Everyone right everyone, its Matt Williams, mr. MPW, and welcome to today’s drone expert secrets, video in today’s video we’re going to be looking at something that’s fairly topical, particularly with the time of year that we’re coming up to now. That is how to fly safely at night. Everyone, its Matt Williams, mr. and peww, welcome to the channel and today’s video, if you are new to the channel – and you haven’t done so yet, please don’t forget to subscribe to the channel press the bell button next to subscribe, icon to stay up to date with All of the new videos that we’re trying to drop every single working day to help you out and to get you up and running in business and get you flying safely.

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Mpw dot-com, so today this is topical one, because we’re moving into the kind of autumn winter season now and the nights are drawing in. So more people are going to be exposed to potentially operating their drone at night and also because of an incident that we have heard about through the forums and the groups. I’M not gon na drill down into the incident itself that wouldn’t be fair on the people who were involved. We don’t know anything about it.

We don’t know the circumstances, but what we do know is that an incident happened not long ago at night, where, by the sounds of a drone, collided with a building. Now there are checks and balances in place in the air navigation order and, more importantly, as a PFC, oh holder, inside your permission for commercial operation wording which should prevent this from happening, and indeed the reason, I suppose taking a step back in 2015. When we kind of first started out teaching properly to put in big numbers through, you couldn’t fly your drone at night without understanding permissions without having done a course of some sort. So the original permission for aerial work and the permission for commercial operation when it first came out only authorized you to operate a drone for commercial gain. If you like during the daytime, and you had to remain within visual line of sight in 2015, we worked with the CIA to produce a course, and we delivered that course so that it was kind of half a day in a classroom with a simulator assessment and Some of the NQ EES actually did this.

Where you had to go and fly at night, then we did it with a simulator assessment in a classroom where we could then provide the evidence to the CIA that allowed people to operate at night. So then those people got permissions to operate by day and by night commercially over the last well within the last 12 months. Actually, the CIA have now made it standard that anyone can operate any weight of aircraft from 0 to 20 kilos and you can operate by day and by night and the primary reason behind. That is because we have proven as a community that we can operate small and large aircraft safely without their needing to be a delineation between 0 to 7 and 7 to 20. We’Ve also proven as a community that we can operate by day and by night safely.

There have been as far as I’m aware, very few if any incidents at night, certainly that have been reported more than just culture in a forthcoming video. That then means that the CIA have gone. You know what we think: it’s safe: let’s, let people operate by day and by night understand it permissions. However, the only reason we’re going to be, or the only way, we’re going to be allowed to maintain the kind of privileges of exercising those rights is by continuing to operate safely. It’S not as simple as getting your drone flying in the dark, as you would have done during the day.

Yes, 9 times out of 10 99 times out of 100. You may get away with it, but aviation isn’t about getting away with it. It isn’t pardon the phrase about winging it every time it’s about being strategic with what we do is about being procedural with what we do, and it’s about doing things safely by briefing and practicing and walking through things on the ground and being aware of the problems That could be caused rather than just throwing the aircraft in the air and getting flying now. All of these things as a permission for commercial operations holder, should be detailed in your operations manual and in your operations manual. You need to state how you’re going to operate differently at night than you are in the day.

What are the additional things that you’re going to think about? What are the additional procedures and processes that you’re going to put in place and run through to make sure that you can operate your drone safely at night? Now the course that we created that we did in the classroom and then this simulator assessment was pretty much made defunct when the CAE decided to allow everyone to operate at night. We still include it as part of our pro course so that people can continue to get that learning, get that experience from others experienced aviators in the kind of full-size world, the manned aviation world, but also in the unmanned space. So this course is really really useful and I can see, if I’m honest, if we continue to have incidents, I can see those getting potentially to a place where we’re going to be forced to do some kind of training again to be able to operate at night.

So please, let’s work together to not allow that to happen. Don’T give the CIA an inch so that they can take a mile and take all of those things from us. But what I’m going to do is just dive through the wording inside the PFC. Oh, so that you can be aware of exactly what you need to do in order to really be operating within the bounds of your PFC, oh, and to keep yourself and everybody else safe. So the first thing we’re going to look at is that the CIA say within your PFC, oh, that flights at night shall only be conducted in accordance with the approved operations manual procedures.

So that means that really to be able to operate at night in the first place, you don’t just need to have to kind of have a PFC, Oh, which as standard we’ll have night in there now, if your enquiries done their job properly in the CA of Grunts you, those permissions. You also need to have the appropriate information in your operations manual. Now we do have a video about night flying and how to add that into your operations manual you’ll have to go back. I will drop a link to it down below, but you’ll have to go back. Look at that video and we’ve actually done it for you, we’ve written the basic paragraph again provided with no kind of liability or indemnity it’s there as a basis for you to use.

