Remember, remember, the fifth of November…..gunpowder, treason and, oh yeah, drone registration opens today!
As of today, the CAA website slowly but surely allowed flyers and operators to register and be all above board and legal. Great eh? Well yes, in theory….except not all drones have to be registered (only those heavier than 250g – so not the new DJI Mavic Mini for instance) and does the CAA really think that those intending to misuse their drones are going to register, obtain an operator ID and then display that ( as required) on their drone, before going ahead and doing whatever naughty things they wanted to do originally?
As a PfCO holder, I personally am exempt from the online test portion of the registration – but decided to do it anyway, just to see what it’s like. Apart from a niggle with one or two of the questions I got presented with (for the record, the pass mark is 16/20 and yes, I got 20/20!), the questions seem fair and reasonable – nothing in there that should scare anyone interested in flying drones safely and legally and certainly nothing that couldn’t be googled* in a matter of seconds. *Other search engines are available – or so I’ve heard.
As an operator, EMAV is required to register it’s drones too – this has all been done this morning, well ahead of the end of November deadline.
Some folks out there are saying “it’s just a backdoor tax on the drone industry” and part of me agrees with them – the EMAV Operations Manual (essentially the go to guide for how EMAV say we’ll operate our flights and planning) contains the serial numbers, pictures and details of our drones, so why do we need to pay £9 to let the CAA know this information that they already know? The simple answer is….because we’re required to….so we’ve paid the £9, it’s not going to ruin our day and we’ll happily get on with flying and helping our customers!
Now if the CAA could arrange for this mizzly weather to do one….we’d happily pay for that!