=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 432 ===
Title: LDO 432 - The Post - Pre - Consultation Of R***** ID
Recorded: 2023-12-07
Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash
Guest(s): (none recorded)
Total audience: 1,081
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuXMpBvwdAo); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1686712104-letsdroneout-ldo-432-the-post-pre-consultation-of-r-id.mp3)
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Consultation Document: https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/Review%20of%20UK%20UAS%20Regulation%20-%20Consultation%20-%20v1.0_Final_2ndedition.pdf

Consultation form: https://consultations.caa.co.uk/rpas/review-of-uk-uas-regulations-consultation/

BMFA Response: https://bmfa.org/caa-review-of-uk-unmanned-aircraft-systems-uas-regulations 
FPVUK Response: https://fpvuk.org/caa-uas-consultation/ 
Survey Results: https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAA%20Drone%20Tracker%202023%20-%20may%2023.pdf
UAVHive: http://www.uavhive.com/

[0.0] Jack: Hello and you're listening to Let's Drone Out and special thank you to our lovely patrons that help donate so that we can pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things we say. Massive thank you to.
[14.0] Jack: Carlos Campos.
[16.0] Jack: Art Faulkner.
[18.0] Jack: Sam Dahmer.
[19.0] Stephen: On with the show.
[21.0] Frank: Let's Drone Out now.
[23.0] Stephen: Hello and welcome to Let's Drone Out.
[54.22] Stephen: You are joined this week by myself, Stephen, by everyone's favourite, Curry Kitten.
[60.22] Stephen: Hello.
[61.22] Stephen: Legally obliged to say everyone's favourite there.
[64.22] Stephen: And of course, the authority on all things CAA, Frank.
[70.22] Frank: Where's the disclaimer?
[72.22] Frank: Hello.
[73.22] Stephen: I need the disclaimer.
[74.22] Stephen: I think you really are the authority so it's absolutely fine.
[79.22] Stephen: You're certainly well versed compared to us and the average person on the street. So let's leave it at that.
[85.22] Frank: If anyone missed episode 415 back in August, I did say that they were already installing three a week of the remote ID ground stations. So, you know, it's it's it's fairly advanced at this point.
[103.22] Stephen: So if you haven't caught the title, here's what it is, folks.
[109.22] Stephen: Remote ID.
[111.22] Stephen: Remote ID is the ability of an unmanned aerial something.
[116.22] Stephen: System.
[117.22] Stephen: UAS to communicate identification and location information during flight.
[122.22] Stephen: The requirement for remote ID already exists in UK regulation brackets EU 2019 slash 945 and 2019 slash 947, but is yet to be implemented.
[133.22] Stephen: The call for input describe the important role of remote ID in improving the ability to identify individuals misusing UAS and in enabling enforcement.
[144.22] Stephen: In addition, it discussed how remote ID could be implemented in practice and potential changes to regulation.
[150.22] Stephen: So what do you think people who were asked about that thought?
[154.22] Stephen: Well, of those who responded, 60.7 percent of responses for call for input were negative.
[162.22] Stephen: Oh, that's OK. I'm sure there's a larger number that were positive. So 15.3 percent of responses were positive. Right.
[169.22] Stephen: OK, let's four times as many people dislike the idea of remote ID than like the idea of remote ID. OK.
[178.22] Stephen: So clearly what you're going to do is you're going to to say the time isn't right for remote ID.
[184.22] Stephen: We've got to halt it all until.
[187.22] Stephen: The respondents swing in favor of this and indicate it's a good time to implement it. Right, Frank?
[193.22] Frank: Yeah, yes. Yeah, maybe.
[196.22] Stephen: That's good. That would be applying the respondents raised concerns regarding data privacy implications.
[201.22] Stephen: Obviously, you're now transmitting your location to anyone that wants to come and find you in your expensive toys.
[207.22] Stephen: And maybe if a child does that, they get mugged and beaten up and remote IDs effectiveness in delivering improved security, because frankly, it's easy to switch off.
[215.22] Stephen: We all build our own equipment. And if you're a criminal who wants to fly somewhere you shouldn't, then odds are you'll probably wrap some tin foil around it at the very least.
[224.22] Stephen: Respondents with positive views recognize the benefits for identifying unlawful operators.
[229.22] Stephen: So that's all OK. I think we can say clearly that, you know, given that input, that no one is going to actually be implementing remote ID. Right.
[240.22] Curry: I feel like the computer in 1960's Star Trek, when Kurt confuses it with logic, it's the same thing. The same thing over and over is, oh, we can catch criminals because we all know that criminals take great care to do all the proper things.
[256.22] Stephen: What we'll do is we'll say if you're a criminal, you have to wave a criminal flag as you go down the street and then we'll just catch anyone who waves a criminal flag.
[265.22] Curry: That says, are you going to do illegal things with your drone tick box? Oh, we've got you. Oh, no. What were they thinking?
[274.22] Frank: What they're trying to say is that it's very hard to find people that are flying drones illegally at the moment the way the rules are at the moment.
[283.22] Frank: So what we're going to do is we're going to make a lot of those flights that are currently legal.
[288.22] Frank: Like illegal, because if you if you're flying otherwise legally, but don't have remote ID on it, then that's illegal.
[295.22] Frank: So any policeman coming along or whatever any any drone nuisance that's reported where there isn't a remote ID on it, the policeman can go.
[304.22] Frank: Yeah. It's not got remote ID. It doesn't appear on my app here. Therefore, it's illegal.
[311.22] Stephen: So you obviously say, oh, whoopsie, it looks like my antenna was damaged because antennas get damaged quite often.
[318.22] Stephen: Unfortunately, the effective range of my remote ID system seems to have been about three foot short of where you were standing, officer.
[326.22] Stephen: I assure you, I'll fix that antenna.
[330.22] Curry: You've already been tased and your drone's been confiscated and they put you in the test by that point.
[339.22] Curry: Yeah. Fitted you up and found some more crimes to charge you with.
[343.22] Stephen: Yeah. And they said that, you know, because you're flying a multi rotor, you probably gunned down some school children.
[349.22] Stephen: Yes. I mean, wait a minute.
[352.22] Frank: Well, more to the point, as as as we are aware of, like, you know, with people that have flown their DJI stuff, which already has effectively its own remote ID indoors, but within, you know, the control area of an airport,
[372.22] Frank: they've had the police knocking on their door, have their phone, laptops, SD cards, drones, all seized in plastic bags or walked out the door, make you look like a right Roman.
[385.22] Frank: So, you know, that's that's not ideal.
[387.22] Stephen: Well, that's OK, because what we're talking about here is large people like Amazon flying giant delivery systems.
[395.22] Stephen: This isn't just anyone flying a WOOP outdoors, is it? That would that would be madness.
[400.22] Stephen: So obviously it's going to apply. You know, you've got that like five kilo limit. It's going to be people over that only. It's not going to be absolutely everyone, is it?
[413.53] Stephen: If you're using a camera, it is. If you have a camera on your quad, then regardless of the weight, you need a remote ID system on that from when this comes into effect.
