Drone Basics :

Drones have been a great hobby of mine since day-one of learning to fly them, and although I first started my Drone interest through the company I worked with at the time, I now fly Drones primarily for my own fun and enjoyment.

Getting started with Drones can seem daunting, especially if your first experience is with the rules and regulations, most regulatory bodies make this part sound complicated, long-winded, and at certain points restrictive, this often puts people off from giving it a try for the first time, usually from fear of getting into trouble for flying in the wrong places.

Most of the people I’ve talked to that might have a slight interest in getting started with the hobby often miss-quote things from the regulations or interpret sections wrongly, such as people often assume that a license is ALWAYS required to fly any kind of Drone, or that to get certified they need to spend lots of money on courses before they can even use a Drone in the first place, or that they need to spend thousands on insurance policies etc.

While this may be the case if you want to fly larger Drones ( over 250g ) and usually if you also intend to fly commercially, it is extremely straightforward to get flying quite quickly for the small price of a registration fee in most countries and with often, very little flying restrictions in the class of Drone under the 250g weight limit.

And while the regulations and rules indeed get increasingly more important once you seriously get more involved with flying Drones, especially if you upgrade to a larger one, much of the more complicated aspects of legislation doesn’t tend to apply to someone who would probably be starting out with something like a sub 250g Drone for personal recreational use anyway.

Now, of course depending on where you are in the world your countries regulatory body may be more restrictive, or less, so I highly recommend that you check the rules for your region before just buying a Drone and flying it wherever you like.

Being from the UK, we here tend to be well versed with what often are over-reaching regulators and legislators, I mean, I am not sure about the rest of the world but the UK is the sort of place that has regulations to force peanut packets to state that the product may contain traces of peanuts! And that vaping related products such as EMPTY plastic vaping pods must state that the product contains nicotine when it clearly does NOT contain nicotine! So you can be certain that most of the regulations surrounding most things in the UK are also probably going for the blunt “nanny-state” approach rather than pin-point accuracy in information, although nuts containing traces of nuts is quite accurate information to be fair.

When it comes to giving you the facts, clearly, of what you can, and cannot do with your Drone, most of the regulations and the enforcement of them are often presented in the light of someone having a larger than 250g drone, and assuming a commercial use case when quoting the rules, and often confusion on private land versus open air spaces.

Taking something like the Mini 3 Pro ( pictured in this page ) this Drone is a sub 250g drone, it can be flown without a license, liability insurance is not mandatory if used for recreational purposes, but I would recommend getting liability insurance anyway, just in case you do somehow manage to injure someone or damage property with the Drone, and even more so if you intend to use it for commercial purposes, since this keeps you compliant with the Civil Aviation Authority ( CAA ) regulations in the UK for commercial use cases.

Some insurance companies specialise in specific drone insurance policies, they can offer cheaper plans if only being used for recreational hobby use, and can also offer damage/fly-away cover for your Drone too, if you didn’t opt for cover when purchasing the Drone. Some can also offer plans that you only pay for the times when you fly to help keep costs down.

Separation from people and property can often be another topic that is mis-interpreted, you will often hear that you cannot fly within 50 meters of people or buildings, this is only correct if the Pilot involved is flying a Drone 250g or more, and even then, you can fly larger Drones closer if the people and property are involved, shooting a movie for example.

If the Drone is under 250g you can fly closer than 50 meters to people and buildings, however I would caution against it in most scenarios if they are not involved or there is no good reason to be closer.

You are not allowed to fly any Drone regardless of it’s size over large groups of people, how many people constitutes a large group? nobody knows, but I would assume that page was left intentionally blank to be used, possibly inappropriately, later against a pilot most likely.

There is however reference from the CAA literature loosely defining it as people who may not be able to move out of the way in time should the Drone come down on them, so my guess based on basic logic would be if one person is in the middle of four other people they are pretty much trapped from moving in any direction when huddled together so I use five people minimum by that logic, of course subtract a person from that number if for example  obstacles block their path to move out of the way also, such as walls, fences etc.

You are encouraged to use your own logic and common sense to determine the numerical variable of a “group of people” and if they can “move out of the way” or not in any given scenario should one arise, as I am quite sure you will be given no help in determining this number if challenged on it legally but you would have the footage and your own sound logic to argue your case.

And to wrap things up, you cannot fly higher than 400 Feet ( 120 Meters ) from the ground, unless you have an appropriate license and special permission to do so, you must also not fly in restricted airspaces unless you have obtained proper permission to do so, although when using most reputable consumer Drone brands they will most likely not allow such flights anyway if operated properly.