=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 316 ===
Title: LDO 316 - Chris Bradbury And The British Drone Flyers
Recorded: 2021-09-16
Hosts: Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash
Guest(s): Chris Bradbury
Total audience: 2,613
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joqa-_P1nWo); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1126522501-letsdroneout-ldo-316-chris-bradbury-and-the-british-drone-flyers.mp3)
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https://britishdroneflyers.org/

[0.0] Jack: Hello and you're listening to Let's Drone Out and special thank you to our lovely patrons that helped donate so that we could pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things we say. Massive thank you too.
[14.0] Jack: Carlos Campos.
[16.0] Jack: Art Faulkner.
[18.0] Jack: Sam Dahmer.
[20.0] Jack: Mikey Dread.
[22.0] Curry: On with the show.
[24.0] Curry: Let's Drone Out now.
[54.58] Jack: Welcome. You are listening to Let's Drone Out. Tonight you're joined by our wonderful puppet master, Andrew St. Frank.
[64.58] Jack: Good evening.
[66.58] Jack: Everyone's favourite, Curry Kitten.
[68.58] Jack: Hello.
[70.58] Jack: Very interesting and wonderful shirt, Steven.
[72.58] Jack: Hello.
[74.58] Jack: And Chris from the BMFA, the drone support officer.
[80.58] Chris Bradbury: He's a slightly official title, isn't he?
[83.58] Stephen: What's the drone support officer do? Sounds like you should have some kind of uniform.
[88.58] Chris Bradbury: Sounds like you should have these really big heavy drone and hold it up like that.
[93.58] Frank: Like one of the two behind you, maybe.
[96.58] Chris Bradbury: This is Bertha on that side and Arthur on this side. They're two heavy lift drones that I fly for work.
[103.58] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, I suppose drone support officer, I'm here to support the BMFA membership and the new PDF membership with their drone inquiries.
[111.58] Chris Bradbury: People understand where they can and can't fly and all the sort of stuff that comes up on a regular basis.
[117.58] Chris Bradbury: Usually technical questions relating to the open categories and what classification am I in, what do I do with Article 16 and stuff like that.
[125.58] Frank: So Andy's got bored of answering these questions and found someone else to forward them all onto, right?
[131.58] Chris Bradbury: Yeah.
[133.58] Chris Bradbury: Andy Simmons is still the club support officer for the BMFA, so he still deals with an awful lot of those questions.
[140.58] Chris Bradbury: It's just when it comes in and it's more drone related now, it comes to me.
[144.58] Chris Bradbury: So that's my speciality. So we're just, as the drone side of things is growing, we're just sort of splitting it and making it more accessible so there's more support for different people.
[156.11] Frank: Cool. Because you've, I mean, this isn't your, you were saying that you've only been here like a few months, but you've been doing a lot for BMFA drone-wise beforehand, haven't you?
[167.11] Chris Bradbury: Yeah. So my background is I run altitude aerial photography as a company. So I fly these and do TV filming and stuff like that.
[175.11] Chris Bradbury: But about 12 years ago is when I started flying my first drones back when we all used to take the Nintendo nunchucks apart to get the accelerometers out and build our own control boards and all that kind of stuff.
[187.11] Chris Bradbury: Or if you were really posh, you had somebody had smashed their iPhone free and you got the accelerometers from that.
[192.11] Chris Bradbury: So about eight, nine years ago, I then got invited in to join special interest group when we were discussing FPV and getting the exemption improved so that we could get rid of the requirement for the buddy box and go to observers and spotters and stuff like that.
[207.11] Chris Bradbury: And then a couple of years after that, I got invited on to the achievement scheme to write a multirotor test because we had the fixed wing test, helicopter test, glider tests.
[217.11] Chris Bradbury: So it was probably eight years ago I wrote the A and the B certificate for multirotors.
[221.11] Chris Bradbury: And then a year after that, I got invited on to the committee full-time and I'm now chairman of the committee as you come forward.
[227.11] Chris Bradbury: So that's me as a volunteer with the BMFA. And then obviously when the BMFA were looking for an employee to work with drones, it's kind of I'm there already.
[236.11] Chris Bradbury: I do it for a living. I do it for a hobby with my all-encompeting passion.
[242.11] Chris Bradbury: But then I still make kind of a good crossover because I still fly helicopters. I still fly model airplanes, gliders.
[248.11] Chris Bradbury: You know, it's all radio controlled cars, boats. There's a radio controlled car sitting up on top of the shelf up there.
[255.11] Frank: And before we went live, you were showing us your FPV quads that you were trying to fit through some benches.
[263.11] Chris Bradbury: My little three and a half inch Titan H3 there.
[267.11] Chris Bradbury: It just needs a couple of screws putting back in and some new propellers.
[271.11] Chris Bradbury: It turns out that the gates that I fly through, well, you're supposed to fly through the hole, aren't you? Not through the gate itself.
[279.11] Stephen: It's open to interpretation. It really depends what you can get away with.
[282.11] Chris Bradbury: The battery has definitely seen some better days. I think we need to find some salty water to dispose of that.
[291.11] Frank: And you had a BDF event at Buckminster recently, right?
[296.11] Chris Bradbury: Yes. So we've kind of started bringing the BDF events in with all the ASRC events because the ASRC events achievement scheme, it's for training and teaching.
[306.11] Chris Bradbury: So it's a natural thing to invite the drone guys into that as well, by guys, obviously ladies as well, just general term in drone folk.
[314.11] Chris Bradbury: So we can teach people to fly the drones. But then on the 11th, we had our first camera drone dedicated event.
[320.11] Chris Bradbury: So for people with things like Mavics and Phantoms, the opportunity was to come down, learn how to do a risk assessment and some basic sort of safety training, site planning experience, about an hour and a half.
[331.11] Chris Bradbury: Then we actually went out into the runway and did some fly flight training.
[335.11] Chris Bradbury: And then towards the end of the afternoon, we kind of looked at a little bit of Photoshop, you know, how to edit those pictures together afterwards.
[343.11] Frank: I saw you posted on Facebook as well that you were introducing some people to FPV during the course of the event.
[350.11] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, Andy and I had this great game that Andy came up with person tipping.
[354.11] Chris Bradbury: So one of us flies aerobatic FPV and the other person puts goggles on people and we just see if we can get people to fall over.
[361.11] Chris Bradbury: I think the idea is we can get 10 people and 10 goggles. We can just do it like bowling and see if we can get anything.
[368.11] Frank: Did you have like a total tally up on the wall?
[372.11] Chris Bradbury: No, we've not managed to topple anyone over. We're not harsh, but we have a few people raise their toes and have a good wobble.
[378.11] Chris Bradbury: But we're always there to catch them.
[380.11] Chris Bradbury: The idea is to give them that experience and see if they're interested in shifting over.
[384.11] Stephen: You're getting to do a power loop and see if they just carry on leaning back.
[387.11] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, I love to go shooting straight up and then just do like eight very rapid rolls and people are either freaked out by the rapid roll or quite often it's a slow roll.
[396.11] Chris Bradbury: So if the fast roll doesn't get them, you go up and you do a nice sort of three or four second really slow roll and that's normally the one that gets them.
[405.11] Stephen: That's evil, but very funny.
[407.11] Chris Bradbury: Yeah.
[408.11] Stephen: So you come from a heli background, right? And then you're looking at how to do A and B certs for quads.
[413.11] Stephen: How do you make that different for quads?
[416.11] Chris Bradbury: For the quadcopters, it's basically, I mean, when you think about how a helicopter and a multirotor fly in terms of manual flight.
[424.11] Chris Bradbury: So if we ignore self stabilizing GPS, holding things like the Mavics and so on, just, you know, you're racing quads.
[431.11] Chris Bradbury: There are a lot of similarities in how they fly in terms of the pitch, the role, you know, that kind of throttle control and how you get one to hover.
[440.11] Chris Bradbury: The transition, the differences is, for example, I mean, I've got 3D quads now that you can reverse the pitch to hold against the rope.
[448.11] Chris Bradbury: So when you take your helicopter where you do a stall turn maneuver, part of that exercise is to put negative pitch on and compensate for the wind, which with most quadcopters isn't actually possible.
[458.11] Chris Bradbury: So took those two exercises out and put in the loop instead.
[462.11] Chris Bradbury: So it's kind of just modifying it and making it relevant.
[465.11] Chris Bradbury: We had a lot of people saying, you can't loop a quad, quads don't loop.
[469.11] Chris Bradbury: They will. It's just a different technique.
[472.11] Chris Bradbury: You know, the actual style and the method of doing it is different to an aeroplane.
[477.68] Frank: So you've been doing a lot with, you know, you're an employee of the BMFA.
[483.68] Frank: So how does the how does the BDF separate or how is it different from the BMFA or what's the connection?
[491.68] Chris Bradbury: OK, so the first thing is it's kind of not really separate.
[495.68] Chris Bradbury: So a BDF membership is a form of BMFA membership.
[499.68] Chris Bradbury: So when you join the British drone flyers, you're getting the same core package that the BMFA members get.
[504.68] Chris Bradbury: So you get the same insurance, which is class leading 25 million.
[508.68] Chris Bradbury: Public liability comes with 35000 in person with injury as well.
[512.68] Chris Bradbury: So if you do decide to slice a finger off in a multi-roader propeller, not that we recommend doing that.
[517.68] Chris Bradbury: There is money available on claims.
[519.68] Chris Bradbury: So the key thing is there is that the core package is essentially the same.
[523.68] Chris Bradbury: You're still a BMFA member.
[525.68] Chris Bradbury: What we've tried to do is create a membership type that is more suitable for drone operators.
[531.68] Chris Bradbury: So when you look at most people who probably fly in helicopters and planes, they're joining the club.
[535.68] Chris Bradbury: The club runs January to December.
[537.68] Chris Bradbury: So they run January to December.
[538.68] Chris Bradbury: And it's kind of like that kind of atmosphere.
[540.68] Chris Bradbury: A lot of drone flyers, especially the camera guys, they're probably unique in terms of that they fly on their own.
[546.68] Chris Bradbury: Probably that's the drone goes on holiday with them for selfies.
[549.68] Chris Bradbury: They go out and they, you know, video and monument when they're out doing a walk, that kind of thing.
[553.68] Chris Bradbury: So the standard membership pattern doesn't sort of sit with their style of use.
[558.68] Chris Bradbury: So the two key differences between a BMFA membership and a British drone flyer membership,
[564.68] Chris Bradbury: the first one is it's a rolling 12-month membership from the day you join.
[568.68] Chris Bradbury: So whereas BMFA is January to December, the BDF is from the day you join.
[572.68] Chris Bradbury: So if you join now, you'll have membership up until mid-September next year.
[576.68] Chris Bradbury: The other key difference is that most of the camera drone guys, they're probably not interested in
[581.68] Chris Bradbury: bolster stick models, helicopters, gliders and all the other stuff that goes in the BMFA news.
[586.68] Chris Bradbury: So we've just basically created a digital online only BDF news, which will come out with stuff that's more relevant.
[593.68] Chris Bradbury: So all the latest on drone legislation, laws, regulations, as well as stuff about camera techniques, you know,
[599.68] Chris Bradbury: how to learn to fly a quadcopter manually.
[602.68] Chris Bradbury: The stuff that's probably a lot more relevant to them than is someone making stuff out of a bolster and tissue paper.
[609.68] Frank: So all the people that complain about getting a load of trees through a letterbox with a load of RC stuff in it,
[616.68] Frank: they can opt out of that and just have an online version that's a bit more based around.
[623.68] Frank: I guess is it mainly sort of aerial photography and videography?
[628.68] Chris Bradbury: The BDF news, no, it's drones in general.
[631.68] Chris Bradbury: So we have had the BDRA give us some racing articles as well.
[635.68] Chris Bradbury: It's not just the camera drones.
[637.68] Chris Bradbury: So again, a lot of the people that might be FPV racing might just be doing it themselves on the woods,
[644.68] Chris Bradbury: rather than actually joining a club per se.
[647.68] Chris Bradbury: So one of the things in terms of my future goal is to try and encourage some more drone clubs to start forming up.
[653.68] Chris Bradbury: There's a couple of aspects to that.
[655.68] Chris Bradbury: One is that it creates that nice environment where somebody that wants to get into this hobby can go and learn safely
[661.68] Chris Bradbury: rather than doing it potentially dangerously in their back garden or somewhere else.
