UK Use of a quad for profit

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I have a few ideas about earning some cash with a quad - and a camera. Is this legal in the UK? I had heard that there re rules about this.
 
You must obtain permission to perform aerial work from the CAA. The only way to get this is to pass the BNUC-s or RPQ-s certification. This involves a ground school and exam, then a flight assessment. You must also have public liabilities insurance and must submit a full flight operations manual.

Factor on around £2000 for the course, exam, and test flight fees and about 30 hours of your time to produce the ops manual.

Be very careful about flying for profit without CAA permission. They are cracking down HARD on unlicensed pilots and fines are steep.
 
Not without a specific Permission for Aerial Work granted by the CAA. In order to get that you'll need to get one of two currently available qualifications to evidence your "competence". You'll also need professional indemnity insurance and an approved "Operations Manual". I made a video about this recently if you're interested: How to make money legally in the UK with your quadcopter

More information from the CAA here: http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid ... geid=11185

EDIT: Sorry for the duplicate post, didn't come up that we were all answering within a couple of mins of each other! So what they said. :)
 
Also a factor I think in the UK is that they have or had a temporary ban on commercial work with the phantom vision and vision plus or any UAV that works off a 5.8ghz control signal but I'm sure the lads above will know more about that than me if it hasn't been already included in the links that they have provided you with.
 
Hi,

Does anyone have any information about the above mentioned temporary ban on commercial work with the phantom vision and vision plus?

Thanks.
 
MrBojangles said:
Hey! bliffman I thought I was the only Phantom pilot in Bolton.
Let me know where you are if you fancy meeting up.
Drop me an email if you like [email protected]

not a good idea to put email addresses on forums, you can end up with a lot of spam. PM the info.
 
This begs the question, what if 2 phantoms were close to each other? Do they change wireless channels automatically? Usually with RC you change crystals to change frequency, but that's not possible with the P2V+, or is it?

P.
 
this licensing requirement for commercial use of a drone makes no sense.
so an amateur is free to fly these things whereas someone who wants to make marketing material is subject to substantial costs.
it seems to me that anybody who wants to create a saleable product will have honed their skills and be a better pilot than the weekend thrill seeker.
there is already considerable money and time involved getting set up to use these commercially so the added cost of licenses, etc. will be a deal breaker for a lot of people i would think. and who gets all those licensing $$$ and what do they do with them?

there was a case in the US of a homeowner who was free to fly around his house and take all the pictures he wanted but he couldn't use them to sell his house. absolute bureaucratic BS!
 
what you might be able to do is get someone else to take the photo's and give them to you??
 
As an amateur, you are strictly limited as to where you can fly. No flying over towns and villages, within 50M of any vehicle, boat or person etc. As a commercial drone operator, you will probably need to fly closer to things and people, so it is reasonable that you have a higher level of training, as well as full insurance etc.

I believe the current issue over 5.8GHz is that it is not currently recognised as an airborne R/C system and there are some concerns over its suitability, due to limited and unpredictable range in some atmospheric conditions. Many UK owners are switching their TXs up from the CE setting to get usable range, so this kind of proves the point.

The CAA treats all airborne vehicles with a recording camera the same, whether they weigh 0.5Kg or 100Kg. The rules are there to protect privacy as well as to avoid accidents and incidents.

For my book, I researched Youtube videos and came to the conclusion that around 80% of UK clips showed illegal flying - mainly close to houses and over towns. This really brings home that there needs to be more education and more information when people buy these machines.

I am sure there is a suspicion that commercial operators are protecting their interests by keeping out the amateurs through high costs, but this is not the case. It's the same in lots of industries - I work for a large events company and we compete with lots of one man bands. We have full truck operating licences, carry out daily vehicle checks, only work our drivers within the rules etc. but find that many one man bands ignore these legal requirements and are therefore are cheaper... Right up until they get caught and prosecuted!
 

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