Keentune

Drone Operations curriculum

9 chapters
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160 concepts
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free
Everything the adaptive question bank can teach and test in Drone Operations, from foundations through advanced practice. Work through it in order, or start practising and let the questions find your level.
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A free 13-minute primer — the mental model, the mistakes beginners make, and what to practise first.
A. Airspace
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A (FL180+, no sUAS), B, C, D, E-surface need authorization; G uncontrolled, none needed.
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700/1,200 AGL E floors: why a 400-ft op under an E-aloft floor needs no authorization.
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Prohibited, restricted, warning, MOA, alert, controlled firing areas; National Security UAS restrictions.
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Stadium/wildfire/VIP TFRs and NOTAMs — check before every flight.
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Runway numbers = magnetic heading ÷ 10 (+ reciprocal), traffic pattern, CTAF/UNICOM, segmented circle/wind sock, towered vs non-towered.
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The tiered "inverted wedding cake" around the busiest airports, and why every layer of it needs authorization.
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The surface ring plus shelf structure, described in radius and altitude rather than read off a chart.
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A single surface cylinder around a towered airport, sized to contain its instrument approaches.
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Airspace that changes class when the tower closes, and what that does to the authorization requirement.
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Uncontrolled airspace needs no authorization — and changes none of the other operating rules.
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sUAS limits are AGL while airspace boundaries are usually MSL; converting with field elevation is the recurring step.
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Reading a ceiling and a floor as a band, and recognising when an operation sits under a floor rather than inside the airspace.
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The veil around the busiest airports, what it requires of manned aircraft, and what it signals to an sUAS operator.
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IR and VR routes, their naming convention, and the low-altitude high-speed traffic they carry.
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Standing national-security restrictions and how they differ from a temporary flight restriction.
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The special flight rules area around the national capital region and its inner ring.
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Wildlife-refuge advisory altitudes and park-service launch restrictions: not airspace, still binding on the operation.
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A chart is a snapshot and a notice is current; which one settles a question about today's flight.
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Turning "what airspace am I in" into "do I need an authorization, and for what altitude and window".
B. Weather sources & decoding
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Station/time (Z), wind ddff(Ggg)KT/VRB, visibility SM (M = less than), ceiling = lowest BKN/OVC, sky covers, temp/dewpoint spread, altimeter, present-weather codes.
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Forecast valid period; FM/BECMG/TEMPO/PROB groups.
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Is this METAR legal for Part 107 minimums? Multi-step visibility + cloud-clearance + gust chains (computed family).
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Zulu to local and back, including the date rollover that makes a report look stale when it is not.
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The routine hourly observation versus the special issued when conditions change enough to matter.
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What lives in the remarks section, and the items there that change a low-altitude decision.
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Clear, few, scattered, broken, overcast — and which of them can constitute a ceiling.
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Ceiling as the lowest broken or overcast layer, or vertical visibility into an obscuration.
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A converging spread as the fog and low-cloud predictor, hours before the fog exists.
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The altimeter setting in the report, and what a falling setting says about the trend.
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Steady wind, gust groups and variable wind, and turning a gust spread into a go decision.
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Issue time, valid period and the airport-specific scope of a terminal forecast.
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FM, BECMG, TEMPO and PROB: how each modifies the prevailing line rather than replacing the forecast.
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Advisories for widespread and severe hazards, and which parts reach the altitudes an sUAS flies.
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Pilot reports as the only direct observation aloft; reading the routine fields and weighing the source.
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Forecast winds and temperatures aloft, and the lowest usable level near the surface.
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Official briefing sources versus a consumer weather app, and why the difference shows up in the decision record.
C. Weather theory
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High/hot/humid → thinner air → worse performance; pressure altitude and the standard atmosphere (15°C / 29.92 inHg).
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Stable: stratiform, steady precip, smooth, poor visibility. Unstable: cumuliform, showery, turbulent, good visibility; lapse-rate judgment.
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Smooth air, trapped haze/fog, possible wind shear at the top.
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Radiation (clear calm nights) vs advection (warm moist air over cool surface, needs wind) vs upslope vs steam; frost formation.
