Life is becoming pretty difficult for drones lover in Belgium: apparently the department of air transports in Belgium has either approved a new law or a new interpretation of an old one, which equiparates drones to any other RC aircraft: under that interpretation, drones can only take off from approved terrains, and can only go maximum 400m from the RC club, and must stay at more than 200m from any building.
That means that basically autonomous drones like Arducopter can do autonomous missions only inside the air space of the RC club, so they cannot even be tested in your own garden. This is even a bigger threat to other "toy drones" like Ar.Drone, because I doubt people that buy such "toys" will ever join a RC club (which might cost a few hundreds euro per year).
The article cites that the main problem is the protection of privacy since all drones are equipped with cameras and might pictures.
Here is the link to article that discusses about that topic: Drones à usage civil en Belgique : interdiction de décoller depuis le jardin (in French, sorry).
Comments
As always the problem I think is the "one law to rule them all" approach: I agree that fixed wings drones might fly so high and far from the takeoff position that can interfere with normal aircrafts, but multicopter only have a 10 min fly time, so it more unlikely that this will happen, and even more the toy drones (like the AR.Drone which everyone in the original document talks about but is shown in the image in the news).
Furthermore, areas where normal aircraft fly are already marked and you cannot fly there anyway.
That is if the problem was the air safety.
If the problem they try to address is privacy, why big tele lenses are still allowed since they make it possible to take stills of anything (and your not so close neighbor's daughter) from hundreds of meters?
I think this will turn out in nobody respecting this rule, unless they make it dead easy to ask for permissions for non commercial usage.
>But our belgian rules like "you can only fly over an approved r/c club field"
this makes shure no problems are ahead.
you can call this an area where flying is allowd ;-)
now you have to find the spots...
the rules are clear - there is way too much traffic in the air.
and quite a few people are violating the rules...
In the long run its a good thing Europe is finally harmonizing. There are parts of the world where even testing UA would be illegal. Rules have to be put in place to regulate commercial use.
That is a good point, of course. It'll end up too expensive and prohibitive to make a buck with a simple drone. Pity, with all the unemployment, that people cant pull themselves up by providing a useful service that typically has nothng to do with spying on people. Governments are the ones looking to peep.
Have you ever driven faster then the speed limit? People break rules and laws every day. Especially inconsequent and out of touch ones. it is almost impossible not to, in today's society.
This will only cause problems for commercial usage.
Man, I love Beligian Ales but I dont think I'd want to live there if the drone police are gonna bust me for hovering in the garden.