Coastal Drone Academy

Coastal Drone Academy students are currently employing mapping drones to assess coastal towns, forests, wetlands, bays, and beaches. In our first course, however students learn drone safety and film making. For example here we are aboard the OSU R/V Pacific Storm on station five miles off Newport, deploying a drone to monitor grey whale migration in the Spring of 2018 (click here for story).

eBee SQ and +RTK drones

Our training and certification program uses a curriculum accepted by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), endorsed by major aviation insurance providers, and evaluated and recommended for college credit by the American Council on Education. The program is built on a comprehensive ground and flight school using Unmanned Safety Institute curriculum with its aviation emphasis.

The four aviation courses in our state-approved program are:

• Aviation 101.1: Introduction & Drone Safety
• Aviation 101.2: Phantom Film School
• Aviation 102: Coastal Drone Mapping (Operations) (see details)
• Aviation 103: Natural Resource Management Using Drones (Missions) (see details)

All courses work through experiential, hands-on learning, and collaboration with local marine scientists, my pilots fly missions where they develop knowledge of the several key aspects of coastal resource management. Here is an example of technical education using research projects as we learn boating, fixed wing drone flying, and seagrass ecology in the Spring of 2018 with our entire Operations and Missions classes having a role:I use a research-based curriculum that involves students working on longer-term projects directly with industry and government collaborators, building on their knowledge of drones and how they apply directly to their coastal habitat missions.  Advanced student pilots have acquired knowledge and can challenge the FAA Remote Pilot Certificate (drone license) test.

Throughout Spring 2018 ten of our student pilots and four of our instructors helped carry out our Netarts Bay Seagrass Mapping Mission. Our collaborator on this mission is the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and it was led by our instructor Dr. Tony D’Andrea. It culminated in three days of flying together, producing over 25,000 images, and beginning a summer of analysis by “Einstein” (our supercomputer).

This course helps student pilots fill their log book with commercial flight time doing significant projects for our collaborators, including megafaunal (salmon and whale) surveying, and coastal (beach, shore, bay, marsh, forest, and city) mapping.

With continuous missions (we are booked out several months) student mastery results in application for Drone PRO™ rating where pilots log their first 50 hours. Level of rating may increase with hours and years flown:

PRO™ Basic Certification 50 hours (specific UAS) 1 year
PRO™ Level 1 250 hours 2 years
PRO™ Level 2 500 hours 3 years
PRO™ Level 3 1000 hours 3 years

The emphasis of Advance Missions is to complete the USI Safety Course, complete a USI Drone Pro rating on the student’s fleet of Phantom drones, and pass the FAA 107 test.

2 DJI Phantom 4Pro

Preflighting drone

OSU teaching drone launch

In Drone Missions they show proficiency in enterprise level drones (the eBee RTK and the Matrice 600).

eBee SQ and +RTK drones

Our mission pilots do useful work while training, and before flying they are visual observers, data managers, and/or battery technicians.

All classroom, field training and deployment are carried out while working for our dozen or so collaborators, including:

Missions has another 100 hours of ground school focussing on the following modules:

• Ground school (Part 107 and USI Safety)
  • Regulations
  • Operations in the national airspace
  • Human factors
  • Crew resource management
  • Aeronautical decision making
  • Safety policy
  • Risk management
  • Safety assurance
  • Safety promotion
• Map Making
  • Pix4D Mapper