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The Gadget Man – Episode 87 – Drones. Should they be licensed?

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I was back on air this morning with Mark Murphy and James Hazell to talk about drones and the immense rise in their popularity.

With popularity comes a degree of public worry and a much larger degree of press coverage. Should drones be licensed? Should people need to take a proficiency test to use them? All of this was covered on BBC Radio Suffolk this morning along with interviews with The Civil Aviation Authority and local pilots.

Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles come in all shapes and sizes and can range in price from £10 to literally thousands. Many of the more expensive semi professional drones have ‘Geo Fencing’ which stops the drones from flying in banned areas or ‘No Fly Zones’.

Of course it is possible to build your own drone. Kits are widely available and many people have built their own drones from scratch using light weight computers such as the Raspberry Pi. In this case, no licensing is going to stop the production of these kinds of drones and increasingly advanced techniques such as GPS ‘way point’ route planning means that the pilot does not need to be in radio contact during the flight and therefore distances of 7km possible before battery charging is necessary.

Currently in the UK, I can’t see how any ‘proficiency’ testing can be brought in being, it would be far too costly and reliant of the purchaser of the drone. Tracking the drones is equally difficult without elaborate (and expensive) tracking transmitter/receivers being added to the drone.

Consequently, it lays with the manufacturers of these devices to ensure that their equipment is safe, easy to use, legal and abides by any global no fly zones.

I will be reviewing the Parrot Bebop 2 camera drone very soon, so stay ‘tuned’.

 

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The Gadget Man : Parrot Bebop 2 Drone with “Follow Me Bebop”

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I’ve finished testing the Parrot Bebop 2 camera drone. A fully review is coming up shortly. In the meantime here is a selection of footage I have taken over the last couple of weeks.

Electric Car, Electric Vehicles, Gadget Man, News, Uncategorized

Electric Vehicle Registrations Continue to Soar!

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The UK has experienced it’s best ever quarter for Electric Vehicle reservations, with an average of 1 EV registered every 13 minutes between January to March 2016, a rise of 23% on the same period 2015 according to Go Ultra Low

During this period, 10,496 plug-in cars with registered averaging at 115 per day and is set to continue this trend despite the recent slashing of the government grant from £5000 to £2500.

Using figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), Go Ultra Low’s analysis showed the sales of plug-on vehicles rising steadily against the previous five year trends.

Motorists are beginning to see the benefits of electric vehicles and growing to understand the idea of ‘topping up’ overnight on home charge points and during the day at public chargers, along with the Plugin Car Grant which has been utilised by more than 58,000 motorists since its inception in 2011.

When asked to comment, Transport Minister Andrew Jones was quoted as saying: “These record figures show that hundreds of people every week are coming round to the fact that plug-in cars are cleaner, greener and cheaper to run. The UK is a world leader in the uptake of low emission vehicles and our long-term economic plan is investing £600 million by 2020 to improve air quality, create jobs and achieve our goal of every new car and van in the UK being ultra-low emission by 2040.”

Notably the month of March seems to be one of the strongest months for Electric Vehicle sales, this year 7,144 electric cars with registered compared to the previous monthly high of 6,104 for March  2015.

Poppy Welch, Head of Go Ultra Low, said: “This continued and steep growth in uptake of plug-in cars is testament to how electric vehicles are becoming a natural choice for increasing numbers of new car buyers. With low running costs, tax exemptions and free parking in many locations, many more motorists should be considering a plug-in vehicle as their next car. As registrations records continue to be set and the rate of EV growth carries on, it’s no longer a question of will more motorists choose electric, but when.”

The UK is now a market leader for Electric Vehicles in the European Union with one fifth of the European Union’s collection EV Sales, runner up to Holland.

Goultralow.com provides a one-stop shop for information about owning and running electric vehicles, the makes and models available and the locations of the thousands of publicly available charge points.