[423.53] Stephen: That's what they're proposing. So if you've got your WOOP carefully, carefully built and you shave the frame and you've taken the metal screws out and you've put plastic ones on there and you've got this thing down to like 25 grams with a battery, you're going to have to clamp a remote ID system on there, which right now weighs, I think, what, 10 or 15 grams.
[447.53] Stephen: And it's probably larger than your flight controller.
[450.53] Frank: Either that or your flight indoors.
[452.53] Stephen: Yeah, or if you make sure you don't wander out to the garden. Yeah, we've all seen you, Curry, do those dangerous flights when you could have you could have perhaps murder rated a small school bus or something by flying with bodies lying around my house for me.
[469.53] Curry: Quads is outrageous. It's just I never get the blood of a week.
[474.53] Frank: You might cause a hazard to a passing butterfly or something.
[479.53] Stephen: To be considerate of these things. Yeah, users. Yeah, you really got to watch out for the neighborhood moths. I think those are the people who are worried there.
[488.53] Stephen: So yes, unfortunately, the government in their wisdom has decided that the best way to enforce remote ID is for absolutely anyone that has a camera. If you are under 250 grams and you're flying line of sight with a multi rotor.
[504.94] Stephen: Honestly, I don't know who is doing that, because every single DJI drone has a camera. So other than quad mover, I've never seen people go and recreationally fly multi rotors without a camera on them.
[519.94] Stephen: It just doesn't happen, especially under 250 grams. And this isn't talking about toys. Toys are a separate thing, right? So you're talking about something that doesn't fit into the operations.
[532.94] Frank: Well, under their proposals, toys, a toy isn't going to be part of this anymore. They're going to simplify things by toys aren't going to be.
[541.94] Stephen: Oh, yes, yes, we should perhaps move on to that. So the simplification includes once again, changing the names for absolutely everything.
[549.94] Stephen: Because everyone was having a lot of trouble after just learning the names for everything they'd introduced a decade ago. So they're going to change it now. And instead of.
[558.94] Stephen: The kind of traditional classification they've used, it's now going to be over near and far.
[564.94] Stephen: And presumably medium. And I don't know, chonk.
[573.54] Frank: Tiny boy.
[576.54] Frank: Hefty chonker.
[579.54] Curry: Oh, lordy.
[580.54] Curry: Under this legislation, there's there's no such thing as a toy, because if it's got a camera on it and flies, then it can't be a toy. It's a dangerous drone.
[588.54] Stephen: Yeah. Well, you know, I'm really looking forward to lots of children in parks getting handcuffed and taken away. It's going to be fantastic.
[599.54] Stephen: Because that's literally what this legislation says. Right, guys, this is saying that anyone who goes, you know, if you get something on your birthday and you go and fly it in the park or all those kids who get something in Christmas and they're out there with their mittens on trying to fly something around on Christmas day.
[613.54] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Time to take you down the station. You're next.
[618.54] Stephen: I think there's just a complete lack of awareness and context around this. And the way that there's also exemptions for anything that is called a model aircraft, which somehow doesn't fit into this.
[631.54] Frank: Again, that's that's still up for debate, right? This this is the consultation. So when we were talking about this before, there was the call for input, which is the pre consultation consultation.
[645.54] Frank: And now this is the the actual consultations. This is the post pre consultation consultation.
[652.54] Curry: Yeah, in terms of consultation, I think we saw that first slide where it said people thought this was a bad idea and 15 percent thought it was a good idea.
[659.54] Curry: So we're going with those 15 percent of the minority of the people that thought it was a good idea because it meets with us. It's like, yeah, you can you can say things like democracy means there's a controversy.
[669.54] Curry: But it's still like we don't have to do anything with it. We can just report and say, OK, thanks all you stupid people that voted the wrong way. We're going to do it our way.
[680.54] Frank: Yeah. Well, you know, that's because they're not following the expert opinion of the people who actually have any kind of use of these rules.
[691.54] Frank: It's you know, who are affected by these rules. It's what they're following. They're following the will of the people generally.
[697.54] Frank: So they do reference in here the drone awareness survey that they do or during awareness tracker as he does, which they've been doing on a sort of semi regular basis.
[710.54] Frank: And it shows that for the general public, about four percent of the general public, three, four percent know that, you know, there's a four hundred foot height limit or stuff like that.
[723.54] Frank: And sixty, seventy percent of the general public think there should be more drone rules. So, you know, with that kind of mandate, you've got to have more drone rules, right?
[735.54] Stephen: Well, that does rather sound like democracy. Put a poll in the sun and everyone said that drone users are pedos and should be burned.
[744.54] Stephen: Again, I don't really think there's a lot of context there. And just saying do not like, do like doesn't really inform law, does it?
[753.54] Stephen: We don't know what the rules are, but there are rules. Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of public didn't appreciate that we already had quite a lot of legislation around civil aviation and remote controlled aircraft to start with.
[767.54] Stephen: And now it's just becoming this ongoing morass that constantly morphs.
[773.54] Frank: It's sort of very, very brief history. I mean, it was ten something years ago that Amazon said we're going to we're about to start delivering things by drone.
[785.54] Frank: That's a long ago I started doing that. And so then the authorities went, oh, well, we've got to come up to the rules.
[794.54] Stephen: But first we've got to leave Europe and throw away all the moors we've got.
[798.54] Frank: Well, no, this is this is before even that was considered because this was this was the ARSA. This is the European Aviation Safety Authority came up with the first sort of draft of rules and published that and said, what do you think of this?
[811.54] Frank: And everyone went, that's ridiculous. Have you? Do you know the breadth and depth of the variety of flying things in the air that fly between the ground?
[822.54] Stephen: It feels like we're diverting to that, Frank. Well, yeah, but given up trying to when that was originally came out and everyone went, that's just ridiculous.
[831.54] Frank: You need to actually look at what's already flying there and not just make rules for Amazon and be aware of what's already going on.
[839.54] Frank: They did actually, you know, take that away, throw that away and come up with some other things. Basically, they've been trying to do that ever since.
[849.54] Frank: Even before that, I mean, we write ideas is the unmanned aerial vehicle equivalent of electronic cosmocurity, which they've been trying to do on manned aircraft for even longer than that, you know, for 20 years or something.
[868.54] Frank: And every time someone goes, I'm going to solve it, it's the classic kind of XPS thing of if there were four standards and we came up with a new standard to unite them all.
[881.54] Frank: And then there were five standards. And basically, it looks like the same thing is happening here.
[887.54] Frank: So because the eye cow who regulate aviation generally internationally, you know, with any time that there's kind of international aviation stuff is mixing, I can't get involved.
[902.54] Frank: Is that the international game of whoops? Yeah, it's I see. I didn't realize that.
[909.54] Stephen: Yeah.
[911.54] Frank: And they've said that ADS-B is banned from being on unmanned aircraft. So we're not we're definitely not going to be using ADS-B.
