Remote Pilot 107 Online Chapter 1

Remote Pilot 107 Online Chapter 1

IN THE BEGINNING


Kenny: This year at Heli-Expo, I was there for two days in the flight instructor refresher clinic. One of the topics that I had to speak about was the remote pilot because, as instructors, we’re going to have people come to us who are already pilots and they want to add their remote pilot on. As a flight school, you also have students coming to you off the street that want assistance in getting their remote pilot.

So, as instructors, we need to be able to inform our students how they can get this rating. Whether it’s an addon for you or if you’re brand new off the street you need to know some of the do’s and don’ts with small unmanned aircraft because we know they’re a part of our world now. They are a part of the airspace. As a pilot, there are things that you need to know regardless of whether or not you’re going to be a drone pilot. You still need to know some of the basic facts.

Gary: I’m going to go over basic radio communications, Class G, and some tips for towered airports, the things that I learned as a new pilot that helped me. get over that. I have a couple stories to tell and we’re going to talk about our course, www.remotepilotonline.com.

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First off, my first thought of this whole thing was a local law enforcement officer that was on the county police department approached me and he said, “Hey, you’re a helicopter CFI, would you be interested in putting on a class for some of the officers that want to fly the drone that the prosecutor’s office purchased for our police department?” I had never given it much thought and I said, “Well, I don’t know, I teach helicopter training.” And the more I got to thinking about it, I thought, “I’m going to look into this a little bit.” Kenny and I discussed it and we came to the realization that it is important, even for general aviation pilots, to know some information about the restrictions that are held to the drone operators or the small unmanned aircraft systems pilots in command. I found that the FAA actually made Part 107 in the FAR/AIM, which lays out all the rules for operating, registration, and restrictions. I went through Part 107 and I became familiar with the laws and restrictions that are imposed upon the remote pilots and the small unmanned aircraft.

Then I found the Remote Pilot Unmanned Aircraft Systems Study Guide that the FAA has out and the Advisory Circular on small unmanned aircraft systems that the FAA has out. I just really dug into this and I came up with a video course which is going to be similar to the course that we have for the actual general aviation helicopter pilots in that everything you need to know can be found with self-study, but we know that we learn mostly through vision, and second would be our hearing and so forth on our senses.

So by making a video course, it just helps you to learn faster and you can tap into the knowledge and everything you need to know to pass your test is going to be covered in our videos at some point through our course. And just like the helicopter general aviation courses that we have, the videos can be watched over and over and repeated and paused, and the pilots can use it to move forward. So I did not help this deputy back when he asked me. I said, “Tell them just to study the ASA test prep.” I thought that drones were toys, but I have learned a lot more about drones since then, I’ve realized that they are not toys, they are a registered aircraft and can fly up to 400 AGL. A helicopter pilot could easily be operating at 300 AGL over somebody’s property and be sharing the same airspace as the small unmanned aircraft.

We know, as helicopter pilots, our altitude limit is only to keep enough altitude so as to not pose a hazard to persons or property. You could have a person operating these small unmanned aircraft for pleasure under the model airplane exception without knowing the rules, such as the requirement for a remote pilot to yield to all other air traffic.

General aviation pilots need to look out for the lack of knowledge and, ultimately, safety is our goal. There is one more thing to look out for in addition to towers and power lines now. We have to look out for drones. What if we get a small unmanned aircraft in our rotor system? It’s going to cause some major problems.

The first time a drone goes into a rotor system on a helicopter and kills somebody or even the first time a drone gets sucked into a jet engine, either to just anyone but what if it’s a celebrity or a government official? We’ve seen these videos of these close encounters with drones. I just watched one yesterday that had taken place in Australia. This thing, because they are so small and the speed of the helicopter, you don’t see it until it is within a couple seconds. And this drone went right underneath the helicopter.

Remote Pilot 107 Online Chapter 1

I thought, “Wow!” This makes the case that these things are so small that, if you’re flying along in a Robinson at 90 knots or a Eurocopter at 120 knots, you don’t have any time being that that thing is so small. We, as pilots, are going to have very little time to react. Hopefully, we would be able to. But informing the public is a big job for us as pilots I think, to let people know what they can and can’t do and the danger especially to us as helicopter pilots.

We fly lower to the ground than fixed-wing. Fixedwings are going to have this problem with takeoff and landing, but what about us low flyers that can legally fly at 500 feet or less? Well, we know that the drones aren’t supposed to fly over 400 and, hopefully, most of them know that. What if they miss it by 100? Or what if we’re flying a little lower legally because we’re doing some aerial filming or whatever the case is? I wanted to jump in and point that out because I think that’s when regulations are going to change and we know that things are going to keep changing as more and more drones come into play. They’re here they are not going away.


