Drones have some rules (more details here). For my case (camera, under 250g, in countryside ('Open' category airspace)):
for recreation, sport, or as a hobby
You are allowed to go over private property:
Drones and remotely piloted aircraft should be flown at a height over the property of another person which is ‘reasonable’ in all circumstances. Failure to do so could amount to trespass if the flight interferes with another person’s ordinary use and enjoyment of land and the structures upon it.
You are allowed to fly at night (this was even a question in the Flyer exam!)
Temporary flight restrictions are not generally issued for areas where military training is planned. Although someone mentioned drone operators are required to file a NOTAM, this isn't true for drones weighing less than 250g. NOTAMs are only to warn/ask authorities if you plan a future drone event that might endanger other aircraft - there is not currently a way to notify authorities of hobby drone flights for the purpose of avoiding getting hit by low-flying military jets.
The government publishes timetables of military training - but they falsely claim low fly-overs only occur in 3 regions:
and 5 air ranges (in Carmarthenshire, Ross-shire, Sutherland, and 2 in Lincholnshire).
Low-flying military jets is common in Wiltshire - far from any of these regions. I have also heard they regularly do low fly-overs in parts of the Lake District, which is a bit further inland than the vaguely-worded 'border area'.
But these timetables, and NOTAM alerts, are the only tools available for drone operators. Drone hobbyists say:
In the Lake District I’ve rung their low flying number and been told if any sorties are due but they can’t say exactly where. You can post a Notam for your own flight the day before and they’ll take it into account in their flight planning, so I understand.
To quote from a brochure on the government website: “Most low flying is planned on the day of the flight to account for weather, training requirements and airspace restrictions. A forecast of daily activity is available for most areas from 0800 515 544. When pre-planned exercises and other events are scheduled, they are notified on our website and in local media.” I have never called this number, so I don’t know how useful it is.
If military traffic is your main concern the best days to fly are weekends or public holidays as there’s almost no low level or training nationwide on those days. Failing that, weekdays before about 8.30am and after about 5pm seems far less.North Wales you get the Hawks and yanks flying the Mach Loop so i’d be very cautious flying there on a weekday.
There are the common routes and corridors for the lakes online as well to get an idea. Keswick is busy. I’ve been buzzed by a 4 ship of F-15s with no warning at all last time I was at Buttermere and certainly came closer than i was comfortable with as no time to react to them.
Everyone recommends DJI for photography, although there was another manufacturer routinely mentioned for cheaper but worse value-for-money drones for e.g. FPV and other tasks.
The cheapest DJI drone - the DJI Mini 4K - seems perfectly acceptable for photogrammetry and gaussian splatting, but the DJI Mini 3 has a larger sensor and I can see visibly more vibrant colours as a result.
The manufacturer claims ~30 minutes flight time per battery, but users tend to say its more like ~20 minutes, so they recommend getting up to 3 additional batteries.
The most annoying thing is the DJI Fly App that is required to fly the drone. It isn't available on the Google Play store (probably because of data privacy); the APK file won't install onto my Android (the error message does not say why - modern software never tells you why - but it's probably because my phone is old).
On their website, they list specific phones the software is compatible with, e.g.:
The minimum Android version is 7. There isn't any more detail than that. They don't say what the minimum specs are - but apparently this is sufficient: 3GB RAM, 64bit OS, 8 core processor. My phone fits that; I confirmed it by installing `CPU-Z`:
Cores: 8
Total RAM: 2702 MB
Android Version: 12
Kernel Architecture: aarch64
In online discussions, one thing I noticed was that people were able to get the app to work by tricking their phones - which suggested to me that if I side-loaded the app (using `adb` to install it via USB), I could probably avoid all the over-zealous protections that stop APKs being installed (e.g. compatibility checks). Indeed, the app installs fine via `adb` - it just crashes immediately.
I tried to download the APK from their website, but it won't display the download link to desktop computers, so I had to download it on my phone again, and copy it over to my laptop. I tried installing it via `adb` - and finally I got a clue. `adb` told me that I didn't have enough storage space to install it! Apparently it needed more than the 2.4GB of free space that I had, despite being 700MB in size. Why can't Android's UI say this????????????????? Why do I need to use a developer tool to give me such basic information?
The cheapest controllers (such as RC-N1) use a smartphone as the display. Ironically, these cheap controllers sometimes have more features than the expensive display-included controllers, due to the ability to install updated software on the Android devices.
Dronelink is a paid Android app that uses the DJI SDK to implement features, e.g.:
I advice you to use an android tablet with 6go RAM (8 go RAM to be sure).
Note that you must already use DJI Fly App to set photographs to be taken RAW instead of JPEG.
Presumably - especially for light drones - I should avoid windy conditions too (there are apps to track weather conditions). I wonder if I can fly them indoors safely - that is going to be the easiest way to learn how to handle them.