[923.54] Frank: The CIA has decided or the CIA says it should be ADS-B, even though that's internationally would not be permitted. So I don't really think they know what they want.
[937.54] Frank: But lots of people are spending lots of money building ground stations and installing ground stations around the country for ADS-B, for ADS-B and lots of other similar things.
[948.54] Frank: Even even to the point of having around certain locations, having cameras that they reckon can pick up drones. So, you know, if really kind of luck with that, they can't even do it when they're trying to film events.
[961.54] Stephen: Okay, that's going to be interesting. I thought ADS-B is is a fairly large kitchen sink approach. And most of the devices are, you know, car stereo or above sized units for manned aircraft.
[976.54] Frank: I mean, they can be fairly small, a lot of them are quite big, but there's I don't know if it's ADS-B, there's definitely some kind of electronic conspiracy things that are the size of a VTX. It's not impossible.
[993.54] Curry: At the moment, correct me if I'm wrong, there are manned aircraft that doesn't need any kind of electronic conspiracy. I can't say the word.
[1002.54] Curry: Conspicuity.
[1004.54] Curry: Thank you. If if they're flying in certain airspace, is that something?
[1008.54] Curry: I might have to exempt as well.
[1010.54] Curry: So what we'll have, yeah, might collide certain certain types of regular places.
[1015.54] Curry: What we'll have is a route under more restrictions than a manned aircraft.
[1021.54] Stephen: Yeah.
[1022.54] Stephen: And a human being flying attached to a motorized glider effectively, that that kind of up to 200 kilos in the air of almost certain death for anyone it collides with is now under less legislative burden than a child flying a 25 gram camera drone in their back garden.
[1043.54] Stephen: Yeah, so someone somewhere has just shortcut it to the common sense, I think.
[1050.54] Stephen: And I flicked up this page because it kind of runs through where we've been before, because there was this huge deal with legacy systems. Well, that loophole is closing.
[1060.54] Stephen: We are therefore promising to require legacy UAS to be operated with active remote ID from the 1st of January, 2028, excluding the sub 250 without camera rule.
[1071.54] Stephen: So effectively, everyone gets in the same system. So, you know, you you got some analog quad back in 2015. Well, it's not going to be exempt anymore.
[1081.54] Stephen: So they suggest either remotely upgrading a UAS with inactive remote ID, then maybe one of those somewhere in the UK, or through users attaching a compliant remote ID add on module to their device.
[1095.54] Stephen: And I'm sure that when they wrote that they knew exactly what a compliant remote ID add on module was, because that's exactly what America did.
[1103.54] Stephen: They planned a range of modules for all shapes and sizes of model aircraft that would be suitable before the legislation was passed, didn't they? So I imagine we probably followed the same rule here.
[1115.54] Frank: Well, given generally how they have been deciding that whatever the U.S. does, we should do over here in terms of aviation, even if it's completely against everything that we've done ever and against the reality of things in the UK.
[1133.54] Frank: And I'm not entirely surprised, but also, you know, they're saying they want to do this by what, 2028 for the remote ID. So, yeah, they reckon they reckon four or five years of it being in the U.S.
[1148.54] Frank: It will have, they will have self-doubt the wrinkles. It'll be all right in the UK.
[1157.54] Frank: Of course, if you don't think so, this is still a consultation. Clearly, it's questionable whether, considering how much is already being done on it, whether anything will actually change. But, you know, you can always try.
[1174.54] Frank: If you search for the review of the UK UAS regulations from the CAA, or it's in the description on here, you can go fill it out and tell them what you think.
[1189.54] Frank: I remember back in the Arza ones, there was the sort of summary of the responses from that, which said there were many, many responses to this consultation, not all of them polite, which I always stuck in my mind, this baby entertaining.
[1209.54] Stephen: One thing that I think we should countenance here is that, you know, while you may not be able to buy a compliant remote ID solution for an acceptable amount of money, some inroads have been made.
[1220.54] Stephen: And if your goals vary slightly from the documented approach, then you could always just buy an ESP32, for example. And what you can get right now is open source code to spoof your remote ID location and perhaps draw something obscene on a map, I'd suggest.
[1242.54] Stephen: So yeah, so what this ludicrous situation we're in right now is that while I can't buy a remote ID system that is compliant with this proposed UK legislation, I can go and build a system that would spoof 10 imaginary drones flying around whatever point on the map I nominate in random paths.
[1265.54] Stephen: Something isn't right here, right, that there should have been more foresight. And the fact that I think we've got a flight test module that isn't available in the UK and isn't isn't certified for the UK.
[1277.54] Stephen: I'm not really aware of anything else that's out there right now. So that that's kind of a glaring omission.
[1283.54] Frank: Jack is recommending that we read this out. So I'll keep him happy. It's a legal notice. Any views expressed by any guests on the show or host are personal and may not reflect the views of others. And there's a safety notice as well. Do not be on fire. Be careful around busy roads. Do not take our advice.
[1302.54] Frank: This is a podcast, not a source of legal advice.
[1307.54] Stephen: Correct. Alternatively, if you did want some advice, there's another one that you can throw and stick to the side of buildings here. So yeah, as you were.
[1318.54] Stephen: Yeah, so we just need to consider, I think, if we're going to be flying after December 31st, 2027, then that there needs to be some sort of easy remote ID solution. I hope that we see the likes of Express LRS and, you know, that we had the INAF radar guys formation flight.
[1339.54] Stephen: The new name for that project on just a little while ago, I'd really hope that formation flight and people like that can step up and provide us with lightweight, easy to use solutions that integrate with the rest of our systems without having a giant box that weighs us down, breaks and costs an absolute bomb. So fingers crossed, I guess that's going to be the reality.
[1361.54] Curry: Do we say instead of doing that, that when we've got a rule that's ridiculous and makes no sense, we protest it by not doing it. We might as well have that thing scrolling all the time and say, no, we're just going to fly as we were because we had a perfect safety record. Nobody's died so far and thus we'll carry on.
[1383.54] Stephen: Yes, and I think that chimes with that chimes with something I was saying, which really got my way. I think the phrase I use was boiled my piss, which is this paragraph on exemptions that they on model aircraft specifically, they recognize the good safety record of model aircraft flying in the UK.
[1401.54] Stephen: And they're talking about wings here. And you know, well, I know some perfectly nice people like you two guys that fly wings, this constant language of praising the wing community and denigrating multi rotor pilots really does boil my piss.
[1416.54] Stephen: And the fact that they feel the need to use this to recognize the good safety record of model aircraft flying in the UK, where alternatively, have killed people and multi rotors have not.
[1429.54] Curry: Maybe model aircraft community includes multi rotors as well. Exactly. Exactly. Maybe what is a multi motor model of there are no full scale multi rotors.
[1440.54] Curry: There's there's been somebody the oldest aircraft and multi rotors. Isn't it like all plane to drones, therefore, all model aircraft are also you know what I'm talking about.
[1451.54] Stephen: You know what I'm talking about. There's this kind of like, let's let's be friendly to all the old retirees with their gas engine aircraft, because they're in peak condition and they never crashed them and everything's fine.
