Reply to post: What is a drone?

What is a drone?

What is a drone?

Like all laws, this will always hang on the definitions, and likely be really badly drafted.

I've just built 2 Emax quads and a flying wing, all 3 with FPV, all above 300g TOW.

The quads have basic flight controllers purely as that's what quads need to fly, but their FCs have no GPS or RetToHome logic built in.

The police will not have the time or expertise to delve into any 1 FC's capabilities, so this would be simplified to: "a drone is anything with multiple rotors".

So to your average policeman, because "quads are multirotors, a quad is therefore a drone" and so would fall in this legislation, whereas the flying wing would not.

Yet I could easily install a full featured FC in the wing and get it to autonomously fly from say Windsor to LHR and back, and the police would be none the wiser to its capabilities, nor would they likely seize it as "its not got multiple props so its not a drone, Sarge".

All they would see is the wing, a battery, a motor and two three plastic boxes, so the default response will likely slide towards "seize ANY RC kit as its better we err on the side of caution".

I also see this in the Gov announcement:

"

The government is also working closely with drone manufacturers to use geo-fencing to prevent drones from entering restricted zones.

"

Good luck with geofencing any of my RC kit; none of it has GPS, nor any logic besides basic FC.