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Three ingredients, three stages; microbursts, gust fronts, virga; stay well clear (20 NM severe).
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Sea/land breeze, mechanical turbulence, wind shear, mountain wave/lenticular, surface friction, wake turbulence.
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Visible moisture at/below freezing; effect on lift, weight, drag.
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Composition and layers, and why everything that matters to a drone happens in the troposphere.
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Highs and lows, the vertical motion in each, and the weather each generally brings.
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Circulation around highs and lows, and why surface friction turns the wind relative to the flow aloft.
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Isobar spacing as wind-speed information, without needing to see the chart.
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Cold-front structure and speed, and the narrow band of vigorous weather that rides it.
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Warm-front structure and the long band of stratiform cloud, poor visibility and steady precipitation ahead of it.
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Stationary and occluded fronts, and the persistent conditions they park over a site.
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Wind shift, temperature change, pressure trend and precipitation change as the observable markers.
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Relative humidity, dewpoint and the saturation mechanism behind every cloud and fog.
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Cloud families by height and form, and what each form says about stability.
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Drizzle, rain, freezing rain, ice pellets and snow, and what each implies about the temperature profile aloft.
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Fog, haze, smoke, blowing dust and precipitation as distinct causes with distinct behaviour.
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Standard lapse rate versus the actual profile, and how the comparison sets stability.
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Uneven surface heating, thermals over different terrain, and the low-level turbulence they produce.
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Upslope and downslope flow, lee-side downdraft and rotor, and their scale relative to a small aircraft.
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Frost, ice and standing water on an airframe and what a small change in weight and surface does to lift.
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Hail, lightning and gust fronts well outside the storm's visible boundary.
D. Loading & performance
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CG too far forward/aft; max gross weight; density-altitude interplay; computed moment decisions.
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Bank angle raises load factor and stall speed (30°≈1.15G, 45°≈1.4G, 60°≈2G); √n stall-speed rise (computed family).
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LiPo fire risk, damaged packs, cold-weather voltage sag, heat aging, storage/transport practices.
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Added weight raises the power required, shortens endurance and eats the climb and recovery margin.
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Trading payload against flight time, and why the trade steepens near maximum weight.
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An off-centre load makes a multirotor fight itself: the tell in flight, and the fix on the ground.
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Weight × arm = moment; deciding whether a loaded configuration stays inside limits.
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The manufacturer's maximum takeoff weight, and what exceeding it costs before it costs control.
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Hot, high and humid cuts available thrust while raising the power needed just to hover.
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A multirotor is more efficient in forward flight than in a hover, which changes mission planning.
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A tailwind out and a headwind back is the classic battery-reserve trap.
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Descending into your own downwash: the symptoms and the lateral, not vertical, recovery.
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Nicks, imbalance and mismatched pitch as thrust loss and vibration, not cosmetic damage.
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Keeping thrust headroom for gusts and recovery instead of flying at full power.
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Voltage sag under load, why percentage remaining is not linear, and how reserve should be set.
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Cold reduces usable capacity; heat ages the pack and raises failure risk.
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Storage charge, cycle counting, and retiring a swollen, dropped or damaged pack.
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Charging supervision, surfaces, and the fire behaviour that drives every one of these rules.
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The controller and the mobile device as their own power, thermal and brightness failure points.
E. Physiology & aeronautical decision-making
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The IMSAFE self-check; dehydration/heat stress; medication judgment; CO from generators.
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Systematic sector scanning, night off-center viewing, ~30-min dark adaptation, empty-field myopia.
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Acute vs chronic fatigue; hyperventilation vs hypoxia symptoms.
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Anti-authority, impulsivity, invulnerability, macho, resignation — and each antidote.
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PAVE, 3P/DECIDE, risk = likelihood × severity, hazard vs risk, SRM/CRM with the VO, plan-continuation bias, the error chain.
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Lost-link/flyaway failsafes, situational awareness, automation complacency, crew briefing, control transfer.
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Heat stress and dehydration across a long field day, and the judgment they quietly degrade.