[1463.54] Stephen: And if you've got wings, you can fly above 400 feet because no, no spas ever break and everything is perfectly perfect.
[1471.54] Frank: I feel perfectly safe, you know, turning my back on someone flying one of these big gases with very much.
[1479.54] Frank: Sometimes you just have a nap on the runway, don't you? Exactly. Very much safe in the knowledge that it's going to stay where it should be flying and not come anywhere near me.
[1487.54] Stephen: Yeah, so it just it feels tone deaf at times, I guess, is what I'm saying there.
[1493.54] Frank: That's that's the thing. You're just you're you're not the target audience. You're not retired. You're the anomaly.
[1502.54] Stephen: I guess, you know, maybe people who are retired had a lot of time to chime in and write this. So the exemption here for safe and secure model aircraft flights, the aircraft must meet the CIA's definition and specification for exempt model aircraft.
[1516.54] Stephen: And here we can see another looming loophole that isn't fully explained in this document. What is an exempt model aircraft yet to be decided?
[1524.54] Stephen: Or B, the pilot and UAS remain within the bounds of a designated model aircraft flying site.
[1529.54] Stephen: So I guess a nod to the BMFA and their flying sites authorized by the CIA based on proximity to urban sensitive restricted sites.
[1537.54] Stephen: So that might mean that BMFA sites have to reapply to this to the CIA to get that.
[1545.54] Frank: Oh, yeah. And, you know, the BMFA have been collecting details about the sites used by clubs and where club members regularly fly.
[1557.54] Frank: But I would say a fairly considerable amount of time before this document present.
[1563.54] Frank: You know, so, you know, I think it's been been coming for a while.
[1569.54] Frank: But what they are asking here, you know, as part of the consultation is when we say model aircraft flights should be exempt.
[1577.54] Frank: You know, some of the questions are how do we define a model aircraft flight? Do we define it by the aircraft?
[1584.54] Frank: Do we define it by the location? Is there something else we should define?
[1589.54] Stephen: We should define between B and C here because we've got B within the bounds of a designated model aircraft flying site authorized by the CIA.
[1597.54] Stephen: No mention of club. And C, the flight takes place within a model aircraft club with an authorization granted under Article 16 of UK regulation brackets EU 2099.
[1607.54] Stephen: Absolutely. So that's a club, not a site. What's the difference?
[1612.54] Frank: So, you know, the BMFA and the FPV are very, very proud of their Article 16 authorizations, which is something that says if you're a member of this club, these rules don't quite apply to you.
[1626.54] Frank: So you can fly, you know, an aircraft higher, further, bigger, all this kind of thing than you would outside of that Article 16 authorization.
[1636.54] Frank: So there's potentially what they're saying here is maybe anyone flying in a particular location, like if you're not a member of the BMFA or the club or the FPV UK or anything like that.
[1647.54] Stephen: So if I'm a member of FPV UK, I can just be like...
[1651.54] Frank: Well, for some, for some rules, you know, that's maybe the question is, is it enough to be a member of, you know, BMFA or FPV UK to get an exemption regardless of where you fly,
[1665.54] Frank: as long as it's safe and legal?
[1667.54] Stephen: So what was that Article 16 authorization? I'm trying to remember. Is that the one that allowed you to fly closer to people in public spaces? Was that the one?
[1678.54] Frank: Yeah, and higher as well. So there's generally, like if you're just someone who's just bought something in a model shop and you're just flying it, you've got a 400 foot regulation, you can have its fixed wing model.
[1691.54] Frank: And then if you're, if you have an Article 16 authorization, which you might have to have a risk assessment or you might not depending on various things, but you can go potentially, you know, 1000 foot, potentially higher.
[1707.54] Frank: So that is something that comes with membership of FPV UK or BMFA.
[1715.54] Frank: And then there's, you know, the other option that they're suggesting is maybe it's just a designated site. So it's just whoever flies in one location, or maybe it's wherever you fly, whether you're partly under this authorization, or maybe it's both, or maybe you need both or, you know, that's what they're asking.
[1733.54] Stephen: If you're a site and you've done that risk assessment and you're not near buildings or roads or members of the general public, then you still get the Article 16. And that's what they're saying here.
[1744.54] Frank: Yeah, exactly. So you still got to follow the rules within your Article 16 authorization. It doesn't mean you're free to do anything.
[1751.54] Frank: And you're exempt from remote ID?
[1753.54] Frank: Well, potentially, that's what they're suggesting.
[1756.54] Stephen: Which is interesting, because the rest of the document goes to some lengths to say you're not exempt, even if you've got legacy UAS, but then you are exempt if you're a member of FPV UK and you're flying safely.
[1769.54] Frank: Well, not necessarily. That's, you know, that's kind of the options that they're offering here is maybe it's purely the site, in which case, as far as I'm aware, I'm not aware of any FPV UK club sites as such.
[1782.54] Frank: Maybe that's going to be a thing over the next few years.
[1785.54] Stephen: So are you saying it has to meet A, B and C? Because I thought it was A or B or C?
[1790.54] Frank: Well, that's what the consultation is about, is that we've come up with these three different ways of defining model flying.
[1796.54] Frank: You know, either it's because you're a member of one of these groups, or it's because you're flying at one of these sites or, oh, yeah, we've got these three definitions.
[1805.54] Frank: We don't know how to use them. How do you think we should use them?
[1808.54] Frank: Which ones apply what combination?
[1811.54] Frank: So that's kind of what they're asking for, really, as part of the consultation.
[1817.54] Stephen: Given the fact that 60% of respondents said it was a bad idea or only 50% said it was good and they plowed ahead, what's the point?
[1825.54] Stephen: It'd rather it rather feels like taking a wee into the wind at this point.
[1829.54] Frank: Well, from my point of view, so there's, okay, so we've got the BMFA and FPV UK as the organisations that represent, ostensibly at least, us.
[1846.54] Frank: And then you've got the CAA, who were the kind of government owned, like state owned corporations that are trying to manage aviation in the UK.
[1858.54] Frank: And then you've got the Department for Transport, which is the kind of, there's MPs that run that, basically.
[1867.54] Frank: And from my point of view, the MPs have said we want remote ID because we want to be like the US and we want to, well, that's the kind of cynical view.
[1878.54] Frank: The more, the less cynical view would be they want to make sure that investors in the various opportunities that drones allow need some kind of security to know that whatever regulations are coming over the next few years.
[1897.54] Frank: Are going to allow these investments to mature. So they've said they want remote ID and they want these regulations in place and the CAA have gone, what do you mean?
[1912.91] Frank: And the FT have said, you work it out, that's your job.
[1917.91] Frank: And so the CAA have been told you've got to make remote ID work, find a way.
[1922.91] Frank: And that's what the consultations are about, is like, how do we do this?
[1927.91] Frank: What does that mean? How do we do that while causing as little hassle as possible?
[1935.91] Frank: So that's from my point of view, that's what's going on.
