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

[ken anderson.]

i would say 100% Yes-have a word with him. Why let 1 person do what they want and put the site at risk for the other members who fly there.unfortunatley the times we live in are governed by rules which we have to adhere to.there will be many who will say do nowt...but many more who will say act.

ken anderson...ne...1..do nowt dept.

[Denis Watkins]

Posted by Nigel Heather on 04/12/2019 08:39:58:

Question

You are at your club, pretty empty, just you and another guy. The other guy is flying a quad using FPV so he doesn’t have line of sight. Even if he had a spotter, the quad is often flying behind structures that would block line of sight. He is a very competent flyer and doesn’t appear to be putting anyone else at risk given the location that we fly from.

Do you say anything?

Cheers,

Nigel

Over the years Nigel, I personally have caused many flyers to leave the club

Not by being impolite or being a jobsworth

But for looking for increased safety

Looking out for my self and others and our neighbours living nearby

You are not compromising safety

They are, and we feel awkward

We constantly revise what we should be doing

We are all better off without these competent great flyers who risk it for everyone

[Ron Gray]

If the (hypothetical) guy is a true club member then he won’t mind you saying anything.

[Don Fry]

Posted by Ron Gray on 04/12/2019 09:25:32:

If the (hypothetical) guy is a true club member then he won’t mind you saying anything.

[Jason-I]

Posted by ken anderson. on 04/12/2019 09:05:40:

i would say 100% Yes-have a word with him. Why let 1 person do what they want and put the site at risk for the other members who fly there.unfortunatley the times we live in are governed by rules which we have to adhere to.there will be many who will say do nowt...but many more who will say act.

ken anderson...ne...1..do nowt dept.

If there are no other members there, he is a competent flyer and he is not putting anybody at risk, then why not just leave the poor fellow alone to enjoy his hobby? Why do people always feel the need to say something when no harm is being done?

[Nigel Heather]

Posted by Ron Gray on 04/12/2019 09:25:32:

If the (hypothetical) guy is a true club member then he won’t mind you saying anything.

Personally, I would not have the confidence, nor the desire for confrontation, to say anything.

In the last year I have been at the field when there was about 6 of us, me and five quad pilots - they all seemed very competent and also very tight knit as if they are mates beyond just club membership.

If they fly today the way they flew then they would all be breaking the law. Even back then, I was uncomfortable with the way that some of them flew. Now that the new legislation is in force maybe they will change the way they fly but it is not something I would put money on.

But I didn’t tackle them on the subject and in all honesty if it happens this year I won’t either - I don’t have the confidence for a five on one confrontation.

Cheers,

Nigel

[Martin_K]

Posted by Nigel Heather on 04/12/2019 10:58:25:

.... five quad pilots - they all seemed very competent ....

If they fly today the way they flew then they would all be breaking the law

Competent pilots / breaking the law.

Are those two statements compatible?

[Ron Gray]

There are ways of saying things and there are ways of saying things! It’s not really confrontation it’s just an observation. If said person ignored your (justifiable) comment then it would indicate the sort of person you are dealing with and at that point you would have to decide to either repeat the comment or report the incident to club officials. Personally I would repeat the comment but then, whilst I don’t seek confrontation, It doesn’t really bother me (call me thick skinned / stupid / nutter).

However, I am against letting it go which is totally against JasonI’s post above.

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Denis Watkins]

No need to start WW3 Nigel

We have always flown " Line of Sight ", so the " Secretary " could assist by putting out an email, or your club form of communication, relating to what is expected of in the pilots box

Maybe have a word with a trusted colleague at your site, and see what they say

[GONZO]

Competent is generally used to define ones ability/skill as a pilot and should not be conflated with the CAA 's 'high jacking' of the term to describe their test.

Lets expand this theoretical incident to include a situation less 'black and white' where a member, who you know did not register as an operator, is flying a plane you suspect is 1/ slightly over the 250gm limit(small foamy) and 2/ could in your visual assessment be about 500gm(open structure vintage'ish). What do you do? Do you have some scales with you? Are you going to photograph the plane and club member then start a full inquiry with the club committee? Are you going to push the committee to start a process of weighing planes and keeping records? These possible situations are fraught with problems. From causing bad feeling when the accusation is wrong to possible physical confrontation.

