NEWS - First UK person prosecuted for dangerous UAV flying

[ryankaye]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... craft.html

[stewart clifford]

That'll teach him for having a crap transmitter.

[Cary Bailey]

The Daily Mail can't even get it right, they state he used a Delta wing aircraft & show a picture of a Quadcopter!! Nincompoops! (Oooops now I will be presecuted for using that word or will they conjur up another)???
Cary

[Alan Cantwell 1131]

i use one of those trannies on a hen long tank, i bet its only a matter of time until one of these guys do the sport a serious injury, the ignorant public tar all with the same brush, this is the way over here, bunch of geeks flying toys is the way we are labled, not so in europe, or the USA, why us???? as for this bloke, ask him for his insurance, yeh, right

[James Stewart]

Why is there a club within ear shot of NUCLEAR power station? It doesn't matter if an RC model could do damage or not. There are certain things/areas that we should stay away from, or am I assuming common sense doesn't apply to these people?

[Bob Thompson1894]

There is a long thread on this over on RCMF. Basically, the guy is an idiot. When it went to court he walked out of the court 30 minutes before it was heard, and his solicitor just had to withdraw any defence. He was found guilty in his absence. It looks like it was not FPV, but an autonomous flight. He had previously said he wanted to fly over the nuclear facility.

[Matt Harrowven]

It wasn't a planned autonomous flight, it was flown LOS and lost signal, but the return to home failsafe didn't work and it flew away.

The mail have it all wrong (surprise!).

[Dave Hayfield]

This case made it into the 'big boys' magazine, Flight International, and the authorities are using it as a warning for people not adhering to the air nav orders with unacceptable flying and no insurance cover. I'm surprised this hasn't happened before considering the vast amount of 'flying toys' flooding the market.

[Alan Cantwell 1131]

The BMFA fought for eons to keep flying toys off the shelf, stuff like this can be bought at gadget shops, and its all over ebay, seems this guy had BMFA insurance, but thats only good when the model/drone/toy is flown legally, and within CAA guidelines, there must be many many flying things out there that are flown with no insurance, and no knowledge of just what they can do, sadly, i think this could do us nothing but bad, sad, innit?

[Bob Thompson1894]

Matt- he SAID he was LOS, but he had inputted waypoints into his laptop, and the video does not show a flyaway, it shows a model under some sort of control right to the end when what looks like the battery going down crashes the thing into the estuary.

[Matt Harrowven]

Fair doo's then. That's asking for trouble.

Mat

[Bob Thompson1894]

And the latest- the CAA guy went to see him at his premises and was thrown out and told to f off.
Sounds like a total moron!