Legal considerations

This course does not teach you about what your restrictions are legally for flying and filming in your country.

You can a need to have to go off and work out what those are for yourselves the reasons for that are varied.

But one of them is that this is of course a course that is internationally pitched.

And so there are going to be many different laws from country to country and they do vary pretty dramatically.

Some countries have little to no restrictions in place.

Others have quite heavy restrictions as well as that the laws themselves are a moving target.

They are changing all the time and being heavily considered in many countries right as we speak.

And so you’re going to have to get used to being on top of investigating what the latest laws are to make sure that you can fly and film legally.

As you start to get into this in a more in-depth way it’s quite likely that you’re going to be if it’s anything like me flying internationally.

So again you’re going to have to get used to investigating in the country that you’re going to what the laws are.

So make sure that you can adhere to them.

There are many different areas where there are going to be laws that affect how you can use a drone photography or video or graphy.

But here are three areas that you should certainly be looking into.

Find out what the rest are as well investigate those.

The first is going to be around any privacy regulations that may be in the country that you’re flying in.

There may be restrictions on whether you’re allowed to video or photograph private property or people sometimes even public property such as bridges and so on.

Additionally there’s likely to be something there called a Communications Commission in the country that’s responsible for the airwaves and how they’re used for communications to occur across them.

They will be looking at things such as what frequency’s people are allowed to use for different purposes.

So things such as wife eye for instance in your everyday House will have some restrictions around which frequency it is allowed to use.

Similarly any frequencies that you’re using for controlling your drone or for sending a video transmission back from it to some goggles that you might be wearing were screen on the ground will have some restrictions to what frequencies those signals can use.

So you need to find out what those are with the kit that you’ve got actually adheres to them or not.

As well as which frequencies can be used.

The strength of the signal on those frequencies will have some restrictions around it too.

So again look at your kit and make sure that it’s adhering to whatever the strength is that you’re allowed to be using.

As well as a communications commission and as well as any privacy regulations.

A very important area to be looking at will be the civil aviation authority.

So this will be the body that’s responsible for making sure there are air is safe for planes to fly in and that the people below it can remain safe from the aeroplanes that are actually up there.

The typical kind of rules that you’re going to find in place around this there are likely to be some height restrictions you can only fly so high the higher up you go the more likely there are going to be full size aircraft.

So obviously if you want to stay well away from those.

So make sure you find out what these restrictions are and stay within them.

Issue Ali you just don’t get very good footage.

The higher up you go so you don’t want to be flying very high anyway.

Some countries have rules around having a spotter so that while you’re flying you’ve got somebody that standing next to you that’s looking out for any other aircraft that might be coming into the area.

And also they can help deal with say passers by that come along and start trying to talk to you while you trying to concentrate on flying.

Is there any good they’ll be helping you with your bags as well.

So work out whether you need a spotter or not.

Additionally there are likely to be some rules around whether you’re allowed to fly over property or heavy urban areas or urban areas generally.

This makes sense because if you’re going to have any issues while you’re up in the air you going to run into potentially more trouble when say you’ve got a busy city below you.

There may be some regulations around flying over heavy crowds of people or people at all.

And this makes a lot of sense because again if something goes wrong you’re a much increased chance of actually hitting people below.

If your drone ends up having to come out the sky makes sense to never fly over people in this kind of way.

We see some ridiculous videos sometimes online of people flying over things like such as football stadiums or other heavy crowds.

Avoid this weather of course.

There are any restrictions in place or not around it.

Next set of laws that are going to need to go off and investigate carefully those around restricted airspace.

There’s going to be parts of the country where you’re not allowed to fly or drone and you got need to find out where those are so that you can make sure that you’re not in them or that you even fly anywhere near them.

There was an insane in the news recently that helps illustrate the importance of following these laws.

A drone is seen flying near Heathrow Airport.

It got near to an Airbus 380.

So a very large passenger jet.

If that passenger jet had hit that drone it would have had probably disastrous consequences.

Also if that passenger jet had had to try to dodge that drone then it could have had disastrous consequences for other air traffic in the area.

These laws are in place in part to avoid that kind of situation arising.

You need to find out most likely from the equivalent of your civil aviation authority what the restricted air space is are there often also be some rules in place such as you have to stay X miles or X kilometres away from an airport and then only beyond that distance can you actually fly.

So you need to find out what that X actually is.

In some countries for instance it is five miles so more than eight kilometres.

Typically whatever the number is now probably going to be going up as you can have to be at a B even further away from these places we are likely to have low flying aircraft around.

Remember it’s not just airports it’s landing strips helipads might be strips of water where planes are taking off from and landing on.

It might well be military bases where there’s going to be low flying aircraft doing practice flights.

For any new flying spot the restricted air space status is always one of the first things that I check is it in a restricted airspace.

I also of course checked to make sure that I am far far away from any airports or landing strips or other places where there may be low flying aircraft coming in.

Some countries have restrictions around the instance that your drone is allowed to travel away from you the operator.

Sometimes that is that it has to be within visual line of sight.

So that is sight site that is not aided by binoculars and so on to find out if that’s one of the restrictions you’ve got to adhere to.

Some countries have banned the use of first person view flying so that is flying with the use of goggles on or with the use of a screen where you’re actually effectively looking out the front of the drone.

And this is in heavy discussion in countries at the moment.

So I understand if that’s a necessity for you to have to follow They’re also going to be some restrictions potentially around whether you were allowed to use drones and filming for commercial purposes or you’ve got to go through a whole bunch of extra hoops and stuff to jump through to get further permissions to do that.

So if that’s part of your plan then check with you’re allowed to do it in the country that you’re going to be flying in.

In some countries you’ll find that there are rules requiring you to keep a minimum distance from houses or people.

So investigate whether that’s the case for where you’ll be flying.

So they have it there’s a wide range of things that you’re going to have to be looking at.

And I’ve only covered a few of those here.

You wouldn’t need to be investigating.

Find out what they are in the country or flying in and then fly within the law and fly safe.