[1940.91] Stephen: We're talking about supporting private enterprise and this darling work that they're doing.
[1945.91] Stephen: As you mentioned earlier this week for audio listeners, the headline would be drone mail service suspended after device sinks.
[1955.91] Stephen: That's a controlled descent into the ocean, so controlled, they still don't know exactly where it is.
[1962.91] Curry: I like the idea of a controlled descent. It's like it didn't crash, it meant to descend into the ocean. It's an RIV as well.
[1971.91] Frank: A spokesperson said the craft was not carrying any cargo at the time and there was no damage to people or property.
[1979.91] Curry: Tell that to the fish.
[1983.91] Frank: Yeah, this was up in the Orkneys where it looks like role mail have been involved in some kind of island hopping inter-island delivery.
[1994.91] Frank: There you go, that's what they're calling it.
[1996.91] Frank: So three months trial started on the first of all this.
[2001.91] Frank: It's got in the sea.
[2004.91] Stephen: I mean, if this is what we're all trying to get out of the way for, I'm unimpressed.
[2011.58] Frank: I mean, there's also, I think it's an altitude angel that are in Reading sort of way.
[2019.58] Frank: And I've got a drone corridor being set up so they can do beyond visual line of sight operations, which sort of ties in with...
[2027.58] Frank: I mean, they say they're doing it for, you know, getting medical samples from the hospital over here to the hospital over there that has the lamp.
[2036.58] Stephen: I mean, the other article that you helpfully locate it, Frank.
[2041.58] Frank: Yeah.
[2042.58] Stephen: Imagine a corridor in the sky that stretches between Reading and Coventry.
[2049.58] Stephen: Great. Great.
[2052.58] Frank: It's quite 6.2 miles wide between Reading and Coventry.
[2056.58] Stephen: Now if people get sent to Coventry, they can do it by air.
[2061.58] Frank: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience, downloaded and edited to make sense when it played audio only,
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[2077.58] Frank: All thanks to our Patreons.
[2079.58] Frank: Consider joining them and you'll also get other online benefits.
[2082.58] Frank: Find out more at patreon.com forward slash let's drone out.
[2087.58] Stephen: OK, so relies on a line of beacons on the ground.
[2091.58] Stephen: OK, so this must be maybe some of those sites that you were talking about being set up with a great cost earlier.
[2097.58] Frank: I think that's a different one, actually.
[2098.58] Frank: I think it's a different company setting up.
[2100.58] Frank: I think it was pilot aware doing three a week.
[2103.58] Frank: Although it looks very similar to that.
[2106.58] Stephen: That's a pretty awkward piece of masthead extension in that photo.
[2110.58] Stephen: It looks like they've got every extension arm they can find sort of linked together.
[2114.58] Curry: I built it straight when you can put three 90 degree bends in it instead.
[2120.58] Stephen: Making their lives easy, are they?
[2123.58] Stephen: OK, so near Green Park in Reading, Berkshire.
[2126.58] Stephen: A large drone with a wingspan of more than one meter flies a planned route by itself without a pilot.
[2132.58] Stephen: But watched by a ground crew.
[2134.58] Stephen: So there you are.
[2136.58] Stephen: You've got you guys must have a few one meter wings, right?
[2140.58] Frank: Yeah, I mean, a meter is not huge, is it?
[2143.58] Stephen: No, although this does look extra fancy.
[2145.58] Stephen: They've got the they've taken pictures of the VTOL, no doubt, because it photographs.
[2149.58] Stephen: Well, it's very hard to take pictures of aircraft flying past a speed.
[2157.58] Stephen: And they're saying it stays below 100 meters altitude.
[2160.58] Stephen: So, yeah, that's odd.
[2162.58] Frank: Which is interesting because, yeah, in Germany, for example, they're the same between four and five hundred feet is the use space for such things.
[2173.58] Frank: But, you know, different strokes for different folks and all that.
[2178.58] Stephen: In the center of town is an air traffic control center for drones from a console.
[2182.58] Stephen: Any drones in the corridor can be monitored.
[2184.58] Stephen: If the flight paths conflict, the drones can be automatically instructed to alter course.
[2190.58] Stephen: This sounds like a problem that should really just be automated, but I guess someone has to watch it.
[2196.58] Curry: I mean, you've got to make sure the automation works, right?
[2199.58] Curry: Yeah.
[2200.58] Curry: It seems like, OK, if we're sending up drones in our control in a pre-plan, pre-planned flight route,
[2208.58] Curry: then how we ever get in this situation is like, oh, they're going to crash.
[2212.58] Curry: Surely it's like we go this way there.
[2214.58] Curry: And then when we come back, we do a slightly different way.
[2216.58] Stephen: And they know where they are to like one meter.
[2219.58] Stephen: So what you've got to do is make sure that things never go within 200 meters of each other.
[2223.58] Stephen: And done, right?
[2225.58] Frank: Now you've fallen into the trap that they've set for you, which is an air traffic control, which requires remote ID.
[2239.58] Stephen: Right.
[2240.58] Stephen: So the purpose of the Skyway is to put very clever sensors on the ground, not to actually fly from A to B,
[2246.58] Stephen: but the purpose of the Skyway is to put sensors on the ground.
[2249.58] Stephen: OK.
[2251.58] Stephen: So the sensors stare into the sky.
[2253.58] Stephen: They look for aircraft as well as other drones.
[2255.58] Stephen: We take that information into our control center and process with aircraft are heading.
[2259.58] Frank: Yeah, but obviously, like this means that only one company owns this route from A to B,
[2268.16] Frank: all the space in between, which means that, you know, if you if you want to have multiple companies using the same space,
[2275.16] Frank: or like if you have a route that goes from east to west to the route that wants to go north to south between it,
[2282.16] Frank: then you can't do that without some kind of communication.
[2285.16] Stephen: Well, you can, Frank, because because you have another dimension, unlike road vehicles.
[2290.16] Stephen: So you can have a route that goes east, west and a route that goes north, south.
[2293.16] Stephen: And you could use this thing called height, which is which is available to air vehicles.
[2299.16] Frank: Yeah. And there's the classic thing in aviation of one's using all the heights and one's using even heights.
[2305.16] Frank: But you still need to communicate, you know, for n routes that cross each other in various positions at some point.
[2315.16] Curry: Well, again, you can just have telemetry rather than a melody.
[2319.16] Curry: That screen looks like he's playing a game of some weird little thing rather than air traffic control.
[2325.16] Curry: It looks like missile command.
[2327.16] Curry: It's literally a bunch of circles and someone looks like a little, yeah, some sort of blue worm crawling across the screen.
[2334.16] Curry: I don't really understand what's going on.
[2336.16] Frank: Well, I imagine the blue worm is his airway and the other ones are other airfields, right?
[2340.16] Frank: So you can kind of see like runway protection zones.
[2345.16] Curry: It's just like we will bomb slough.
[2347.16] Curry: Why is he looking at the airways?
[2349.16] Curry: Why is he not looking at his airway where the drones are?
[2351.16] Curry: It's like, that's weird.