[665.68] Chris Bradbury: But also it just kind of builds that camaraderie in the hobby.
[669.68] Chris Bradbury: I think when you go to places, for example, Western Park, the other week, the BDRA racing,
[673.68] Chris Bradbury: if somebody crashes a quadcopter at one of those events,
[676.68] Chris Bradbury: nobody sits there laughing at them going, well, fix it yourself.
[679.68] Chris Bradbury: They'll all rally around, find some soldering irons, find some solders and screws and spare props for them
[684.68] Chris Bradbury: and see what they can do to get back in the racing even if they're a competitor.
[687.68] Chris Bradbury: So it's a nice atmosphere, isn't it?
[690.68] Frank: So would the club membership work the same then for a BDF member versus a BMFA member?
[697.68] Chris Bradbury: Yes. So if you're a British Dry and Flyer member, you know that.
[700.68] Chris Bradbury: So the BMFA affiliated clubs, you have to have BMFA insurance, the BDF insurance, the BDF membership.
[706.68] Chris Bradbury: It's the same insurance.
[707.68] Chris Bradbury: So you've got the same access to a club, in theory.
[710.68] Chris Bradbury: The only caveat I would say there is we can't necessarily control the clubs.
[715.68] Chris Bradbury: So what a club does in terms of its own individual rules,
[718.68] Chris Bradbury: there are clubs out there that are fixed-wing only.
[720.68] Chris Bradbury: There are some, for example, Farnham Heli Club is helis only, but they take drones.
[724.68] Chris Bradbury: And there are some drone-only clubs.
[726.68] Chris Bradbury: So what the club sets as their own rules is down to what they've set the club up for, I guess,
[731.68] Chris Bradbury: and their own individual membership.
[732.68] Chris Bradbury: But in terms of what we offer, the support, the package, it's the same.
[736.68] Chris Bradbury: So there's no disadvantage, I think, is the key thing to being a British Dry and Flyer member.
[742.68] Chris Bradbury: And there's no disadvantage to being a BMFA member.
[745.68] Chris Bradbury: It depends what sort of information you want to get from us, whether that's the British Modern Flying Association News
[750.68] Chris Bradbury: or the British Dry and Fly News, really.
[753.68] Frank: So hopefully that also clears up Richard Warwick in the chat's question.
[757.68] Frank: Will BDF insurance cover RC planes as well as drones?
[761.68] Chris Bradbury: Absolutely.
[762.68] Chris Bradbury: It's the same insurance.
[763.68] Chris Bradbury: So we've often come across quite a few myths.
[766.68] Chris Bradbury: And one of the articles I'm writing at the moment was a bit of a myth-busting exercise.
[770.68] Chris Bradbury: And one is that clubs don't like drones, and drones aren't insured by the BMFA.
[775.68] Chris Bradbury: Absolutely they are.
[776.68] Chris Bradbury: And vice versa.
[777.68] Chris Bradbury: Airplanes and helicopters are all part of the BDF insurance.
[780.68] Chris Bradbury: It's all the same.
[783.68] Stephen: Speaking of a more responsible approach to flying, I noticed one of the headings over at British Drone Flyers
[789.68] Stephen: is the A2CFC, something that we've touched on in the past.
[793.68] Stephen: And a lot of our listeners, I think, are flying recreationally.
[797.68] Stephen: And they view this as a way of putting a bit more safety around their recreational flying.
[801.68] Stephen: Maybe they don't want to go for a full professional qualification,
[804.68] Stephen: but this would give them some more legitimacy.
[808.68] Stephen: Could you explain what the A2CFC can do for people and what it entails?
[813.68] Stephen: OK.
[814.68] Chris Bradbury: So I think the first one is another one of the myths that I come across quite regularly,
[818.68] Chris Bradbury: that the A2 is only required for commercial operations.
[822.68] Chris Bradbury: It's not.
[823.68] Chris Bradbury: The A2 is required to operate in the A2 open category.
[827.68] Chris Bradbury: So when you look at the open categories, you've got A1, A2, A3.
[832.68] Chris Bradbury: When you go above the open category, you go into the specific category,
[835.68] Chris Bradbury: which is where you fly stuff like this in London, for example.
[838.68] Chris Bradbury: And then you go to certified, which is manned aviation risk, so flying taxis, for example.
[843.68] Chris Bradbury: And then you have, obviously, Article 16, which is another key benefit of being a British drone flyer membership.
[849.68] Chris Bradbury: You can still use the Article 16 from the BMFA because you're part of the BMFA.
[853.68] Chris Bradbury: But in terms of the A2, when you think about what you can fly,
[857.68] Chris Bradbury: so the Mavic Mini and the Mini 2, the 250g and below aircraft,
[861.68] Chris Bradbury: that kind of goes straight into the A1 category.
[864.68] Chris Bradbury: When you go above 250g, what a lot of people don't realise is that all the aircraft then
[869.68] Chris Bradbury: default into the A3 open category because of the weight,
[872.68] Chris Bradbury: where you can go up to 25kg.
[874.68] Stephen: Right.
[875.68] Chris Bradbury: So what you end up with there is you've got to be 150m away from this.
[878.68] Chris Bradbury: You've got various different restrictions.
[880.68] Stephen: So anyone who's flying a freestyle quadrant, maybe 600g,
[883.68] Stephen: is getting lumped in with someone who's flying a massive camera drone or flying a 10kg?
[886.68] Stephen: Yeah, exactly that.
[887.68] Chris Bradbury: You're in the same category as someone flying 25kg.
[890.68] Chris Bradbury: So if you're a BDF or a BMFA member, straight away you've got access to Article 16,
[896.68] Chris Bradbury: which takes a lot of those A3 regulations and actually brings a lot of the distances down,
[901.68] Chris Bradbury: allows you to do things like flying your local park as long as you've done a suitable risk assessment.
[905.68] Chris Bradbury: And a lot of safe elements then open up.
[908.68] Chris Bradbury: What the A2 does is it allows you to fly in the A2 category,
[912.68] Chris Bradbury: and that's what the A2 CFC or the A2 certificate competency allows.
[916.68] Chris Bradbury: So with the A1, A2, A3, there's no longer a distinction between hobby flying and commercial flying.
[922.68] Chris Bradbury: It used to be you had to have the permit for commercial operation.
[925.68] Chris Bradbury: That's all gone.
[926.68] Chris Bradbury: Let's just break down those categories.
[928.68] Stephen: As you say, A1, A2, A3, you touched on A3 as being like the huge drones
[933.68] Stephen: and A1 that characterised as being Mavics and smaller stuff.
[936.68] Stephen: What does A2 mean in that case?
[938.68] Chris Bradbury: So the A2 is up to four kilos for what we class as C2 class drones,
[944.68] Chris Bradbury: and the C2 class drones don't exist yet.
[947.68] Chris Bradbury: Right.
[948.68] Chris Bradbury: When they start coming out, there will be aircraft coming out that have three metres per second
[953.68] Chris Bradbury: as a minimum, you know, like a sort of slow speed setting and some other features,
[959.68] Chris Bradbury: and that's what they'll need to get the C2 classification.
[962.68] Chris Bradbury: So without those available, what you then have is a legacy section,
[967.68] Chris Bradbury: and the legacy aircraft is anything that's placed on the market before the end of next year.
[971.68] Chris Bradbury: So that's basically everything that's for sale now and everything that we've built ourselves.
[975.68] Chris Bradbury: Right.
[976.68] Stephen: Yeah.
[977.68] Stephen: So the open part is that relating to the DIY aspect?
[981.68] Chris Bradbury: What the open means is it's open to all.
[984.68] Chris Bradbury: So it's a category that's not regulated.
[987.68] Chris Bradbury: When you go into the specific category,
[990.68] Chris Bradbury: I'll skim on this very quickly because it's talking about this sort of thing,
[993.68] Chris Bradbury: but the specific category is what has replaced the PFCO scheme,
[998.68] Chris Bradbury: which replaced the permit for aerial work, became the permit for commercial operation.
[1002.68] Chris Bradbury: First of January, it's become something called an operational authorisation.
[1007.68] Chris Bradbury: An operational authorisation is a predetermined risk assessment, PDRA01,
[1012.68] Chris Bradbury: and that's where you apply very similar to the old PFCO scheme.
[1016.68] Chris Bradbury: So you do a GVC, general visual line of site certificate qualification,
[1020.68] Chris Bradbury: through one of the recognised entities.
[1022.68] Chris Bradbury: You get a recognised certificate qualification.
[1024.68] Chris Bradbury: They cost anything from £500 to £2,000,
[1027.68] Chris Bradbury: depending on which training school you go through.
[1030.68] Chris Bradbury: You then apply for an operational authorisation from the CAA,
[1034.68] Chris Bradbury: where you supply them in operations manual and all the other govins.
[1037.68] Chris Bradbury: That costs about £250 per year.
[1040.68] Stephen: This is all very serious professional drone operator stuff than this category.
[1043.68] Chris Bradbury: What that allows you to do is take stuff like this and do overflight
[1046.68] Chris Bradbury: in built-up areas and stuff like that.
[1049.68] Chris Bradbury: So when you look at the old system,
[1053.68] Chris Bradbury: the old system was very simple.
[1055.68] Chris Bradbury: You were a hobby flyer and you flew 0-20 kilos in category A
[1058.68] Chris Bradbury: and you followed those regulations.
[1060.68] Chris Bradbury: And if you were working commercially,
[1062.68] Chris Bradbury: you got a permit for commercial operation and you went into category B
[1065.68] Chris Bradbury: and you followed those regulations.
[1067.68] Chris Bradbury: And if you wanted to do something really weird,
[1070.68] Chris Bradbury: such as, for example, the one we did a couple of years ago,
[1073.68] Chris Bradbury: which was building a life-size Chichi Chichi Bang Bang flying replica,
[1077.68] Chris Bradbury: that goes into the Certifier category,
[1080.68] Chris Bradbury: where you write operational safety cases
[1082.68] Chris Bradbury: and you have to do something quite unique through the CAA.
[1084.68] Stephen: You've got to sit down and write a lot of risk assessments.
[1086.68] Frank: And talk a lot with the CAA, right?
[1089.68] Frank: That's the main thing.
[1090.68] Frank: And I think the CAA kind of got bored of that
[1092.68] Frank: and decided they should formalise things
[1095.68] Frank: and let people do things a bit more with less actual one-on-one conversations.
[1100.68] Stephen: So it's this kind of side effect of the proliferation
[1103.68] Stephen: of more lightweight, semi-professional camera drones
[1106.68] Stephen: than they've brought this qualification into effect.
[1109.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, I think the changes...
[1111.68] Chris Bradbury: I mean, I love myth busting tonight.
[1113.68] Chris Bradbury: You're going to see a thing coming up.
[1116.68] Chris Bradbury: But one of the other myths that comes up a lot,
[1118.68] Chris Bradbury: and I came across this a lot
[1120.68] Chris Bradbury: when we were running the BDS stands supporting the BDRA at Western,
[1124.68] Chris Bradbury: was the number of people who go,
[1126.68] Chris Bradbury: oh, bloody drones, they changed all these rules because of the drones.
[1130.68] Chris Bradbury: The current drone regulations and the changes,
[1132.68] Chris Bradbury: they're not because of drones.
[1134.68] Chris Bradbury: There is an element of drones that have gone into that,
[1136.68] Chris Bradbury: but manned aviation has evolved
[1138.68] Chris Bradbury: and just when you look at normal model aircraft,
[1141.68] Chris Bradbury: when you used to buy a model airplane,
[1143.68] Chris Bradbury: you'd go to a model flying club because you'd crash it in 30 seconds
[1146.68] Chris Bradbury: if you tried to do it yourself.
[1148.68] Chris Bradbury: Whereas now you can go and buy something that's got safe technology,
[1150.68] Chris Bradbury: self stabilising on it.
[1152.68] Chris Bradbury: Things like the Parat Disco flying wing, for example,
[1155.68] Chris Bradbury: you throw it in the air and it goes around in a circle above your head
[1157.68] Chris Bradbury: until you tell it to land.
[1159.68] Chris Bradbury: So it's not just drones, it's technology as a whole.
[1162.68] Stephen: Well, also when it's made of...
[1164.68] Stephen: It's not just multi-rotors, we should say.
[1166.68] Stephen: It might be drones in the form of classification of autonomous vehicles,
[1169.68] Stephen: but it's not multi-rotors.
