Arial Photography and videotography

[scapes]

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum but have a few questions. The first is I am interested in filming some footage of the countryside for my own personal use however I have been told that due to living in the uk that companies like phantom have restricted their drones gps range. so was wondering what drone I could buy to fly a great distance and shoot high quality video.

Thanks
Liam

[guest325]

Legally you can not fly any further than line of sight (about 400 metres), this is regulated by the CAA.
So if you do go out further than that you could risk prosecution; that said plenty of people do.
A custom made model will do what you have asked and if you don';t want to build one yourself Peter King';s builds come highly recommended:
http://www.droneshop.biz
Have a look!!!

[scapes]

Right okay I will check them out thanks.

[Hands0n]

Hi Liam, welcome to the forum

Firstly, do you have any links you can point us to where you';ve received that information about restricted range?  As a Phantom owner (of late) and seeing several others here who have flown theirs at significant distance I am very doubtful as to the veracity of that particular claim.

There are a lot of factors that may affect the range of any remote controlled aircraft, and they will all be similarly affected if they are using similar radio frequency and radio powers.  Typically we see 2.4GHz and various digital signalling methods used in a typical transmitter.  They';ll typically be cited to have a range of 2km or thereabouts.  Which would be an illegal flight in the UK by the way as the aircraft would be out of direct unaided sight.

DJI have implemented No Fly Zone protection in their modern fleet. These use GPS for your location and compare against a table of such No Fly areas, preventing take off if you';re within.  As far as I can see on mine, you can actually switch that off and ignore it completely.  But of course you';d be risking things by doing that anyway.....

The Phantoms, like other purpose-built UAS, have superb video capabilities, varying by the camera installed. You';re unlikely to be disappointed.

[scapes]

Here are a couple of links.

http://forum.dji.com/thread-14444-1-1.html

http://www.phantompilots.com/threads/ce-or-fcc-phantom-3-advanced.51368/

[insx]

Are the drone regulations law or guidelines?

[Hands0n]

Are the drone regulations law or guidelines?

Consider those issued by the CAA as law. Their regulations are not written into the statute books, but they are charged (in law) with implementing regulations for safe air space use and control. 

The UK courts can, and do, pass judgements based on CAA regulation with some swingeing fines and other penalties possible.

You should familiarise yourself with them if you';re going to fly anything at all.  This forum has threads with links to the relevant, and tons of discussion also.

[insx]

Oh, I am trying to keep within the guidelines, I just see other people flying their Phantoms miles away and saying "they';re guidelines".

[Hands0n]

Here are a couple of links.

http://forum.dji.com/thread-14444-1-1.html

http://www.phantompilots.com/threads/ce-or-fcc-phantom-3-advanced.51368/

Thanks for the links.  I went through the DJI forum thread. Oh my, I can see why we get a bad name when flying Phantoms!!! 

My take-away from the reading.  DJI do in fact reduce the Radio power when the aircraft detects that it is in a European region.  You';ll notice that in the thread the chaps are sharing pictures of the stickers on the box their Phantom arrived in. 

On the stickers are letters  FCC and CE. The latter is the important one.  Manufacturers selling product in the EU have to conform to various EU regulations. For equipment that uses the 2.4GHz radio frequencies one of the conformance limits is the radio signal power output.  Their equipment is type-tested to gain CE certification, a mark of conformance, and then it can be sold here.

The sheer paranoia expressed by a few on that thread is amazing as it is rather silly.  Within even the illegal distance limits any aircraft will have sufficient range. Push out any greater distance and there';s a fair chance you won';t get it back because the battery has run out.    And certainly within legal distances you';d be more than safe.

One lad claimed that the greater FCC signal strength would protect him against flying behind obstructions such as trees and buildings.  Good luck with that, is what I say.  He cannot accurately predict how any obstruction is going to impact his radio signal. And in the interests of safe flight he should have considered his flight path to limit the chances of dipping behind a forest, hill, block of flats etc...  He';s dangerous and unsafe if he does any of those!  An earner of our bad reputation.

Bottom line - what kind of flight do you want to do?  Within unaided sight? No problem.  Out of unaided sight?  What are the likely obstructions between you and the aircraft?  Remembering that any or all of those could cause you loss of signal regardless of EC or FCC radio strengths. 

How lucky do you feel ::)

[Hands0n]

Oh, I am trying to keep within the guidelines, I just see other people flying their Phantoms miles away and saying "they';re guidelines".

LOL I hear that sometimes.  Generally, you don';t get fined for breaking guidelines.

There were a few very successful prosecutions in 2015 for lads flying their model aircraft outside of "guidelines" (actually "regulations"). 

Sadly, Phantom users are all branded the same.  Clueless.  Whether it is intentional or unintentional cluelessness is irrelevant. As soon as you take one out of the box the bystanders eyes roll skywards 

I may have to paint mine black ::)