PERSON ARRESTED FOR FLYING FPV PLANE IN THE UK
- Thread starter tomcat
- Start date
Used to work on the sub program for the company that became BAE. No relevance to this post - random, useless fact.
Sounds like the guy deserved to be arrested. Flying over a military installation = stupid. He's lucky he was only fined.
I, too, hate the media's use of the word, "drone."
Sounds like the guy deserved to be arrested. Flying over a military installation = stupid. He's lucky he was only fined.
I, too, hate the media's use of the word, "drone."
Foam Addict
Squirrel member
Agree on all counts with 172 and EST. Fault lies with the pilot. He deliberately flew over a restricted area and payed the consequences.
It's not the word "drone" that's bad, it's the way they manage to "rub some stank on it" when they say it, that wads my drawers. One of the worst things that the media does today is inject a major bias into the news. It should be the facts, and only the facts, not some producers soapbox or journalistic forum for getting their opinion out there...
Yes, as far as I know, it's not illegal to fly R/C in England. What's illegal, and has been for as long as I know of, is trespassing on a military base. Flying your model over the base constitutes trespassing and flying over with a camera, well, you are just digging your own hole. Posting the video on the web, I guess we just found England's first living brain donor...
Here's where it can get sketchy. The military obviously needs to keep a lot of what they are doing away from prying eyes of the enemy. What enemy? Foreign powers that wish to do you harm. Yes, I know how it sounds. But that's how the military thinks. Which military? name one...
Look at it this way...
Say you have some stuff in your back yard that you don't want certain people in your neighborhood to know about. You catch the next door neighbor's peeking over your fence. They aren't the neighbors you are keeping the stuff secret from, but, how do you know if they are just being nosy or if they are spying on you for the ones you ARE keeping the secret from? Since you don't know, you have to assume anyone looking over your fence is the "enemy" and you are going to do what you need to do to keep them from looking over your fence.
The military doesn't control the internet, but I'm sure they monitor it for stuff like this so they can keep what's supposed to be secret, actually secret. It's the world we live in...
Look at it this way...
Say you have some stuff in your back yard that you don't want certain people in your neighborhood to know about. You catch the next door neighbor's peeking over your fence. They aren't the neighbors you are keeping the stuff secret from, but, how do you know if they are just being nosy or if they are spying on you for the ones you ARE keeping the secret from? Since you don't know, you have to assume anyone looking over your fence is the "enemy" and you are going to do what you need to do to keep them from looking over your fence.
The military doesn't control the internet, but I'm sure they monitor it for stuff like this so they can keep what's supposed to be secret, actually secret. It's the world we live in...
While your correct it didn't say "military installation", but it did say "submarine".
I'm going to bet military.
Living where I do knowing where the military plays is vitally important. Out here military land is not always obviously marked and their <clears throat>emissions<clears throat> don't exactly follow those boundaries anyway. Having Mexico equally close makes things interesting as well (starting with their taxi drivers who don't exactly have much respect for frequency allocations or power limits.)
Thankfully I've yet to run into any issues - but I stay well clear of where they play. Still in an area where our county fair doubles as an airshow because it's right next to a very active marine base so we get to see LOTS of neat active military hardware coming and going right overhead and it's not unheard of to get lost trying to find a friends house and finding that slightly after the street you're driving on turns to dirt you run into people in fatigues with automatic rifles who politely suggest you not go any further....spectrum interference issues are pretty well known around here
Oh - and don't forget our local aerostat (which my neighbor is actually a flight controller for)...visible from town on clear days looking right over town towards the border watching who knows what along with the publicly disclosed radar.
Bottom line - messing around with RF you don't adequately understand around here can quickly get you a visit from people you'd rather not get a visit from.
I finally figured out today that I had my FPV TX/RX set to slightly different frequencies when I tried changing frequencies convinced that "something" in the area must be raising the noise floor on the frequency I was using and causing the horrible range I was getting. Before moving here I would consider something like that highly unlikely on 5.8ghz. And even here wifi would be a more likely culprit if it wasn't boscam's misprinted instructions - but after watching 3 Ospreys land back to back Tuesday night at the fair this week and knowing we've got a big training exercise going on that will even be using a park I sometimes fly at to simulate embassy evacuations in a few weeks...well, sometimes the obvious doesn't come to mind first in those situations
godonholiday
Junior Member
Actually, from what the TV said by me, he lost signal (not for the first time) and it kept going. He has footage of it happening before and always posts them on youtube.
Also, it was not as close to the military site as reported.
The negative tone of voice in the news doesnt not help. The RC groups in the UK need to spend some money and get something together that can be used to show people what these 'Drones' are and how 99% of the people are using them for fun/filming or commercial purposes. If they dont, then this will escalate and the hobby will be in trouble, heavily restricted to private air fields.
Also, it was not as close to the military site as reported.
The negative tone of voice in the news doesnt not help. The RC groups in the UK need to spend some money and get something together that can be used to show people what these 'Drones' are and how 99% of the people are using them for fun/filming or commercial purposes. If they dont, then this will escalate and the hobby will be in trouble, heavily restricted to private air fields.
frankstrudel
Junior Member
I've just been skimming through the huuuge discussions between the pilot himself and the big cheeses on fpvhub, the FPV UK (model flying association) forum, and from what I can tell he was flying it LOS, no Vtx, across the water from an existing R/C club site. He lost control fairly early on, but hadn't configured the failsafe to do anything sensible, so it held its heading and flew up the river to the BAES submarine shipwrights. If he'd been aware of the relevant rules, no fly zones and authorities, he'd probably have informed the authorities and it'd have been fine.
As it was, the airframe was recovered by a BAES employee and handed over to the police, who got from the images of the man and his vehicle from the beginning of the recorded video (and his labels on the airframe) who he was and where he lived. No YouTubing involved.
Having got into trouble, the BMFA (British AMA equivalent) were unwilling to help him out as he was using a UHF control system and he himself failed to get any legal advice before his hearing. He's gotten some advice (and plenty of flak) from FPV UK, and he's now in contact with Trappy.
FPV UK have been working with the CAA for quite a while and gotten FPV'ers some pretty good deals in the regulations, hopefully this isn't going to put them back too far.
As it was, the airframe was recovered by a BAES employee and handed over to the police, who got from the images of the man and his vehicle from the beginning of the recorded video (and his labels on the airframe) who he was and where he lived. No YouTubing involved.
Having got into trouble, the BMFA (British AMA equivalent) were unwilling to help him out as he was using a UHF control system and he himself failed to get any legal advice before his hearing. He's gotten some advice (and plenty of flak) from FPV UK, and he's now in contact with Trappy.
FPV UK have been working with the CAA for quite a while and gotten FPV'ers some pretty good deals in the regulations, hopefully this isn't going to put them back too far.
mate thanks for the information, iv only seen the video over bbc news an as you can see they didn't give any information im really happy to know it was only a mistake an a problem with losing control i would apprentice if you post a contact for this person or a contact for bmfa forum because i still think that it is wrong its a Rc Hobby an theres loads of possibility that you can lose control over your plane because its not a drone an i think we need to help this person with this situation like a Rc community because this is possible to happen to anyone who fly's fpv