[1171.68] Frank: Yeah, a lot of people say drones...
[1173.68] Frank: Even stuff that doesn't have a flight controller on it,
[1175.68] Frank: if it's made of foam, you can have a few more goes
[1178.68] Frank: before it disintegrates.
[1180.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, exactly that.
[1181.68] Frank: And the other thing is there's YouTube and the internet
[1184.68] Frank: and forums and things where people can help you
[1187.68] Frank: without having to go to a club
[1189.68] Frank: and you can learn a lot more without having to go to a club
[1193.68] Frank: to actually find out how anything works.
[1196.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, social media certainly opened a lot of doors as well.
[1199.68] Curry: I mean, the whole world is...
[1201.68] Curry: It does seem... I'm not utterly convinced that it's not all down to drones though,
[1205.68] Curry: because it seems to be...
[1208.68] Curry: You said it along, Kerry.
[1210.68] Curry: Well, devil's advocate.
[1213.68] Curry: I don't think...
[1215.68] Curry: There's been some people being idiotic,
[1218.68] Curry: but the news report going on about various bits
[1221.68] Curry: and the drone's done this and drone's put in drugs in jail
[1225.68] Curry: and oh, Gatwick's, it was full of drones, honest it was.
[1228.68] Curry: It just seems to have demonised such to such an extent
[1231.68] Curry: that the public are like, what are you doing about it?
[1233.68] Curry: And the government's like, well, you're introducing all these rules.
[1236.68] Curry: You never hear like somebody flying a little plane in the park and...
[1240.68] Curry: Convenient scapegoat.
[1241.68] Curry: I'm outraged. This must be banned.
[1243.68] Curry: It's always multi-routines.
[1245.68] Chris Bradbury: When you bring up Gatwick, that's another good example
[1248.68] Chris Bradbury: of the part of the myth about drones, it's a blame.
[1251.68] Chris Bradbury: Oh, yeah, I'm absolutely convinced there was no drones.
[1254.68] Curry: Outstanding there's no evidence.
[1257.68] Curry: As far as the greater public go, there were,
[1260.68] Curry: and it's all you people flying them, you ought to blame for everything.
[1263.68] Curry: There definitely was a drone there.
[1265.68] Curry: There was a police drone there.
[1267.68] Curry: There was a police drone there.
[1269.68] Curry: But as soon as that's in the public conscience,
[1272.68] Curry: you can't get that back out, can you?
[1274.68] Curry: That's the problem. You can't bust through all the damage.
[1277.68] Chris Bradbury: This is one of the things that I'm doing as the drone support officer
[1279.68] Chris Bradbury: and it's the drum that I'll be banging all weekend at Duxford
[1282.68] Chris Bradbury: when we're talking to the general public.
[1284.68] Chris Bradbury: We take things like the Gatwick incident,
[1286.68] Chris Bradbury: whether there was or whether there wasn't a drone.
[1289.68] Chris Bradbury: I believe even the beep of DJI has just said today, hasn't he,
[1293.68] Chris Bradbury: that there wasn't, but irrelevant to whether there was or not.
[1296.68] Chris Bradbury: There was one there, there was a police drone,
[1298.68] Stephen: which people kept telling the police they'd seen.
[1300.68] Chris Bradbury: But people blame Gatwick as a reason for the rule changes.
[1303.68] Chris Bradbury: But when you actually look at what's come in,
[1305.68] Chris Bradbury: the EASA regs were actually on their way
[1308.68] Chris Bradbury: two or three years before Gatwick ever happened.
[1311.68] Frank: We are well aware here because we've definitely got
[1314.68] Frank: at least two listeners who had their comments on public record
[1319.68] Frank: because we were talking about it for ages, years on here.
[1323.68] Chris Bradbury: So the regulations were already changing before,
[1327.68] Chris Bradbury: because the CAA, people will sort of slate the CAA
[1331.68] Chris Bradbury: and say they're the campaign against aviation,
[1334.68] Chris Bradbury: whatever you want to come up with.
[1336.68] Chris Bradbury: But the reality is they are quite switched on.
[1340.68] Chris Bradbury: It's sad in some respects that maybe not enough of them
[1343.68] Chris Bradbury: that do the job understand drones or fly drones potentially,
[1347.68] Chris Bradbury: but they do know what they're doing for the most part.
[1350.68] Chris Bradbury: And they're quite aware that, you know,
[1352.68] Chris Bradbury: the one idiot that goes down the park with a Mavic
[1354.68] Chris Bradbury: and does something stupidly dangerous or Gatwick
[1357.68] Chris Bradbury: doesn't represent everybody.
[1359.68] Chris Bradbury: You know, they fully understand
[1361.68] Chris Bradbury: that the British Model Flying Association
[1363.68] Chris Bradbury: has over 30 odd thousand members who for the most part
[1366.68] Chris Bradbury: are following the rules, acting sensibly,
[1368.68] Chris Bradbury: and that there are thousands of people who aren't members
[1371.68] Chris Bradbury: following the rules and acting sensibly.
[1373.68] Chris Bradbury: The comparison I always make is if you think about cars,
[1376.68] Chris Bradbury: the number of people out there on the road right now with cars
[1378.68] Chris Bradbury: that don't have insurance tax, MOTs, driving at high speed,
[1381.68] Chris Bradbury: driving on the wrong side of the road and doing stupid stuff,
[1384.68] Chris Bradbury: you know, it doesn't stop everybody else from driving a car.
[1387.68] Chris Bradbury: So the stuff from Gatwick that has come in
[1389.68] Chris Bradbury: that was changed probably because of Gatwick
[1391.68] Chris Bradbury: is just some of the fines and the punishments
[1393.68] Chris Bradbury: that are put in for those that break the rules.
[1395.68] Chris Bradbury: The rules themselves weren't done because of Gatwick.
[1399.68] Frank: Yeah, I mean, we're in danger of getting on to a round
[1403.68] Frank: of like, oh, but even people that don't break rules
[1405.68] Frank: and get caught, they don't get...
[1407.68] Frank: Anyway, moving forward to where we were.
[1409.68] Frank: We haven't even mentioned it yet.
[1411.68] Frank: We haven't seen a conspiracy yet, Frank.
[1413.68] Chris Bradbury: The A2 category, let's jump back on to the A2 category then.
[1416.68] Chris Bradbury: So the A2, essentially, you don't need it to operate commercially.
[1419.68] Chris Bradbury: So a lot of people assume that's what it's for.
[1421.68] Chris Bradbury: You need it to operate in the A2 category.
[1424.68] Chris Bradbury: That's what it's for.
[1426.68] Chris Bradbury: So when you are flying, it used to be that, like I said,
[1429.68] Chris Bradbury: you were a hobbyist or you were a commercial,
[1431.68] Chris Bradbury: and it was one set of rules, either or.
[1433.68] Chris Bradbury: And the hobby rules was you had to be 150 meters
[1435.68] Chris Bradbury: from congested areas, 50 meters from people.
[1438.68] Chris Bradbury: That's pretty much the A3 rules.
[1440.68] Chris Bradbury: When you look at the regulations for the A3 open category,
[1443.68] Chris Bradbury: that's pretty much what the hobby rules used to be.
[1446.68] Chris Bradbury: So what the CIA have looked at
[1448.68] Chris Bradbury: and the DFT and the ASSA and all these people,
[1450.68] Chris Bradbury: and obviously Dave Phipps from the BMFA
[1452.68] Chris Bradbury: has been out there banging his drum for us as well.
[1454.68] Chris Bradbury: You've got all these, like you say, new drones and new things.
[1457.68] Chris Bradbury: So they've decided that the best way to actually do it is on risk.
[1460.68] Chris Bradbury: And they acknowledge that there's a huge difference
[1462.68] Chris Bradbury: between somebody flying a Mini 2
[1464.68] Chris Bradbury: and somebody flying a 15 kilo, 6-foot hexacopter.
[1468.68] Chris Bradbury: So the risk level for something small that's low speed,
[1471.68] Chris Bradbury: that has a low kinetic energy,
[1473.68] Chris Bradbury: which is basically what it's all boiled down to,
[1475.68] Chris Bradbury: can go into different categories.
[1477.68] Frank: The Mini 2, 250 grams.
[1479.68] Frank: One point I've just thought of that we should probably make
[1481.68] Frank: because it hasn't been mentioned.
[1483.68] Frank: Because we were saying, you know, it's all based on risk
[1485.68] Frank: and it's not based on commercial versus recreation anymore.
[1488.68] Frank: There is still the issue of insurance.
[1490.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, insurance. We'll get to that.
[1492.68] Stephen: The issue of operatorability as well,
[1494.68] Stephen: someone buying an EGI drone that they just got off of Argos
[1498.68] Stephen: is probably likely to be a little unsure of how it flies,
[1501.68] Stephen: whereas I'd expect you with a giant hex,
[1503.68] Stephen: probably don't want to smash it to pieces
[1505.68] Chris Bradbury: and probably a little bit more cautious.
[1507.68] Chris Bradbury: I've been a commercial examiner for a few years
[1509.68] Chris Bradbury: in training schools and I've met people who turn up
[1511.68] Chris Bradbury: to do a test for a commercial and they're hopeless.
[1514.68] Chris Bradbury: But in terms of the risk level,
[1517.68] Chris Bradbury: the A2 lets you fly up to two kilos of legacy aircraft.
[1520.68] Chris Bradbury: So that's what it is.
[1521.68] Chris Bradbury: So the A2 CFC itself, if you think about the Damaris test
[1525.68] Chris Bradbury: or the BMFA's RCC equivalent,
[1528.68] Chris Bradbury: it allows you to sort of do a little bit of theory and knowledge.
[1532.68] Chris Bradbury: The A2 sits above that,
[1533.68] Chris Bradbury: so you'll see a little bit more coming into it
[1535.68] Chris Bradbury: about thinking about, you know,
[1537.68] Chris Bradbury: what sort of cloud formations are coming towards you,
[1539.68] Chris Bradbury: how to do a risk assessment,
[1541.68] Chris Bradbury: what sort of stuff needs to be done.
[1542.68] Chris Bradbury: So it's just a little bit of a higher step up.
[1545.68] Chris Bradbury: It's still an online course,
[1547.68] Chris Bradbury: so you'd sit at home, read through a load of modules,
[1549.68] Chris Bradbury: a bit like an open university thing,
[1551.68] Chris Bradbury: so you can do it in your own time at your own pace.
[1553.68] Chris Bradbury: And at the end of it,
[1554.68] Chris Bradbury: you'll sit down and do a test on a laptop with a webcam on,
[1557.68] Chris Bradbury: you know, and you show the webcam around the room,
[1559.68] Chris Bradbury: make sure that there's no one stood on the other side
[1561.68] Chris Bradbury: or there's not a whiteboard on the wall
[1562.68] Chris Bradbury: with all the key details on it,
[1564.68] Chris Bradbury: and you go through the test.
[1566.68] Chris Bradbury: When you do the test, it gets assigned to a flyer ID,
[1569.68] Chris Bradbury: so if you're currently a member of the BMFA or BDF
[1573.68] Chris Bradbury: and you've done the RCC test for remote pilot competency,
[1577.68] Chris Bradbury: you still actually have to do a flyer ID.
[1579.68] Chris Bradbury: I believe Dave Fitz is in negotiation with the CIA
[1582.68] Chris Bradbury: at the moment to actually make the RCC
[1584.68] Chris Bradbury: more recognized as a flyer ID,
[1586.68] Chris Bradbury: but there's just obviously systems,
[1588.68] Chris Bradbury: transitions to be made and something to hit somewhere.
[1592.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, I think it's more of a computer integration
[1595.68] Chris Bradbury: thing, but it goes above my payground,
[1597.68] Chris Bradbury: should we say that?
[1598.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, yeah.
[1599.68] Stephen: It sounds like the operator ID scheme was certainly plagued
[1602.68] Stephen: with its share.
[1603.68] Stephen: Yeah.
[1604.68] Frank: But so your average person who's not a member of anything,
[1609.68] Frank: there's basically above 250 grams,
[1614.68] Frank: you've got the A3 below to 50 grams, you've got the A1,
[1618.68] Frank: and then if you join the BDF, BMFA, or, you know,
[1622.68] Frank: FPVCo, however, you've also got the Article 16
[1625.68] Frank: that's offered to the Model Flying Associations,
[1630.68] Frank: which depending on what you're doing,
[1632.68] Frank: you've either got some extra permissions
[1634.68] Frank: or you might have to do some more paperwork
[1636.68] Frank: to get some extra permissions and to fly things.
