Irresponsible ' drone' retailers

[Former Member]

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[MattyB]

Membership of the BMFA is not mandatory to fly models, and they don't author the ANO, make laws or enforce them. Their handbook is a set of guidelines, not a list of rules. Based on that is is very hard to see how they can be considered to govern all model flying in the U.K., whatever it says on their website. They are though the best placed organisation to represent the sport of model flying when negotiating with the likes of the CAA or EASA, purely because they are the largest and they have a mixed, inclusive membership made up of all aspects of the hobby, including drone/multirotor pilots.

Edited By MattyB on 19/04/2017 19:53:24

[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

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[Martin Harris - Moderator]

No argument that they are the representative and governing body for national and international competitions...but John and his club are free to use their guidance in flying matters - or not - as they see fit within the law of the land - he is NOT governed by the BMFA in this respect.

Governance: the activity of governing a country or controlling a company or an organization; the way in which a country is governed or a company or institution is controlled

His club is governed by the requirements of membership laid down by the BMFA such as all members being BMFA members, for example.

[Former Member]

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[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Nope John's responsible for his own well being, any mistakes he makes (not that he do's) he will take full responsibility for, any advice offered from any quarter will be considered appropriately. Any "governance" must be via £50 club fee or the "law" of the land.

John...anti "governance party..vote June 8th

[Former Member]

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[avtur]

This conversation is fascinating and clearly demonstrates an enthusiasm to deal with irresponsible use of drones, which is great. However, has anyone tried to step back and look at this from the point of view of someone outside our hobby, with perhaps no interest in it but simply wants to buy and operate a drone.

Perhaps such a person might just be tempted use Google to find out about operating a drone safely “how to fly a drone safely”. Having just done such a search there was no mention of the BMFA in the first six pages of results. If for some reason this would-be drone flyer happens to pick up on the existence of the BMFA and if they go the BMFA website and enter drone into the search box they will see pages of results which are very difficult to make any sense of, none of which points to the right information. If, however you enter ‘multi rotor’ you will eventually find a page a very detailed information, so that’s great, the information is in there somewhere but it requires a very intense search to find it. And when you do find it the presentation of the information is not good, paragraph after paragraph of wordy text, hardly inviting.

By contrast the first two hits on the Google page are the CAA and Drone Aware, both lead quickly to good graphic displays of all the basic requirements, very well presented, engaging to read and easy to understand. This is exactly the information my would-be drone flyer needs. Now someone has clearly put an lot of thought and resources into creating this web presence and that being the case I think the best course of action would be to point people towards these good resources that already exist.

I’m not knocking the BMFA, far from it, and I want them to carry on working for the benefit of model flyers. But they are not set up to deal with the problems presented by the rapid expansion we have seen in the availability of, and demand for, drones. Others organisations are way ahead in their approach to the problem, I believe we should encourage people to take up that offering of help and advice.