Drone Takeoff and Landing: Everything You Need To Know UK

Explore the skies responsibly with our comprehensive guide to drone takeoff and landing in the UK! In this video, we delve into the prerequisites for a safe and legal liftoff, offering valuable insights on choosing the perfect location and time for your drone adventures. Whether you’re considering private land, public spaces, English Heritage sites, National Trust properties, or dealing with ‘No Drone’ signs, we’ve got you covered. Stay informed, fly confidently, and enjoy the breathtaking views from your drone with this must-watch guide!

This week we’re talking about takeoff and landing locations and everything you need to know about them we’ll also attempt to answer questions about takeoff and Landing from places like National Trust foot paaths public spaces what about no drone signs we’ll even take a look at takeoff and Landing from

A moving vessel and what about in the dark I’ll also give you a simple tip that actually saved my drone from being taken by a dog when I was about to land this video is based on UK law and my understanding of that with the O2 CFC

And GVC before I even get to the location I’ll check the airspace and have a little look on Google Maps and see that my drone is legally able to fly there I did a much more detailed video about this that I’ll put in the end card

Of this video so the basic Act of taking off your drone needs to be the had to spin its propellers fast enough to take off if the propellers are impeded by something like grass or sticks or something like that the chances are that your drone is going to throw an error

And it won’t take off ideally we don’t want to be taken off from an area that has lots of dust that’s likely to get into the gimbal of the camera I’ll always look for two take off and land in locations both the primary one and a

Secondary one if there is a problem if somebody walks up to you or if you need to find another place so always have that in your mind I’m looking for a flat surface that is free of grass and debris leaves anything like that a couple of meters across ideally avoid areas like

Walls and car roofs car bonnets car Bonnets and roofs are very slippery so if you’re Landing or taking off your drone can literally just fall off of that area and walls again if they’re very narrow uh the Drone might not take off correctly and it might just tip and

It’ll be gone another major consideration about takeoff and land in location is to be able to maintain the separation distances for your drone obviously larger drones might have a 50 m separation distance depending on your qualification but even for a sub 250 g drone that has no mandated separation

Distance between the Drone uninvolved people it doesn’t mean that you can get so close to them that you’ll put people in danger so be careful of that and it’s not just about people what about Wildlife what about dogs what about uh nesting birds for instance it’s actually illegal to cause disturbance to Wildlife

Especially if birds are nesting for instance when you take off you might actually find you draw attention of birds that are surrounding the area too so think about that as well what’s flying around uh and if you’re close to nesting site also think about the timing

So even though you wouldn’t want to fly from a shopping Precinct at 2: p.m. on a Saturday if you were to do that same location at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday you may get much more success timing is Paramount it’s vital that the area taken off and the landing from doesn’t have an

Overhanging tree cables whether they be telephone cables or power cables even though you maybe had a pilot around it if there was a problem uh by where your drone is coming back automatically under the return to home function then your drone won’t know they’re there and it

May well crash into that tree or those cables so that’s another major consideration I’ve never really use a takeoff and landing pad and even when I went and did my GVC uh flight test I managed to forget my Landing Pad so I had to use a car mat but equally you

Could use an item of clothing a coat you could use a uh a banner if you’ve got a business and maybe put your drone logo on a banner and have one that’s a meter or 2 m wide and that actually often makes a better Landing Pad than the ones

You buy off Amazon make sure if you’re using a landing pad you fully push in the spikes that come with it to hold it down because propellers have a habit of finding those one thing you won’t find me talking about is taking off and Landing from your hand now I think it’s

Quite dangerous and and in fact it’s probably the most common drone injury so I would suggest you don’t do that and if you want to do it this is not the video for you just remember GPS and let it actually acquire the GPS location before you take off it says

Home Point updated I’ve never had a problem with GPS not getting a lock eventually it can take a while for your drone to lock on if it’s not been turned on for a while or if you’ve moved a large amount between the last flight because it needs to work out where those

Satellites in the sky and it’ll take a little while to do that but I’ve never had an instance where it hasn’t locked on but you could have a problem actually if you’re flying where there steep Cliffside so you flying at the bottom of a ravine may be or if you’re flying in a

Built up area that’s got big buildings around it that blocks the sky then it might take longer for your drone to set it home Point home updated now you could technically fly without setting a home point and that would be fine but just remember your return to home won’t work

