see it. Giving me plenty of time to either return to home or move safely away. ( I almost always fly within a few hundred metres away from me ( often much closer )
Commercial pilots. drivers, train drivers, and others are required to keep a ‘good lookout’ at all times, but cannot possibly do this because flying aeroplanes, driving road vehicles, and driving trains requires frequent checks on the instruments for vital information (HUD tech is improving this). The VLOS rule is the same; surely safety is enhanced if you glance away to the screen to check on battery level, sattelites locked, signal strength &c. DJI Fly will give you spoken verbal warnings and bells as well, but you ideally need to react to problems before they develop that far.
I treat VLOS as being able to see the drone; obviously if it is obscured by trees or buildings or geography it isn’t V or any other sort of LOS. The size of my drones means I find them hard to pick out against a sky background at distances that would challenge the signal viability (one of them is a Mavic Mini, wifi signal, now that’ll show you what LOS is, even leaves will upset it!). And as has been said, even harder to pick out even at short range below the skyline. Strobon helps.
But, if there is nothing blocking my VLOS but I can’t see the drone, am I flying legal? If I lose the drone after glancing away or framing a shot, I can hover and not fly any further in any direction until I’ve found it again; does this satisfy CAA requirements?
Been doing this for nearly 6 months now, and still a lot of learning curve to climb, but my confidence is growing. I hover anyway quite a lot in my flights to set up and frame shots, and it is not much of an extension to hover occasionally to relocate the drone. I have two methods to assist in this, the view from the drone camera, and the map on the screen, and using these can usually locate the little bugger in two or three seconds.
I contend that this is within the spirit if not the exact letter of the CAA rules, and that obeying them to the exact letter cannot be done, any more than you can drive a car without looking at the speedo. My intention is to fly within the rules as far as is possible and as safely as possible.
The CAA have known that drone pilots need to refer to their controller screens in order to be effective for years.
Back in 2019 (following a number of complaints no doubt) the CAA actually had to publish an exemption for ‘commercial’ pilots operating under a permission, in order to allow them to look at the controller screen! (ORS4 No1297) - As long as they had a ‘competent’ observer with them, who was watching the UAV when they were looking at the screen.
Lots of arguments for/against. I would add (apologies if I’ve missed somone mentioning this) that slapping on 1 or 2 high-power strobes would also help immensely. Had a quick look at CAA site and they jsut seem to give an arbitrary distancec of c… 500m (plus the usual 120m altitude) ?
In the case of my drones, both sub-250g minis, strapping more than one Strobon would almost certainly take me a gram or so over the limit, not that this would stop me doing it if I thought it was necessary. I use a single Strobon at present, and find it very effective in helping me find the drone if I’ve looked at the screen, but for now best practice is probably to put the drone into a hover and note it’s position before looking away.
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