[1640.68] Frank: And then with the membership of BMFA or BDF,
[1645.68] Frank: you've also got 50% off on getting this A2 CFC course
[1650.68] Frank: that will get you more, presumably.
[1652.68] Chris Bradbury: So the UAV Academy, I mean, the A2 courses range
[1656.68] Chris Bradbury: from about £99 to £300, depending on where you go.
[1659.68] Chris Bradbury: The UAV Academy were already one of the more competitive ones
[1662.68] Chris Bradbury: at £99, and they basically agreed a discount to us
[1666.68] Chris Bradbury: for £49.
[1668.68] Chris Bradbury: So Andrew Bailey, the manager of the owner,
[1671.68] Chris Bradbury: as it were, of UAV Academy, he's a model helicopter flyer
[1674.68] Chris Bradbury: himself, he's been a member of the BMFA for many years,
[1677.68] Chris Bradbury: so he's quite respectful of what we do,
[1679.68] Chris Bradbury: and likewise, we're quite respectful of what he does,
[1681.68] Chris Bradbury: so it makes a very good partnership in that respect.
[1683.68] Frank: Mm-hmm. Cool.
[1685.68] Frank: And you were talking as well a while ago
[1689.68] Frank: that you were at Western with the BDRA.
[1692.68] Frank: Yeah.
[1693.68] Frank: We saw you up there.
[1695.68] Frank: So what's the connection between the BDF slash BMFA
[1700.68] Frank: and the BDRA?
[1702.68] Frank: How is that all working together?
[1704.68] Chris Bradbury: Well, the BDRA is still their own association
[1706.68] Chris Bradbury: running their own events, and we're just going to continue
[1709.68] Chris Bradbury: to support them and offer what we can.
[1711.68] Chris Bradbury: You know, coming back to some of the myths, again,
[1714.68] Chris Bradbury: I think some people have always been that we don't support
[1716.68] Chris Bradbury: drones in general and that the BMFA is more interested.
[1719.68] Chris Bradbury: It's the British Model Fix Wing Association.
[1722.68] Chris Bradbury: We are. We're interested in all of it,
[1724.68] Chris Bradbury: and that's the thing with the governing body
[1726.68] Chris Bradbury: for the sport of model flying, and drone racing
[1728.68] Chris Bradbury: is another form of model flying.
[1730.68] Chris Bradbury: So as far as we're concerned, it's part of that big umbrella.
[1732.68] Chris Bradbury: Mm-hmm.
[1733.68] Chris Bradbury: So Andy, for example, I think was one of the,
[1737.68] Chris Bradbury: on one of the original committees for the BFPVRA, was it?
[1740.68] Chris Bradbury: Mm-hmm.
[1741.68] Chris Bradbury: The British FPV Racing Association,
[1742.68] Chris Bradbury: which then became the BDRA.
[1745.68] Chris Bradbury: But the BDRA reached out to us recently
[1747.68] Chris Bradbury: and asked for a little bit of funding
[1749.68] Chris Bradbury: for the large LED monitor that was on display at Western.
[1752.68] Chris Bradbury: Mm-hmm.
[1753.68] Chris Bradbury: But we decided to go a little bit further,
[1754.68] Chris Bradbury: give them some funding, take down a tier,
[1756.68] Chris Bradbury: and then make sure that we had refreshments
[1758.68] Chris Bradbury: available for the pilots.
[1759.68] Chris Bradbury: So a little bit of a PR publicity for us
[1762.68] Chris Bradbury: to let them know that, you know, we do care about drones,
[1764.68] Chris Bradbury: we definitely like them, and we want to make sure
[1766.68] Chris Bradbury: that we're supporting all the disciplines.
[1768.68] Frank: Yeah, because there was a bit of, you know,
[1771.68] Frank: maybe a bit of issues a few years ago.
[1775.68] Frank: I mean, we covered this, you know,
[1777.68] Frank: that there was, well, the FAI World Championships,
[1781.68] Frank: and there wasn't a Team GB for a while.
[1784.68] Frank: I've been told at Western that there is now going to be
[1787.68] Frank: a Team GB, and that's all been smoothed over.
[1790.68] Chris Bradbury: We'll make sure we sort something out at the end of the day,
[1792.68] Chris Bradbury: because we want to make sure we're supporting things.
[1794.68] Chris Bradbury: I don't know the difference, what that is.
[1796.68] Chris Bradbury: I don't know the history, because I wasn't a member
[1798.68] Chris Bradbury: of staff at the time, so I can't comment.
[1800.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1801.68] Chris Bradbury: In terms of what happens from the future, it's, again,
[1804.68] Chris Bradbury: it's not something I'm actually aware of fully at the moment,
[1806.68] Chris Bradbury: to be honest.
[1807.68] Chris Bradbury: So, again, if the BDRA guys come to me and say,
[1810.68] Chris Bradbury: this is what we want to do, then we'll see what we can do to help.
[1812.68] Chris Bradbury: That's what we're here as BMFA to do.
[1815.68] Chris Bradbury: So, yeah, when it comes to that side of things,
[1818.68] Chris Bradbury: it's a little bit out of my experience level, to be honest.
[1820.68] Chris Bradbury: If Andy Simmons is around in the comments thread,
[1822.68] Chris Bradbury: maybe watch for a reply from him,
[1824.68] Chris Bradbury: because he'll probably ping something up.
[1825.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, he is.
[1826.68] Frank: Yeah.
[1848.68] Frank: Find out more at patreon.com forward slash let's drone out.
[1853.68] Frank: Since you have been working with the BMFA,
[1855.68] Frank: are you like the kind of in touch with the BDRA?
[1858.68] Frank: I mean, it seems like it's all going well,
[1860.68] Frank: seeing as you kind of help them out and everything.
[1862.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, no.
[1863.68] Chris Bradbury: We've got a Facebook chat group now, is it?
[1866.68] Chris Bradbury: We're a messenger, myself, Andy, Jamie from the Obviously Committee
[1870.68] Chris Bradbury: and so on.
[1871.68] Chris Bradbury: And one of the things we're already doing
[1873.68] Chris Bradbury: is trying to help them sort out their next racing event,
[1875.68] Chris Bradbury: because they're trying to sort out a venue.
[1877.68] Chris Bradbury: So we've just moved the pile on racing around at BMFA Buckminster
[1881.68] Chris Bradbury: so that they can host their next event up there
[1883.68] Chris Bradbury: in the beginning of October.
[1884.68] Chris Bradbury: So again, you know, it's the thing for Buckminster,
[1888.68] Chris Bradbury: if you look at it, Paul Manley has a massive job every year
[1890.68] Chris Bradbury: of trying to get probably 100 plus events into 50 weekends,
[1894.68] Chris Bradbury: you know, and it's multitasking for him.
[1899.68] Frank: I've seen, we've had a comment on Facebook saying
[1903.68] Frank: the BDF are sponsoring the World X class.
[1906.68] Chris Bradbury: Yes, we've also put some funds towards some gates and events
[1910.68] Chris Bradbury: because that's coming up in mid-October,
[1912.68] Chris Bradbury: which is the X class racing and also some fixed-wing racing.
[1917.68] Chris Bradbury: So again, you know, since I joined,
[1920.68] Chris Bradbury: I've been aware of Marty and Ryan from Fossil Stuff
[1922.68] Chris Bradbury: and a few of those kind of guys.
[1924.68] Chris Bradbury: And I know that they've been trying to get it kick-started
[1927.68] Chris Bradbury: over here in the UK.
[1928.68] Chris Bradbury: And I just think, you know, the best foot forward
[1930.68] Chris Bradbury: is not to let them do it on their own,
[1932.68] Chris Bradbury: but see what we can do to help them promote it,
[1934.68] Chris Bradbury: bring it on board and sort of not take over,
[1938.68] Chris Bradbury: because that's their thing.
[1939.68] Chris Bradbury: You know, we want to let them do it,
[1940.68] Chris Bradbury: but at the same time be there for them if they need any help.
[1944.68] Frank: Yeah, because you've collectively as an organisation had a few,
[1949.68] Frank: well, almost a century of experience
[1951.68] Frank: of making events and regulations.
[1954.68] Chris Bradbury: 100 years should be in the F.A. next year, so yeah.
[1956.68] Frank: Yeah, so of the kind of bureaucracy
[1961.68] Frank: and things that go on to make things happen.
[1964.68] Frank: Yeah.
[1965.68] Chris Bradbury: The thing with the BMFA that you have to remember
[1967.68] Chris Bradbury: is that there's a handful of stuff.
[1969.68] Chris Bradbury: There's myself, Dave Phipps, Andy Manley and a few others,
[1972.68] Chris Bradbury: but the rest of the people, we're all volunteers.
[1974.68] Chris Bradbury: So, you know, I work a part-time job for the BMFA.
[1977.68] Chris Bradbury: I run a full-time business,
[1979.68] Chris Bradbury: and then I run a part-time position as a volunteer.
[1982.68] Chris Bradbury: So all the stuff I do on the achievement scheme,
[1984.68] Chris Bradbury: that's voluntary.
[1985.68] Chris Bradbury: So the videos that we've made for the fixed-wing,
[1988.68] Chris Bradbury: A certificate, B certificate, demos, the helicopter ones,
[1991.68] Chris Bradbury: that's all been done voluntarily.
[1994.68] Chris Bradbury: The next one coming out will be the multirotor A and B.
[1997.68] Chris Bradbury: That's already done.
[1999.68] Chris Bradbury: We're just basically just waiting for an opportunity
[2001.68] Chris Bradbury: to get four or five people together to do it,
[2003.68] Chris Bradbury: and we're going to film the camera drone one at the same time.
[2006.68] Chris Bradbury: So that was another new test actually for this year,
[2009.68] Chris Bradbury: was the camera drone test.
[2010.68] Chris Bradbury: So it's the first time we've allowed a test with GPS on board.
[2013.68] Frank: So is that not just a basic proficiency test,
[2017.68] Frank: but an actual A-cert?
[2019.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah.
[2020.68] Chris Bradbury: So if you take the A-cert and the B-cert multirotor,
[2022.68] Chris Bradbury: you have to do those in manual.
[2024.68] Chris Bradbury: If you do the A-cert with self-stabilization on board,
[2027.68] Chris Bradbury: so ATI, horizon, angle, any of those modes,
[2030.68] Chris Bradbury: it would be a BPC.
[2032.68] Chris Bradbury: When you look at the modern camera drones,
[2034.68] Chris Bradbury: quite a few of them don't even allow you to switch the GPS off.
[2037.68] Chris Bradbury: If you take the Mavics, for example, it's permanently on.
[2040.68] Chris Bradbury: So what I've tried to do there with the test that I've written
[2043.68] Chris Bradbury: is make it more about putting the aircraft into awkward angles,
[2046.68] Chris Bradbury: so that the pilot has to sort of react left and right,
[2049.68] Chris Bradbury: but at 90 degrees off.
[2051.68] Chris Bradbury: So there's an element of pilot skill that we can measure and judge
[2054.68] Chris Bradbury: while the aircraft's still using an element of electronic stabilization.
[2058.68] Chris Bradbury: So there's no B-certificate, unfortunately, for the camera drones,
[2061.68] Chris Bradbury: simply because there's not enough of a challenge to create there.
[2064.68] Chris Bradbury: The A-cert can be done with GPS,
[2066.68] Chris Bradbury: and the BPC-certificate can be done in ATI mode.
[2070.68] Chris Bradbury: But it is a... Sorry, go on.
[2072.68] Frank: For people that kind of don't know,
[2074.68] Frank: kind of the A-certs and the B-certs
[2078.68] Frank: and the achievement scheme of the BMFA,
[2080.68] Frank: that's kind of a BMFA internal thing
[2083.68] Frank: to kind of recognize levels of proficiency, right?
[2086.68] Frank: And typically...
[2087.68] Frank: It's a personal achievement scheme.
[2089.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah.
[2090.68] Chris Bradbury: So another myth that we get is that the A-cert is required.
[2094.68] Chris Bradbury: It's a license to fly unsupervised.
[2096.68] Chris Bradbury: You have to have it for the insurance and the BMFA.
[2098.68] Chris Bradbury: You have to have it to fly at a club.
