Where can I fly my drone in the UK and get £5,000,000 Public Liability Insurance cover? Welcome to Drone Scene!

Wondering where you can legally fly your drone? Looking for great places to fly? Looking for £5m Public Liability Insurance cover? Well look no further!

Welcome to Drone Scene, the place to find great drone flying locations in the UK, view images and videos posted by other pilots and share your flying locations in order to help other UK hobbyists find great locations where they can fly safely too.

Click on a marker pin to view details of that location. You can also add comments and discuss the location in our forum.

×You must log in to see Airspace Restrictions, Ground Hazards and other interactive map layers.

Copehill Down added to Everything Else in South West by clinkadink on 23/02/2023

Parking: 51.217731, -1.986573
TOAL: 51.209728, -1.973508

I parked at the top road, then walked about a 1.5 km down the public footpath, to a crossing about 100m outside the village. North of the road (where I parked) is covered with red flags, which means no entry. But south of the road is full of public footpaths and people walking their dog.

After making sure there weren’t any FRZs or NOTAMs on Drone Scene, and no signage about stating no drones aloud … I TOAL’d from the public footpath and grabbed short 3 minute video of the empty village.

I also checked the MoD Public Safety at Salisbury Plain and the Imber Range bye-laws, although it doesn’t appear to have been updated since 1963. Regardless, there is no mention of drones.

From a distance, Copehill Down looks just like any other new development of houses cropping up all over the county. It’s only as you get closer, to this most unusual of Wiltshire villages that you begin to realise that there’s something not quite right. Not only is it not mentioned on any maps of the area, but it’s been built on a firing range on the edge of tank-track scarred Salisbury Plain.

Twinned with Bonnland Hammelburg, a military training village in Germany, Copehill Down was built in 1988 as a mock-up village for troops to hone their skills at ‘FIBUA’ or fighting in built-up areas. The mock Bavarian village not only boasts a pub and bar, a train depot with railway tracks and six or so train wagons, but also a church named after the Patron Saint of Lost Causes, St Judes. The small Eastern Block village also boasts a fake garage, a petrol station, shops and a school.

With 80 plus buildings and over 2,000 rooms, it’s the largest FIBUA training facility in Western Europe. Covering an area, almost 350m by 450m, the northern European looking Town got itself a neighbour, a decade ago, an Iraqi looking village which has, as far as we know, remained nameless. Built out of ISO Cargo Containers balanced one on top the other the Iraqi Village has also been purpose built by the MOD for FIBUA training.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copehill_Down

Land owner permission requirements unknown.

View and discuss this location in more detail on Grey Arrows.

Co-ordinates: 51.20977, -1.973472 • what3words: ///look.upcoming.suspends

The originator declared that this location was not inside a Flight Restriction Zone at the time of being flown on 19/02/2023. It remains the responsibility of any pilot to check for any changes before flying at the same location.

Where to fly your drone

Recently added locations

Saint Tudno church and graveyard (By LordEdam)

St Tudno’s church was founded by St Tudno in the 6th century as the original parish church of Llandudno. The existing church is dated to the 12th century on the same location

In 1903 the church graveyard was extended by the surrounding Great Orme Cemetry, with coffins and mourners transported up to the church by the nearby Great Orme Tramway