Before being admitted to Coastal Drone Operations (AV 102), students must complete Introduction to Unmanned Aerial Systems (AV 101) which requires 50-100 hours of ground school and flight arena training using a trainer drone assigned to each student (below is our indoor flight facility at the Oregon National Guard armory and the Hubsan X4 Spider).
In addition, each pilot is required to complete a Red Cross/CPR course. Students are recommended to have 20/40 corrected vision, be physically fit, in academic good-standing, and express a desire to advance in the aviation field of endeavor (expressing advancing levels of work ethic and maturity) to advance to operations. Below is the curriculum of AV 101.2.
- Phantom Film School
- Phantom and Mavic editing school
- How to tell aerial stories
- Killer shots & 360 panoramas
- Stunning aerial videography and photography
- Start an aerial photography drone business
Field trips are taken to an airport, a flight museum, and a flight service center.
Operations students are required to join our nationally sanctioned (Academy of Model Aeronautics) flight club, the “Coastal Dragon Drones” to promote drone flying activities and activities within the school and community.
Students in Aviation 102 first learn to fly a quadcopter used to create photo mosaics, topographic, vegetation, and 3D aerial maps while following lesson plans in radio communications, performance, physiological factors, decision making, airport operations, maintenance and pre-flight procedures. In addition students experience flying a fixed wing drone over larger areas (below is a sample plan for a flight to map a large seagrass bed (shown in a dark green).
Students test and gain the following areas of proficiency in operations.
- Ground school (Part 107 and USI Safety)
- Foundations of unmanned aircraft
- Robotic aircraft
- Datalinks
- Control stations
- Payloads
- Applications of unmanned aircraft
- Elements of UAS applications
- Professionalism
- Map Making
- Drone Deploy and Pix4DMapper
- Drone Deploy and Pix4DMapper
- Part 107 Test Preparation (Passing not required to pass, but this or USI Safety certification is required to advance to participate in a team during Missions (AV 103))
- ASA knowledge testing workbook