[2100.68] Chris Bradbury: It's not.
[2101.68] Chris Bradbury: It's not.
[2102.68] Chris Bradbury: They're purely personal achievements.
[2105.68] Chris Bradbury: A lot of the clubs will ask you to have an A-cert to fly unsupervised
[2109.68] Chris Bradbury: because it's their way of...
[2111.68] Chris Bradbury: Their own sort of chairman, is it,
[2113.68] Chris Bradbury: where the secretary of the club making their own rules
[2115.68] Chris Bradbury: to protect their own safety.
[2117.68] Chris Bradbury: But it's not a BMFA requirement.
[2119.68] Chris Bradbury: They're just purely personal goals.
[2121.68] Chris Bradbury: Some people assume that the B-cert is a license to fly a model air show
[2125.68] Chris Bradbury: and stuff like that.
[2126.68] Chris Bradbury: You don't even need an A-cert to fly a model show
[2128.68] Chris Bradbury: if you're well enough known.
[2129.68] Chris Bradbury: It's just another way that people use to measure your ability.
[2132.68] Frank: Yeah.
[2133.68] Frank: I mean, that's kind of from personal experience.
[2137.68] Frank: What ends up happening is when it's a small group of people
[2140.68] Frank: that you personally know, it's fine
[2142.68] Frank: because you know what people are going to be like
[2144.68] Frank: and you know who you can trust to fly somewhere
[2147.68] Frank: and you know who's a good enough pilot
[2149.68] Frank: and who isn't just going to wig out
[2151.68] Frank: and do something stupid in front of a crowd
[2154.68] Frank: or just in a place where you're pretty keen
[2157.68] Frank: on not pissing off your neighbours.
[2159.68] Frank: But when you start getting more people
[2162.68] Frank: that you don't personally know, you have two options.
[2165.68] Frank: You either tell them to go away
[2168.68] Frank: or you have a way of kind of having
[2172.68] Frank: a standards that you can get people to meet
[2175.68] Frank: without you personally knowing them.
[2177.68] Frank: And that's kind of what the A-cert and B-cert have been used for
[2181.68] Frank: by clubs and by event organizers.
[2183.68] Chris Bradbury: The A-cert definitely gets used a lot for that level of
[2186.68] Chris Bradbury: can I turn my back on this person and no,
[2188.68] Chris Bradbury: I'm not going to get hit in the head.
[2191.68] Curry: So there's this question come up there from
[2193.68] Curry: Numskull FPV saying,
[2195.68] Curry: can we do the course with an FPV drone?
[2197.68] Curry: And I think what he means by that is can we fly FPV?
[2199.68] Curry: Because these are...
[2200.68] Curry: Rather than on a site.
[2202.68] Chris Bradbury: For which test, sorry?
[2206.68] Curry: For the multi-rotor A and B, I presume.
[2209.68] Chris Bradbury: Right, so for the multi-rotor A and B,
[2212.68] Chris Bradbury: they are predominantly designed for what I would class
[2215.68] Chris Bradbury: as a manual flight aircraft.
[2217.68] Chris Bradbury: So something like that, that's a seven inch.
[2221.68] Chris Bradbury: You know, this could easily be set up for long range FPV.
[2224.68] Chris Bradbury: I do this for line of sight aerobatics.
[2226.68] Chris Bradbury: But the A and the B certificate are designed
[2230.68] Chris Bradbury: for line of sight manual flight.
[2232.68] Chris Bradbury: So as long, you know, you could use a racing drone.
[2234.68] Chris Bradbury: I think I did mine with a gravity 280, if you know those.
[2239.68] Frank: Yeah, yeah.
[2240.68] Chris Bradbury: Little six inch racer in manual flight.
[2243.68] Chris Bradbury: The camera drone is definitely designed for those things
[2246.68] Chris Bradbury: like Phantoms, Mavics, Inspires, anything that's stabilizing.
[2251.68] Chris Bradbury: In terms of the...
[2252.68] Chris Bradbury: Sorry, go on.
[2253.68] Stephen: FPV versus LOS.
[2255.68] Stephen: Are you expecting the operator to not have goggles on
[2258.68] Stephen: when they're doing those tests or...
[2260.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah, so the A and the B set,
[2262.68] Chris Bradbury: the A and the B set are line of sight.
[2265.68] Chris Bradbury: So you have to be able to watch the drone.
[2267.68] Chris Bradbury: What we have got is an Acer extension for general FPV,
[2271.68] Chris Bradbury: which is where we just fly around, you know,
[2273.68] Chris Bradbury: do some procedural turns, fly around the site and come back.
[2276.68] Chris Bradbury: And we've also got an Acer extension for FPV racing.
[2281.68] Chris Bradbury: And the Acer extension for that is going around gates,
[2284.68] Chris Bradbury: you know, through flags and stuff like that,
[2286.68] Chris Bradbury: racing starts and so on.
[2288.68] Chris Bradbury: In fact, that's the only test that we've got
[2290.68] Chris Bradbury: where we actually allow a crash.
[2294.68] Chris Bradbury: Normally if you crash in a test,
[2295.68] Chris Bradbury: it would be considered a very much instant fail.
[2299.68] Chris Bradbury: For the FPV extension, we understand that hitting gates
[2302.68] Chris Bradbury: is something that happens a lot.
[2304.68] Chris Bradbury: So in the FPV extension, if you hit a gate,
[2307.68] Chris Bradbury: we actually want you to shut the throttle and drop,
[2309.68] Chris Bradbury: not try and punch the throttle and end up 100 feet in the air
[2312.68] Chris Bradbury: going into a non-controlled area.
[2314.68] Frank: Is that like a required test maneuver, just a crash and disarm?
[2317.68] Chris Bradbury: No, the idea is that in the rules,
[2319.68] Chris Bradbury: it says if you do hit a gate and crash,
[2321.68] Chris Bradbury: that's what you want to see you do and you can reset.
[2323.68] Chris Bradbury: Two crashes, you're clearly not ready.
[2327.68] Stephen: So if someone's doing the bulk of their flying FPV,
[2330.68] Stephen: why are they being examined line of sight
[2332.68] Stephen: if they don't intend to be flying that drone line of sight?
[2335.68] Chris Bradbury: It's a valid point, actually.
[2337.68] Chris Bradbury: I'll raise it in our next achievement scheme meeting.
[2340.68] Chris Bradbury: So we always try, there you go, arms up.
[2343.68] Chris Bradbury: We're always open, always, always open to constructive ideas,
[2348.68] Chris Bradbury: you know, and that's a very, very valid idea.
[2352.68] Frank: Jack's about to set some fireworks off.
[2355.68] Frank: There's a lot of pilots who fly self-built drones
[2359.68] Stephen: and, you know, they have the goggles on from the moment they take off
[2362.68] Stephen: to the moment they end up in a tree, right, or land.
[2365.68] Stephen: And they wouldn't intend to be flying it line of sight
[2368.68] Stephen: because they might be flying within visual line of sight,
[2370.68] Stephen: but to get orientation on maybe a small quad,
[2373.68] Stephen: let's say 100 feet away from yourself,
[2376.68] Stephen: it's much easier with goggles on to pilot that than line of sight.
[2379.68] Curry: I think there's always an argument that you should be able to take your goggles off
[2383.68] Curry: and bring it down if you've got a problem.
[2385.68] Curry: But, of course, most people in that situation,
[2387.68] Curry: because there's a delay going like that,
[2389.68] Curry: is you'd flick into angle to deploy some time,
[2392.68] Curry: especially me, because I'm like, where did I put my glasses?
[2394.68] Curry: There they are. Where's my cord?
[2396.68] Curry: There it is, and bring it down that way.
[2398.68] Chris Bradbury: I have a three-way switch on my controllers,
[2400.68] Chris Bradbury: which has always got red heat shrink on it to identify it,
[2403.68] Chris Bradbury: and it's a three-way switch.
[2404.68] Chris Bradbury: Middle is full acro, flick either direction,
[2407.68] Chris Bradbury: and it goes into horizon or angles,
[2409.68] Chris Bradbury: and it levels off, it gives me a chance to get my eyes on it and orientate it.
[2413.68] Chris Bradbury: But, no, in terms of the achievement scheme,
[2416.68] Chris Bradbury: it's like I say, I was brought in as a volunteer several years ago
[2419.68] Chris Bradbury: from my experience with multirotors to write a test,
[2421.68] Chris Bradbury: and that's why we did the A and the B certificate.
[2424.68] Chris Bradbury: Since they were brought out, we've actually tweaked them slightly,
[2428.68] Chris Bradbury: because the original one, because it was pretty much a copy of the heli,
[2431.68] Chris Bradbury: I've also tweaked the helicopter one,
[2433.68] Chris Bradbury: because originally you used to do certain exercises hovering,
[2436.68] Chris Bradbury: then you do a circuit exercise hover, circuit exercise hover, land,
[2439.68] Chris Bradbury: and what we've decided is if you can't take off and land repeatedly by B set,
[2443.68] Chris Bradbury: you shouldn't even be flying.
[2445.68] Chris Bradbury: So, we've put all the hovering stuff together, land,
[2448.68] Chris Bradbury: all the circuit stuff together, land,
[2450.68] Chris Bradbury: because what that allowed is for people who fly things like the 3D electric helicopters
[2454.68] Chris Bradbury: that might only get a four-minute flight time,
[2456.68] Chris Bradbury: it means they've got a natural landing point in the middle of the test to swap batteries,
[2459.68] Chris Bradbury: and it's the same thing for a lot of the racing quads
[2461.68] Chris Bradbury: that might only fly three and a half to four minutes.
[2465.68] Stephen: Four minutes, you're doing well on some of those quads.
[2467.68] Stephen: Yeah.
[2468.68] Chris Bradbury: Well, it's about setting your aircraft up for the test.
[2470.68] Chris Bradbury: It's the same of any aircraft.
[2472.68] Chris Bradbury: Something like the one I showed a minute ago,
[2474.68] Chris Bradbury: my line of sight on there, that'll fly for an easy 20 minutes,
[2477.68] Chris Bradbury: but it'll fly for four minutes if I'm flying like a hula-doo.
[2479.68] Stephen: Do you have anyone come to do those certs with, say, a tiny whip or something
[2483.68] Stephen: that's just somewhat ludicrous?
[2485.68] Chris Bradbury: Some of the tests are...
[2489.68] Curry: There's an answer to that one from Andy Simmons there.
[2495.68] Frank: Yeah, so Andy Simmons has said if it's under 300 grams,
[2498.68] Frank: it's classed as the basic proficiency test.
[2501.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah.
[2502.68] Stephen: So you literally can't do an A test unless you've got a 300-gram drone.
[2505.68] Stephen: That's what you're saying.
[2506.68] Chris Bradbury: You can't just add lead to it.
[2513.68] Chris Bradbury: The reason I wrote that requirement for 300 grams,
[2516.68] Chris Bradbury: very few of the tests, you take the helicopter test,
[2519.68] Chris Bradbury: there's no weight requirement.
[2520.68] Chris Bradbury: The glider test is no weight requirement.
[2522.68] Chris Bradbury: The six-wing is a minimum of a kilo,
[2524.68] Chris Bradbury: and it has to be able to roll on the floor so it has to have undercarriage.
[2527.68] Chris Bradbury: With the camera drone test, multi-roader test,
[2530.68] Chris Bradbury: there's no weight limit either.
[2532.68] Chris Bradbury: The camera drones, we're fully aware there's going to be a lot of people
[2536.68] Chris Bradbury: with Mini 2s that want to take that test.
[2538.68] Chris Bradbury: So to make it easier for the examiners, we've put a 300-gram limit
[2542.68] Chris Bradbury: so that if anyone stands up with a Mini 2 that clearly states on it
[2545.68] Chris Bradbury: 249 grams, because you cannot switch the GPS off to do the A certificate,
[2550.68] Chris Bradbury: they want people sneaking through by mistake.
[2552.68] Chris Bradbury: So that's why there's a 300-gram limit on that one.
[2556.68] Chris Bradbury: So in terms of doing the regular multi-roader test or the helicopter test,
[2560.68] Chris Bradbury: the circuit length is a minimum of 50 meters and about 30 meters wide.
[2564.68] Chris Bradbury: So you're talking a good, much bigger than a tennis court.
[2567.68] Chris Bradbury: So when you think about something that's probably only 2 inches wide...
[2569.68] Stephen: It's really deep.
