Whilst that may not be expensive to you, it's certainly expensive to me.
£800 a yer for liabilities insurance?
That's taking the biscuit isn't it?Multirotor, multicopter and quadcopter discussion - The Drone thread
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£800 a yer for liabilities insurance?
That's taking the biscuit isn't it?Whilst that may not be expensive to you, it's certainly expensive to me.
£800 a yer for liabilities insurance?
*ahem* I'm sure situations will arise where footage is taken on private land with permission of the land owner and someone supplies a copy as thanks. If they want to slip a brown envelope in your back pocket, that's up to them.
I don't fancy the jumping through hoops so I'm sticking to hobby flying. I've been asked by friends to get some footage of various bits of private land though.
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That's fine, as long as you're not being rewarded in any way.
Whilst that may not be expensive to you, it's certainly expensive to me.
£800 a yer for liabilities insurance?
That's actually a bit of an low-ball estimation. I've been quoted £960 / year for my setup for £5 million of liabilities.
At the end of the day, it's not a lot of money if you are planning on making a business at it. In my CODB plan, the liabilities insurance is tiny in comparison to other expenses such as fuel, batteries, repairs, web-hosting, advertising, printing, and time.
If they want to buy me a load of beer down the pub in a completely non-related way, then yeah, I was assuming that'd be fine.
Soldato
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Ta. Though we are insured up to £2mil Public Liability, certainly wouldn't be flying without insurance! We got Hiscox to specifically state that too so our insurance does state "Video Production & Photography including use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle". This isn't hobbyist insurance either, we amended our existing cover with Hiscox which includes all the other boring products and employers liability etc. And yeah we pay around £2kpa all-in so your £800 figure sounds about right for just PL cover.
We told them that would be flying up to 2,000ft as well so we didn't beat around the bush
. No idea what we'd actually go to but there's a few records on YouTube around the 2,300ft range.You got any links to info about certs and who to do them with etc?
2000ft is completely illegal. Maximum permitted ceiling for a UAV is 400ft and within visual range.
The best place to read up on this is the CAA website: http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?CATID=1995
Courses: http://www.eurousc.com/ and http://www.resource-uas.co.uk/RPASTraining/RPQstraining.aspx
These are the main rules you need to adhere to:
The maximum altitude is 400 feet (120 metres)
The maximum distance from the operator is 500 metres
The minimum visibility needs to be 5 km
UAV must be flown in line of sight of the operator
UAVs cannot be flown at night without special permission
Permission must be obtained from the owner of the take-off point
UAVs cannot be flown within 50 metres of structures, vehicles or people that are not under the control of the person in charge of the aircraft.
With regards to your liabilities insurance. I would be extremely surprised if Hiscox actually paid out if you damage someone or something while flying in contravention of CAA regulations. Even if their policy says they will, no one will insure you to do something that is illegal.
The best place to read up on this is the CAA website: http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?CATID=1995
Courses: http://www.eurousc.com/ and http://www.resource-uas.co.uk/RPASTraining/RPQstraining.aspx
These are the main rules you need to adhere to:
The maximum altitude is 400 feet (120 metres)
The maximum distance from the operator is 500 metres
The minimum visibility needs to be 5 km
UAV must be flown in line of sight of the operator
UAVs cannot be flown at night without special permission
Permission must be obtained from the owner of the take-off point
UAVs cannot be flown within 50 metres of structures, vehicles or people that are not under the control of the person in charge of the aircraft.
With regards to your liabilities insurance. I would be extremely surprised if Hiscox actually paid out if you damage someone or something while flying in contravention of CAA regulations. Even if their policy says they will, no one will insure you to do something that is illegal.
Rilot - I'm looking at buying one of these to make my own cables:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002AVVO7K/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=AVBQW9JBUUOBO
Where do you get your plugs and terminals from, and which ones do I need to terminate the small "JST" type for connections to my CCD and the like?
Soldering cables together is just a bit pants really and I'd rather make nice tidy ones myself.
Cheers!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002AVVO7K/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=AVBQW9JBUUOBO
Where do you get your plugs and terminals from, and which ones do I need to terminate the small "JST" type for connections to my CCD and the like?
Soldering cables together is just a bit pants really and I'd rather make nice tidy ones myself.
Cheers!
If you want nice and easy, you can get the Fatshark Predator v2 system. Plug and play. The transmitter is 250mw although it's working absolutely fine for me - I do have the magic mushroom antennae though.
Got any links? I'm a bit of a noob at FPV.
Whats the range on that?
Edit: Found it on HK. Bit confused as to what I'd actually need? I take it none of these systems are compatible with my Futaba 8FG transmitter and I'd need a new one?
Whats the range on that?
Edit: Found it on HK. Bit confused as to what I'd actually need? I take it none of these systems are compatible with my Futaba 8FG transmitter and I'd need a new one?
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This is everything you need to get started.
http://quadcopters.co.uk/fatshark-predator-video-goggles-v2-full-set-inc-camera-687-p.asp
It does require better antenna's though.
Using some custom antennas,iv been upto 500 metres away,wouldnt risk any further as im using a cheap
orange reciever on my fpv rig.
