I would expect to need chest waders to get out of the stuff coming off the fan!
Drones?
- Thread starter finnbear270
- Start date
Too many lotuses 
lotuseater
Well-Known Member
wouldn't surprise me - you could deliver plastic explosives anywhere with a high street drone for a couple of hundred quid. A nightmare for the security services.
FrenchieBoy
Well-Known Member
Totally agree! But could you also not say the same for an R/C Planes and an ordinary R/C Helicopter, or do some of these drones have a greater range?
It's a combination of payload and range.
The r/c planes and helicopters have a very small range circa 40m with little or no payload.
The drones that we are thinking about using at our work have a range of 500m and capable of carrying about a 1kg payload.
What I'm not sure about is the model planes and helicopters that are flown by enthusiasts and what their capabilities are.
The latter two already need licences so will be interested keen to see how this develops.
Ed
Section 1(1) of the CDA 1971 provides that:
"A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage any such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence."
The only real way out of that would be the "lawful excuse" bit. However to have lawful excuse, you really need to have permission from the owner of the property in question, i.e. the drone (good luck with that) or you need to do it to prevent damage to your own property.
However....if the drone was in amongst, for example, flying pheasants on a drive and got shot down, the likelihood of someone being able to prove an intent to damage it is negligible. They could try to say that you were reckless, possibly with a little more chance of success, but to be honest, the reckless nature of flying the thing amongst pheasants being shot would really be on the controller's head I should think.
Well this may be of interest to some of you. Skip to 4.15 for the good bit.
2 commercially available RC helicopters for 'enthusiasts'. total cost of £2000ish. Total range approx. 1000m total flight time approx 20mins. No licence required...yet.
My understanding are there are three different sizes of drones.
Type 1 are the ones you can get out of the likes of Aldi for £20 and use AA batteries
Type 2 are the more sophisticated with a range of up to 500-600m and a battery time of 20-30 min.
Type 3 are the petrol powered ones with goodness only knows what flight duration and capabilities as can be seen in the previous vids.
So are they all drones? - looks like it but with a very wide range of capabilities and endurance.
Regarding the licences, I've obviously got the wrong end of the stick as the company that are flying drones for us have CAA approval.
Ed
Type 1 are the ones you can get out of the likes of Aldi for £20 and use AA batteries
Type 2 are the more sophisticated with a range of up to 500-600m and a battery time of 20-30 min.
Type 3 are the petrol powered ones with goodness only knows what flight duration and capabilities as can be seen in the previous vids.
So are they all drones? - looks like it but with a very wide range of capabilities and endurance.
Regarding the licences, I've obviously got the wrong end of the stick as the company that are flying drones for us have CAA approval.
Ed
Well as far as I know there is very little in the way of regulation at present. There is a maximum weight that you must stay under before it becomes a light aircraft and possibly a maximum wing span as well, but other than that and the obvious stay out of controlled airspace and below 200m rules there isn't much. You can purchase RC aircraft which run on petrol or on alcohol based 'nitrofuel' without licenses and flight time can be up to around an hour with those. There is also no control of first person viewing capability and I have an rc helicopter with a module fitted as a failsafe in the event of receiver failure that allows it to fly itself without control inputs from me as well point to point via gps. I imagine that as long as your interest is non commercial you can do pretty much whatever at present. It's only a matter of time before some delightful individual uses one to ferry drugs across the channel or plant explosives somewhere and gets them all heavily controlled for the lawful users. Either that or someone will have an accident and kill someone. They are effectively a 20kg flying lawnmower with a top speed of over 100mph after all. Absolutely lethal if you clobber someone.
Don't think it will be long before there's a maximum lift capacity.
We had our usual week at an estate in Sutherland in September and on the last day we drove up to the loch for a little camping expedition. One of the guys pulled a drone out of the back of his truck and we sent it off for a scout about. All the pictures from the Go pro were sent back to his ipad live.
It was a good surveillance tool. It's range is about 2000m from the control and flight time was 30 minutes, which was more than enough. Sensible range was more like 1000 meters as you couldn't really see it beyond that.
We saw lots of deer that we couldn't see from the loch and they were not phased by it even if you got pretty close.
Not sure you saw a lot more than you would from a decent spy point, next to the loch we were pretty low so it seemed impressive. If there were lots of nooks and crannies you could get a good look in if you really needed to.
Particularly easy to fly, would hover on a GPS location, so even in 20 knots of wind it was stable. Camera on a gyroscope so the picture was very stable considering the conditions.
I will not be putting one in my truck. But then I'm an amateur and enjoy the day. If you had a job to do and didn't have a good spy point to use it might save a bit of time, but it is a lot of faff.
At the end of the day it's just another bit of kit. If you know your ground and the habits of your deer I'm sure you don't need one.
It was a good surveillance tool. It's range is about 2000m from the control and flight time was 30 minutes, which was more than enough. Sensible range was more like 1000 meters as you couldn't really see it beyond that.