We know Amazon and UPS have considered using them for package delivery. A base manager that I worked with when I flew EMS just five years ago just went to work for Uber and his job is to help Uber develop human transport drones. But, anyway, our world is changing and drones are going to keep changing everything that we do. The regulations are going to change often and that’s another reason we thought we’d build a course like ours where it’s interactive. Members can get in, it’s a community, you can ask questions. We are committed to staying on top of things as they change. The next part of my presentation is kind of ironic. I had a little bit of a rough weekend. I fly a Rotorway helicopter that I own - up until Saturday that is. I had a cog belt failure and the FAA has already been here Sunday and investigated it. It was clear-cut cog belt failure. I was forced to auto rotate it into a cornfield. So the corn did a lot of damage and I’m now calling it the Rotorway corn harvester. It’s stuck in the corn field until the farmer decides he’s going to pick his corn in a couple of weeks and then we can see exactly what needs to be done if we’re going to fix it.

But this came full circle. The same officer that had approached me, wanting to know if I would teach his officers, showed up at the scene. and he said, “Hey, Gary. Do you want me to take pictures of the accident with my drone?” We couldn’t see it from where everybody responded. It’s in the cornfield and the corn is about 8 feet high right now. I said, “Yeah. Do you have your drone with you?” And he pulled it out of the trunk and started preflighting it, I said, “So, did you get your Remote Pilot Rating because I’m teaching a course on that now. I’m getting a course ready to put out to the public online.”

Remote Pilot 107 Online Chapter 1

He said, “Yeah, I did. I had to go to the FAA testing facility and that test was tough!” I said, “Wait a minute. You’re a private pilot for airplane, right, if I recall?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Why did you go to the testing facility? I’ve just dug into all of this and you only had to do a simple online course and an open book test and then go through IACRA to get the rating and verify that you had a flight review in the last couple years.” And he said, “Well, they told me I had to go and take the test.”

So here’s an example of somebody in an official capacity that’s being told by somebody in another official capacity that he had to take a knowledge test which includes topics such as airspace and in-depth weather and things that an initial unmanned remote pilot would have to go through with the test at the FAA facility. He could have skipped all of that. He’s already been through a lot of that with his private pilot rating.

I included in my presentation some pictures that he took with his drone and this thing is not a toy at all. He was able to get up over the accident and take some very awesome pictures of where the Rotorway is sitting. You can see where the Rotorway has settled into the corn. You can even see by looking at some of these pictures the exact point where the flare occurred prior to the touchdown. For some of you that don’t know what a cog belt is on a Rotorway, that is the transmission.

So basically, when the cog belt fails, the rotor system is not being driven like it should be. These pictures are all drone pictures from different angles. It just took him a matter of minutes to take these pictures and he could see it from the position that he was standing operating it. So he had a line of sight and was operating it over the sparsely populated area. He knew all the rules about remote piloting. The pictures are just absolutely phenomenal and I’ll use these pictures forever because I’m pointing out to a student how you may have to auto-rotate. You can see in these pictures where you’ve got the flare close enough to the ground to chop some corn, and then as I leveled, it didn’t chop as much. In fact, on the one side of the aircraft, you can see where the blade didn’t even touch the corn during the leveling process.

And then, during the settling, there’s a nice round patch where it chopped the corn. So these pictures, as bad of a day as it was for me, I can walk away from it uninjured. I’ve got some property damage, but I’ve got a story to tell, and we survived it, and I’m able to show these pictures to you and students forever now.

That’s one thing we want to do moving forward, or what I’ve always tried to do, is make our HOG’s training realistic. We don’t hide behind a mansion on a hill and we’re not trying to prove that we’re something we’re not. We like to give you the real deal about what happens and right there is proof of Gary getting up there and saying, “Look, I had a bad day, but now I’m going to take these pictures and I’m going to use these with my students in the future.”

