Hi,
I've been loving flying my P2V+ about for the last few months and have filmed a mate's wedding in Italy and various other sites.
I've been approached by wedding couples, hotels and a handful of other companies that have seen my videos (not that they're amazing, just happen to hit the spot with them) to do some work for them. At the moment I can only do this for free as I don't want to invalidate my insurance (FPV UK).
I've got a full time job that I'm committed to but would like to do the odd paid flying gig at the weekend. From what I've seen there's no half-way house with the commercial work, you either have CAA approval (which mean BNUC-S/RPQ-S) or you don't and the latter being illegal.
For someone like me, it seems a bit OTT to do a course £1200-£1600, spend 20-30 hours on an operations manual, wait 3 months to get approved by CAA (another £113) and then pay out for insurance (probably £600+) like i'm working on aerial photography full time.
It just seems to me that it's quite a steep entry point ~£2,500 for someone who might only do the odd weekend gig. I understand it's like that to stop that people just buying them and charging people in an unregulated manner but it just feels like it's a bit OTT to me given that I could fly in the same places (mostly) as CAA approved pilots.
Does anybody have any views/advice apart from "don't fly commercially then!"?
I've been loving flying my P2V+ about for the last few months and have filmed a mate's wedding in Italy and various other sites.
I've been approached by wedding couples, hotels and a handful of other companies that have seen my videos (not that they're amazing, just happen to hit the spot with them) to do some work for them. At the moment I can only do this for free as I don't want to invalidate my insurance (FPV UK).
I've got a full time job that I'm committed to but would like to do the odd paid flying gig at the weekend. From what I've seen there's no half-way house with the commercial work, you either have CAA approval (which mean BNUC-S/RPQ-S) or you don't and the latter being illegal.
For someone like me, it seems a bit OTT to do a course £1200-£1600, spend 20-30 hours on an operations manual, wait 3 months to get approved by CAA (another £113) and then pay out for insurance (probably £600+) like i'm working on aerial photography full time.
It just seems to me that it's quite a steep entry point ~£2,500 for someone who might only do the odd weekend gig. I understand it's like that to stop that people just buying them and charging people in an unregulated manner but it just feels like it's a bit OTT to me given that I could fly in the same places (mostly) as CAA approved pilots.
Does anybody have any views/advice apart from "don't fly commercially then!"?