Getting ready to crash my shiny gift...

Chatting with some RC glider flyers I learned that you need an insurance to cover any damage to others. Makes sense. Would anyone know what the name of this particular policy might be?

My google-fu isn't too strong: a quick web search produced nothing directly relevant, and just one unconfirmed mention of a Swiss personal liability insurance covering RC's. I'll have to check with my provider, but if someone knows outright that this is false, it would be useful, too.

Cheers.
//ata

[Edit: thanks for the move to Insurance, tried to figure out how to do that myself about 5s after posting...]

Having never heard of such insurance........ my first port of call would be to use "Google" and track down some sort of club that fly these things.

They should not only know, but probably have experience with who provides the insurance and at what rates and premiums.


Sorry, but if nobody posts anything, that'd be my suggestion.

Working on that, and managed to trace at least this club site.
"Some do, some don't" they say, so no resolution yet. But it looks like membership and club insurance is a sensible option if my personal liability insurance isn't helpful. 15 CHF for the insurance, now if only I can find the club prices...

Feedback from the contact email of the above was helpful enough. Yes, insurance coverage is required for RC airplane flying, with damage coverage up to one million CHF. (This would probably be for the regular kind of hobby flyer only. I assume megalomanic giant kits just one step below jet liners would require something more.)

Fortunately, as it happens, my personal liability insurance does cover this. Yay. Off to practice avoiding million franc crashes!

//ata

I got myself a Parrot AR Drone for christmas, I had no idea this would be required. I've got personal Liability insurance, do you know if it's a standard clause or something that has to be opted in to?

The drone went haywire when I took it on my roof a couple of weeks ago, shot up in the air and refused to come back down, then flew out of range and luckily landed in the square outside my building, shops had closed so it wasn't busy, but could have given some shoppers a fright, had to run out and recover it.

Oh I know the financial pain of crashing these things into other peoples property well. I remember losing it with my indoor helicopter (or airborne lawnmower as I less than fondly refer to it these days) straight into the jungle - a place in the flat where my GF keeps most of the plants.

Being a determined kind chap I attempted to recover from the situation rather than just cutting the throttle. However my inept control inputs resulted in a not inconsiderable amount of flora and fauna being sliced and diced, together with a number of decapitated prized orchids. The GF was not best pleased as you can imagine, and the financial restitution ran quite merrily into the hundreds.

Needless to day the damn thing has sat on the shelf since then.

Regarding insurance - I've come across RC plane fanatics who seem to get a kick out of buzzing members of the public.

I wonder how much it would cost for the hospital treatment for facial and skull reconstruction for a young child who gets hit in the face by a motorised one of these?

Actually, I've mainly observed sensible flying here but one chap who flew fast and very low over my family three times in the U.K. despite me warning him not to was about to get his plane stamped on by me. Luckily he stopped doing it after my final warning.

To the OP:
There's a club of RC glider fanatics who, at weekends, regularly meet on the hill above Hirzel. They even have a camera fitted to one motorised glider and fly using that linked to a screen!

LOL, first time I unpacked the thing I hadn't entirely considered the ramifications of flying a helicopter indoors. It scattered the masses of paper I had been sorting for recylcing all over the room, before landing in my one and only house plant, removing quite a few branches. Luckily the plant survived.

Bit more careful indoors now.

Make sure it actually does, as it adds a premium to the normal insurance fee. Make sure you get the specific yearly RC insurance certificate from your insurance.

That is amazing, never seen one before, however as a biker it is bad enough with bugs on the helmet..

This prompted me to call a second time, resulting in a different answer.
Exactly so: an extra bit of fee for this fun (about 30 CHF). Grumble.
Now I need to figure out whether to join a club or take the easy way out.


Cyrus - it's possible that the Parrot has entirely different requirements, but I don't have the facts. You might want to email one of this area's RC clubs and check: http://www.modellflug.ch/index.php?o...id=137&lang=de