theMattW
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Flight distance : 66342 ft
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I thought I'd share my recent drone experience in Turkey, I returned to the UK last weekend.
I took my Mavic Air, controller and a spare battery in my hand luggage (backpack) and flew to Antalya, we then stayed at an all inclusive resort near the town of Side.
This was the 4th time I've taken the drone through Stansted and again had no problems at all.
When we arrived in Antalya there were no baggage checks at all and to be honest the airport seemed to be struggling with the volume of tourists coming through. There were random checks set up on the way out of the airport but I did not get stopped.
During our stay I flew the drone about 7-8 times from the beach in the resort. I tried to observe basic drone etiquette and not bother anyone I didn't need to. All but 2 of the flights were early in the morning, flying between 07:30 and 08:30 - most of the flight was over the water, pier and beach and there wasn't many people around. I flew over the hotel and local area once or twice but at a altitude of 300 feet so as not to cause any bother for anyone.
The other 2 times I flew, once was during sunset from the beach, again not very crowded. The other time was from the beach at around 6PM, it was fairly quite and I only flew it about 5 minutes as I wansted to get a zoom-out shot of the family waving from the beach.
Nobody seemed bothered at all by the drone or me flying it, most people pointed and tried to watch as it whizzed off into the distance. A few people came up to me to ask questions like what drone is it? How high does it fly? I think they were locals quite amazed by it.
On the way back the drone made it through 2 scanner checks at the airport and then I was randomly selected for a thorough search at the gate (something to do with a requirement from the British government). The guy conducting the search pulled it out and even took it out of its case but he didn't ask me any questions, he just swabbed it to make sure I hadn't been using drugs. He also swabbed the spare battery but didn't ask me any questions about it. I came back to the UK with some great video and photos of the beach area.
I didn't take it out of the hotel complex even though we did spend a few days at local towns and markets, I guess I was a little nervous about flying it out and about. However, I suspect that if I had of flown it from a quiet area and not bothered anyone then nobody would have bothered me. You never know though so please take it as a green light to do so, just documenting my experience.
Hope that gives you a flavour of what to expect. |
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