US confusion over drone law

Whilst in the UK, and an increasing number of other countries, there is clarity about legal and illegal drone use, that's not the case in the USA. The UK CAA has approved EUROUSC to carry out drone pilot (really a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System - RPAS) approval via an exam, operations manual and flight test called BNUC-S.

Howver, the US is in confusion over drone laws causing a field day for lawyers

See this link:  http://fortune.com/2014/04/09/drone-law-becomes-big-business/

A recent attempt by the FAA to prosecute a drone pilot was thrown out of court by the judge who observed that the FAA had issued no laws, just guidelines and worse, only had jurisdiction over manned flight! So while the US FAA scramble to bring in controlling legislation the situation for drone operators spans the range from banned to free for all depending upon the  location's state law.

Drones help in survival of species

See this Guardian story on drones helping with species survival:
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/drones-species-preservation-conservation-environment

BNUC-S Course Part 1

Just finished day 1 of the BNUC-S Part 1 training at Heathrow with EuroUSC - excellent course - great presenter and good, relevant material.
Just tomorrow morning to go then the exam. Fingers crossed !

Cool QU4D aerial footage from IoW

Click on link:

Cool QU4D aerial footage from IoW


Video by Paul Brown - YouTube Channel 




Great work Mr. Brown.

Super smooth aerial video with the Steadidrone QU4D with gimbal and GoPro3. However, not sure about the legality of overflying the public - worth checking out next time.

Flight Simulators

Why bother with a Flight Simulator? Specifically why spend out extra on flight sim software as well as your quadcopter when your aim is just to get your camera in the air for aerial video or photos?

Good question.

Plus Points

• Flight simulator software is a small cost compared to crashing youquadcoptererious aerial photography rig (assuming you have a PC or Mac already to run the simulator software)
  
• Choose a flight simulator with a real transmitter interface and you can practice the correct hand to control feel and eye hand coordination
  
• zero cost of crashes
   
• You can practice at night and in bad weather
  
• It's possible to practice RC style ground control flying and FPV (First Person View) flying depending upon the choice of software. Make sure you check because few do both.
  
• RC style simulators may have better, more detailed scenery and the ability to load different real world locations to fly in

Negative Points

• Without a real transmitter/controller you'll be pressing computer buttons or a game controller which is no use in learning to fly a real quadcopter
  
• It won't fly like the real thing - it's all in the tuning of flight parameter models in the simulator and in your transmitter/controller
  
• Most sims are designed for RC (remote control) flyers of all types of craft without FPV. If you want FPV the software has to model multiple viewpoints and that means a computer generated environment. So the location choice will be much more limited and less detailed as trade off for allowing FPV flight

So what flight simulators are available where they also have a quadcopter or multicopter aircraft model?

Three examples of Flight Sims for Quadcopter pilots

1. Aerosim RC - This one supports RC quadcopter practice and FPV
2. Phoenix
3. Realflight

Finally I think that the ideal set up would provide you with a simulated quadcopter experience, using a real trainsmitter contoller for maximum real touch and feel, with a realistic (tunable) flight model. The icing on the top of the cake would be a quadcopter model for a small indoor practice quadcopter that you could use with the same transmitter/controller. More on that challenging search in a later post.

Learning to fly a radio controlled (RC) copter

After the initial excitement and enthusiasm became the desire to shoot aerial video well, my first thoughts about getting ready for aerial video shooting was that it may not be as simple as it looked in the adverts.

So what were the risks and what could be done to minimise those risks.

Risks:

1. It may be to hard to learn to fly remote controlled (RC) aircraft - SKILL
2. You loose control of the RC aircraft - SKILL
3. The aircraft crashes requiring replacement or extensive repair - COST
4. The camera carried on the RC aircraft is damaged, destroyed or lost by falling from or crashing with the aircraft - COST
5. The aircraft hits and damages property or hurst bystanders or yourself - SAFETY
6. You might be doing something illegal - LEGAL
7. You might find it difficult to get permission to fly from landowners - PERMISSIONS
8. It might prove unaffordable to reach an acceptable quality level for the video or photos - COST

Having thought about the risks I decided to think about how I could learn to fly RC to start addressing the SKILL related risks.

I asked myself - does learning to fly a RC helicopter or quadcopter help you on your way to shooting aerial video or aerial photography? The web research I did was contradictory to say the least.

Let me be clear. I was a complete beginner with RC flying. A Christmas gift from my wife of a small indoor RC helicopter with contra rotating rotorblades was a fun start. However the number of crashes was far from encouraging. I eventually got a semblance of control over the craft and started to consider a larger aircraft which could potentially be able to carry a camera.

Fixed wing was out because the aerial video shooting I wanted to do would require hovering. So that left RC helicopters and multicopters.  The larger helicopters I researched came with the added issue of requiring significant additional skill to control pitch and yaw. Pitch and yaw is where the tail boom swings left or right using a smaller propellor which needs to be controlled to oppose the rotational forces when the main rotors spin faster.

Now honestly this seemed to be pushing into the distant future the day when I would be good enough at this skill to hold a heli steady for filming.  I tried this on a simulator (covered in a later post) and decided that I would crash a lot and it would take months at the very least for me to get proficient with larger RC helicopters. Just my view as a beginner.

That left multicopters. The cheapest and most common multicopter being the quadcopter with four propellors - one at each corner. Web reviews indicated that they had some inherent stability over single rotor helicopters. So they looked promising and that's where I headed to research and learn next.

So does 'Learning to fly a radio controlled (RC) copter' help prepare you for aerial video/photography? I would say that if you are already a skilled RC helicopter pilot then yes it would help a lot. You have learned about transmitters, receivers, battery issues (if you fly electric powered helicopters), where to fly and you may be a member of an RC group who will give help and support. Is that that whole story for aerial video/photography - no it's not. If you are just starting out like I am the best suggestion to gain basic skills is a simulator. Will it be just like the real thing? No. But it will help and virtual crashes cost nothing!

Beginner's Guide to Shooting Aerial Video - List of Topics

I have found out quite quickly that there is a lot more to aerial photography than meets the eye. I found a lot of information on the web together with much conflicting advice in comments.

Not everyone who fly multicopters is interested in aerial video. So, not all of the many thousands of pages of information is relevant.

Here is my list of topics that I think are important and that will be covering in this Beginner's Guide to Shooting Aerial Video in the forthcoming posts:

Beginner's Guide to Shooting Aerial Video Topics List

• Learning to fly a radio controlled (RC) copter
• Flight simulators
• Flying a quadcopter for the first time
• Indoor practice quadcopters
• Choosing a first copter for aerial video
• Practice makes perfect
• Where to fly
• Choosing a camera for aerial video
• Commercial aerial video
• UK regs for aerial video with a quadcopter
• First Person View (FPV)
• How to become a qualified pilot/operator
• Quality issues with video output
• Getting landowner permission to fly
• Operational safety
• Crashing your copter
• Post processing video output

I haven't got all the answers as some knowledge and wisdom only comes with experience. However, the key things I have learned so far is that the safety, legal and permission topics of aerial photography are absolutely key to this activity not getting banned in the future. So, please take them seriously. I hope to be happily shooting aerial video for many years and so do an increasing band of other flyers.