We saw lots of deer that we couldn't see from the loch and they were not phased by it even if you got pretty close.
Not sure you saw a lot more than you would from a decent spy point, next to the loch we were pretty low so it seemed impressive. If there were lots of nooks and crannies you could get a good look in if you really needed to.
Particularly easy to fly, would hover on a GPS location, so even in 20 knots of wind it was stable. Camera on a gyroscope so the picture was very stable considering the conditions.
I will not be putting one in my truck. But then I'm an amateur and enjoy the day. If you had a job to do and didn't have a good spy point to use it might save a bit of time, but it is a lot of faff.
At the end of the day it's just another bit of kit. If you know your ground and the habits of your deer I'm sure you don't need one.
Gaz
Well-Known Member
While stalking at first light for Sika in the Highlands November last year I had just started out onto a moorland when I heard a vehicle travelling the side road behind me and came to a stop. Within a very short time a loud whizzing noise frightened the sh** out of me before one of these things came into sight above the tree lines. This one had two bright red and two bright green flashing lights on it and continued its ascend to what I would estimate as 200 plus meters before travelling away from me. Within twenty yards I spotted 3 sika hinds running flat out into the wooded area and needless to say saw no other beast on the moor all morning. If I would have had the shotgun and not the rifle I too would of shot the bloody thing out of the sky.
Thing is we all imagine using it to our benefit or not using it as the case may be.
However what happens if the antis get onto them and start buzzing the deer to prevent them settling and allowing a stalker to get a bead on a beast, or buzzing a pheasant or grouse drive to disrupt it?
However what happens if the antis get onto them and start buzzing the deer to prevent them settling and allowing a stalker to get a bead on a beast, or buzzing a pheasant or grouse drive to disrupt it?
I think you could probably do the operator for trespass if it were private land. I believe that in Britain you own the airspace above your own ground, but I don't know to what Height. Probably at least 50m or so though.
I have shamelessly stolen this from t' interweb but it clears things up
Today, the maxim is still used as a guideline. However, as a property owner you only really have the right to the airspace above your land located in the lower stratum, the precise boundaries of which are not explicitly labelled. In the end, you are supposed to be entitled to enough airspace to reasonably enjoy the land below that air. However, exactly what this means is up for debate. For example, you can’t ask commercial planes to stop flying over your house, because the sky is considered to be a public highway. You could potentially, however, prosecute an overzealous news helicopter for hovering over your house if it was impeding your enjoyment of the land. Again, this would vary on a case-by-case basis but there have been instances of people being fined for trespassing for flying over someone’s land; so it’s not unheard of in US or British law.
The most famous case of this kind comes from 1945 when a chicken farmer named Thomas Lee Causby sued the US government for flying approximately 83 feet above his property, the noise of which caused a bunch of Causby’s chicken’s to accidentally kill themselves by running into walls. Causby won his case and the courts agreed that although a property owner wasn’t entitled to own all of the air above their land,they were entitled to enough so that planes flying overhead wouldn’t kill their chickens. Progress!
Today in the UK thanks to the Civil Aviation Act of 1982, the generally accepted amount of air above one’s roof a person is entitled to is approximately 500-1,000 feet, though again this isn’t a hard definition. Likewise, the United States has a similar estimation of about 500 feet, though this has never been officially ruled on by the Supreme Court.
Judging by that you would have a case if a drone was interfering with sport, especially as gamebirds are classed as livestock in law in some cases.
I have shamelessly stolen this from t' interweb but it clears things up
Today, the maxim is still used as a guideline. However, as a property owner you only really have the right to the airspace above your land located in the lower stratum, the precise boundaries of which are not explicitly labelled. In the end, you are supposed to be entitled to enough airspace to reasonably enjoy the land below that air. However, exactly what this means is up for debate. For example, you can’t ask commercial planes to stop flying over your house, because the sky is considered to be a public highway. You could potentially, however, prosecute an overzealous news helicopter for hovering over your house if it was impeding your enjoyment of the land. Again, this would vary on a case-by-case basis but there have been instances of people being fined for trespassing for flying over someone’s land; so it’s not unheard of in US or British law.
The most famous case of this kind comes from 1945 when a chicken farmer named Thomas Lee Causby sued the US government for flying approximately 83 feet above his property, the noise of which caused a bunch of Causby’s chicken’s to accidentally kill themselves by running into walls. Causby won his case and the courts agreed that although a property owner wasn’t entitled to own all of the air above their land,they were entitled to enough so that planes flying overhead wouldn’t kill their chickens. Progress!
Today in the UK thanks to the Civil Aviation Act of 1982, the generally accepted amount of air above one’s roof a person is entitled to is approximately 500-1,000 feet, though again this isn’t a hard definition. Likewise, the United States has a similar estimation of about 500 feet, though this has never been officially ruled on by the Supreme Court.
Judging by that you would have a case if a drone was interfering with sport, especially as gamebirds are classed as livestock in law in some cases.
