Latest CAA Update

[Don Fry]

At the risk of being accused of being a moderator, there is a lot of combined knowledge on this site. I don't think it is a good idea to share any part of it in speculating on how to blow up an oil refinery.

Model aircraft are difficult. Stick to a challenge.

[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

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[Jonathan W]

I'm sure that the nutty professor who sat next to Dave Phipps in the Commons Committee could tell us!

[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

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[Chris Berry]

Posted by Steve J on 13/09/2019 13:06:12:

Posted by Jason-I on 13/09/2019 10:14:28:

Also quoting the Gatwick drone incident again as if it was fact, yet still no evidence that a drone was ever involved.

I know that I am going to regret asking this, but if there wasn't a 'drone', what do you think happened at Gatwick?

A mass hallucination by the 115 people who reported see a 'drone'?

A conspiracy to shutdown the airport for some unknown reason?

Steve

The same weekend the ‘incident’ occurred at Gatwick, there was an air traffic computer malfunction at Birmingham which affected arrivals and departures. I wonder if that same system is employed at Gatwick?

Heathrow and Stanstead have suffered similar glitches in recent years also.

[conrad taggart]

Posted by MattyB on 13/09/2019 12:25:00:

Posted by conrad taggart on 13/09/2019 10:07:57:

Strange how elections focus the mind ... the last thing you need to do is piss of a lot of your potential supporters

A lot of potential supporters? Err, not really... If we aggregate all of the members of the national associations together that might be 45,000, and that's probably generous. Even so that would represent only ~0.07% of the population of the UK (based on 66m inhabitants), or ~70 voters for each of the 650 constituencies. Not exactly massive numbers!

This has nothing to do with any upcoming election; if it were we'd probably have seen more draconian suggestions being put forward to try and hoover up the votes of outraged Daily Fail readers whose xmas holidays were impacted by the (seemingly imaginary) drones at Gatwick. No, it's mostly just a slice of timely good luck (plus good work by the associations and their members in the campagn) that a minister has been appointed that has some actual knowledge of the space, and one who is prepared to stand up for the rights of a minority sport such as ourselves.

Edited By MattyB on 13/09/2019 12:26:55

An election would have about half those number of votes and it could be tightly fought with a few percent or even less making a difference. If you are a party that is supposed to be against silly rules (the EU so called rules on Bananas etc. ) then the last thing thing you want to be portrayed as is something equally or more stupid, particularly among or largely among your own base of supporters ..

[Peter Jenkins]

Conrad, I rather doubt that 45,000 potential voters will be in the same constituency. They are spread all over the UK significantly diluting this number. If we assume they are evenly spread across 600 constituencies then the number drops to around 80 per constituency. Agreed that they are probably not evenly spread but we don't know one way or another. Furthermore, since we are not all of the same political persuasion the number is further diluted.

[conrad taggart]

Posted by Peter Jenkins on 16/09/2019 00:01:15:

Conrad, I rather doubt that 45,000 potential voters will be in the same constituency. They are spread all over the UK significantly diluting this number. If we assume they are evenly spread across 600 constituencies then the number drops to around 80 per constituency. Agreed that they are probably not evenly spread but we don't know one way or another. Furthermore, since we are not all of the same political persuasion the number is further diluted.

I didn't say they were ... The only thing most politicians care about is votes and how they are perceived - if you can have 40,000 votes or even 400 extra votes and be perceived as less stupid and be seen to listen - why wouldn't you take it ... People get moved on when they become a liability / unpopular at key times and they were certainly falling into that category

[Don Fry]

Conrad, why not take the easy conspiracy theory. Failing Grailing and Vere were totally, serially, and consistently useless. And from that point, if you employed an idiot you get an improvement.

In this case we have a new minister who is a person with a decent track record however.

Edited By Don Fry on 16/09/2019 07:20:26

[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

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[Don Fry]

Steve, it is not the job of a politition to sign off recommendations. They direct the civil service where policy is going. Then sign off, if up to standard. Mind, caviat coming, Grayling has a consistent track record of not spotting non starters,and signing off the weird results of doctrine over pragmatism. I'm not blaming him, just pointing out, Failing is a nickname awarded by his fellow Conservative MPs.

