Further to the announcement earlier this week, we will be working with the CAA to clarify the detail of how we can best assist our members to comply with the Registration and Competency requirements which were introduced in the 2018 changes to the Air Navigation Order and become law on the 30th November 2019 for those operating unmanned aircraft. The changes to the law are in part to address established issues arising from unlawful operation, but also to help facilitate the wider integration of...

The CAA have just published the following update: https://www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Unmanned-aircraft/Our-role/Drone-and-model-aircraft-registration/ which is provided in full below: The UK’s new Drone and Model Aircraft Registration and Education Scheme will go live on 5 November 2019 (please note that you cannot register before this date). There will be two elements to the online system. Anyone responsible for a drone or unmanned aircraft (including model aircraft) weighing between 250g and ...

EASA have now published documents outlining their Acceptable Means of Compliance (AMC) and Guidance Material (GM) in support of the EU regulations for unmanned aircraft. The documents can be found here: https://www.easa.europa.eu/document-library/agency-decisions/ed-decision-2019021r The AMC for Article 14 includes our suggested provision to permit registration numbers to be carried inside a model aircraft, which is consistent with what we agreed recently with the DfT/CAA.  “If the size of th...

The Science and Technology Parliamentary Select Committee will today publish their report into ‘commercial and recreational drone use in the UK'. The BMFA provided several written inputs to the Committee on behalf of the UK model flying associations and BMFA CEO Dave Phipps appeared before the committee on the 9th July to provide oral evidence. We are pleased to report that the Committee have incorporated many of the comments we provided as well as a number of comments submitted directly by m...

I published an update on the BMFA website on 23rd August (https://bmfa.org/News/News-Page/ArticleID/2608/An-update-on-the-UK-regulations-for-model-flyers ) which provided a summary of our position at that time. This was also going to be the basis of my article for the forthcoming issue of the BMFA NEWS. However, the very next day I received a telephone call to tell me that the new Secretary of State for Transport (the Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP) had picked up the case for us and would ‘be in touch...

Further to our previous update of 11th September (https://bmfa.org/News/News-Page/ArticleID/2610/An-update-on-the-UK-regulations-for-model-flyers-a-bit-of-good-news-at-last ). There is no real change to the situation as published.  All parties are currently awaiting the outcome of the Secretary of State’s deliberations on the matter and there is little we can add until we receive this. What we can confirm however is that the DRES scheme will not be rolled out on the 1st October (it seems unli...

We would like to record our thanks to all those members who responded to our ‘Call to Action’ in response to CAP1775, the CAA’s consultation of the Drone Registration and Education Scheme (DRES) for which they are expecting our members to contribute a significant element of the annual £2.8 million running costs. The response from our members was fantastic, with the CAA receiving over 11,000 responses to the consultation – the biggest ever response they have ever received to anything.  Despi...

The British F3C team started off well with Steve Roberts and Mark Christy making it through the Preliminary Round to the Finals Rounds.

A terrific medal haul for the British team in the F3N (Freestyle Helicopter) at the World Championships in Ballenstedt, Germany that finished today.