EU Drone Regulations: Navigational Lights for Night Flying

𝖠 𝖦𝖱𝖤𝖤𝖭 𝖥𝖫𝖠𝖲𝖧𝖨𝖭𝖦 𝖫𝖤𝖣?!​

(a post on EU/EASA rules)

One of our local pilots, who was flying after sunset, was admonished by police during the control for not having navigational lights 😵 and warned that this may be a subject to a serious consequences next time, as this can be treated as causing threat to air traffic safety 🙃 I forgot to mention that he was flying a microdrone (1.8'').

I checked it, and apparently in EU there is an active rule 2019/94 UAS.OPEN.060 / point 2G: the operator ensures that, during night operations, a flashing green light is activated on the unmanned aircraft.

The law does not state any technical details; the light must be green and flashing. So the next thing I did is build a lightest led light 😎🐝 I bought a 3mm led light with an inbuilt flashing chip and the 150R 0,6W resistor. Both super tiny. Together with the AWG30 cables and thermal coating it is 0.38 g. Works, drains 20mA, so it has not much impact at all on the current, and I succesfully added it to my 1.8 and 2 inch drones.