If you don’t have that in your operations manual, then you can’t fly at night. Okay, have a look at the wording, that’s in the description of that video copy that into your operations manual. If you don’t have something in there at the moment, because bear in mind if you don’t you’re, not fine in accordance with UPF Co, therefore you won’t be insured. If heaven forbid, you have an accident, so go back, have a look at that: we’ve provided it for you, okay and if you’re in key, we haven’t done that then get on them. They should be doing the same as well.

The next thing is that, prior to any flight operations and bear in mind, this is written in your PFC o prior to any flight operations. A daylight reconnaissance and site safety assessment, including aircraft flight paths within the surrounding area, shall be undertaken to identify, address and record any hazards, restrictions and obstacles. So you cannot, according to your PFC, oh just rock up somewhere random, put your aircraft down and go and fly. You have to have done a sufficient recce in the daylight. You have to have looked for things that are going to impact potentially or literally potentially impact the flight of your aircraft.

We recommend that you go and do this during the day in good daylight, you physically walk and potentially even fly the route that you’re going to fly at night to make sure that it is safe. It is clear, then, when you go back at night take another look, don’t assume that everything will be exactly the same. I was doing a job once at night for Midsomer Murders just outside Windsor and we were flying through an avenue of trees. We’D done the recce in the day we stayed there pretty much all the way through until the evening, and we’ve done the recce about four o’clock in the afternoon. It was a actually similar time to this.

It was late autumn done the recce at four o’clock in the afternoon. Let the song go down. The chute was at about half past 10:00 at night. Fortunately, I went and walked the route that we were gon na fly, the drone with a torch, a very powerful torch, looking upwards and in the time between us doing the recce and going back again at na it’s, the rigours had put electrical cables across the trees. Exactly where we would have been flying an eight-foot-wide 20 well 19 and a half kilo drone with an Alexa mini underneath over the top of a crowd of people who were under our control, they were all on set.

They were part of the the crew and the cast, but that would have caused some serious drama. Fortunately, we found it, we’ve got them to move the move. The cable and everything went okay, but it’s super important that you do this before you fly in the day. You have to anyway, and then you do the same again at night. In addition, you need to make sure the launch site has adequate illumination, so it needs to be provided with adequate illumination and the aircraft needs to be equipped with adequate conspicuity lighting, which, in the case of some aircraft, might not be appropriate or meet the requirements within The air navigation order for navigation lights, etc for the purposes of identifying an aircraft.

The final part of that is that flights shall only commence when the weather conditions are suitable for continuous visual line of sight operations. Now, again, generally, if we are going to be fine at night, that’s not a problem, but the big question. The big point, actually I would say about this – is the visual line of sight at night is quite interesting. You can quite often and very easily end up a lot further away than the 500 meters maximum that you’re allowed to, because at night it’s very difficult to judge how far away something is it’s very difficult to do that during the day. But we don’t get the same fall-off, in contrast, and things like that to be able to kind of subconsciously realise that our aircraft is further away.

The lights on our aircraft are actually really bright at night and you could easily get your aircraft out to probably one kilometer and still see it for the purpose of avoiding collisions and think that you are within your 500 meters maximum. So it’s very very interesting. There are lots of illusions that happen at night. There are lots of kind of traps and pitfalls that we as people as humans and the human system from a human factors, point of view can fall foul of if we’re operating at night that you wouldn’t during the day, you can find out all of this information By doing our course – and if you want to do our course, it’s normally 399 pounds. If you drop down into the description, there is a discount code in there.

You can use that discount code to get our course for just 39 pounds. Okay, so there is really no excuse. That course will walk you through everything that you need to know to be able to operate safely at night. It’S some that we used to charge 700 pounds for to do in a classroom. It can be yours for 39 pounds.

Please, as a community embrace this, we need to all be doing this safely. Otherwise, those rights and privileges are gon na, be taken away from us and you’re going to find yourself in a place where you’re gon na have to be doing a 700-pound, of course again to be able to fly at night so drop down. It’S the description. Do that Knight course in there is everything you need in terms of learning, but also a couple of examples: some example jobs and what you need to think about for the recce x’, and also the extract that you need for your operations manual so flying safely at Night I pulled together. Let’S do it safely, let’s not let there be any more accidents, or instance like say this, isn’t a dig at the people or the courses that are being run to teach people how to do this.

It’S genuinely just to make sure that everybody is doing things safely. I hope that was useful. You know what to do if you liked it give it a thumbs up if you didn’t like it, give it a double thumbs, down, drop your thoughts and comments in the questions down below, don’t forget as well. We are running an OSC course soon for the first 60 people who apply it will be free for we’re. Gon na drop the details of that to everyone who’s part of the mist mpw newsletter in the next ten days from this video dropping.

So if you’re watching the future, you’re probably missed it, but if you’re watching it live then go to. Mr

I’M PW calm down to the bottom sign-ups the newsletter we’ve had about a hundred and forty ish hundred and forty-two people. I think, signed up to that over the last few days. So we will choose the first sixty when we drop the kind of notice for that OSC course, which is the first. Sixty people who apply and fill in the application form they’ll get to come to a full day of OSC training for free I’ve been Matt.

Williams, fly safe and blue skies.