[2570.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah.
[2572.68] Chris Bradbury: Flying that to 30 meters distance away from yourself
[2575.68] Chris Bradbury: and then going a further 30 meters out naturally...
[2579.68] Frank: It could be entertaining.
[2580.68] Chris Bradbury: It'd be very entertaining.
[2582.68] Chris Bradbury: The other thing as well is that the tests have to be flown outdoors.
[2586.68] Chris Bradbury: And in terms of the wind, we have got an indoor test, by the way,
[2590.68] Chris Bradbury: for airplanes, you know, the shockies and stuff like that.
[2593.68] Chris Bradbury: But in terms of the test, it has to be flown outdoors.
[2595.68] Chris Bradbury: So again, it's kind of self-limiting.
[2597.68] Chris Bradbury: So if you take something like the little nano helicopters you can get
[2600.68] Chris Bradbury: that are 4 inches long and 30 grams,
[2602.68] Chris Bradbury: theoretically you could use that for your helicopter test,
[2604.68] Chris Bradbury: but you're just not going to be able to see it
[2606.68] Chris Bradbury: and it's not going to fly in the wind.
[2607.68] Stephen: I learnt on the little Hubsan H107s which were complete rubbish
[2611.68] Stephen: and they didn't have a camera
[2612.68] Stephen: and I used to fly those things around the park.
[2614.68] Stephen: I only lost one of them.
[2615.68] Stephen: But yeah, I used to fly them 30 meters out definitely.
[2618.68] Stephen: Yeah.
[2619.68] Stephen: Just orbit myself.
[2620.68] Chris Bradbury: But it's semi-self-limiting in that respect.
[2622.68] Chris Bradbury: But coming back to Jack's, you know, the point there that made Jack happy,
[2626.68] Chris Bradbury: I'm chairman, like I say, of the Achievement Scheme Committee.
[2629.68] Chris Bradbury: So it's a very valid point that a lot of people do go
[2632.68] Chris Bradbury: and I saw a lot of the guys at the BDRA race event that can't hover line of sight.
[2636.68] Chris Bradbury: Because they've purely done FPV.
[2638.68] Chris Bradbury: They've always flown with the goggles on.
[2640.68] Chris Bradbury: So it might be worth working out if we can create some form of A-set
[2644.68] Chris Bradbury: or even a B-set for them.
[2646.68] Frank: A couple of questions I'll have.
[2647.68] Frank: One is for the racing A-set, FPV racing A-set or whatever it was.
[2654.68] Chris Bradbury: The extension, yeah.
[2655.68] Frank: The extension, that was the one.
[2656.68] Frank: Yeah.
[2657.68] Frank: Do they have to do the fail safe and all that check-in bit?
[2661.68] Frank: Because that's like key for a racer.
[2665.68] Frank: Having organized quite a few events with FPV racing at it,
[2670.68] Frank: if you can make sure that they all can do the check-in process
[2673.68] Frank: in under 30 seconds, that would be amazing.
[2676.68] Frank: Well, we don't time it.
[2677.68] Chris Bradbury: Shut up and say that you're on this channel.
[2679.68] Chris Bradbury: Yeah.
[2680.68] Chris Bradbury: The one thing we've done with the FPV extension for racing extension.
[2684.68] Chris Bradbury: We've got an FPV extension, which you could do with a multi-rotor,
[2687.68] Chris Bradbury: a fixed wing or anything, which is kind of just flying around the sky, essentially.
[2691.68] Chris Bradbury: The racing one involves gates and everything else.
[2693.68] Chris Bradbury: It does state on there about sort of a smooth, steady speed.
[2697.68] Chris Bradbury: So what we haven't done is put time limits on anything.
[2699.68] Chris Bradbury: We don't want to encourage actual racing during the test.
[2702.68] Chris Bradbury: It's more about competency.
[2703.68] Chris Bradbury: But coming back to your question,
[2705.68] Chris Bradbury: range check has to be explained to the examiner by the candidate.
[2708.68] Chris Bradbury: That's written in the polls.
[2709.68] Chris Bradbury: The examiner does have the right to ask them to demonstrate how the range check is done.
[2714.68] Chris Bradbury: And fail safe is compulsory to be tested on all tests now.
[2718.68] Chris Bradbury: That was released about three months ago.
[2720.68] Chris Bradbury: So if somebody does their fail safe and the fail safe doesn't work,
[2724.68] Chris Bradbury: what we actually do is we abort the test
[2727.68] Chris Bradbury: and it doesn't count as one of their two attempts on the day.
[2730.68] Chris Bradbury: So the fail safe is a requirement now as part of all the tests.
[2734.68] Frank: Cool.
[2737.68] Frank: It was another question I had, but I've forgotten what it was now.
[2739.68] Frank: So I'll let someone else jump in.
[2740.68] Frank: No, no.
[2741.68] Chris Bradbury: I was just going to say in terms of doing something like an FPV only test for the A,
[2745.68] Chris Bradbury: you know, direct to FPV,
[2747.68] Chris Bradbury: it would be great to get some ideas from you guys on what sort of maneuvers
[2750.68] Chris Bradbury: and exercises we can put in.
[2752.68] Chris Bradbury: Because one of the things I was conscious of writing the FPV racing extension for the A
[2756.68] Chris Bradbury: is not everybody has access to gates or poles or flags.
[2760.68] Chris Bradbury: So it's trying to write something where it's like, okay.
[2762.68] Stephen: Natural obstacles like trees or sign.
[2765.68] Stephen: Yeah, exactly.
[2766.68] Curry: Go between those trees, avoid scraggle and get them to land in space.
[2773.68] Curry: The number of people I fly with that can't land
[2776.68] Curry: and they just go along and disarm randomly.
[2779.68] Chris Bradbury: So the BDRA, we had Eric Likou from the BDRA,
[2783.68] Chris Bradbury: had a good level of feedback into the original FPV racing extension
[2786.68] Chris Bradbury: along with his committee.
[2788.68] Chris Bradbury: And one of the things to that is they have to land in a two meter designated box.
[2793.68] Chris Bradbury: And again, we do allow for the quad to tip over after landing
[2796.68] Chris Bradbury: because you know what it's like sometimes you land and the board fights the ground.
[2799.68] Stephen: You've got a bottom mounted battery, I mean.
[2800.68] Stephen: Yeah.
[2801.68] Stephen: Not much choice.
[2802.68] Chris Bradbury: Exactly.
[2803.68] Chris Bradbury: So, you know, if it's dropped, we've also allowed, for example, the drone
[2806.68] Chris Bradbury: to be dropped the last six inches, you know, that wouldn't be a fail.
[2809.68] Chris Bradbury: But landing in a two meter box, if they land in the two meter box
[2812.68] Chris Bradbury: and it cartwheels four meters out of the box, then that would be a fail.
[2816.68] Stephen: You probably don't want to be doing this test on a 60 degree camera angle then.
[2820.68] Stephen: You want to be a little more conservative.
[2822.68] Stephen: Where's Bluelle?
[2823.68] Frank: Where's Bluelle?
[2824.68] Frank: Yeah.
[2825.68] Frank: I mean, my other question, which I've now remembered, was,
[2828.68] Frank: because many of the BDF members, as you were saying,
[2831.68] Frank: are likely to just be kind of country members, as it's called in the BMFA,
[2835.68] Frank: so not affiliated with a club, just likely flying out on their own.
[2840.68] Frank: How are they going to kind of make use of the achievement scheme?
[2845.68] Frank: What's the best way for them to do that?
[2848.68] Chris Bradbury: So, examiners themselves are assigned to clubs.
[2852.68] Chris Bradbury: So, they're called club examiners because the club asks for someone to be tested
[2855.68] Chris Bradbury: as an examiner and then they ratify them every 12 months
[2858.68] Chris Bradbury: as part of their annual renewal process for the club affiliation.
[2864.68] Chris Bradbury: What we do for country members is you can still basically ask.
[2868.68] Chris Bradbury: So, all club examiners could do a country test for them.
[2871.68] Chris Bradbury: So, you could go to their club and do the test.
[2873.68] Chris Bradbury: So, the best way to do it though is to contact the BMFA
[2876.68] Chris Bradbury: and then we can put you in touch with the local achievement scheme coordinator
[2880.68] Chris Bradbury: for your area.
[2881.68] Chris Bradbury: So, for example, in my area, the northwest area, we've got Kevin Watson.
[2884.68] Chris Bradbury: He would then ask a local club if they can help
[2887.68] Chris Bradbury: or we've got a network of area chief examiners, which I'm one of.
[2890.68] Chris Bradbury: I'm a fixed-wing heli and multirator area chief
[2894.68] Chris Bradbury: and we're quite happy to meet people at clubs
[2897.68] Chris Bradbury: or in the case of a country member, probably down the local woods
[2900.68] Chris Bradbury: as long as it's not a dogging hotspot.
[2903.68] Chris Bradbury: I'm not being, as soon as I started saying that,
[2905.68] Chris Bradbury: I was sitting there thinking in the back of my mind,
[2907.68] Chris Bradbury: I'm not being lured into the woods for something dodgy.
[2910.68] Jack: Welcome to Let's Throw Now.
[2916.68] Chris Bradbury: But no, we've got a network there for the country members as well.
[2919.68] Chris Bradbury: And also, I should get mentioned,
[2921.68] Chris Bradbury: Andy's probably screaming this at the keyboard.
[2923.68] Chris Bradbury: We have the BMFA National Centre in Grantham
[2927.68] Chris Bradbury: where you can go a lot of buttments so we can go along
[2929.68] Chris Bradbury: and we have achievement scheme events once a month.
[2932.68] Chris Bradbury: So, our next one's coming up on the 27th and 28th of this month
[2935.68] Chris Bradbury: and we go out there, we have three or four chief examiners minimum normally on there
[2940.68] Chris Bradbury: and we can do any of the achievement scheme tests.
[2943.68] Chris Bradbury: If it's a CSET or an examiner test, we just need it booked in in advance
[2947.68] Chris Bradbury: because that has to go back through the area.
[2949.68] Chris Bradbury: But essentially, we're there to help facilitate.
[2951.68] Chris Bradbury: So, we did a couple of camera drone tests last month, the August one.
[2957.68] Stephen: So, if people aren't members of a club, then they can go up to Grantham.
[2960.68] Chris Bradbury: They can come up to the BMFA buttments to site
[2963.68] Chris Bradbury: or they can get in touch with their local area coordinator
[2966.68] Chris Bradbury: and assess something that way.
[2967.68] Chris Bradbury: So, there's more than one option, basically.
[2970.68] Frank: Jack would need to take his oxygen cylinder to go that far north of London.
[2976.68] Chris Bradbury: Does he get a nosebleed past the M4?
[2980.68] Jack: I don't even like going on the M4.
[2982.68] Jack: It's too close to Wales.
[2986.68] Stephen: He goes up to like kind of curry sauce with chips level
[2989.68] Stephen: and he's just really distressed.
[2991.68] Stephen: He gets to like gravy with chips so he just doesn't know what the f*** is going on.
[2995.68] Jack: Yeah, just starts sweating, rolling on the floor, crying.
[2999.68] Chris Bradbury: I'm going to say this just to go back here because I know he's watching
[3002.68] Chris Bradbury: but don't go to Yorkshire where they call a bread roll a tea cake.
[3008.34] Jack: What?
[3009.34] Jack: I'll throw you a loop.
[3011.34] Jack: But you go further north and then you've got a tannux tea cake, the old Scottish.
[3015.34] Jack: Yeah.
[3017.34] Jack: What? Tea cake?
[3019.34] Stephen: So, all this stuff, all the qualifications, they seem to be around
[3023.34] Stephen: a lot of people trying to harmonise a lot of this drone stuff internationally.
[3027.34] Stephen: So, we don't have weirdly esoteric British laws and weirdly esoteric French laws.
[3033.34] Stephen: What do you think is going to happen in the future?
[3035.34] Stephen: We've got a lot of drone stuff that people seem to be standardising on labelling
[3040.34] Stephen: but there's still room for self-built stuff.
[3042.34] Stephen: Do you think there's going to be a rush to try and put us into a new category in the future?
[3048.34] Chris Bradbury: The category is already there.
[3050.34] Chris Bradbury: So, coming back to my myth-busting theme for the evening,
[3054.34] Chris Bradbury: there's a lot of people that are saying that we won't be able to fly anything that we've got after 2022.