[2353.16] Curry: OK, I don't get it.
[2356.16] Stephen: And I highlighted the follow the money angle.
[2359.16] Stephen: In this case, the follow the money angle would be in California.
[2363.16] Stephen: Amazon is experimenting with delivering parcels by drones, people's homes, and it hopes to bring the idea to the UK.
[2369.16] Frank: But they said this 10 years ago.
[2372.16] Frank: You know what works really well?
[2374.16] Stephen: People on minimum wage and fans.
[2376.16] Stephen: They can fit a lot more parcels than drone.
[2379.16] Stephen: I'd like to see the drone that carries as much as a small transit van or rather I wouldn't like to see it.
[2384.16] Stephen: They'll be terrifying and unwieldy.
[2387.16] Frank: But, you know, they were just outside of Oxford for ages trying to set up their drone system and they gave up because it's really not.
[2396.16] Curry: We all know it's not going to work because you're restricted on where you can deliver it.
[2400.16] Curry: It's not economically viable, like Stephen says.
[2404.16] Curry: What are you buying?
[2405.16] Stephen: You're buying like a 10 pound piece of plastic tap and you're going to deliver it via a personal drone?
[2410.16] Stephen: How does that work?
[2412.16] Curry: Yeah, and it may be delivered if you've got this enormous bit of land where a drone can actually land.
[2419.16] Curry: Because it can't just like do what the local delivery driver does, which is just put it outside my front door and not bother telling me about it.
[2427.16] Curry: Because there's like cars and people in the way in roads.
[2430.16] Stephen: I live in London, someone will nick it.
[2432.16] Stephen: Like, no offence, but people have to chain their plant pots up some place, isn't it?
[2436.16] Stephen: That drone is going to be gone instead it touches down.
[2439.16] Frank: But they keep saying they're going to.
[2442.16] Frank: They're not going to.
[2444.16] Frank: Well, we know that.
[2446.16] Frank: But the MPs who want to be seen to be doing something new and innovative and making money, you know, improving the economy or whatever.
[2457.16] Curry: I don't know how it improves the economy.
[2459.16] Curry: It's like, oh, yes, getting loads of jobs in his drone things.
[2462.16] Curry: It's like, no, it's not.
[2464.16] Curry: In California.
[2466.16] Curry: Well, how many have they actually done there?
[2468.16] Curry: Is that actually happening?
[2469.16] Curry: Are they actually delivering past?
[2471.16] Stephen: No, I mean, like all the jobs for programmers and people who are not earning minimum wage or be in California, the job related to drone delivery in the UK will be changing broken props and motors on minimum wage for Amazon.
[2485.16] Stephen: That's what will happen.
[2486.16] Curry: These these people that were driving the vans previously will now be driving their vans looking for the drones that people in London smashed up trying to steal when they've been trying to deliver things.
[2497.16] Frank: I mean, that's the other thing, isn't it?
[2499.16] Frank: Is the whole EV toll market.
[2501.16] Frank: That's another like basically flying cars.
[2504.16] Frank: Right.
[2506.16] Frank: So it's not going to happen.
[2508.16] Frank: But.
[2510.16] Frank: But apparently it's going to happen that there's going to be loads of money in it.
[2514.16] Stephen: So this is reality anyway, guys.
[2518.16] Stephen: So we're coming to the end of twenty twenty three going to hit twenty twenty four.
[2524.16] Stephen: And then by twenty twenty eight, this is going to be the world.
[2528.16] Frank: So in some shape or form, almost certainly.
[2535.16] Frank: I mean, it's general election next year, right?
[2537.16] Frank: Maybe they won't care so much.
[2541.16] Curry: That'd be high on the agenda.
[2543.16] Curry: Just just above the economy, immigration and everything else.
[2548.16] Frank: That's what I mean.
[2549.16] Frank: I hope you kind of hope that we've got more important things to look at than this.
[2554.16] Frank: But I don't know.
[2557.16] Stephen: Yeah.
[2558.16] Frank: Just trying to see some hope, guys.
[2560.16] Stephen: Frank, you should run for office.
[2562.16] Stephen: That's the only way that the situation is going to improve.
[2565.16] Stephen: If we end up seeing you standing at a podium telling the nation to forget about immigrants and start sourcing out its technology problems.
[2572.16] Frank: Well, you you joke about immigrants, but the the the secretary of state or transport is the guy who came up with the go home vans and then was sacked because his cleaner was an illegal immigrant.
[2592.16] Frank: And then got me up, can you reappointed as the minister for disabled people and then did the whole system with the like repeatedly testing like permanently disabled people that they were still disabled.
[2611.16] Stephen: So he basically hates people.
[2613.16] Stephen: And that's why someone gave me.
[2615.16] Frank: Yeah.
[2616.16] Stephen: Yeah.
[2617.16] Stephen: What a guy.
[2618.16] Frank: And now he's he's the guy who's saying just everything should be cars as secretary of state transport.
[2625.16] Stephen: Well, instead of people, you mean just everything, just everyone, just no more people, just cars, gleaming metal future.
[2633.16] Curry: I see the future.
[2634.16] Curry: We have three options.
[2637.16] Curry: Option one, follow the awful rule.
[2639.16] Curry: Be miserable.
[2640.16] Curry: Hate yourselves.
[2641.16] Curry: Option two, civil disobedience.
[2644.16] Curry: Don't do it.
[2645.16] Curry: Try and make the law unworkable for everybody.
[2648.16] Curry: Hope they see the light.
[2649.16] Curry: Number three, give up and do something else, which is a very real possibility because lots of people do this hobby as a bit of fun and a way of like chilling out and going and, you know, or hanging out with friends and stuff.
[2662.16] Curry: And it's just too much hassle to go through all this crap to have some fun.
[2667.16] Curry: So it could just be the case of screw it.
[2669.16] Curry: You can do something else.
[2670.16] Stephen: Well, you've cleverly chosen option four, which is to find a friendly farmer who lets you fly without knocking on you.
[2676.16] Curry: Well, that's that doesn't matter because I still thought I'd be on private property, which is completely under control of me, which is why I can fly there.
[2686.16] Curry: It's like, well, it's a bit like if I fly whooping the garden.
[2689.16] Curry: It's like, where's your remote idea?
[2691.16] Curry: So I'm in my sodding garden.
[2692.16] Curry: It's my garden.
[2693.16] Curry: Well, we're going to come into your garden and take you and then take all your drones and computers and stuff.
[2700.16] Stephen: They'll just, you know, drop drop a small bag of evidence, whatever that might be.
[2706.16] Stephen: And off they go.
[2707.16] Stephen: It's a standard standard practice.
[2709.16] Stephen: They brought that over from the U.S. as well.
[2711.16] Stephen: That's very popular with U.S. police.
[2714.16] Stephen: No, a little bit of evidence.
[2716.16] Stephen: Get you in jail.
[2718.16] Stephen: The ban is still running.
[2722.18] Stephen: Well, it's good.
[2724.18] Frank: It's just permanently there.
