Please be aware that the experiences written about in this post refer to the UK Civil Aviation Authority and may not be the same in your country. And sorry for the length of this post. But please read to the end.
A friend and I set up a name to post our aerial footage and photos under on Facebook.
We've recently found that the CAA (Civil Aviation Authrority) are not happy with our practises so thought I would share our experiences with you guys so the same thing doesn't occur for you. I'm interested to know if people were aware of the rules and regulations before purchasing, after or even not at all until reading this post...
With the ever growing popularity of Phantoms and similar devices the CAA are soon going to have a lot of issues on their hands. They've contacted us with a potentially very real £2,500.00 fine for the way we have been operating. I'm sharing this so that others are not faced with the same.
A small fact; the seller we got our original Phantoms from has sold a minimum of 800 since the start of the year. We now both fly DJI F550 Flame Wheels.
Now we stated to the CAA that we had not been charging for anything we had been doing no matter how commercial it appeared to be. However they said that we had been breaking other rules as laid out in CAP393 Articles 166 and 167. I only see rules broken in Article 167, but also feel these rules are out of date for modern equipment such as the Phantom with GPS.
CAP393 Article 166: Small unmanned aircraft
The next document is the one that to us seems more like a tax on the device instead of the requirement for a licence.
CAP393 Article 167: Small unmanned surveillance aircraft - Meaning, ONLY IF A CAMERA IS ATTACHED!!!
The CAA should really think about defining what a congested area is. They complained that we flew over a 300 acre derelict mental asylum that has been empty, closed and disused for over 16 years.
And also let me state again. 167 rules only apply when a camera is attached. So the whole thing about a licence being required is BS, it is most definitely a tax.