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Last summer I traveled from Canada to Europe. I flew extensively in Germany including on a river cruise with a Mavic Air and Spark. The ship’s captain was very intrigued with the drone as no one had ever brought one on board before me. He had no issues with me flying off the boat but I did, so I only made flights when the ship was docked.
Preparation
Six months before the trip I visited Lufthansa Technik’s SafeDrone website. There was an Academy page where I learned the UAV operating rules for Germany. After taking the course, which was in German, there was an online test which I passed. I also registered my UAVs with SafeDrone. A month later I received a Pilot Certificate and aluminum ID tags for my UAVs in the mail. Shortly before I departed I obtained 5 million euros of liability insurance through HDI Global SE as required by German regulations. Insurance was valid throughout the EU and cost 30 euros for a month of coverage. I could obtain this because I was visiting a relative and used his address. Typically the insurance is not sold to foreigners.
The Mavic Air and Spark flymore packages come with small travel bags. They hold the UAV, Batteries and Controller. The bags fit nicely into a backpack which was carry-on for the flight. Chargers were in the checked baggage. Airport security x-rayed the backpack and never looked inside both flight directions. I have traveled to many countries around the world with drones and never had an issue at security or customs. However there are countries that will take your drone so it’s important to check first. In the last three years I have flown into Germany, France, Romania, USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Zambia and Namibia with a Drone as carry-on without a security or customs issue.
Flying
The golden rule for flying abroad and at home is to respect those around you. I found it best to fly early in the day when there were very few people around. If flying off someone’s property I would ask if it was OK but mostly I took off and landed on the deck of the ship. I also kept my flights short. Usually I shot video while climbing to altitude and then take a 360 panorama. Shot video again on the way down. I always flew with a vertical and horizontal Geofence, 100m and 300m. Also remember you don’t always have to fly our drone to get good video, it works very nicely hand held as well. In the Cruise video the shots under the bridges in Frankfurt are from a hand held Spark. I brought along 4 Mavic Air and 3 Spark batteries. Didn’t need that many, two of each would have been sufficient as I always had access to AC power to recharge them. When traveling you also need a way to save data from microSD cards. I brought a Chromebook with an external 500 Gig SSD drive. Plenty of room for files however in the future I will bring two SSDs and save two copies of my data stored in seperate places in case one crashes or gets lost. Below are videos and 360° pictures from the trip.
Cologne with the magnificent Cathedral.
Town of Rudesheim
Locks at Krutzenburg
Town of Wertheim
Town of Wurtzburg
Town of Kitzingenhttps://www.skypixel.com/photos/kitzingen-pano
Locks at Bachhausen
Bamburg Harbour
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Captain
lvl.2
lvl.1
Second Officer