There are tons of things he can use those for, not only just the fact at how cool the drone was, but it’s a great story about how that deputy’s involvement is the whole reason we thought about starting a our online course, www.remotepilotonline.com. And, the fact that he was being told the wrong information to go and take an un needed test. He could have easily been done in an hour, but goes through all of that. All of that for nothing. We’re glad he’s okay, but what we’re trying to do is put the realism in here. Here is what happened. These are the things that you need to know about it as new pilots, or even somebody refreshing or maybe you’ve been flying 20 years, we all need to stay fresh on the fact that it can happen to any of us on any given day. In my ground resonance accident, it was 70 degrees out. It was beautiful. It was a sunny day. Everybody was happy. We were in this $1,000,000 aircraft and we’re coming back for a lobster lunch, paid for by the guy who owned the aircraft, and they are all waiting on the ramp. It was a beautiful day and none of us had any clue that it was going to turn into this monstrous thing that was going to rip us apart and throw us all into the ramp. So kudos to Gary for having the guts to jump in there right away and tell the story already about what happened because helicopters get wrecked. Even with the insurance company that we have now he said, “Just because somebody has had an accident, we don’t automatically raise insurance.

We don’t even really raise an eyebrow.” Yes, of course, if you fill out a form to be on the insurance, they are probably going to glance over and see what you said. But he said, “Helicopters get wrecked all the time. Pilots make mistakes and things break. Just because you had an accident doesn’t mean that you’re never going to get a job.” I thought that too and, six months later, I got an EMS job. So because you’ve had an accident, why run away and hide from it? It doesn’t mean you can’t still have a career. I’ve done it. Gary is still going to do it. I just appreciate people that are willing to get in front of the camera and talk about it.



Here’s a neat shot that shows how close I was to a parking lot and that’s where I really wanted to be. Kenny mentioned that he and I did add on a Remote Pilot Rating using the online training and there’s a test you take at the end of the online training. They use IACRA to get your remote pilot certificate. We are going to include it in the course that we sell to remote pilots. We are going to include the same support via text, telephone, and email to answer questions and help people through this because it is a new thing.

The FAA stepped in and made some regulations, and it is not common knowledge. And so, just like we do for our helicopter general aviation students, we are going to be there for our remote pilots. I think we’ll find that a lot of our helicopter pilots will be adding on the Remote Pilot Rating because it’s a neat tool and a neat rating to have in addition. Quite frankly, we’ll probably have some remote pilots that take our course that end up also doing the helicopter ground and getting their general aviation private pilot helicopter license. I wouldn’t be surprised at all. www.helicopterground.com has helped thousands get their helicopter ratings. We want to be able to say the same thing about www.remotepilotonline.com someday.

In going through the process of getting our remote pilot license, we did document exactly what kind of questions we incurred. Part of the support to our members is to give them some feedback to help them know what to expect when they log on, not to mention that all of it’s going to be covered in our videos. Any remote pilot operating for compensation or hire must have this license. If you are not already a rated private pilot or better, then you do have to go to the FAA testing facility like a pilot would for their initial private pilot test. They have to pass this test with 70% or better to get the rating. If you are already a pilot, as we’ve already discussed, it’s an online process.

The definition of a small unmanned aircraft is a remote aircraft that does not exceed 55 pounds and these do have to be registered. I do have a story to tell about my pastor, who you’ll see in some of the pictures and videos that we show of the small unmanned aircraft system. He became interested in it when I told him I was working on this course, and he went and purchased one and registered it. He wanted to be all legal with it. He does not need to be a remote pilot certificated through the FAA because he does not plan on operating it for hire. Although, I do believe he is going to pursue it. He did register it, he got on the phone with me one night and he said, “I thought you said it was $5 to register these drones?” I said, “Yes. It is.” And he said, “Well, I’m trying to register it and it says it’s $24.99.” I said, “Well, look up in your address bar of your browser and does it say FAA.gov?” He said, “No.” So there are companies out there who will gladly do this simple process for you for $24.99 instead of you doing it yourself for $5 on the FAA site. All of them have to be registered, regardless if you’re flying them for fun or if you’re going to use them for hire. The difference is whether you need to be certificated through the FAA.

We are finishing up the video learning course that will include videos on all the topics that you’ll be tested on. We’ve got videos on the use of the FAR/AIM, pilot requirements, registration and pre-flight, initial and recurrent knowledge test, the small unmanned aircraft flight restrictions part one and two. We have in-flight emergencies and how to handle them. We have loading for the small unmanned aircraft, flight planning, airport operations, effects of weather, drugs and alcohol, aeronautical decision making, radio communications, waivers and weather sources. So, whether you’re adding this on by taking the online course and maybe you don’t need all of this, or if you’re going as a non-pilot to a testing facility and you need all of this, it’s all going to be on our site.

