Yep, the UK government have effectively shot themselves in the foot with all this nonsense and have now forced people to go down the road of non-compliance whether they want to or not. I would expect the number of pilots who are registered with the CAA to plumet over the next few years. Some of those will be due to people jacking in the hobby completely (whether that be FPV of camera drone pilots) due to all of the ridiculous bureaucracy, and others will be people who will just let their existing registrations lapse and go "underground" by continuing to fly by stealth under the radar which means the CAA then won't have any kind of reasonable data about who and how many drone fliers there actually are in the UK.

Sean did have a Q&A session about the CAA consultation, but disappointingly it was for Geeksvana YouTube channel members only so I'm not able to view it. If anyone is a member of the channel then you might be able to watch a replay of the live stream at the link below...

https://youtu.be/gduvLUlDhb4?t=0

Sean did a livestream yesterday (link below) going over all the important points on the UK CAA Remote ID proposals. It's quite a long stream at 1 hour 19 minutes but I watched it on double speed to get through it quicker.

Not only are the CAA bringing in Remote ID but it looks like they are also looking to tighten up on the enforcement side of things. We all know that police resourcing in the UK is creaking at the seams, but it's still not good news to hear that they want to clamp down on and penalise people just for having a bit of fun with a hobby they enjoy. I think we are going to have some dark days ahead of us with all of these new regulations. Hopefully all the hardcore pilots can hang in there and ride out the  storm which seems to be coming.

I guess I will be joining the resistance then.

Snow does it mention if it only applies to flying out in the open? I know if you fly inside a building, you don't have to jump through all the hoops currently.

(01-Dec-2023, 03:33 AM)Pathfinder075 Wrote: Snow does it mention if it only applies to flying out in the open?  I know if you fly inside a building, you don't have to jump through all the hoops currently.

Like the FAA in the USA, the CAA in the UK have no control or jurisdiction over the airspace inside an enclosed space and never will, so as long as you fly completely inside a building then none of the UAS regulations apply including all of this new nonsense they are trying to implement.

We were discussing this last night, almost everybody agreed that for the most part, everybody is already breaking the law by not utilising a spotter, so it’s just going to push the hobby further underground and most people will just say no point in complying with any of it let alone trying now as to comply is practically impossible.

I hope, is it Simon? From FPVUK can negotiate some exemptions for us, I have no doubt the BMFA will try to throw drone users under the bus again, they certainly tried to in the last round of consultations with their responses, by god do I hate having to be a member of that organisation, they should not have the power over their affiliate clubs to demand BMFA membership from their members, I used to be involved in another sport a long time ago and it was completely different in that, as long as you had the correct license and insurance, you didn’t necessarily need to be a member of the organising club to participate, just one of the various organisations scattered about - it should be the same here, FPVUK members should be welcomed at BMFA clubs and vice verca, not doing so only harms the hobby imho.

Sorry for the rant but this all just really gets on my wick.

Maybe Simon will do, I don't know though, he is one guy against a runaway national organisation. But you are right that no one follows the rules as is and for the most part there is no enforcement for FPV. Because it would mean police officers having to go to out of the way places for little to no return. It's not financially viable to tie up two officers for maybe an hour or two to maybe go to some place that's out of the way, possibly a good long walk from any road and if they have id's, then it's not a pay day. Especially when you have real crimes taking part that need to be attended by those officers. So enforcing this sort of stuff is going to be bottom of the pile pretty much forever. The DJI lot are easy to enforce. They fly slow drones and tend to stick to legal TOAL locations that don't involve trudging down miles of tracks. FPV tend to fly wherever is quiet and away from people, which is often off the beaten track.

I won't be renewing my Op Id and Fly Id next year. i only did them this year because of one specific event that i won't be attending next year. Not sure I will bother with the FPVUK membership either, since not having the two id's would likely invalidate the insurance anyway.

Folks who fly in rural areas (where there are no people) will likely not have 
any problems. Well, as long as they don't go posting videos that can be 
incriminating. 

(01-Dec-2023, 03:50 PM)Pathfinder075 Wrote: I won't be renewing my Op Id and Fly Id next year.  i only did them this year because of one specific event that i won't be attending next year.  Not sure I will bother with the FPVUK membership either, since not having the two id's would likely invalidate the insurance anyway.

