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The Gov't, CAA, BMFA & UAV legislation thread


Nigel R
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Separate parts from the BMFA News update;

The Queen’s Speech of 14th October announced the ‘Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill’

We will be working with the CAA towards the implementation of the EU regulations in June 2020

Are these two statements referring to the same piece of UK law?

Do we need to wait for a new act to go through parliament before finding out under what terms Privately Built models of 250g and above can be flown?

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Many thanks to the BMFA for their hard work.

So my understanding and summary is as follows

1) Still an annual fee, but reduced to £9.00 instead of £16.50.

2) There is still a competency test but if you have a BMFA Achievement (such A or B certificate) then that counts instead and you don't have to do the test

3) For those without achievements, BMFA will be rolling out their own test, you can choose to do this one or the CAA one.

4) The £9.00 will be collected by the BMFA and passed onto the authorities. It has been agreed that payment can be deferred to align with BMFA renewal - rather than having to meet the November deadline

5) BMFA cannot accept payment unless you have achievements or have passed one of the competency tests.

My thoughts

a) shame it is not £5.00 but recognise the substantial discount

b) still not addressed the fears of what happens next year when the CAA realise that they haven't collected nearly enough money

c) the authorities recognise that the registration scheme will have little to no impact on unlawful operation

Cheers,

Nigel

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Posted by Martin_K on 23/10/2019 15:04:58:

Separate parts from the BMFA News update;

The Queen’s Speech of 14th October announced the ‘Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill’

We will be working with the CAA towards the implementation of the EU regulations in June 2020

Are these two statements referring to the same piece of UK law?

Do we need to wait for a new act to go through parliament before finding out under what terms Privately Built models of 250g and above can be flown?

The Queens Bill brings into force the legislation that we are discussing today. It has gone past committee stages, I believe that it is now just a formality

The EASA legislation comes into force mid 2020, the exact date hasn't been confirmed yet. I have been following this and it is very much in line with the CAA legislation. I wouldn't expect any changes

Remember the legislation covers other things besides Model flying. IMHO, it could have been very,very much worse. I think the BMFA (with support from the members following the call to action) have done an amazing job and should be congratulated. Once the registration hurdle is walked over I don't think we will see any significant changes in the way we fly or where we can fly.

Edited By Martyn K on 23/10/2019 17:04:22

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Remember the legislation covers other things besides Model flying. IMHO, it could have been very,very much worse. I think the BMFA (with support from the members following the call to action) have done an amazing job and should be congratulated. Once the registration hurdle is walked over I don't think we will see any significant changes in the way we fly or where we can fly.

Edited By Martyn K on 23/10/2019 17:04:22

Not too much to argue about with the above, but as we suspect, it'll more or less be business as usual, then is it not reasonable to assume that thirty thousand or so BMFA members and others will wake up and start asking "why are we mixed up with this in the first place?, what good is it doing us? and what's going to be done to change things"?

Aeromodellers are simply a useful innocent  target and have become a nice easy source of income to help finance the registration system and give it thirty thousand extra guaranteed members to boost numbers and give a veneer of legitimacy to the regs.

I assume this palava will be reviewed as time goes on, and when as most of us expect we are proved to have been wrongly put in a silly situation, we can expect some changes.

 

Edited By Cuban8 on 24/10/2019 08:58:05

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Posted by Steve J on 23/10/2019 17:20:10:
Posted by Nigel Heather on 23/10/2019 15:59:05:

c) the authorities recognise that the registration scheme will have little to no impact on unlawful operation

That isn't the primary driver. Commercial UAS operation are.

Yes, I know that, it says that in the main report.

But the point I was making was that when this was first announced it was very big on security, referring to the Gatwick incident. During the consultation they got a lot of “how on earth will this help” type of questions which of course they couldn’t answer. So at some point they have shifted their focus to commercial operation.

From a personal view, I feel that commercial registration should be a thing for commercial operators. And I’m pretty certain that commercial operators already have some form of registration - or is it the case at the moment that anyone can walk into PC World by a drone and operate it commercially as a business without any governance at all.

Cheers,

Nigel

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When CB radio was first legalised, all operators were supposed to get a licence - and it seemed like many did. Once the novelty had worn off, and CB usage dropped to almost zero, the licence was abandoned as "uneconomical" to collect.

Something very similar happened with RC licences, that once upon a time we were all required to buy for our transmitters.

I foresee something very similar happening with drone registration.

--

Pete

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One important thing missing from Nigel’s summary above is that the BMFA are not making registration a mandatory requirement, in other words you can still belong to the BMFA and not register (obviously this could mean illegal flying). I await the outcome of the BMFA’s consultations with the insurers regarding this point.

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Thread renamed to encompass all aspects....

Folks, as you can see, I was up in the night (catching a mouse the cat brought in) and made the mistake of checking my phone to see how Chelsea had done, catching the forum in the process and removing a thread with bad language.

Most threads like this go the same way, they start with good discussion, then the unhappy chaps drop by, we moderate, behind the scenes we issue formal warnings and, and.....

Andy Symons wrote a good piece in the last BMFA News about focussing on the positives and I think we all need to bring a sense of proportion to what we say. The BMFA are doing a good job in difficult circumstances and if as many of you know as much about politics as you say, you'd agree. Manny, Dave and Andy are trying to make sense of government while also facing a barrage of emails and calls from unhappy (and sometimes abusive) BMFA members. That they do this in a calm and professional manner with such good humour is very impressive indeed.

And, as someone once said.....

cartoon1.jpg

 

On with the discussion...........wink 2

Edited By David Ashby - Moderator on 24/10/2019 09:48:51

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Posted by Steve J on 24/10/2019 10:03:34:

Posted by Nigel Heather on 24/10/2019 08:56:57:

Posted by Steve J on 23/10/2019 17:20:10:

That isn't the primary driver. Commercial UAS operation are.

Yes, I know that, it says that in the main report.

So at some point they have shifted their focus to commercial operation.

This has always primarily been about enabling commercial UA operations. Read the Riga Declaration from 2015 (and the Warsaw, Helsinki and Amsterdam declarations from the following years) if you don't believe me.

Commercial operators are indeed already registered and pay a lot of money to the CAA for the privilege (see ORS5 358 for the charges).

Steve

Edited By Steve J on 24/10/2019 10:06:40


Thanks for the info.

So humour me. I’ll put my hands up, I didn’t read all the formal stuff, I got to hear about the registration from papers and news reports. They pretty much made it about security, about stopping things like the Gatwick incident - so that is what I took away.

So onto commercial operations - if it is already regulated why does it need another regulation scheme.

How does the registering of tens of thousands of people who mostly fly line of sight fixed wing from remote farm fields impact commercial operation?

Cheers,

Nigel

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