According to recent survey in this forum most of us do AP for business. And business is business – we have limited quantity of clients and some strong competitors. Not taking in consideration the general aviation I think our main competitors are ultralight planes, ultralight weighshift trikes and of course paramotors / powered parachutes.

So of course each one of the aircraft has its pros and cons. Not going into detail I think the most “dangerous” are paramotors. The speed is low, the altitude can be low also. So the only whey to compete is doing panoramas or taking some low level pictures in the middle of the town. Second “dangerous” friend is weighshift trike – the speed is low also (minimum is some 60 km/h) – the distance limitation can be more than 250 km from the base. As for me ultralights like Skyranger are not big competitors because of their minimum flight altitude limit.

Any other thoughts for RC AP competing with ultralights.

For me
I make R/C Paramotor with Zenoah G-380PU and with the 3.18 M size of it.

So what else those real Pamotor can do but we can not.


The real Paramotor normally do not have live picture to mornitor on ground.
But our system can have mornitor to show customer during flight.

My R/C Paramotor can go up to any wind condition but the real one dare not to do.
What i do not like to fight is only price, if any system offer very low price to customer, I will not fight with them. Yes I do AP as my main business.

I think to do AP from a full scale airframe you need a commercial pilots license. I also think you have to fly a fully licensed aircraft, which would exclude the ultralight airframes.

Yes, customer can monitor what we picture!
ThaiskyDigital - can you share some more of your paramotor?

FrankC - there is a licence to fly ultralights.

Guntars, does that license allow commercial activity though? I know they came out with a classification for a two seat ultralight to be used as a trainer, so flight with an instructor would be a commercial application.

One of my customers actually said to me 'there is no other way I can obtain the kind of photographs that you supply me' - so in certain respects I think that R/C can provide a unique service. I cannot see how a full size can operate in the sub 400 feet area in the same way.

When I explained to my customer that the CAA are shutting this down in January* he was amazed.

Adam
* I think it's a done deal, myself - love to be proved wrong.

So Urban arias are for RC AP defiantly! The only point is that ultralights can take off somewhere and fly take pictures (if the urban aria is free to fly).

What is the penalty in UK to do RC AP work?

I would dob in ultralights doing illegal commercial AP work

I do not believe there is any evidence that this will be the case. To me, the CAA seems to be far more rational and practical in dealing with the RCAP issue than either FAA or Australia's CASA.

Originally Posted by Ginger Adam

One of my customers actually said to me 'there is no other way I can obtain the kind of photographs that you supply me' - so in certain respects I think that R/C can provide a unique service. I cannot see how a full size can operate in the sub 400 feet area in the same way.

When I explained to my customer that the CAA are shutting this down in January* he was amazed.

Adam
* I think it's a done deal, myself - love to be proved wrong.

I presume that if you were caught breaking an ANO, the CAA could take you to court. I have no idea what the fine would be, but I would imagine that they would make it a big public one to discourage others, since trying to police this activity is going to be difficult.

Adam

I really hope you're right. I suspect that the process of COA will be so cumbersome and expensive that it will kill off all but the biggest players.

For all non-commercial AP and AV, I suspect that it will be completely ignored. The only changes will be less posting of pics and videos on forums like this and YouTube.

Adam

Originally Posted by Tonystott

I do not believe there is any evidence that this will be the case. To me, the CAA seems to be far more rational and practical in dealing with the RCAP issue than either FAA or Australia's CASA.

The Eurocae thus far has the most pragmatic approach (IMHO)

One of my customers actually said to me 'there is no other way I can obtain the kind of photographs that you supply me' - so in certain respects I think that R/C can provide a unique service

I believe it. No aircraft can safely fly along at 150 feet with an airspeed of 25 mph and take pictures. I use an airstrip owned by a guy with a full size aircraft and intend on sending him some pics of his land soon as a "thank you". He has a plane and I bet he has pics, but none of them will be as clear as an uncovered camera from an RC plane moving at comparitively low speed.

http://www.aircam.com/index.htm This one resembles an ultralight but was specifically designed for aerial photography. I got a look at one at the Sun-n-Fun flyin a few months back and it is very interesting. It is a twin engine design but in the booth they had video clips of it taking off and climbing on just one engine, even with both seats occupied. The most impressive clip (to me) was one with the plane on floats and doing a single engine takeoff from water. If you go to their site and click on the videos they have some interesting inflight videos. The one at the flyin had three camera mounts installed. One faced forward under the nose, one was on the side of the fuselage, and the third was on a wing strut.

In the U.S., aircraft (full-size) are not allowed to fly below 500 feet in populated areas. So RC AP will always have a niche below this altitude in urban areas.

-Vince