Model Railway Forum

The Sligo Rover wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 3:09 pm Is that you in the back garden of the right hand semi?

Might be.

Barry - cheeky s@d.

Geoff, any drone without the return to home function is an accident waiting to happen. Personally, I don't think they should be sold. Same goes for the GPS lock - we have a couple of areas nearby that fall into that category, a T.A. depot and a navy diving school.

The rules have changed recently as it's now legal to fly a sub 250 gram drone from your back garden but have become more restricted in 'public' areas and around registration with the CAA.

Until last year, a 249g drone did not necessarily need registration although I registered mine and got my CAA licence because just by adding a polarising filter to the camera put it right on the weight limit. Better safe than sorry.

Many folk do not realise that you need to set the ‘home’ location to where you are operating from now.
Folk have taken their drones away for the day and when the battery faded the thing tried to recover to the last home location in its memory which could likely be very many miles away and impossible to reach.
Such a thing happened to a guy who had made calculations before sending his drone out to photograph a ship. Well within the battery range, according to trials, but a headwind on the way back ran the battery into a go-home state and it shot off across the estuary towards where he lived before falling into the sea.
Not as simple to operate as they first appear these devices, hence the need for training and licencing.

Headwinds - always check the wind speed before flight. If it’s higher than the max speed of the drone, less 10%, don’t fly. If you must fly into the wind so that if the wind speed increases it will blow 5he drone back to you.
Rob, my drone auto resets it’s ‘home’ each time it is switched on - handy feature.