So now we have the basics let’s look in a little more detail about places like National Trust English Heritage public land foot paaths and what about no drone Signs Now just before we get into this just remember this is not legal advice I am not a

Lawyer so this is how I approach these locations and it’s up to you if you choose to do that or not but that is really down to you so let’s first look at the best place to take off and land from and consider the gold standard and

It’s what I learned to do through my GVC and that is taking off and Landing from private land where you have permission of the landowner whether you are videoing football practice for your local Grassroots team or capturing amazing action sequence of the latest Bond movie landowner permission is King

It also leads you in a very good legal standpoint you can C in yourself off an area and give your space to take off and land without worry of the general public walking into your location but still remember to have the backup next let’s look at public land most land that you

Can walk onto is either owned by the local or burough Council now you can always email the local Council and see they’ll give you permission if you want to take off and land from that location or you can also check for bylaws from your local Council now get to your local

Council website and search on there to see the local bylaws as far as emailing local councils I’ve had both positive and less and positive results from that we we wouldn’t give you permission um because we’ve had this out with our insurers and their answer to us is if we

Give permission then uh anything that happens as a result so for example example if it falls out the sky yeah or if it damages something then we’re partially liable so I believe that no is the natural trust and in fact English Heritage is default answer unless of

Course you’re doing a job directly for them or you are a TV or production company that’s got a decent budget to pay if you were to have an accident and somebody were to get hurt on National Trust land and that person realized the National Trust had given permission to

The Drone pilot to fly there then they are likely to come after the National Trust more than the Drone pilot themselves cuz they’re the bigger organization with Bigger Pockets I have seen an interaction between a drone pilot not me and a National Trust Ranger on one of the National Trust sites the

Guy flying obviously didn’t realize he’s on National Trust land and to be honest he probably didn’t have a fly ID and it was even flying within a flight restricted Zone but anyway uh The National Trust Ranger just asked him politely to stop he did so so if you get

Any problems on National Trust land I’ll suggest if someone asks you to stop just stop I’ve flown from National Trust land many times uh always find a discret place or discrete time and I’ve only ever once seen a no drone sign and that was at the lizard peninsula of course I

Checked signage for no drone signs at any location and we’ll come back to no drone signs bit in a minute I once tried to get permission to fly a English heritage site now just a little bit of background this was to promote an event they were having at their site and

Although not directly for the English Heritage it was actually for a reenactment group that was doing the event and it would have looked amazing it was in a local Fort and English Heritage sent me an email asking for my insurance my qualification all this sorts of stuff which I all had uh which

Was fine but what they then wanted was a fee so I I gave them the information but asked exactly what am I getting from my fee because I can get the footage I want from outside of the location exactly what are they offering I’m still waiting for the response I also think English

Heritage aren’t particularly well set up for what are effectively hobbyist flights around their sites if you’re a production company or film company then that’s fine because you don’t mind paying a fee because it’s in the budget but for what is effectively a kind of almost a hobbyist flight so easier for

Them again to say no because then they don’t have the risk so what about taking off Landing from moving object like a boat have you ever flown from a boat or something moving because I’ve done this once and it gave all sorts of problems and that’s what we’re going to get into

Next but let me know in the comments if you’ve flown from something that’s moving a couple of years back I flew from a small boat on dering water now I actually made a video about that that you can see on my channel but it gave some interesting problems first thing

You need to do is increase the maximum distance if you are moving with your drone I had uh the issue of trying to get the Drone to come back to me because it had reach its maximum distance it wouldn’t go any further it took me a few

Minutes to work this out remember also that returning to home it’s going to go back to your first location and if the boat was there and now it’s not it’s going to be a very wet Landing the other thing to think about is if your boat or vessel is moving drones don’t like

Moving places it’ll really struggle to land in my instance I had to almost crash land it Strangely I think the best thing to land a small drone might be a landing net so exactly what are no drone signs about so remember if you read the

Drone code it asks you to check for no drone signs before you fly I think they come in two flavors really the first are the generic signs that you can probably buy off Amazon nowadays and I look at those as a request from the land owner

For you to not fly from their land I may or may not obey these but in the past I’ve always obeyed them remember a private land owner can actually tell you what they want and permit on their land so if they want you to not fly something

