safe places to fly your drone big

The Cause

I am constantly out and about in search of any initiative that helps the drone hobby community, helps us by shedding a positive light on multicopters. This is important, because there seems to be a lot of fear mongering going regarding drones and most of the negative sentiment stems from ignorance. This is a natural setback of earl days of probably any disruptive technology. People probably had similar feeling when the first “horseless carriage” aka. car was introduced. More recently, we have been hearing a lot of concerns over mobile phone use, both from the etiquette point of view and how much it causes cancer, etc. I don’t want to take sides on any of these issues, but one thing is certain: raising awareness in a fair way is important.

Why Only Blacklists?

It was just a few weeks ago when I reported about NoFlyZone, a private initiative promising to set up a sort of geo-fence around your property by keeping drones away from the airspace above your real estate. I raised my concerns over the fact that it probably promotes a false sense of security (where there is no danger in fact) and the plan that it will be a paid service.

Efforts in creating black lists of areas where multicopoters should not fly are not meaningless, but what about white lists so decent, law abiding multirotor pilots can find places where their drones are welcome? This is what Simon Newton plans to create and he is asking for your help. Simon is the guy behind the great video podcast series On The Kitchen Table which I personally very much enjoy watching. His videos are mainly aimed at newcomers to multirotors, quadcopters, drones and UAVs, particularly to the DJI product range, and the Phantom line in particular. He has how to’s, product reviews, tips, tricks, hints and information for beginners and those in the early stages of the hobby. Check his stuff out when you have a minute!

Safe Places to Fly Your Drone App Movement

With the increasing numbers of consumer multirotor aircraft, UAVs or “drones” being bought and flown, both manufacturers and airspace regulators are keen to educate people on where and how you can legally fly these amazing machines. As well as finding suitable public land to take off from, users also need to be aware of airspace restrictions around sensitive areas, as well as any prohibitions or local laws (in the UK, for example you can’t fly over or within 150m of congested areas or within 50m of people, vehicles, structures of buildings not under your control with a camera drone).

This app will be a way for people to share appropriate and legal sites they have found for flying, wherever they are in the world. Be it a large, unobstructed open area; easily accessible public right of way for taking off from; beautiful scenery in open airspace for taking stills and video of; or all of the above!

Whilst there is no prohibition on flying over private land, we should always be sensitive to noise and privacy concerns, so please avoid any sites where this may be likely. Similarly whilst taking off from a public right of way would be legal, if that right of way goes through or very close to occupied buildings then please be considerate. This is all about you – the vast majority of drone hobbyists who fly sensibly, safely and legally – curating your own database of great places to fly and showing the world at large that we don’t all buzz airports, peep into windows or fly like reckless kids.

The final form of the app will be collaboratively designed by the subscribers and viewers of the YouTube multirotor/drone channel “On the Kitchen Table” – and anyone else who wants to join in and contribute to the positive side of the hobby!

Here is a “Kitchen Table” video from Simon explaining the concept first hand:

Support The Cause!

I have personally signed up to support Simon’s idea over at App Movement and hope to bring in my geek friends to provide some coding efforts. I might have to buy them pizza in return, but that’s ok. 🙂 I also hope to see you in the movement, let’s make this happen because I would love to just slip out my smartphone anywhere in the world and find a nice and safe place to fly and take some nice shots!

Image Source: Wikipedia / Tobias Klenze / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Summary
Safe Places to Fly Your Drone
Article Name
Safe Places to Fly Your Drone
Description
Safe Places to Fly Your Drone is an app movement to create a white list for drone pilots and enthusiasts to easily find places in their neighborhood where their drones are welcome and are good locations to catch some nice images.
Author

There are 2 comments:

  • Simon Newton at 3:17 pm

    Hi, thanks for your support, much appreciated! I very much agree with your sentiments – let’s promote places to fly that aren’t going to trouble law enforcement, aviation authorities or private landowners. The “blacklist” and “no fly” concept is fine, but still reinforces the “drones are bad” message, so I figured why not try and engage the flying community, the vast majority of whom are very much pro-safety and pro-responsible flying (despite what YouTube drone footage of idiotic flying practices might have people believe). The coding is all there, as we will be using a pre-existing “template” for the app, we just need to collaborate on look-and-feel and the nitty gritty of curating/moderating the suggested flying sites, etc.

    We now have sufficient support that the app WILL be made – I still want lots of people to “back” it though so that we have a groundswell of support to hit the ground running with when it launches.

    Onwards and upwards!

    Simon – On the Kitchen Table

  • LocaLoqa at 4:10 pm

    There’s a new location map based Q&A at http://LocaLoqa.com/@Drone-Pilots for all drone flyers to ask questions and help out each other by answering, sharing, discussing.

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