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

I am afraid that if it was at my club field I would have to bring up the subject. However, I wouldn't just wade in but I would point out that he was breaking club rules as well as the law by flying FPV without a spotter and offer to stand with him as an observer. I would question his competence if he was unable to appreciate the dangers of flying out of line of site with the limited field of view and lack of visual acuity provided by a small screen or goggles. Threat detection by the human eye depends on detection in peripheral vision.

Our field is too valuable to the members as a whole to justify allowing one person to jeopardise its existance - and there's the wider point that the BMFA has cultivated a professional working relationship with the CAA based on the safety record and general responsibility of its clubs. Prosecutions of club members for flouting the regulations - and even worse, injuries to third parties - could only harm this.

If a person isn't willing to abide by the law and by club rules, it brings into question his suitability to continue to enjoy the members' facilities - happily this is not something often encountered and most people are willing to comply with reasonable rules when the reason for their application is explained.

Edited By Martin Harris on 04/12/2019 12:18:42

[Nigel Heather]

Posted by Martin_K on 04/12/2019 11:20:48:

Posted by Nigel Heather on 04/12/2019 10:58:25:

.... five quad pilots - they all seemed very competent ....

If they fly today the way they flew then they would all be breaking the law

Competent pilots / breaking the law.

Are those two statements compatible?

By competent, I meant that they were clearly very experienced and in my opinion had full control of their aircraft at all times. In my opinion they were flying safely and this was in a farmer’s field well away from other people and property.

Strictly speaking he would be breaking the law if he repeated it now because he did not have a spotter. But I suspect he would argue that he had a much better appreciation of the aircraft’s surrounding than any line of sight spotter would have. Don’t know if any of you have tried to follow a 250mm freestyle quad being flown around at distance, close to the ground, at speeds well over 50mph - I have and I find it vey difficult and that is when there is just one in the air.

I’m not excusing it, just exploring some of the practicalities. I think the law has been written in mind of the kid who has got a drone for his birthday and is flying around in a public park going behind trees with no idea what is behind them, rather than the hobbyist flying at the club field which is on a remote piece of private farmland where the pilot knows the landscape very well. But it is one law for all applied to the lowest common denominator.

Cheers,

Nigel

[Don Fry]

Going to object a little. Spotters and FPV. Might be inconvenient.

Get some blinkers, as in horses to eliminate peripheral vision. Jump in the car, drive briskly across town. Or if not up to it, imagine it. The difference is you, your actual skin and bones, are at risk.

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Lets say there are no new regs, it never happened, no such thing as a Drone, or FPV. Someone is ignoring your club rules, he's flying behind the flight line, over your heads, too close, he's "Competent" so the rules aren't for him, his mates the same, his heli's too close, it's in the other pilots faces, he's hovering over the strip stopping folk taking off and landing, he's "Competent". They're making people uncomfortable, nervous, a bit unhappy because they don't want to be the fun police, you're feeling a bit embarrassed because you don't like confrontation, and feel you should say something really.

Who's the bad guys here ? and why should the vast majority have to put up with it ?

And we've all been here seen this.

[Nigel Heather]

Posted by john stones 1 on 04/12/2019 13:11:54:

Lets say there are no new regs, it never happened, no such thing as a Drone, or FPV. Someone is ignoring your club rules, he's flying behind the flight line, over your heads, too close, he's "Competent" so the rules aren't for him, his mates the same, his heli's too close, it's in the other pilots faces, he's hovering over the strip stopping folk taking off and landing, he's "Competent". They're making people uncomfortable, nervous, a bit unhappy because they don't want to be the fun police, you're feeling a bit embarrassed because you don't like confrontation, and feel you should say something really.

Who's the bad guys here ? and why should the vast majority have to put up with it ?

And we've all been here seen this.

Get a bit fed up with this sort of thing. Someone describes a scenario and then someone else comes along, ignores the original scenario, creates a completely different one and then tries to discredit the original scenario with lots of whatiffery.

Thing1 says that a competent driver was safely driving on the deserted motorway at 56mph when the 50mph restriction signs were still on.

And then Thing2 says, but he can’t be competent because he was breaking the speed limit.

Thing1 agrees that strictly he was breaking the law but the motorway was deserted and he was driving carefully.

To which Thing2 says what if he was drinking a bottle of whisky and playing with a live hand grenade at the time.

Well he wasn’t, stop changing the scenario.

