Live and Let Fly – License to Drone
So, I was out on a job the other morning, capturing stills of a bulk carrier entering Newcastle harbour. On any normal day, I’d pack a bag or a road trunk with cameras, lenses, a tripod and I’d make my way to the shoot and spend a couple of hours pleasantly snapping away.
This relatively easy routine is turned on its head though when the thing you want to photograph has to be photographed from the air. Drones (or RPAs) have certainly made aerial photography much easier and cheaper than the days when shooting from above meant a minimum spend of $1200 plus dollars an hour to hire a helicopter (which you can do here by the way - AEROlogistics - Newcastle), but the process is far more complex than simply finding somewhere to take-off and land and something to shoot. When I bought my first drone in 2011, I needed little more than an open space and a pile of batteries to fly. The internet is awash though with videos from those days in which flyers, powered by little more than weapons grade stupidity, would invade controlled airspace and create a nuisance of themselves. I don’t want to begin this blog with a rant though so I’ll throw a nod to those early pioneers who, casting common sense to the wind brought us to the point where flying a drone commercially involves layers of regulation and licensing.
So, what happened before I could get up into the air and take those pictures for you? The short answer is a LOT.
Just a few rules…
CASA, the organisation responsible for making “stuff safe in the air” have some rules for this game, and they take those rules very seriously - $38,000 worth of seriously. I’ll put a link in here so you people can sharpen their reading skills but the TL;DR version looks like this –
You keep your drone in sight, below 400ft while only flying during the day at least 30m away from people and 5.5km away from any airport, while respecting people’s privacy. Oh, and you can’t make money from flying.
If it is your intention to do all this in a commercial basis, you’ll need to get licensed.
Licensing? How does that happen? Drone pilot qualifications –
I spent a good deal of time & money getting qualified to fly a drone and then use it to make money. You should believe me when I say there is no free or quick way to get the job done and I know that because I looked.
To do it properly and so you don’t need to rely on flying under someone else’s authority you need four things –
An Aviation Reference Number or ARN. You’ll need this before you go any further.
Your AROC – a radio operator’s certificate so you can talk to people in the air.
Your RePL certification – your remote pilot’s license.
Your ReOC certification – a remote operator’s certificate which allows you to fly commercially, for yourself, at night etc.
Now I personally paid the good people at DroneIt for my training & qualifications. I’ve linked to them so you can check it out if you’re interested but, please note - although I completed their training program, I am not a representative of the company.
And now I can fly?
Not quite.
Before each flight I have some paper work to do. I am bound to complete and store a range of internal documents for my own business and a legal obligation to complete and store those same documents for the NTSB & CASA. These include flight authorisation forms, an analysis of the flight task and the photographic task, I have to write a pre-operational briefing and a job safety assessment & complete a risk assessment.
In most cases, to complete these I’ll need to conduct a site inspection, check a range of charts and maps for airspace restrictions and ongoing flight operations & obtain a weather briefing from the special weather service that covers such things – NAIPS. After a few more steps, I can move on site but not quite get up in the air just yet.
When I arrive, I establish a cordon and checking the airspace around me, I get on my radio and announce to the local air traffic that I am about to get airborne.
Why do you need to know about this?
When you hire an aerial photographic service to take those aerial real estate pics or photograph your latest building project (or even you company’s newest bulk carrier) from the air, there is a lot more involved than just finding a guy who once bought a drone. The investment of money and time involved in someone getting up in the air deserves attention but as professionals, you need to consider whether the guy you’ve just hired will capture you some positive marketing attention or create an NTSB safety scandal.
So next time you need a drone photographer in Newcastle, whether for real estate marketing, a visual survey of a new construction project or just to capture some of our area’s scenic beauty, just drop me a line at NSW Real Estate Media Production.