[2727.18] Stephen: Legal notice.
[2728.18] Stephen: Yeah.
[2729.18] Stephen: I just I just stay out of people's way.
[2731.18] Stephen: I mean, I always have done.
[2732.18] Stephen: There's a common sense aspect to this, which is that I don't want to annoy people because I go flying to go flying not to get people riled and get into antagonistic scenarios with members of the general public, whether it's for hitting them with one of these things or or some kind of presumed snooping offense.
[2754.18] Stephen: I have zero interest in dealing with people.
[2757.18] Stephen: I'd rather go somewhere scenic and just, you know, hang out with my wife as spotter with a dog running around and go fly a few packs.
[2766.18] Stephen: And it's just bewildering.
[2769.18] Stephen: It really is.
[2770.18] Frank: Yeah, absolutely.
[2775.18] Frank: But I mean, we sort of joke about public disobedience, but I mean, there's some historical precedent for that, right?
[2786.18] Frank: I mean, if you consider the space that we fly in to be a public common and then there is the enclosures of the commons, which was protesting against by lots of people just going up whichever hill that was and just standing on the hill and saying, now, we're just going to be here.
[2813.18] Frank: And rather than the landowners successfully charge all your packs and go to the top of the hill and then everyone flies.
[2822.18] Frank: Yeah, I mean, maybe, you know, maybe it's not the worst idea to have a massive fly in somewhere and just like try and keep something in the air for like just twenty four seven until they repeal it.
[2835.18] Frank: I don't know.
[2837.18] Stephen: It was certainly get some press and that fundamentally is is what this thing needs, right?
[2843.18] Stephen: It needs that positive counterexample to go against all the red top tabloid stories of anyone with a multirotor being some kind of evil.
[2853.18] Stephen: It just needs people doing the kind of like Josh Bixler flying for the fun of flying, but with multirotors to show that it's not some kind of, you know, horribly demonized, awful hobby.
[2866.18] Stephen: It's just messing around and pretending to be a bird looking through the left BV camera.
[2872.18] Frank: You know, I mean, think about it, though, it didn't actually repeal the enclosure of the commons.
[2876.18] Frank: It did just mean that there was public rights of way public.
[2883.18] Stephen: So Scotland is still open, isn't it?
[2885.18] Frank: It's just they have roaming rights.
[2888.18] Stephen: I don't know.
[2889.18] Stephen: I think you have roaming right.
[2890.18] Stephen: Well, you can also like camp absolutely anywhere in Scotland, can't you?
[2894.18] Stephen: Within reasons, long as you're not damaging things.
[2898.18] Frank: I know they were trying to ban that from Dartmoor, which last place in England.
[2904.18] Frank: We're going way off the.
[2906.18] Frank: Yeah.
[2907.18] Stephen: So the point is that there is no precedent there.
[2909.18] Stephen: The trouble is that in the current political climate, civil disobedience is rapidly becoming an offense in its own right, which is a horrible place to be.
[2919.18] Curry: We could be ranked as some sort of terror organization and not allowed to talk about it at all.
[2924.18] Stephen: It's like I've got my books, 101 acts of minor dissent.
[2929.18] Stephen: And yeah, there's a lot of things you can get arrested for, especially around London.
[2933.18] Frank: We've just joined the BMFA, right?
[2935.18] Frank: So if we can get become a terrorist organization at the same time, that feels like that'd be some kind of.
[2942.18] Stephen: Well, we've got a logo, I suppose.
[2945.18] Stephen: Three letter abbreviations are pretty good.
[2947.18] Stephen: You know, lots of terrorist organizations have that type of thing.
[2950.18] Stephen: We'll make a shot of it.
[2952.18] Stephen: But maybe we could focus on, you know, less despicable terrorism and more just joy to leave terrorism.
[2960.18] Frank: Sort of count bin-based type terrorism.
[2963.18] Stephen: Dardarist terrorism, perhaps.
[2966.18] Frank: Yeah.
[2967.18] Frank: So yeah, comment down below what kind of surreal terrorism should we get up to to protest?
[2975.18] Curry: We should mount watches.
[2979.84] Stephen: It looks like they do have right to Rome and Scotland as a couple of people.
[2983.84] Stephen: Excellent.
[2984.84] Stephen: So good for the Scottish people, perhaps possessed of a bit more spirit than us down in England or with pop politicians who are easier to sway.
[2996.84] Stephen: Used to fly my drones near King's Cross from dominant Clifton.
[2999.84] Stephen: Oh, yeah. Okay.
[3000.84] Stephen: Back in the day, Christmas Day is the best for flying in places which normally have way too many people around.
[3007.84] Stephen: Was this before the police had tasers, Dominic?
[3009.84] Stephen: I think it might have been.
[3011.84] Stephen: How long have you been in Spain now?
[3012.84] Stephen: I'm not sure.
[3013.84] Stephen: I was biking across the other day.
[3015.84] Frank: I wonder why you went to Spain.
[3017.84] Stephen: Yeah.
[3018.84] Stephen: Are you able to come back from Spain?
[3021.84] Stephen: Yeah, it's shockingly policed and there are cameras absolutely everywhere.
[3026.84] Stephen: I think Parliament is probably easier, but in urban areas, difficult.
[3031.84] Frank: If it was that long ago, was the drone like quite big and scary?
[3036.84] Frank: He says before everything.
[3038.84] Stephen: So yeah, he may have just had pads of kind of vinegar soaked wet paper at that point.
[3048.84] Stephen: But yeah, I remember the TBS, is it tea time in London, the video they did when they were flying up the side of Big Ben and places now that would just slap you straight in jail, I'm sure.
[3061.84] Stephen: But this was probably 2013, 2014 maybe, it was really early.
[3069.82] Frank: I mean, there's other things as well, other than the commercial side of things.
[3074.82] Frank: Ian Hudson at UAV High has been very, very big recently on the sapient system, which I can't remember what it stands for.
[3085.82] Frank: It is a acronym clearly, but it's the defense science and technology laboratory, I think it is.
[3098.82] Frank: It's sort of the UK MOD's lab working out how you can take lots of data from lots of different sensors and try and combine them and cross reference them automatically to work out.
[3114.82] Frank: Is it a bird? Is it a drone? Is it Superman?
[3118.82] Frank: So there's sort of a question.
[3122.82] Frank: Ian Hudson was saying there's presumably some kind of risk there that you get misclassified and identified as some kind of military threat, which would be entertaining, I'm sure.
[3138.82] Curry: I think the key to identifying if it's a bird or not is to look for flapping wings, I don't know if anybody's thought of that one, rather than all these other sensors.
[3146.82] Curry: Just an optical one, look for this movement.
[3149.82] Curry: Ornithopter, you've got every other type of flying machine.
[3154.82] Curry: I don't, I want one. But I told you before, I tried to get one from that guy trying to build it and I was like, how much are they?
[3160.82] Curry: The cheapest one is like £2,000. He's like, you've got 10% discount.
[3168.82] Stephen: Yeah, I've seen some cheap plastic ones that looked like they fall apart.