[3059.34] Chris Bradbury: So, the 1st of January, 2023 is when the legacy drones are no longer flyable
[3064.34] Chris Bradbury: and you have to have one of the C-class drones.
[3066.34] Chris Bradbury: All it means is that every drone that we've got now goes into the A3 open category.
[3071.34] Chris Bradbury: So, you basically go back to the original hobby regulations that we had before all of this ever started.
[3077.34] Chris Bradbury: So, as Andy loves to say, when all the new regulations came in on the 1st of January this year,
[3081.34] Chris Bradbury: nothing's changed, nothing's going to change.
[3085.34] Chris Bradbury: But you'll still have access to Article 16 because that's one of the things that we've done as the BMFA.
[3090.34] Chris Bradbury: When I say we, I tend to mean Dave Phipps, our champions as it were when he goes out to the DFT.
[3095.34] Chris Bradbury: The stuff that they've done, the Article 16, there's no legacy requirement on that either.
[3100.34] Chris Bradbury: So, when you look at a racing drone that is self-built, it's not got a C-class rating on it.
[3105.34] Chris Bradbury: It's going to go to the A3 open category or it's going to go to, you can fly it in Article 16.
[3110.34] Chris Bradbury: So, come the 1st of January, 2023 and answering your question, you know, what do we do in the future?
[3115.34] Chris Bradbury: You really, what we're pushing or what the CAA and the DFT and us, we're pushing as everyone to be a member of some form of organisation.
[3122.34] Chris Bradbury: The BMFA have always had the policy, you know, the policy's strength in numbers.
[3126.34] Chris Bradbury: We've got over 30,000 members.
[3128.34] Chris Bradbury: So, when the CAA first did the operator ID and it was going to be £16.50
[3132.34] Chris Bradbury: and there was going to be all these different regulations and so on, you know, when Dave Phipps went into the meetings
[3138.34] Chris Bradbury: and he went in there with the RPAS like everyone else, he doesn't just stand there as Dave Phipps.
[3142.34] Chris Bradbury: He stands there as the voice of 30,000 plus people from 800 plus affiliated clubs.
[3147.34] Chris Bradbury: So, when he stamps his foot, it's a loud stamp.
[3150.34] Chris Bradbury: And that's why we're opening up the British drone flyers.
[3153.34] Chris Bradbury: When you look at the statistics, there's 30,000 plus members, as I say, but there's over 200,000 registered operators in the UK.
[3160.34] Chris Bradbury: And that's just the people who bothered to operate, you know, register, let alone those that probably don't even realise that they need to.
[3165.34] Chris Bradbury: So, there's 100,000, you know, nearly 200,000 plus extra people that we can bring in to make that voice even stronger.
[3173.34] Chris Bradbury: So, I think that some people are accusing us of just trying to cash in on the latest thing and it's not about that.
[3178.34] Chris Bradbury: It's trying to create strength in numbers to protect the hobby, to protect what we do as a passion.
[3184.34] Stephen: So, as you had a kind of pragmatic approach going forward,
[3187.34] Stephen: you know that people are going to want to increasingly legislate.
[3190.34] Stephen: And we've seen people trying to put remote I.D. solutions on drones in America.
[3195.34] Stephen: What do you think is the kind of pragmatic position that you would take going forward?
[3199.34] Stephen: Just draw a line in the sand and say, this is it, or are you prepared to make amendments in future?
[3204.34] Chris Bradbury: I think you always have to sort of be prepared to make some amendments because you just don't know what's going to come to you around the corner.
[3212.34] Chris Bradbury: If you take, for example, things like Amazon and Google that have all been talking about, delivery drones and what have you.
[3219.34] Chris Bradbury: Some people will say it's a pipe dream.
[3221.34] Chris Bradbury: Some people will say, yeah, it's going to come in six months.
[3223.34] Chris Bradbury: You know, I'm more realistic.
[3225.34] Chris Bradbury: I think it's still a bit of a dream, but it's on its way potentially.
[3228.34] Chris Bradbury: So, I think if it happens, that's when you have to sort of think about how to do it safely and how to integrate it safely.
[3234.34] Chris Bradbury: So, I think you have to sit there and think, yeah, the rules might have to change, but how?
[3240.34] Chris Bradbury: We just sort of have to see how it develops, I suppose.
[3243.34] Stephen: Okay. So, you're going to wait to see if the situation changes.
[3246.34] Stephen: You don't have your own agenda that you're looking to push forward at this point?
[3250.34] Chris Bradbury: No. I mean, the beautiful thing with being part of the BMFA is, I mean, I obviously have my own personal opinions.
[3255.34] Chris Bradbury: I've got things that I have to think about.
[3257.34] Stephen: When I say you, I mean the BMFA, not the BMFA member.
[3261.34] Chris Bradbury: I'm more than happy to share personal opinions, but personal opinions obviously don't necessarily reflect on the BMFA side of things.
[3268.34] Chris Bradbury: Because when we do the only thing with the BMFA, it's not about individuals.
[3272.34] Chris Bradbury: It's about that mass of 30,000 people and also the hundreds of thousands of people that aren't registered that we can offer support to.
[3282.34] Chris Bradbury: There's a lot of rules that, because I've got an operator, BFCO.
[3287.34] Chris Bradbury: So, I've got a PFCO, an operational safety case.
[3290.34] Chris Bradbury: I've then got two flyer IDs, two operator IDs, one for the company, one for me.
[3296.34] Chris Bradbury: I've then got a PFCO number. So, I've got nine different serial numbers.
[3299.34] Chris Bradbury: Then every drone has to have its own serial number.
[3302.34] Chris Bradbury: So, you sit there and you look at this and it's got four different serial numbers on it just to fit with the regulations.
[3307.34] Chris Bradbury: And you think, that's gone silly now.
[3311.34] Stephen: Yeah, you can do that when you've got a giant hex. You can maybe climb one.
[3314.34] Stephen: You're going to fly a little finger on each arm somewhere. It gets more challenging.
[3317.34] Stephen: You get a number on each arm, but if you have a fifth number...
[3321.34] Chris Bradbury: So, personally, I think some of the regulations, because there's a little bit of complexity created by that hobby to commercial aspect.
[3328.34] Chris Bradbury: But in terms of the operator ID, I think it's a good idea.
[3331.34] Chris Bradbury: There's a lot of people out there now with these drones that are fully autonomous, you press a button, it hovers.
[3336.34] Chris Bradbury: There's no guarantee that they won't set it up wrong, forget to do a compass calibration before flying the Mini
[3341.34] Chris Bradbury: and it joins the revolution against mankind and spanks off towards the horizon as part of Skynet.
[3347.34] Chris Bradbury: Back to Joanna.
[3348.34] Chris Bradbury: It's not just about blaming people for accidents. It's that, okay, so there's the drone, it's gone somewhere.
[3355.34] Chris Bradbury: We can track it back to who owned it, give it back to them and find out what happened.
[3358.34] Chris Bradbury: And then once we know what happened, we can educate the rest of the people to stop them doing the same.
[3362.34] Chris Bradbury: It's that the CIA do adopt that education over blame approach to a lot of things.
[3368.34] Chris Bradbury: The CIA don't actually do any prosecutions themselves.
[3372.34] Chris Bradbury: They'll only ever really advise the Crown Prosecution Service who would do the prosecution.
[3378.34] Jack: Oh, that's scary.
[3383.34] Chris Bradbury: Regulations aside, I think things could potentially change.
[3387.34] Chris Bradbury: What we need to do is just stay ahead of them and try and make sure that we're always doing the best for our membership at the end of the day.
[3393.34] Frank: Yeah, I mean, like you were saying, there's strength in numbers.
[3396.34] Frank: And I have heard it said from the meetings where there's lots of stakeholders getting in from manned aviation and all sorts
[3406.34] Frank: and sort of the actual literal numbers of people that the BMFA are representing makes them actually quite a big kind of feature in those meetings.
[3416.34] Frank: Because there's a lot of people that fly model aircraft compared to...
[3420.34] Chris Bradbury: We're probably bigger than, you know, I don't know the two statistics, so I might be talking about my back end,
[3425.34] Chris Bradbury: but we're probably bigger than a lot of the organizations put together.
[3428.34] Frank: Yeah, sort of, you know, when you look at sort of the microlight association or light aircraft association,
[3434.34] Frank: the numbers aren't really that big.
[3436.34] Frank: And the BMFA is actually quite a big organization and has quite a lot of weight to throw around in these kinds of things.
[3441.34] Chris Bradbury: And they're also the age.
[3442.34] Chris Bradbury: You know, we're 100 years old next year.
[3445.34] Chris Bradbury: And one thing that does help an awful lot is that the BMFA back in the 90s got model flying recognized as a sport.
[3453.34] Chris Bradbury: So when you look at America, for example, it's actually just a hobby over there.
[3456.34] Chris Bradbury: So it's very hard to enforce anything when it comes to a hobby.
[3459.34] Chris Bradbury: Whereas when it's a sport in the UK, there's a certain element of responsibility to councils,
[3465.34] Chris Bradbury: not very expected responsibility, but a suggested responsibility to provide facilities for sporting endeavors.
[3476.34] Chris Bradbury: So when it comes to model flying, you've got to kind of support it in a way because it is a sport, not just a hobby.
[3483.34] Curry: I think the most important aspect of that takeaway is we can now call ourselves athletes.
[3490.34] Chris Bradbury: So for me, a personal opinion, if you can smoke and drink a pint while you're doing it, you're not an athlete.
[3498.34] Jack: So, you know, darts back in a day.
[3502.34] Chris Bradbury: I've never managed to drink a pint before.
[3508.34] Chris Bradbury: I think the thing with sport is the definition is you can compete.
[3511.34] Chris Bradbury: You've got a competition and that's what we do at the BMFA.
[3514.34] Chris Bradbury: We create the nationals.
[3515.34] Chris Bradbury: We create all the different eventing competitions that people can come and compete in,
[3520.34] Chris Bradbury: whether that's directly ourselves or through the various different governing bodies of different disciplines.
[3527.88] Frank: Cool. Is there anything else that we've missed as kind of like unique selling points of BDF or upcoming events?
[3535.88] Chris Bradbury: In terms of selling points, I think the selling points we did mention earlier about insurance.
[3539.88] Chris Bradbury: But just to clarify on that, if you are looking to fly commercially, BMFA insurance is only covering you for hobby flying.
[3546.88] Chris Bradbury: You need insurance that complies with EC785 2004, if you want to fly commercially.
[3551.88] Chris Bradbury: So, yeah, that's there.
[3553.88] Chris Bradbury: Plenty of insurance companies out there that do pay per day and annual policies, but the BMFA is a hobby policy.
[3559.88] Chris Bradbury: So I think the main benefit of joining the BMFA or the British drone flyers is you're not just getting insurance.
[3565.88] Chris Bradbury: So there's a lot of companies out there that might just offer an insurance package.
[3569.88] Chris Bradbury: We're here to offer support.
[3571.88] Chris Bradbury: So, yes, a lot of people probably join to get that insurance, you know, the public liability insurance.
[3576.88] Chris Bradbury: But we offer the personal indemnity insurance.
[3578.88] Chris Bradbury: When you affiliate as a club, they get landlords indemnity insurance and other policies that cover stuff that happens.
[3585.88] Chris Bradbury: So if you set up a model flying club, for example, and somebody like a neighbor or a drone club.
[3591.88] Chris Bradbury: Well, model flying is drones to me at the same time.
[3594.88] Chris Bradbury: So if somebody sets up a flying club, a drone club and somebody decides to try and sue the land, you know, the landlord of the club for allowing the activity on their site, that's part of the BMFA support that we will do.
[3606.88] Chris Bradbury: In terms of setting up a club, again, compared to somebody that's just selling insurance, we've got on our website.
[3612.88] Chris Bradbury: And this is the nice thing is all of our information is on the website, easy to access for free.
[3617.88] Chris Bradbury: You know, we're not trying to make money out of people.
[3619.88] Chris Bradbury: We're not a profit making business.
[3621.88] Chris Bradbury: We're a charity, essentially.
[3623.88] Chris Bradbury: So things like there's a what's it called club constitutions.
[3628.88] Chris Bradbury: So if you're setting up a club, you sort of said earlier, some clubs could just be five mates that all know each other and they get on.
[3634.88] Chris Bradbury: Well, the next club could be one hundred and fifty two hundred people holding regular racing events.
