A drone at an air display!

[Adam]

Obviously, under normal circumstances, it shouldn't be done. But just sometimes...

Last weekend I was involved in a very unique video shoot at the Keswick Mountain Festival in the English Lake District. Part of the show was a performance by the Aerosparx Display Team, who I make videos for. I'm not usually involved in the drone ops themselves, but do the rest of the filming and editing. We've used drones several times before in our videos, but we believe this is the first time a drone has actually been used as part of a public air display in the UK. We can think of one other example where a drone was used during such a display, but not within it. I understand we are the first team with a Display Authorisation allowing us to do that.

I am very proud of this video, and I hope you agree the results are spectacular!

https://www.facebook.com/AerosparxTeam/ ... 605827347/

Obviously this was all done very carefully indeed - risk-assessed, practiced, briefed, and using qualified drone pilot, spotter, handheld radios etc. And yes, the drone was officially allowed to fly during the show. If you're wondering what the island clips are all about, that was the best place we could think of to launch the drone away from the crowd. You can just about make out myself, the drone pilot, spotter and boat driver.

[Larry I]

I'm a bit surprised this was approved but it's very well done. The new regs for Canada will be released June 1 and are pretty strict re anything RC over 250 grams. Fortunately MAAC members will be exempted as long as they follow all MAAC safety guidelines. Things however get a bit dicey if a club or private airfield is in controlled airspace which then requires special permission to operate.

[Adam]

Technically this show did not take place with a RAT or any other kind of restricted airspace, so ordinary drone ops could legally take place.

However, the CAA allow teams to incorporate drones/models into their Display Authorisation and make them officially part of the display. This concept reasonably well-established with the Little And Large duo doing syncro displays with an Extra 300 and 25% scale model Extra for some years.

It's kind of like when ICAS approve an aerobatic pilot to fly manoeuvres right down to ground level, except we were approved to fly with UAVs instead. I guess the rule is really intended for people wishing to do joint model and plane displays like the Extra duo, but we are well within our rights to use it for a filming drone instead. Of course a CAA evaluator had to watch some practice runs first and sign off our Risk Assessment, but now we can fly with filming drones and models and plan to do both this season.