This article was written by me with the aim of facilitating the passage along the path of official registration of my departure to those amateur modellers who doubt the feasibility of this procedure for themselves and do not know where to start.
First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the author of the article “Obtaining permission to fly a drone (BVS, UAV) in the Russian Federation in 2019” (hereinafter referred to as the initial article), which I was guided by when making my flights, and I strongly recommend reading this post before mine. However, in the process of performing some procedures, I came across some discrepancies of reality with the described. It is these differences that will be discussed.
And why should I even register something?
In this paragraph, I express my personal attitude to the issue of official registration of UAV flights. Those who have somehow justified for themselves the need for such a design and are only interested in the essence of the matter can immediately proceed to the next heading.
To begin with, I want to emphasize that this article is written for those who want to do everything according to the law, and do not seek for themselves a moral justification for its violation. The final solution to the question of whether you need to act in this situation according to the law or not, I would like to leave on your conscience and beyond the scope of this discussion.
For illegal use of airspace under the current edition of the Code of Administrative Offenses, individuals are now fined from 30,000 to 50,000 rubles, and not 3-5 thousand as before. For most fans of an aircraft model hobby, this is too much a price for a flight. You can, of course, guided by the principle of “no one sees”, fly in all sorts of remote places where “there is nobody”, but if you live not in the tundra, then this is most likely self-deception. It’s almost impossible to guarantee that it’s today that you will not interrupt someone. In addition, you should remember about the responsibility of lifting something into the air to others. Here I’m probably thrown with rotten eggs shouting “Who can harm my little quadrocopter / helicopter / airplane?”, But I myself, having been engaged in aircraft modeling for more than 10 years, have seen everything, including the situation when only with With God's help, you were able to avoid casualties on the earth, and you are never safe from technology failure, and failure is not always an instant drop of the device, but, often, at first its uncontrolled flight of arbitrary duration and in any direction. You can’t forget about it for a minute. I become scared, for example, when I think about the collision of my own aircraft model with a car traveling at a speed of at least 90 km / h along a road not far from the flight site, and many readers moved to the car faster. This is to say that it is really advisable to choose a place for flight so that it is far away from everyone. And the registration of the flight according to the rules allows you to avoid fair claims from those who, on the occasion, decided to retire there.
I’m not saying, of course, that the existing procedure is quick and convenient, but it is mandatory, and we don’t have another one today. The discussion of ways to change it for the better I propose to transfer in advance from the comments on this article to the reception of the Federal Air Transport Agency , and in the comments I would like to see the experience of those who, contrary to everything, made their flight and found that the text of my article is not completely accurate. This experience, I hope, will help our followers to do everything right in a minimum time and with a minimum of troubles.
Those who argue that making a flight officially impossible cannot object to my personal experience. Moreover, for flights in the same place, the actions become simply automatic. For myself, I even saw a certain incentive in it - so I made a flight for the weekend, and what can I not fly? Manage, fly! Although there is no weather and time. And if there is no weather at all, then there is a reserve day.
For those who have no plans to plan a flight in 5 days, I express my sincere sympathy. The way out in this situation, if you set a goal to fly according to the rules, is to apply for the use of airspace for every day (this comes out every 6 days if you submit a maximum of 3 main and 3 spare) and cancel it every day 2 hours before departure and send the flight plan the next day, except for a happy day, when everything finally turns out.
In conclusion, I want to say that I am of the opinion that in order to change the procedure in our favor, we must first start observing it. Then, perhaps, the relevant departments will begin to understand that the existing procedure is, to put it mildly, overloaded.
Registration BVS weighing from 250gr to 30 kg
For flights, drones weighing more than 250 grams must be registered and the registration procedure is already running. Since at the time of my registration, other options were not available, I used the registration using mail. To do this, I downloaded the application form and the rules for photographing my drone from the FAVT website , filled out an application, photographed the device against a white sheet, printed a photo in color on sheet A4 and sent it all by mail by sending the first class (allows you to track receipt) to the address indicated on the same site. I registered several types of UAVs, for which, according to the registration rules, it is necessary to fill out a separate application for each type. All applications were sent in a bundle in one letter. Apparently, due to the heavy workload (I applied immediately after the registration started), I did not wait for the e-mail with the assigned numbers for 10 days, as indicated in the registration rules, but for a little more than 2 weeks, and I began to think that, as this, alas, often happens in the field of public services, they simply beat me, but one fine evening a miracle happened and letters with assigned registration numbers appeared on my e-mail.
Obtaining permission to use the airspace
This procedure was described quite well in the original article and it does not make sense to retell it, however, when I made a presentation on the establishment of the regime according to the model provided there and transferred it to the ATM Center, some comments arose.
Firstly, in the upper left corner, the first line required to indicate the time and date of submission of the submission.