Now I agree, if the EU had handled the issue of drones/model aircraft differently and more realistically, we would not have all the problems we have. But they aren't the people doing the laws. National governments are.

Compare and contrast my regime in France, aimed at integrating us into a system, by negotiation. No costs, easy software, a nice free online map telling me if I can fly where I am standing, and an adoption of transponders when light and cheap, not before.

I'm not saying I am out of the woods yet, but at least I am OK for the present.

[Former Member]

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[Martin_K]

Posted by Steve J on 16/09/2019 10:37:37:

..... There is a free online map (and app) in the UK.....

Steve

Re. the Drone Safety Map.

Having looked at the area with which I am familiar, i.e. around Heathrow, I was about to post saying that the map was wrong! FRZ too small. I then noticed what is to my sight a very faint redish circle plus runway extensions, extending beyond the obvious (to me) orange circle.

Two questions for other forum members;

Can others clearly see the red highlighted areas? (Yes, I do have defective colour vision).

Can anyone find a key on the map to explain what the different colour codes mean?

[Former Member]

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[Nigel R]

...deleted, veering into politics there.

Edited By Nigel R on 16/09/2019 11:39:50

[Nigel R]

re: the map, yes it works fine for me. just clicking on a coloured region brings up an explanation. An area with two overlapping coloured spaces results in an explanation for both spaces being displayed.

[Martin_K]

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I picked a bad region to look at. Heathrow is within a much larger red tinted area so you are looking at a redish bit within a red zone!

Some of the explanations seen when clicked are weird, they talk of 'increased risk' rather than fly or no fly.

I will have to study it when I have more time.

[Chris Berry]

The map is all very pretty but doesn’t give any information. For example near me is an area in blue marked as navigation warning and an area in yellow, area of increased risk.

 

I know both areas very well and have flown in both for many years. I’m not sure I understand the reasoning.

Edited By Chris Berry on 16/09/2019 13:56:03

[Former Member]

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[Martin_K]

To interpret this map you do need to understand the different classifications employed, especially where they overlap. This works where the map maker has used existing terms which have known meanings, e.g. ATZ Aerodrome Traffic Zone, FRZ Flight Restriction Zone.

It seems mis-leading to me with "Areas of increased risk". Is there any such aeronautical term?

For example, a field I fly in has London Heli-Route H3 overhead, clicking the yellow highlight gives;

There is an increased risk of encountering aerial vehicles at this location

You will definitely see helicopters but there is no increased risk to flight as the manned helicopters are at much higher altitude. If vertical separation is 'risky' the whole basis of air traffic control is flawed.

[Nigel R]

"It seems mis-leading to me with "Areas of increased risk". Is there any such aeronautical term?"

No idea.

As for the yellow areas, there is one of these shown near me, where "gas venting" is taking place, which I believe is mains gas pipework that apparently (so says pprune) can form plumes of explosive gas that reach 5000ft on a dead calm day.

[John Bisset]

An interesting but quite strange map, thank you Stephen. The detail varied quite a lot across the map. Clearly they have used much more detailed information for towns & cities, though some villages up in our area get poorer coverage, understandably.

For those smaller villages, although the position of school grounds is mapped with yellow caution in random cases no ground detail is shown at the level of zoom required to get the caution areas to show up - rendering them both hilarious & pointless! Nevertheless, a very impressive level of detail overall - in some cases out in the open country, a thin yellow line turns out to indicate where the high voltage lines run - hopefully obvious to anyone on the ground, but nice to see.

I'm not at all sure about the red and yellow areas around airfields though. The civil airfield zones are straightforward, wherever they com down to ground level. In some cases the 'inner' red areas appear to show stubs where someone thinks runway approaches are. In several cases they are wrong, or way out of date, by decades. The military fields yellow and red zones don't match either ATZ or MATZ configurations and locations.

Small civil field and glider fields have small yellow zones shown, though some sites which are not in use are shown and curious;y one very rarely used heliport location has a large zone than the highly active light aircraft field zones nearby. Curious.

A mixture of very impressive detailed information and some oddly out of date assumptions, it seems. I wonder especially where the latter comes from! Do we know who promulgated that map?