Some time ago (in the knee jerk style of many things in the RAFAC), use of drones on Squadrons was banned, pending (presumably), some kind of complex training syllabus from 2FTS or other team.
Since a questionnaire in August last year there has been radio silence.
Anyone have any ideas what’s actually going on now?
As a Squadron we own around £4000 of DJI drone kit, and had been successfully delivering training to our cadets, it was a great tool, fitted very well in ASTRA, and was an opportunity to provide training in something the cadets would actually enjoy. It’s therefore frustrating that we’ve been unable to do anything for a long time.
This ties in to aerospace.laser’s “Cadet Drone Flying Courses” whereby she guides cadets through the CAA Drone Code and waits for them to complete the 40 question quiz to get their official Flyer ID.
She’s catagoric that nothing will be coming out until atleast next year.
Personally I encourage units to but BetaFPV Cetus kits because they are perfect to flying indoors and you’d struggle to hurt a cadet with one.
Brilliant….so exactly what we were already doing, but now we needed to wait 2 years for someone else to claim the credit….(and no doubt a Pat on the back commendation)….standard for this organisation.
I’ve really enjoyed playing with it, and it takes knocks against walls etc without any damage (so far). rig up some hoops or flags etc to fly through and you can have a lot of fun.
It’s certainly worthwhile buying the extra batteries as you only for 3-4 min of flight and they take longer than that to charge up!
The point being that what happens in my Region/Wing is nothing to do with LASER, despite what they may think, the world doesn’t revolve around them. Quite why this isn’t a HQAC lead thing I don’t know.
I don’t see why this organisation is so far behind the rest of the world in this sort of thing.
Real world solution: calling notice for SME’s, meeting(s), plan, design, deliver, evaluate, review.
RAFAC: ban, hear about someone through the 2FTS grapevine who’s doing it, ask them to deliver something, wait out for years, shoddy product arrives, all SME’s moan as the product isn’t fit for purpose.
We’ve also got a really good (and expensive) drone, locked in a cupboard. We were operating perfectly well within BMFA rules and insurance, until the ban. With several aviation professionals and pilots on the Sqn, we were well aware of the issues and how to operate.
I’m told that the group looking at future drone flying in RAFAC are considering everyone having to do A2 training, rather than using the BMFA approach. Seems unnecessary and over complicated to me, although it could work well if the training is sufficiently available and deliverable.
I just want cadets to be able to fly a drone again, which is (was) the most affordable and accessible flying experience for them.
Although a means of Cadets and CFAV being able to access A2 through RAFAC would be a good additional for some progressive training on Drones, however I doubt that will come in…
