taimingkoh
lvl.2
Italy
Offline
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For the last 2 weeks, I was in Italy - Milan, Venice, Florence, Cinque Terre, Naples, Capri, Rome.
And I only flew my Spark properly ONCE (in Capri).
The security and laws are rly strict there. It seems like the Police in Italy react to a drone faster than a pickpocket. I'll share some of my experiences of (trying to) fly a drone in Italy.
Milan: Almost impossible to fly at the Duomo Cathedral, there are police almost everywhere. And anywhere else there are just too many people around.
Venice: That's a no fly zone but it is so tempting to fly at the Rialto bridge at 7am in the morning when there's no one. Some guy tried to fly his Mavic and 5 mins later the police arrived on scene. Poor guy got escorted away on a police boat. (If the guy is you and you're reading this now, I rly wanna know what happened to you)
Florence: At the summit of the Boboli Gardens, I was so tempted to fly Spark as there didn't seem to be much police and people around. But chose not to take the risk.
Cinque Terre: Another no fly zone cause it's a national park (no, you can't even fly it over the sea). I managed to fly it for a short 1 min on the hiking trail before other hikers arrived so I played it safe and kept the drone. Honestly I felt that if you have pretty good drone flying skills, it's possible to fly your drone during the hiking trail as it's rly hard for the police to find you even if they spot a drone. But then again, it's your risk to take.
Naples: Lots of soldiers around, not sure how they'd react to a drone.
Capri: Manage to fly it at the summit of Anacapri (after the Chairlift) for a good 4-5 minutes. Because I couldn't find anything online about no flying in Capri I assumed it was safe to fly. But hours later, someone was flying his Phantom in the Capri city centre and when he landed his drone, a policeman appeared outta nowhere. Not sure is it cause he flew in a congested city centre or because you just cannot fly a drone in Italy.
Rome: You can give up on flying. There are no drone signs outside the Colossuem (and sure you've seen the news), and there are so many policemen everywhere - Vatican City, San Pietro...
So my thoughts on flying a drone in Italy: It's not impossible to fly it. You just have to avoid attention, and a lot of guts. For me, I wasn't gonna take the chance to sacrifice my Spark so early of my Europe travels. Though it makes me wonder if Spark won't attract that much attention of Police because of its small size (and hard to spot in the sky). Anyway, if you really wanna fly it, go to somewhere secluded away from the crowd or find a rooftop. You'll probably have to fly it from somewhere far away from the main attraction you wanna film. And lastly once you've landed, quickly get out of there. |
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