[3174.82] Curry: That was good. Yeah, maybe that's our defense. If we all start having ornithopters and we can fly those around, if someone comes up, they're like, what are you doing?
[3183.82] Curry: What is it?
[3185.82] Stephen: I don't know. Is it an ornithopter, a multirotor or is it a model aircraft? It's technically a model of a bird.
[3193.82] Stephen: It's none of the above.
[3197.82] Curry: It's not a fixed wing because clearly they're flapping.
[3201.82] Stephen: Yeah, clearly they're flapping. There's no rotors.
[3204.82] Stephen: I'm once again illustrating the problems with an ambiguous legislative framework. I mean, it's just a square one, aren't we, guys? Ambiguity.
[3214.82] Stephen: And then you start getting golf balls involved and it's completely out of the way.
[3218.82] Stephen: Golf balls have cameras now?
[3220.82] Stephen: Yep, absolutely.
[3222.82] Stephen: Oh, my word. I wonder how hard you have to throw a GoPro before it gets covered by that.
[3228.82] Stephen: You notice it says camera, not a video transmission system as well. So it doesn't imply a VTX. It applies anything with a camera.
[3238.82] Frank: Interesting how they're going to deal with that in terms of the nuts and bolts of it, because on Deeks Varna, I believe there was a suggestion from him.
[3249.82] Frank: I don't know if he's got some information or anything, but it's going to be more like the Article 95 of the air navigation order where there's the separation of small unmanned aerial surveillance systems.
[3265.82] Stephen: There's a separation of a camera that's to monitor the operation of the device versus a camera that forms part of a video recording apparatus in its own right.
[3274.82] Frank: Exactly. So if you're flying FPV and there's no DVR, then that is a different thing currently under the ANO from something that has a GoPro on it.
[3286.82] Stephen: Yeah. And if you're looking at heads up display that's giving you voltage readouts, maybe some out horizon bars, whatever it is, that's clearly giving you telemetry from the vehicle and not just for the purpose of recording video.
[3300.82] Stephen: So there's an argument there.
[3303.82] Curry: We replace cameras with LIDARs and then we fly like we're in the Matrix and we've got this kind of weird stuff appearing. Yeah, that would work.
[3316.82] Stephen: That would be like a backbone, wouldn't it? Just picking everything.
[3319.82] Frank: If it's just depth information, is that going to be like a lower bit rate than video? Could you compress that even more?
[3328.82] Stephen: You end up with a point cloud and the point cloud takes an enormous amount of processing to realize and to do statistical analysis to remove the erroneous points and things.
[3338.82] Stephen: It would actually be a larger volume of data total, but maybe each frame would be smaller.
[3343.82] Frank: What if you just spewed it straight back and your human brain did the filtering out?
[3353.82] Curry: Literally, we're watching the Matrix. We can process that very quickly. Our heads become acclimatized to it. We can just see stuff. Yep. I see that. I see that.
[3362.82] Stephen: What about kites with cameras? Yep. Yep. Technically a kite with a camera.
[3368.82] Stephen: There are no sense to be a control line aircraft anymore mentioned.
[3372.82] Curry: Previously there was exclusion on kites and I believe balloons for this sort of thing.
[3379.82] Stephen: So spy balloons are okay. You could be a balloon perv.
[3383.82] Frank: A spy balloon is absolutely fine. Any other kind of balloon, illegal, but if it's a spy balloon, it's all right.
[3390.82] Frank: There's rockets were excluded from this, I noticed. Really? It's unusual for rockets to be excluded from almost anything.
[3400.82] Stephen: Rockets seem the safest way of propulsion for starting.
[3404.82] Stephen: So let's rocket out will be the show name from 2028 onwards.
[3409.82] Stephen: What about rockets with cameras? Yeah, rocket-proof missiles, fine. Rocket with a camera.
[3415.82] Frank: What about if you have some slightly large control surfaces on the rockets?
[3421.82] Curry: Yeah, what if you're making a rocket like SpaceX that wants to come down and land itself so it has to have control services?
[3429.82] Stephen: I think that's the wing at that point, isn't it? It's just a fancy wing.
[3432.82] Frank: No, but if it's a rocket, it's a rocket that doesn't count as excluded.
[3436.82] Stephen: So if it uses a solid fuel system. Yeah.
[3440.82] Frank: And lithium is quite solid and looks like an actor's fire.
[3446.82] Frank: So, you know. It's inducting maybe. Yeah.
[3450.82] Frank: Save your old life pace, that's all I'm saying.
[3453.82] Stephen: Maybe I'm sure someone could come up with a recipe that involves lithium and old tyre rubber.
[3457.82] Stephen: Which apparently is basically what a lot of rocket engines are.
[3460.82] Stephen: They take a tyre rubber and mix it with sugar and other things and coat the inside of the tube.
[3465.82] Stephen: And then it's just burning and ejecting out one end of a tube.
[3468.82] Frank: I bet that doesn't have any nasty stuff coming out the back of it.
[3473.82] Stephen: No, no, no, no, no. It's a complete healthy burn. It's happiness and daisies.
[3484.82] Frank: Yeah. Well, I feel like we've almost woken down long enough about this nonsense.
[3492.82] Stephen: Well, thank you for joining us. And I hope this has been an informative discussion, albeit one that grumpily focused too much on the negative aspects.
[3502.82] Stephen: And you can blame me for that, folks. It winds me up. But thank you for joining us.
[3507.82] Stephen: Well, we yet to find any positive aspects, but we'll keep plugging away and looking.
[3512.82] Stephen: We will try. We will mine this deep, deep well.
[3515.82] Frank: It's very deep and getting deeper. Yes.
[3520.82] Frank: If you want something completely different, next week I believe Curry has some exciting things to talk about.
[3527.82] Frank: And we have some exciting guests coming on.
[3530.82] Curry: Well, we've got the Open HD guys coming on next week to talk about what's happening in Open HD.
[3536.82] Curry: And I think they've got some perhaps new stuff to tell us about, which would be exciting.
[3540.82] Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be some interesting things. So stay tuned.
[3545.82] Stephen: I think they're going to be talking about some new developments.
[3548.82] Stephen: Oh, nice. Like positivity, hope.
[3551.82] Frank: Positivity and exciting things. Things that can happen.
[3555.82] Stephen: Things that you still can't. Right.
[3558.82] Stephen: And on that wonderful note, thank you to our amazing patrons. Thank you to everyone in the chat.
[3564.82] Stephen: And we will see you next week.
[3567.82] Stephen: Thank you. You're joined by Frank.
[3570.82] Frank: Bye.
[3571.82] Stephen: Our savior and master and reacher of the legislature.
[3575.82] Stephen: Everyone's favorite, Curry Kitten.
[3577.82] Stephen: Bye.
[3578.82] Stephen: And myself, Mr. Grumpy Steven. Thank you. Good.
[3583.82] Frank: Bye.
[3584.82] Curry: Bye.
[3585.82] Curry: Telemetry loss.