Setting Matters Straight
The CAA has finally confirmed changes to their CAP 722 document for Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the UK (you can download the official CAA PDF File by clicking here).
The timing of the release of this information was, in my opinion, handled quite badly by the CAA as operators and certain suppliers were not made aware of these changes when they should have been. Most people only realised that these changes had been made when it was too late.
Some very embarrassing publicity, from certain major media outlets in the UK, did not help the situation after Merseyside Police did very well on finding an offender by using their AirRobot at night.
The typical misinformed journalists, who never seem to get anything right as far as I am concerned, managed to crown Merseyside Police with praises for their good work on arresting an offender following the deployment of their AirRobot, the first UAV related arrest in the UK. A week later the same media outlets slammed Merseyside Police for using their AirRobot illegally! This was a typical negative follow on report from my favourite people, journalists.
I am hoping that the information here will straighten out the inaccurate reports that were twisted out of all proportion by nearly every national newspaper in the UK and the BBC.
The BBC received a call from me on the day of releasing the story on their news website. They were told that they HAD to change their inaccurate report immediately or else court action would soon become unavoidable. Within half an hour the report was taken down from the site and replaced with the actual facts that I had provided to a representative from the BBC. I also contacted many of the newspapers that published a similar inaccurate report. Since that time no apology has been made to my customers for publishing the false information contained in the reports.
I was with the officers on the said deployment in Merseyside during this event. The AirRobot was flown to a height of no more than 150 Feet above ground level with a range of no more than 50 metres away from the operator and was clear of buildings, vehicles and persons directly beneath the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle at all times. Winds were very light and the unit was deployed only after the standard safety checks were carried out. The Global Positioning System (GPS) was activated and displayed 8 satellites on the laptop PC at the ground station, more than enough information to make a decision to deploy the unit safely. The operators are highly experienced in operating the AirRobot and have been fully trained by experienced UAV and light aircraft pilots’ at AirRobot UK.
On the night of the event a Thermal Imaging camera was employed and within a few minutes the operators spotted the offender lying on the ground in almost total darkness. At no time was the UAV not in line-of-sight. The visibility was not down to a few feet in thick fog, as the sensationalist media circus freaks would have you believe. As this deployment was well within the limits outlined by the CAA’s CAP 722 it was not necessary for the officers to have a licence of any kind for this deployment, another misinformed media report. Light Emitting Diodes (LED’s) were operated so that operators could see the UAV during the flight (Navigation lights are used on all AirRobot systems). For these reasons no laws were broken and the unit landed safely shortly after officers on the ground arrested the offender.
I hope that this removes any doubts about AirRobot UK as a company and also the doubts of any of our trained operator’s abilities. The AirRobot system is sold to government agencies around the world and has been on sale for more than six years. In this time we have not once received any information about dangerous use of the system nor have we had any complaints about near misses with aircraft, persons on the ground or any building or other properties.
Thank you.
Mark Lawrence (Company Director) |