[3639.88] Chris Bradbury: But whichever club you're in, what if one person decides to be an absolute pain in the neck and cause problems?
[3645.88] Chris Bradbury: You know, how do you get rid of them?
[3646.88] Chris Bradbury: How do you kick them out?
[3647.88] Chris Bradbury: And a good constitution is important to protect every member of a club.
[3652.88] Chris Bradbury: There's also a tenancy and landlord agreement templates that you can download.
[3656.88] Chris Bradbury: So if you're looking to rent land off a farmer to set up a club, you know, that's all available.
[3661.88] Chris Bradbury: And then, like I say, the additional insurance that goes on top.
[3664.88] Chris Bradbury: But probably the biggest benefit of joining the BMFA or the BDF is access to the article 16.
[3670.88] Chris Bradbury: So when the article 16 first came out, it was over four different groups.
[3675.88] Chris Bradbury: They're now split and it's set for individual article 16s depending on which group you're in.
[3681.88] Chris Bradbury: So, for example, with the BDR when they were racing, because they were racing under article 16, they had to be BMFA members.
[3688.88] Chris Bradbury: So we had a few that turned out that were FPV UK members.
[3691.88] Chris Bradbury: So we just gave them free insurance for the weekend so they could still race.
[3694.88] Chris Bradbury: That was another way that we had to support the BDR event there.
[3698.88] Frank: I did not know that the article 16 has been split up from the different associations.
[3703.88] Chris Bradbury: So it was four associations originally.
[3706.88] Chris Bradbury: The Southern, sorry, not Southern, Scottish Aircraft Association had lost their account.
[3712.88] Chris Bradbury: They didn't fill out their paperwork or something.
[3715.88] Chris Bradbury: I'm not entirely sure what's happened.
[3716.88] Chris Bradbury: So a lot of the Scottish Aircraft Association, they're joining the BMFA because they want access to article 16.
[3724.88] Frank: It's more paperwork to read, to be up on everything.
[3727.88] Frank: I've definitely given up on keeping up on everything.
[3730.88] Stephen: A quick kind of comparison.
[3732.88] Stephen: If we have FPV UK members, I'm an FPV UK member myself.
[3736.88] Stephen: You might be looking at BMFA.
[3738.88] Stephen: What's the quick comparison on those two?
[3741.88] Chris Bradbury: Well, the main one is obviously, I mean, you've both got article 16s.
[3745.88] Chris Bradbury: If you wanted to race in the BDRA events, they have to be BMFA members now because of the article 16 split.
[3750.88] Chris Bradbury: So that's one probably crossover element that you're going to have to be through there.
[3754.88] Chris Bradbury: But then it's that information side and the support side of things.
[3758.88] Chris Bradbury: You know, we've got people in an office where you can pick up a phone if you've got a technical question about legality.
[3764.88] Chris Bradbury: If you get into trouble, for argument's sake, if somebody starts having if you're flying in a model club and the local council, for example, trying to shut your model club down, you can come to us.
[3775.88] Chris Bradbury: And we'll actually then come and not only just give you support on the phone, but potentially attend meetings with you in the council and see what we can do to help.
[3783.88] Chris Bradbury: Andy has just done that recently for a model club that lost their site on a local park because their park decided to put in bylaws on flying.
[3792.88] Chris Bradbury: The club were like, oh, we've been here for years, you know, 30, 40 years. What's gone wrong suddenly?
[3797.88] Chris Bradbury: So Andy went down, helped them negotiate risk assessments and everything else so that they've now got access to use the site again.
[3804.88] Chris Bradbury: So that's the sort of thing that we can offer that goes beyond, you know, companies that just take money for insurance, essentially.
[3811.88] Chris Bradbury: Got it.
[3812.88] Chris Bradbury: Yeah. So plus things like the BDF news, you've got access to all the achievement schemes.
[3817.88] Stephen: More of a complete package, then.
[3819.88] Chris Bradbury: Yes. It's just sort of a bit of everything, you know, rather than just insurance, essentially. Yeah.
[3825.88] Frank: And Andy's always keen to point out that you to get to make a BMFA club, you don't need.
[3833.88] Frank: How to set a club up?
[3834.88] Frank: All you need is five BMFA members and you don't need a site.
[3839.88] Frank: You don't need anything else.
[3840.88] Frank: You can you can just start with five BMFA members and go from there and the BMFA offer help sorting out sites and sourcing it from there.
[3852.88] Chris Bradbury: Yeah. They decided to make club affiliation the most complicated thing in the world.
[3856.88] Chris Bradbury: You just need five members and you fill out two online forms. That's it.
[3861.88] Chris Bradbury: Why not one form?
[3862.88] Chris Bradbury: Yeah. So, you know, we can offer advice on, you know, how to negotiate with tenants and stuff like that.
[3872.88] Chris Bradbury: So if you're trying to if you found a farmer, for example, that thinks, well, OK, I might be interested, you know, here's the cost.
[3879.88] Chris Bradbury: But what's the risk to me?
[3881.88] Chris Bradbury: If you don't feel confident to have that conversation with people, that's where we're willing to help.
[3886.88] Chris Bradbury: You know, whether it's a phone call, a Zoom call or even coming out to site face to face to meet the farmer and say that, you know, let's arrange a day where we bring a few drones down.
[3895.88] Chris Bradbury: We'll sort of do a demo. You can see what to expect, what the noise will be like.
[3899.88] Stephen: And here's the inherent value of high velocity bird scarers.
[3902.88] Chris Bradbury: Yes. And bird shredders get close enough unless you've got a buzzard fan, then not so much.
[3909.88] Chris Bradbury: Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's that's the key benefit is, like I said, the support and the access to everything that's available, really.
[3916.88] Curry: What is the price of joining the BFMA?
[3919.88] Chris Bradbury: I never know. The BMFA is 38 pounds for 12 months.
[3923.88] Chris Bradbury: The BDF is the same 38 pounds for 12 months.
[3926.88] Chris Bradbury: The BMFA option, because it runs out in December every year, as you go through the year, you start to get discounts towards the end.
[3933.88] Chris Bradbury: So first in July, you get a discount first of September, a bit more of a discount, so on.
[3938.88] Chris Bradbury: So that way you're not sort of overpaying.
[3940.88] Chris Bradbury: But the BDF will always be the same price, essentially, you know, unless we have to adjust the price for next year, because whatever happens, inflation and so on.
[3949.88] Chris Bradbury: But the BDF, it's a 12 months from the day you join.
[3952.88] Chris Bradbury: So you always get the full price, as it were.
[3954.88] Chris Bradbury: There are family memberships as well.
[3957.88] Chris Bradbury: So if you're a junior member, for example, there's discounted rates available for the BMFA family memberships.
[3963.88] Chris Bradbury: So if you're a junior under 18 at the time of joining, there's a discount.
[3966.88] Chris Bradbury: I think it's 17 pounds off the top of my head.
[3968.88] Chris Bradbury: If you are a family, so if you want to bring your kids along, you know, the senior member signs up at 38 pounds, and I think it's 11 pounds a junior.
[3975.88] Chris Bradbury: And then there are scout memberships as well for associated groups.
[3979.88] Chris Bradbury: So groups of Cub Scouts can join the BMFA where someone like the scout leader joins up as the senior or cadets, you know, stuff like that.
[3986.88] Chris Bradbury: And then they can have, say, half a dozen assigned juniors, but those juniors can change because they'll be bringing in new groups of, you know, students, etc, all the time.
[3997.88] Chris Bradbury: So there's various different packages through the BMFA.
[4000.88] Chris Bradbury: The BDF, we've kept it fairly simple because we just basically accept that most people at the moment are just going to be one membership type.
[4007.88] Chris Bradbury: They're either going to be a senior or a junior.
[4009.88] Chris Bradbury: You know, we might get a few family ones join at which point we'll have to sort of work it out.
[4013.88] Chris Bradbury: So there is an element of, you know, stick it in the air and see which way the wind goes.
[4019.88] Chris Bradbury: Suck it and see.
[4021.88] Chris Bradbury: Yeah. So, you know, we're here to learn from what the members want.
[4025.88] Chris Bradbury: So it's like like we pointed out earlier with the the ability to think, well, actually, we need a different type of achievement scheme test if people come.
[4032.88] Stephen: Yeah. I think that TV suggestion seemed to get a lot of interest in the chat.
[4037.88] Stephen: And it was really great to hear you say that, you know, that's something to look at.
[4040.88] Stephen: I think there's so many people who only fly FPV.
[4043.88] Stephen: That would be a very popular thing to look at.
[4046.88] Chris Bradbury: It's a very valid point.
[4047.88] Chris Bradbury: I mean, we did the FPV extension, but it's a very valid point that a lot of people wouldn't get to an extension.
[4053.88] Chris Bradbury: They need to go straight to it. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
[4056.88] Jack: Should we answer Tony's question?
[4059.88] Jack: If I earn money flying, am I insured already as I'm with the BMFA?
[4066.88] Chris Bradbury: If you earn money flying, then you're flying commercially.
[4068.88] Chris Bradbury: So not for the BMFA.
[4070.88] Stephen: I think you'd probably say it's just cash in hand and it doesn't count.
[4076.88] Chris Bradbury: The thing to remember with commercial flying, it's not just about money changing hands.
[4080.88] Chris Bradbury: It could be, you know, something of worth if you're given a camera.
[4085.88] Chris Bradbury: If somebody gives you a GoPro in exchange, it's commercial gain, not cash gain.
[4090.88] Chris Bradbury: So it's anything that creates a benefit to yourself, really.
[4094.88] Stephen: I'm going to play the devil's advocate and think of what the tax man would say.
[4098.88] Chris Bradbury: Yeah. My advice is if you're ever sitting there thinking, do I need commercial insurance or hobby insurance?
[4104.88] Chris Bradbury: Then the answer is you need commercial insurance because if you can't sit there and go, I'm just flying for fun.
[4109.88] Chris Bradbury: It's a hobby flight. Then you're not doing a hobby flight.
[4112.88] Chris Bradbury: You know, it's a lot of people think, is there a gray area in the middle? No.
[4118.88] Stephen: What happens if you do a flight and you put it on YouTube and you get advertising revenue from that, but you didn't intend to?
[4124.88] Chris Bradbury: If you flew, if your purpose of the flight was a hobby flight, then that's different.
[4128.88] Chris Bradbury: So when you think about commercial gain, so a classic example might be for myself.
[4135.88] Chris Bradbury: Let's say I put up my mini to I take photographs of my own house to then sell my house to give to the estate agent to sell my house.
[4143.88] Chris Bradbury: Yeah. I've not done it to make any money for myself.
[4146.88] Chris Bradbury: I've done it to sell my house as part of the sale of my house.
[4149.88] Chris Bradbury: I already own the house. I already have that money.
[4152.88] Chris Bradbury: There's no profit to be made on the flip side.
[4155.88] Chris Bradbury: If I'm the estate agent that's taking photographs of people's houses, I'm doing it to help sell those houses to make myself money for a transaction.
[4164.88] Chris Bradbury: So me doing it for myself is a hobby flight.
[4167.88] Chris Bradbury: The estate agent doing it for his company is a commercial flight.
[4173.88] Curry: Cool.
[4174.88] Curry: It's a flight, isn't it?
[4176.88] Curry: Yeah.
[4177.88] Curry: Do we leave it there, guys?
[4178.88] Frank: I think I think that's that's the time to wrap up with.
[4182.88] Jack: OK, yeah.
[4183.88] Jack: Let's throw now.
[4185.88] Jack: Thank you.
[4187.88] Jack: Don't forget.
[4188.88] Jack: Thank all our patrons, all our supporters, everyone who tuned in.
[4193.88] Jack: Thank you, guys.
[4195.88] Jack: You've been joined by Lord of Master, Andrew Frank.
[4199.88] Jack: Bye.
[4200.88] Jack: Everyone's favorite Carrie Kitten.
[4202.88] Curry: Goodbye.
[4203.88] Jack: Shiny video stuff, Stephen.
[4205.88] Jack: Cheers.
[4206.88] Jack: Disco Chris and the BMFA, Drone Support Officer.
[4209.88] Jack: Yes, sir.
[4210.88] Jack: And I've been Jack, Bright and Solid Fly.
[4212.88] Jack: You've been listening to Let's Throw Now.
[4213.88] Jack: Thank you very much.
[4214.88] Jack: Telemetry lost.