Cheers,

Nigel

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Scenario hasn't been changed Nigel, some people have always ignored rules and others have always felt uncomfortable as a result.

[Nigel Heather]

Posted by Don Fry on 04/12/2019 12:51:56:

Going to object a little. Spotters and FPV. Might be inconvenient.

Get some blinkers, as in horses to eliminate peripheral vision. Jump in the car, drive briskly across town. Or if not up to it, imagine it. The difference is you, your actual skin and bones, are at risk.

Good point, well made.

Though I don’t think that the field of vision is as restricted as you suggest.

Let me state first that I don’t fly FPV or quadcopters - just line of sight fixed wing and some beginner helicopter.

But I have worn a pair of goggles slaved to the same quad someone was flying FPV and the view is pretty good.

Look at this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V0oqnrml0o

Okay this film was probably taken from the onboard camera rather than the feed from the goggles so might have a slightly wider field of view but not dramatically.

Cheers,

Nigel

[Don Fry]

I have flown FPV. If you want good acuity, you go for a narrow view camera. This is the common. If you don't care, a wide angle is a possibility. Most wide angles lens used still give a field of view less than the 120° minimum requirement to hold a driving licence.

[Geoff S]

Posted by Philip Lewis 3 on 02/12/2019 21:18:58:

Quite dangerous ground legally for a club to be checking anything, get it wrong and they have accepted some responsibility, they thereby take on a responsibility that they probably don't want.

That comes from a legal case in sailboat racing where the entrance committee's used to check that the competitor had valid insurance, it was subsequently held that by accepting it was sufficient to race they had endorsed that the cover provided was adequate (which in this case it wasn't). Entrance committee's stopped checking insurance and even refusing to look at it and simply accepted a competitors declaration that they had it.

That is certainly the case. When we raced at open meetings, either championships or at another club, we were required to have 3rd party insurance (it wasn't very expensive because accidents in dinghies were rare) and had to show it when entering but then the clubs stopped checking and we just signed that we had the insurance and they accepted our word. I wasn't aware there'd been a legal case though.

I have wondered whether the requirement to show BMFA membership before flying at a club fly-in puts the home club in a risky position for the same reason. eg if the card is out of date, the person checking doesn't notice and the pilot is, in reality, uninsured and causes injury.

Geoff

Geoff

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

Posted by Don Fry on 04/12/2019 14:29:19:

I have flown FPV. If you want good acuity, you go for a narrow view camera. This is the common. If you don't care, a wide angle is a possibility. Most wide angles lens used still give a field of view less than the 120° minimum requirement to hold a driving licence.

The pictures from the video in the previous post are are great, the flying is impressive and much of the video may have been shot on private land under the control of the operators but the problem of peripheral vision still exists.

To expand on Don's point, the human brain and optical system has evolved to pick up threats in peripheral vision and only then swing the eyes to focus on and identify it. Have you ever stood on an airfield trying to spot an incoming aircraft from a distance? I had some experience of this during gliding competitions and it isn't as easy as you might think. Some people are much better at it than others and it isn't due to their visual acuity but in the way they scan, constantly moving their head and/or eyes and varying focal distance. I expect we've all had similar experiences where you search for an object and it suddenly becomes very clear as soon as it's seen and you can't undersand how you hadn't seen it sooner.

To notice an object that you are looking at at an undetermined distance often just doesn't happen - how many times have motorcyclists heard the words, "Sorry mate, I looked but I didn't see you" as they pick themselves off the road? Because there is no relative movement between objects on a collision course, the brain fails to pick up the object until very shortly before impact when the object starts to expand exponentially in the vision, creating that peripheral movement.

Goggles and screens tend to focus in front of you and present an impression of human vision - they don't wrap round the critical peripheral vision areas. Therefore that threat perception mechanism is at best degraded and probably almost nullified, resulting in far more danger to uninvolved people that the pilot is unaware of.

Edited By Martin Harris on 04/12/2019 14:55:51

[Linds.W]

Looking at all this stuff I think now that seeing "most" of us should have done the same as we did with Maggie's "poll-tax' and refused to pay. We seem to be a soft touch. I think it will get worse until the hobby goes further down the pan.

[Don Fry]

Linds.W, love the idea, just don't see us charging up Whitehall, chucking railings, and rolling marbles under the police dobbins.

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[i12fly]

Here we go again. We need the BMFA more than ever to look after us.