Remote Pilot 107 Online Chapter 1

One thing to point out is that, unlike the flight reviews for general aviation where you can find a CFI and he just endorses your book, you do have to go online every couple of years and do the course again, a recurrent test. It's the same with non-private pilots. They will have to go to the FAA testing facility and, once again, pass the recurrent test for the remote pilot certificate, which will include much of the same information. They have to hang onto this knowledge and this course is going to be out there and available for them to use as a refresher.

There are some limitations on the small unmanned aircraft that can get a person in trouble if not adhered to. You have limits on altitudes, for example, speed, operating over people, operating from moving vehicles, etc. Let’s say I’m going to operate for fun. I don’t go take the test, and I don’t study up and do the online course. I could be operating in violation of FAA regulations. Or, worse yet, I could cause a general aviation accident and maybe do it out of pure ignorance because I didn’t take the time to research and know that there are even rules existing. Our course will include all the rules that a remote pilot needs to know and understand.

I’ll tell a quick story. I was at my daughter’s cross country meet recently and one of the parents pulled out a drone and was flying right over the crowd, right over the kids. I don’t know if he had it registered. I didn’t confront him. It wouldn’t be my place to confront him, but he was violating the regulations that are listed in Part 107 for operating his drone, whether it was for hire or not. He probably had no idea. If the FAA was there, could he be in trouble? Sure he could, and if he caused some type of injury or damage to property. He would be likely be fined because he was operating right over people. That is part of 107. You can operate over people, but there are some restrictions and then there are waivers you can apply for. The FAA can give you a waiver to operate outside of the restrictions in part 107. A remote pilot should know that they cannot operate their small unmanned aircraft after the one-half hour of twilight. So, when it gets to be sunset, you have an additional half-hour to operate that small unmanned aircraft and you must have navigation lighting on it. Let’s say a law enforcement agency wanted to use their small unmanned aircraft to patrol a festival at night to make sure nobody is breaking in and stealing from the vendors, for example. They could simply apply and, as long as the FAA felt that that operation seems safe, they could give them a waiver for it. I am sure being a rated remote pilot would be important on any waiver of part 107.

Our course will include courses on all of these things that we discussed. And we’ve taken the test, so we’ll be there to support our members with information that they may need to pass the test. We included 240 actual FAA questions that our members can test themselves with, to make sure that they are ready. We plan to make this course affordable. We looked at some of the other courses out there and tried to come up with a number.

I haven’t found anything for less than $100. Is somebody going to spend $100 to learn how to operate their small unmanned aircraft safely and legally if they are not doing it for hire? Probably not. So we are still up in the air as to what the course will cost. I know we have quite a bit of money in it, and the time it takes to develop and edit the content. We have a genuine concern for safety. Kenny built his helicopter ground course in the interest of pilot safety, it wasn’t to get rich. It’s a true inner desire to make our members safe and to make them good pilots. We’re going to do the same thing for the unmanned aircraft remote pilot section. There is a lot of information out there that needs to be known to stay out of trouble, regardless of whether a person plans to operate for hire and get their license or not.
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In fact, here is a little tidbit on how somebody in a position where you think they would know all the rules and it drives home how this is all new. Our airport manager, in a kidding way, confronted Kenny when he was operating his drone on the Class G airport property out here and said, “Hey, those aren’t allowed on airport property.” And we had to find a tactful way to kindly not offend him and tell him that, “Well, as long as we yield the right of way to all other aircraft, we can.” So, Part 107 lays it out that we can operate at a Class G airport. It’s not illegal. We’re not violating any rules. Here is somebody in charge of an airport that didn’t know, and I don’t fault him for it because it’s all new. It’s all brand new. These things are cropping up everywhere.

A year ago, I thought they were toys when I was approached by the county officer, and here I am with the realization that there are a lot of rules on them and we do need to take them very seriously. I can see a lot of potential for the use of them, especially after my accident a couple days ago.

This course is for those if you’re going to do it professionally and, if you want the license, you need to do more than just figure out the answers so you can go pass the test. We’ve been talking about this. You’re going to see more and more people get violated by the FAA. This is my prediction. The FAA, they have always treated me well. I’ve never had a problem with the FAA, but we know that everything is always a knee-jerk reaction. So, as accidents happen, there is going to be some knee-jerk reactions. As more drones are out there and more violations are happening, I’ll bet you $5 that they are going to get more serious. They are going to start cracking down on these more. It’s going to happen. I think you are going to see these things exploding. You have people going out and buying them and going out there and doing things they shouldn’t be without really digging in and learning the information.

Remote Pilot 107 Online Chapter 1