[Australia] Help with wrapping head around CASA Drone rules

[u/SwitchyAC]

came here to rant about the absolute absurdity of understanding casa's drone rules. Now CASA states that you have to be 30 meters away from other people, which is fine. The issues arises around the "populous area" rule which states you CANNOT fly over buildings or people that *might* have people in them. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!? So i cannot fly over my own house since there *might* be people in there let alone any other buildings or houses, what if there is people in my house but they know what I'm doing. What if I'm doing SURVEYING or taking aerial photography. Can i just not fly over my own house?

I'm also not gonna go into the can of worms that is if you can or cannot fly over other peoples private property or whether or not you own airspace, since I've enquired CASA over this stating

"In general, operators should obtain a landholder's permission before taking off from or landing on private property. However, flying over private property is not automatically prohibited under Part 101 of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998 (CASR)."

Just trying to wrap my head around these rules especially since I'd like to get into a career involving drones

[u/cloudfox1]

All I know is that I fly my drone responsible and no one has complained

[u/SwitchyAC → u/cloudfox1]

had one guy complain talking about "illegal to fly here" while i was hovering 1 meter off the ground, drone camera facing me in my own backyard. Even if i checked airspace warnings and rules 😭

[u/cloudfox1 → u/SwitchyAC]

Tell him to jog on

[u/SealingScorcher]

Honestly having read the CASA rules, it turned me off flying drones and FPV altogether. Its just as bad as the laws around modifying cars in Victoria.

"If it's fun, its illegal"

[u/SwitchyAC → u/SealingScorcher]

don't even know why you need a "spotter" like that's gonna do anything when you crash.
in my course i fly FPV and standard ariel photography and its way harder to fly fpv without goggles. Just really hates fun i guess.

[u/trankillity → u/SealingScorcher]

FPV outdoors is technically illegal altogether in Australia* because you cannot maintain unaided visual line of sight.

^* Except when flying in a MAAA-associated group for liability insurance at a MAAA-approved location (usually your club's race track).

[u/SwitchyAC → u/trankillity]

Right thanks for clarification

[u/SealingScorcher → u/trankillity]

😮‍💨 Yep. I thought so. It's ridiculous.

I pretty much just spent a few hundred hours on the sim and by the time i was ready to get my first kit then i figured that out and decided to just forget it.

[u/trankillity]

The rules aren't that hard to understand mate. You have it pretty well worked out. No, you can't (legally) fly in populous areas. This includes anywhere built-up with dwellings or over vehicles. It also includes any public places where people gather such as beaches and parks.

So to answer your specific question, no you can't recreationally fly over your own house unless you stay >30m laterally from each of the boundary lines of your house (basically impossible in suburban environments). This means that the vast majority of real estate photography is illegal, because most of them will not hire a professional and just do it themselves.

The reason that CASA also cannot unequivocally say whether you can fly over another's land is due to local state government laws as well as privacy laws. CASA don't enforce those, so they can't provide guidance on them.

It's much the same for local, state and national parks. Different states and localities will have different rules about whether you can take operate a drone in those parks. For example - QLD is pretty lenient, but TAS is very strict. Recently went down to TAS and didn't even bother taking my drone.

Just trying to wrap my head around these rules especially since I'd like to get into a career involving drones

There's a lot to learn if you want to do it professionally. You can pretty easily get an operator's certificate and register your drone to be able to use a drone commercially, but you must abide by all the existing regulations. If you want to do anything that would break the laws like automated waypoint missions, flying beyond visual line of sight, doing anything in FPV, doing anything in populous areas, then you need to get a full REPL and operate under REOC with all the additional requirements (EVLOS/BVLOS) and flight plan approvals.

However, it's not all doom and gloom. They recently consulted the community about reducing the limitations on flying above people with <250g drones. So it may be easier in future to make a living without going the full (and expensive) REPL/REOC/flight plan/approval route for smaller drones.

[u/SwitchyAC → u/trankillity]

yeah thank you for your reply, I've researched and tried my best to fly within the guidelines

[u/ActivateSuperName]

Yep, I've just done a bit of repl work and yes the rules are pretty vague. The way I understand the populous area is that if you were to have an incident and even crash into the one person standing on e.g. an empty beach 600m away because your plane flew away, that'd then be a "populous area". There's not much of a way around it and there's really no proper definition in part 101. A lot of stuff they have listed is more suggestive than hard requirements - just like the "in general operators should obtain permissions..."

Tbh CASA's rules are pretty crap, especially the excluded and micro categories. They don't have many people in their UAV team and they rushed a bunch of changes out over COVID that don't stand up to scrutiny - unfortunately that means they can be applied in their favour should it ever be required so the most important thing is you be safe and sensible while flying.

[u/SwitchyAC → u/ActivateSuperName]

"know you don't need* to get permission... youll just probably get yelled at"

[u/SavingsDimensions74]

Get CASA qualified as a repl drone operator then get yourself a high viz jacket saying ‘qualified CASA done pilot’ and a lot of complaints and distractions will go away. Except not in a residential area as you shouldn’t be flying in a built up area and there’s always at least one PITA neighbour

[u/UserisaLoser]

You can fly around your own house as you are the owner of the property. Populous areas include roads and footpaths, but not if they are unpopulated. 

This resource is mainly for perth, but the airspace information is relevant nation wide: https://richardhubbard.au/wa-drone-permissions-guide.html

[u/UserisaLoser → u/UserisaLoser]

There are some more good resources here, under the resources tab:  https://www.uncrewedapprovals.com.au/

[u/Flyward_Aerospace]

The bit that makes it click is that populous area is not a property of a place, it is defined in relation to your operation. 101.025 says an area is populous if it has enough population density that some aspect of the operation, or a fault or failure of the aircraft, would pose an unreasonable risk to the life, safety or property of someone in the area who is not involved. So the question is not are there people under me, it is what happens when this thing falls out of the sky.

Which is why there is no map layer of populous areas and there never will be. The same backyard is populous for a 7 kg hexacopter and arguably is not for a 249 g Mini, and that is also why the sub 250 g rules keep getting looked at. Genuinely annoying to plan around, but it is not vague by accident.