Or want you not to ride a bike or want you not to ride a horse or a skateboard or whatever they can ask you not to do that of course you can disobey then you would be in breach of their Rule and they might ask you to leave the other

Sort are used by local councils or the police to let you know about a temporary flight restriction I’ve seen these used at places like Bournemouth Air Show they will normally list the exact law for which you would be breaking if you fly and that is normally the air navigation

Order of 2016 these signs are to be obeyed they would normally be backed up by a temporary fly restriction in drone apps like altitude Angel remember DJI app doesn’t show UK airspace directly I made a video about that but that’s not the subject of this one I think we could

Also get a third and that’s where uh councils choose to introduce a public space protection order where they consider drones to be a nuisance in a particular place foot paaths often run across private land and just like any other piece of land the land owner can

Say I don’t want you to stop and have a picnic I don’t want you to camp overnight I don’t want you to fly a drone and this is perfectly acceptable for the land owner to say of course you might be able to fly from a foot path without any problems but just remember

That there might be many many people walking down that foot path there might be children there might be dogs and the clue is kind of in the name but it’s a foot path not a drone flying path just bear that in mind and definitely have a backup location because remember your

Drone can fly you can walk and as long as you can maintain your visual line of sight and you can land almost anywhere if someone or something is put in danger from your drone flying activity on a foot path though it would likely be you that end up in court this could

Potentially be a breach of the air navigation order 2016 article 241 you must not re LLY endanger people or property with your drone so we’ve covered a lot of the taking off stuff now so what about the landing personally always try and land with at least 30% battery life having this approach has

Saved me more than once from actually losing my drone if we take off and Landing place isn’t ideal like it’s a foot path and there are lots of people that have suddenly used it then you might want to give yourself more time to land too I recently flew at Robin Hood’s

Bay and when I took off from the bay which was uh literally on the seafront there was nobody there about 20 minutes later when I was trying to land it was covered in people so I had to go and find myself a different place to land obviously I’d already sust out so I

Checked it another place I flew recently where the having the extra battery life saved me was Whitby Abbey now obviously not within the Whitby Abbey but uh I flew from a car park up there as I was coming to land there was a dog that approached me now the dog was really

Interested in the Drone I saw saw the dog coming obviously you always check your surrounding area before you land the dog’s owners saw what was happening and they came and got the dog it took a couple of minutes but because I had the extra battery life that was fine so just

Bear in mind always land with at least 30% because it gives you options if my drone had been trying to land because it had minimum battery life then that could have ended very differently so always bear that in mind too you might argue the dog shouldn’t have been off the lead

But in reality I could now be looking forward to a legal case uh from either me to the dog owner or the dog owner to me where we are trying to prove one or other is in the wrong I could have had a broken drone and what’s

Easier proving you’re not in the wrong or just taking a little bit more time a little bit more care and land safely when flying at night just bear in mind that all these things I’ve already mentioned are are even more important what else you need to do before flying

At night that isn’t necessarily about take off and Landing but go and have a look in the daylight and just check for things like cables that you might not see in the dark overhead power cables you should obviously see trees but it’ll give you a good understanding of uh

Where to fly from and you can also pick out yourself a place to take off and land from before it gets dark which is easier but the other main really requirement what i’ say with you if you’re going to fly in the dark I’m not talking about

The Drone I’m not talking about strobe light but is actually lighting the area from which you take off and land because many drones like the mini 2 mini3 mini fours don’t have Landing lights so they won’t necessarily identify the ground as the Drone is is coming down the sensors

Would normally see the ground below and they obviously slow the propellers and it’ll know when it’s landed but if it can’t see the ground if it’s not illuminated then it won’t see exactly when when it’s going to land it could lead to a quite a heavy Landing

Which obviously you don’t want to have so it’s easier if you can just uh Shine Your torch on the ground before your drone lands so when it’s like 2 or 3 MERS up put the torch on then your drone will see exactly where this Landing point is let me know in the comments

What you think about takeoff and landing locations do you agree that you should be very careful from flying from a public foot paath if you’ve enjoyed the video please give us a thumbs up and if you’ve really enjoyed it you might want to subscribe to this channel because

This is the sort of video I make hopefully explaining some of the rules and helping you fly in more places and if you’ve enjoyed that you’re definitely going to like this one