If you aren't following ALL of the CAA rules and regulations and are involved in an insurance related incident then your FPVUK insurance will be deemed null and void anyway, and any insurance claim will very likely be refused if they find out you were in breach of any of the regulations (which includes flying without a spotter). Also, if you are breaching ANY of the regulations then any Article 16 benefits will also be null and void, so not applicable to you as a pilot. For most FPV pilots, being a member of the FPVUK or BFMA for the insurance and Article 16 benefits is almost pointless unless you are flying 100% by the book.

I've been a member of FPVUK for a few years now and I'm beginning to wonder why I'm even bothering with that. Initially it was so I could do the theory test directly through the FPVUK without having to register with the CAA for that, and also that in the event of any potential confrontation I could just wave my FPVUK membership card in that person's face (with my name on it redacted of course) so they would hopefully just Fk off and leave me be, but it you were to flash a fake membership card to Joe public they would probably be none the wiser. I might just let my FPVUK membership lapse when it comes up for renewal next year.

If you have a CAA Operator ID then that only lasts for 1 year so you can fairly quickly let that lapse and shed that particular registration, but a CAA Flyer ID is valid for 5 years so getting rid of that could take some time. Unfortunately the CAA duped a lot of people into registering which means they now already have record and a marker against those people as being capable drone pilots, even after any registrations might lapse because I would put money on the fact that your information won't get hard-deleted from their databases once your registrations have expired. It will just remain there and you will simply just get flagged as inactive pilot.

Knowing someone was previously registered as a drone pilot and proving they were actively flying on a particular day are two completely different things, I’ve had enough “official” people turn up on my doorstep demanding this and that, that they would be told to get lost pretty quick and have the door slammed in their face.

I doubt I’ll renew either, if I renew next year its in August so would likely only cover 2-3 months worth of outdoor flying before we move to indoors where the CAA can do one. As it presently stands I’ll probably have to stand down from the club committee (can’t have a committee member not be registered) and sell all my outdoor gear and just fly indoors from then on. We’ve had three committee members step down within the last year because of this shit and other stuff so good job CAA, your campaign against aviation seems to be working as planned.

I only got mine for a very specific event with a bunch of people that insisted on some hoop jumping. In the end the whole thing fell through. I don't subscribe to their club (probably narrows it down to who they are, not that I will name them) and tbh I like to fly solo, unless I somehow find a partner in crime (which might be very close to the truth the way things are going). Sometimes it would be cool to fly with others and as it stands there are still a couple of people I talk to from the other lot that live close to me, so occasional meet ups in the middle of nowhere are still possible.

Anyway, if anyone comes knocking, I shall be sure to tell them to come back with a warrant or go bother someone else, in my nice, polite, Northerly way.

Shame you’re a northerner (not in that way) as we have quiet an active FPV club down south, sometimes we even get brave and go out gorilla whooping like botgrinder.

Hah, I've been a southerner. I have lived in places as obscure as Horsham and Redruth over the years, plus a stint in South Wales. Living in Horsham nuked my northern accent when i was a kid. Living in Cornwall taught me I didn't want to live in Cornwall ever again.

I've been meaning to head South for a bit and do some of the southern bandos. Looks like it will be next year, the ways are going now.

Apart from the old Epsom hospital I didn’t know we had any bandos down south.

I would think living in Horsham would be enough to nuke any desire to live anywhere south of Watford lol (no I’m not in Horsham, but not far from it).

TBH, Horsham wasn't that bad and also this was mid eighties. Crawley on the other hand. LOL. I have some good memories from Horsham and mostly bad memories from Crawley (mostly my first secondary school).

Haven't been to either place in the last 30+ years, but almost did 2 years back when i dropped someone at Gatwick.

As to bandos, join some of the FB FPV Groups. I am on a couple and three people posted up different google map collections of bandos. I'm sure one of them had some places south of Crawley. I know one had mostly Hampshire and around London, plus a bit over towards Bristol, which i'm guessing would be pointless for you. But the other two were more spread out. My links don't work for one of the two i grabbed. The only one I have is the London/Hampshire one. :/

(24-Nov-2023, 10:34 AM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: Sean is going to go through filling in the response on one of the upcoming livestreams on his Geeksvana channel so I'll post a link to that on the forum once he's done so. He is a camera drone flyer though which means that some of the questions/answers aren't going to apply for FPV, so for those you can just put "N/A" as an answer, but for the others it might at least give some idea of what sort of reasonable response to put down.

A few hours ago Sean did a live stream walkthrough of the responses he put to some of the most important questions in the CAA consultation. A replay link for that live stream is below for anyone interested. You can watch it on 2x speed if you want to save some time...