Secondly, they did not send me a form with the signature of the approver, but immediately demanded to insert their signature in the last line after the words "Regards," and before my last name, which I did directly in the electronic document as a picture.
It is also recommended that prior to submitting the submission, call the local ATM center (contacts) and find out the name of the head of the center, which should be indicated in the application heading. At the same time, you can also find out if coordination of departure is required and with whom. In my case, the approval of the submission was not required, therefore, all the points regarding the persons who agreed on the submission were recommended to be removed.
The lack of the need to coordinate the submission, as it turned out later, does not mean the absence of the need to coordinate the departure itself, although it is possible that the dispatcher who agreed on the submission was simply tired or very busy and therefore did not immediately point out this need to me, so I only found out about it stage of approval of the flight plan. In this regard, when calling the ATM center, apparently, you should immediately clarify who will have to call 2 hours before departure and enter the phones in the "Departures by permission ..." display field. In my case, it turned out to be Vnukovo-approach control centers and Ramenskoye airport. Phones I told the dispatcher ZTS ATM.
When someone agrees with you, be sure to write down the name of the person who agreed, even if you don’t need to enter it anywhere right now - then if anything, there will be someone to refer to.
Another point that was pointed out to me - at the end of the paragraph "In order to ensure the safe use of airspace ..." instead of "in the airspace above the territory of the Russian Federation" you need to specify a specific place (for example, east of the village of Polushki). Later this place will be associated with the mode number and will allow faster communication with dispatchers.
For convenience, I am attaching a link to a sample submission form that I have received. Here you can see that to reduce the time spent on reconciliation in flight dates, I indicated the weekend of two weeks at once - Saturday as the main day and Sunday as the reserve. I could also indicate the third, but already knew that I would be busy, and for a month or more to think ahead for me is too much. Moreover, as I understood from the conversation with the dispatchers, the departure on the main day does not automatically cancel the ability to use the backup, just remember to agree on a flight plan for it.
Separately, I remind readers that under current law, as I understand it, you need to obtain permission for the IWP regardless of the mass of the drone and the flight altitude.
Providing a flight plan
I compiled the flight plan according to the information in the original article, and immediately after the transfer I received a response that the plan was not accepted, as it does not correspond to the format, I will familiarize myself with the recommendation in Appendix 4 of Order No. 13 of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation. Later, in a conversation with the dispatcher, they explained to me that the plan should be submitted on the standard ICAO form. I managed to find the form, which is given below.
The form itself for the convenience of filling out on a PC can be downloaded here . When saving, remember to select the Unicode format to save the formatting.
In addition to the form, in my plan two drones are indicated. Since I was planning to fly on two models and did not want to ask for permission to fly individually, I submitted a group flight plan, as indicated by the number 2 (number of aircraft) before indicating the BLA type in field 9. From the point of view of strict rules this is wrong, but I think the dispatchers will forgive me for this guile.
According to the recommendations of the ATM, in the field 18 after the keyword / REG the numbers of devices taking part in the flight received from the Federal Aviation Administration are indicated. At the same time, in field 7, the number is still indicated ZZZZZ, since the number of positions is not enough to record the number of BVS.
On the day of flight
Immediately on the day of flight, according to the rules, I needed only telephone calls.
Separately, I want to talk about communication with dispatchers. Firstly, in my experience, they do not eat people! Yes, if you submit a plan for the flight of military transport, then today they understand that with a high degree of probability there is a “kettle” in front of them, which even did not attend flight school. Feel free to ask questions, for the dispatcher that you will understand the topic is the key to quiet work and they seem to understand this. I received detailed answers to all my questions, for which many thanks to them.
Although this is logical, I didn’t think about it before - dispatch centers work around the clock, so when you send a flight plan at one in the morning, do not be surprised that you will be called back in half an hour and told that it has been accepted.
When calling the dispatch centers, you need to introduce yourself and name the number and place of the regime. For airport control centers, I also needed to name the coordinates and departure time, as well as the flight altitude (in general, when calling, it is better to put a flight plan in front of you).
2 hours prior to departure, I phoned in turn to Vnukovo-approach dispatch centers and Ramenskoye airport, asked for permission to fly and wrote down the names of the dispatchers who coordinated the flight. Then he called the dispatcher of the Moscow Central Office of the ATM, told the names of those who agreed and received permission to fly.
At the time indicated in the flight plan as the departure time, I called the dispatcher of the Moscow Central Office of ATM and said that I was starting to fly.
At the end of the flight, he called the Vnukovo-approach control centers, the Ramenskoye airport, the Moscow ATM center and announced the completion of work and the cancellation of flights on a reserve day (the latter only at the ATM center).
That’s basically it.
At the end of the article I want to wish all interested readers successful flights.