DRES Regulations

Ladies & Gentlemen,

The CAA have spoken - www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Unmanned-aircraf...rcraft-registration/

Basically, the fee is reduced to £9.00 annually to register as an Operator (18yrs+) but BMFA can collect the fee and do the registration for you, if you give them permission to pass on your personal information.

The knowledge test is every 3 years (free to take) but BMFA AS Certificates will be acceptable as a knowledge/competence.

Although this all becomes law on 30th November 2019, BMFA members will get an exemption until 31st January 2020 to allow registration etc to be brought inline with the BMFA membership year.

Think we might need some more examiners in the club now!!!

Regards

Peter

The BMFA Achievement Scheme Review Committee members have been busy all week developing an online knowledge test that will be the equivalent of the CAA online test but using a little more aeromodelling friendly terms and questions rather than the very multi rotor focused CAA questions. This will be so that BMFA members that do not hold a current Achievement Scheme BPC, A, B or C certificate will have some way of undertaking the knowledge test without having to log onto the CAA system. It will also allow club examiners to test candidates in person when that person does not have 'online' facilities to do the CAA or BMFA test and then the Examiner can file an online pass form for the BMFA to record against that persons GoMembership record to pass onto the CAA (with the members permission under GDPR Regs).

I will be attending the Achievement Scheme Review Committee this Saturday to hopefully finalise these questions and kick off the annual review process for all the other AS documentation (30 documents on the list!). I have also raised a number of questions about DRES and the relationship to the Achievement Scheme, which I hope will illicit some answers from Dave Phipps (BMFA CEO) or the CAA by Saturday, or shortly after. However, this will be my last ASRC meeting as I will be standing down from the ASRC via the BMFA AGM on 16th November.

If anyone has any queries or comments re the Achievement Scheme that they would like me to pass onto the ASRC please let me know asap as this will be the last chance to do that directly via my membership of the committee.

Peter

Hi Pete,
what is your opinion on adding the BMFA version of the CAA questions to the WMAC club assessment process? It would be nice to know that any new 'white card' member would be able to confidently pass the CAA questions, and I am sure that our club instructors and assessors will be asked about the format and content of the CAA questions during training and I for one would welcome a little bit on instruction on the subject matter and process!
Cheers, John

Any new pilot going forward will have to take the online test John, so I don't think there would be a need to do this would there?

I would assume that the Committee will have to make a decision as to how they handle this. The obvious method to me would that they would have to pass the online test before they can take the flight test, just as the driving test is done.

As observed by Jon in order to take the club White Card test and be legal to fly alone they would have had to take the CAA or BMFA online test or be a holder of a BMFA BPC, A, B, C certificate. So (subject to committee decision) part of the White Card test will need to be (if flying or owning their own model) a check of the individuals Operator Registration (along with the number of that registration being present on the airframe) plus the CAA personal Certificate of 'Competence'/Knowledge, which will be issued by the CAA but could have been allocated through either the CAA online test or any of the BMFA tests.

Whilst I currently have access to the CAA questions I cannot share them as they are part of a Non Disclosure Agreement between BMFA and CAA (although they will obviously become public once the CAA system goes live online on 5th November). Subject to agreement this Saturday I may be in a position to share the BMFA online test questions next week. One important thing to remember with both online tests is that the questions list multiple possible answers to choose from and for many of the questions more than one of the answers is correct so the technique is to click/tick/choose ALL THE ANSWERS THAT ARE CORRECT FOR THAT QUESTION otherwise you will fail the question. The pass mark is 80%.

There is no rush to register as an operator or to take the personal 'competence'/knowledge test as existing BMFA members have an exemption until the end of January 2020 to allow all this to line up with the BMFA membership year and for it all to be done through BMFA membership renewal, if an individual gives BMFA permission (by opting in) to provide personal data to the CAA. I am not sure what this means if we get someone new to the sport join after 30th November but before the BMFA system is fully up and running as they will fall outside this exemption.

As I have decided to stand down from both ASRC and Southern Area BMFA duties in a couple of weeks time I may be in a position to prepare something of a guide/training material for both unsure club members and newbies to the sport to help them along the way to gaining the necessary legally required 'competence'/knowledge certificate and registration certificate.