The situation vis-a-vis regulation of large drones ~ those large enough to carry people ~ within the UK is confused, and confusing. Traditionally the ranks of the CAA were drawn from among the RAF, who taught me the rudiments of flying (G2626048, Sir!). Training in the RAF is so structured that those with the highest marks are streamed onto fast jets, whilst the remainder are guided toward transports (best for joining airlines) else helicopters (best for avoiding a desk).
With the RAF having altogether less interest in helicopters than the British Army or Royal Navy, they've long formed more of a side-show than the main event. As a consequence, the CAA were never overly interested in rotary-winged craft or indeed hovercraft (for which a pilot-license was nonetheless a requirement).
"Drones" in the traditional sense of the word ~ if the CAA had heard of them at all ~ were jets with the cockpits cut-out which were flown by radio-control and shot at by naval aircraft.
As a consequence, when what the public know as as "drones" came along, the CAA would remain all at sea, staffed as they were by ex-airline captains and/or fighter-jet pilots. And in the way the lunatics might take over the asylum, we had suddenly a situation were the average teenage nerd knew more about the subject matter than those supposedly tasked with regulation.
And don't get me wrong, because Arduino is as foreign a language to me as Swahili.
What we need therefore in the UK, with the advent of eVTOLs in particular and people like me showing other people how they can be put together in your garage and flown without the CAA either knowing or wanting to know, is to start a conversation... and so here we go.
I don't anticipate an answer to the question I put to them regarding operations within ground-effect, because the answer would most easily be answered in the courts, given that law in this country is a question of precedent over statute. Nonetheless one of the easiest ways of kick-starting experimental aircraft like my own is to limit experimentation to below ten feet, in a way they eschewed operations of either ground-effect types or hovercraft.
For the time being however (and we really do need a nice flow diagram) it does appear that I can conduct radio-controlled tests with the benefit of a waiver from the normal requirements of the Air Navigation Order, by doing so through the Large Model Association.
This itself came about because radio-control servos got bigger along with IC engines and micro-turbines, whilst the transmitters got altogether more sophisticated too, and all of a sudden you could build a scale version of a fighter-jet that to all intents and purposes might be more manoeuvrable than the real thing.
We long since ceded development of larger fixed-wing drones to the Americans (whose products the RAF use) and smaller multi-copters to the Chinese (whose video platforms everyone uses), and yet we still have the makings of a niche when it comes to kit-built multi-copters able to ferry an individual around the sky at no great cost.
It is this tricky path that I have now to navigate, and having steered many a Boeing or Airbus through many a thunderstorm, it's something I feel I'm up to ~ a Pathfinder Squadron leader, if you will?
Accordingly I await news of my application to operate a 49 kilo radio-controlled model with the blessing of the LMA. And whilst we wait, here's a photo of a magnificent 29 kilo Blohm and Voss BV-141 to relish!
Meanwhile the debate over regulation itself drones on, as you can see here:
Don't be in a rush to condemn the CAA however. As the UK slides toward its bright new future of Third World membership, bear in mind that all quasi-governmental bodies are desperately short of... well, bodies.
