I read a lot about using drones for commercial purpose on the forum, and I would like to share what is happening in France.
The French equivalent of the FAA is the DGAC, they opened French airspace for commercial use of drone in may 2012.
As their spokesman said, they wanted a smart balance between the development of this promising activity and maintaining a good level of security for the third party people.
I was following drones development on diy and rc group for a while and I decided to start my company few months ago and below is what I did to get the right to work with my diy drone, (trusting the government list I am the first one to get the certification with an apm).
First I build it and test it a lot to be sure that I won't crash and I learn how to drive it safely in desert field.
Then I passed an official test on general aviation rules, the same test that needs to be passed to pretend at partice test to drive a microlight.
After that I need to present a book on my activity, how I learned it, what I will do, what is my emergency process, a long description of my drone with compulsory mode (as logfile, RTL, geofence). It's almost the same thing for running a plane company, mine was almost 100 pages.
I just get my license
I reckon it's a really good thing to supervise our activity and by doing all this stuff I really learned myself and become safer in the air.
Every job is supervised, you can't drive an excavator without a training, the same for driving your car.
But today there isn't any training for our activity so you have to prove that you re good at it.
I hope there will be officials training soon.
If there is any french member, feel free to ask me what you need to do to be official.
I have heard that European authority is thinking of doing something similar.
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I am am english man living in France and I have just built a dji f550 with a frsky tanaris tx
After building,setting up,testing I have been flying in my garden and I would like to get all the papers together to take it out side my gates and to take pictures and film using a gopro
I have contacted French shops and a school in nice about the correct paper work with a different answers
Please could you point me in the right direction so I can conform and use my hex outside my own property are there more schools in France that train and teach new flyers like myself?
I was told It will be very hard if not impossible to get my hex certified as it was not build buy one of the French constuctors is the true as I have see a few f550s on the dgac pilots list
Any help would be great as I am at a loss on which wway to go
Thank you
Philip