Its cheaper on hobbyking if you can get it through customs without any charge's
Your transmitter will work fine with this.
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The FPV setup is standalone, it doesn't need to talk to your Tx. These systems work on 5.8GHz so make sure your controller isn't on that frequency.
The Fatshark battery can be charged by a standard Lipo charger - they don't give you a charger with the setup (despite the fact that the manual says use supplied charger only!).
The range seems fine on 250mW as long as there are no trees or other obstructions in the way. I've flown my P2 plenty far away and still had good video. About 400m out with FPV IIRC. I'm not that brave yet, and where I fly regularly means I can't go much further without getting to within about 300 metres of housing.
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One thing to remember about range; antenna type, quality and gain are far more important than outright transmitter power.
Anything from 200-600mw with some good skew planar antennas will see you out to 2km, far further than you need on a quad. I even have a video on youtube where I picked up some guy's plane on the same 5.8GHz VTx channel who was 4-5km away with one of Gav's antennas on my FatSharks.
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Soldato
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Pretty ridiculous rules on the whole aren't they really. Can't see any common sense reason as to why you need 10x visibility
perating distance (and that's min:max), and I can't think of a single place in Bristol that even has 5km line of sight to be able to have visibility up to that.Also takes an amazing piece of affordable technology that should be increasing boundaries of what is deemed normal for high end visual productions and crashing them all back to ground with needless ties.
Will take a look at the training courses, thanks.
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I agree, the rules are utterly stupid and the whole operation manual thing is just a massive waste of time.
You do realise you need to submit a full maintenance and flight log for your craft each yeah right?
Oh, here's the other thing. When you take your flight exam, you are only certified on the craft you took the test with. Want to fly something else? New flight exam and operation manual needed. Want to change something on your craft such as the flight controller? New flight exam and operation manual needed.
It's utterly, utterly stupid but unfortunately, if we want to make money at this, we have to jump through the hoops.
At least we have it better than the US. Commercial activity using a UAV is illegal, full stop. No certs, no ops manual, just plain illegal.
Personally, I think the CAA have got to come down on some of these regs. UAVs are going to get more and more prevalent as time goes on and they just won't be able to prosecute everyone.
You do realise you need to submit a full maintenance and flight log for your craft each yeah right?
Oh, here's the other thing. When you take your flight exam, you are only certified on the craft you took the test with. Want to fly something else? New flight exam and operation manual needed. Want to change something on your craft such as the flight controller? New flight exam and operation manual needed.
It's utterly, utterly stupid but unfortunately, if we want to make money at this, we have to jump through the hoops.
At least we have it better than the US. Commercial activity using a UAV is illegal, full stop. No certs, no ops manual, just plain illegal.
Personally, I think the CAA have got to come down on some of these regs. UAVs are going to get more and more prevalent as time goes on and they just won't be able to prosecute everyone.
Soldato
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Yeah, it's these kind of rules that aren't just stupid but completely infeasible. Realistically they should have a much lower limit of say 2kg with less restrictions. The fact that all these rules and courses apply for anything from 0-150kg is such a massive and ridiculous difference that covers everything from a Husban with an SD spy camera on it to a fully-fledged military bi-plane, a range which so obviously comes with a huge variation of dangers, responsibilities and skill requirements.
Out of curiosity, Do you realistically expect to cover all your costs within a reasonable amount of time with the work you get or have lined up? I'm guessing you need work from TV companies and the like to get paid a decent amount to recoup enough costs quickly.
I will be doing stills photography and yeah, I think I can make a go of it.
I have a business plan worked out and I've done a 'cost of doing business' analysis. It seems workable but I won't be leaving my day job until I have to turn away aerial work.
I have a business plan worked out and I've done a 'cost of doing business' analysis. It seems workable but I won't be leaving my day job until I have to turn away aerial work.
Soldato
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Are you in the industry already Rilot? If not I'd be wary. We bought ours to compliment existing 'on the ground' (as it were) video and photography production and the take-up has been quite low, even with clients we have a good relationship with.
With costs of say ~£3k on training/insurance/etc, plus the cost of actually building and maintaining a drone, you will struggle if you're solely doing aerial work. And if you stick to the rule book word-for-word most clients will be put off or work won't be feasible.
If you just want to do it for a bit of fun and if you can cover your £3k and have a good time whilst doing it, or even make a bit of pocket money, then great. But otherwise it's a very competitive business, you'll be up against companies who offer aerial work plus everything else that goes with it, and all companies budgets are absolutely slashed still.
You know more about drones than I anyway so good luck!
With costs of say ~£3k on training/insurance/etc, plus the cost of actually building and maintaining a drone, you will struggle if you're solely doing aerial work. And if you stick to the rule book word-for-word most clients will be put off or work won't be feasible.
If you just want to do it for a bit of fun and if you can cover your £3k and have a good time whilst doing it, or even make a bit of pocket money, then great. But otherwise it's a very competitive business, you'll be up against companies who offer aerial work plus everything else that goes with it, and all companies budgets are absolutely slashed still.
You know more about drones than I anyway so good luck!