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Cold costing dexterity and attention before the operator notices anything is wrong.
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How common medications can affect alertness and vision — framed generally, never as medical advice.
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Impairment that outlasts the legal interval, and why the rule is a floor rather than a clearance.
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Generators and vehicle exhaust at a work site as a real CO source for a ground crew.
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Sustained noise as a fatigue input over a long operating day.
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Size and distance illusions when judging an aircraft against an empty sky.
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Sun position and bright backgrounds as the most common way an aircraft is lost visually.
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Distance along the line of sight is the weakest axis of human vision — the reason VLOS has practical limits well inside legal ones.
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Attention locked on the screen while the airspace goes unwatched.
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Recognising saturation and shedding tasks deliberately before the operation sheds them for you.
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Bystanders and interruptions as the most common ground hazard on a commercial job.
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Perception, comprehension and projection — and which level actually fails in most incidents.
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Turning likelihood and severity into a decision rather than a feeling.
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Eliminate, reduce, or accept — and recording which one you chose and why.
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Applying pilot, aircraft, environment and external pressures to the specific job in front of you.
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Client and schedule pressure as the most reliable predictor of a bad go decision.
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Setting minimums before the day starts, and honouring them with the client standing there.
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Debriefing every operation so the next one inherits the lesson instead of repeating it.
F. Radio communication & ATC services
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The common traffic advisory frequency at a non-towered airport and the self-announce practice around it.
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UNICOM as an advisory service run by a ground station, not a control service.
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Automatic terminal information service, its letter code, and what quoting the letter actually asserts.
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Automated surface observing systems and their continuous broadcast as a local weather source.
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Monitoring an advisory frequency purely for awareness when the operation has no reason to transmit.
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Standard position-report structure: who you are, where you are, what you are doing, what you intend.
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Contacting the controlling facility about an authorization, and what an authorization does NOT excuse.
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Flight service as the briefing and notice channel, and what a standard briefing includes.
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Notice categories, and which ones a low-altitude operation genuinely has to read.
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Extracting effective times, altitudes, radius and centre from a restriction's text.
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When a radio station licence is and is not required for a domestic operation.
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Control-link and video-link interference sources, and the site discipline that avoids them.
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Losing contact with the visual observer, and the pre-briefed action that follows automatically.
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Declaring an emergency, what deviation authority it confers, and what it obliges afterwards.
G. Maintenance & preflight inspection
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The manufacturer's maintenance instructions as the baseline programme, and what to do when there aren't any.
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Scheduled intervals versus repair driven by an observed condition, and why both are needed.
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What to record after maintenance, and why a record you cannot reconstruct later is not a record.
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Arms, shell, fasteners, cracks and evidence of previous repair.
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Propeller inspection and secure attachment — the single highest-consequence item on the checklist.
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Bearing feel, debris, and motor mounting security.
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Controller condition, antenna position, screen legibility and device state before power-up.
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Battery condition, connector condition and charge for the planned mission plus reserve.
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Compass and inertial calibration, satellite acquisition, and the environments that corrupt both.
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Firmware currency, and the specific risk of updating on site immediately before a job.
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Payload attachment, balance and cable routing as an airworthiness item, not an accessory.
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Post-flight checks that catch damage before it becomes the next flight's failure.
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Retiring propellers, batteries and connectors on condition or on count rather than on appearance.
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Deciding whether a discrepancy grounds the aircraft, and documenting the decision either way.
H. Emergency procedures & contingency planning
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Configured failsafe behaviour — hover, return, or land — and knowing which one is set before takeoff.
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The return altitude and the obstacle the aircraft will climb into if it was set from the wrong reference.
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Immediate actions when the aircraft stops responding, including who gets notified and when.
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Behaviour and handling when satellite navigation degrades, and flying without position hold.
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Low and critical battery behaviour, and landing on your decision rather than the aircraft's.
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Partial thrust loss on a multirotor, and how much controllability remains by airframe type.
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Loss of the controller or its display, and the pre-briefed handover that keeps the aircraft flown.
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Losing sight of the aircraft, and the immediate action that is not "keep flying and hope".
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Yield immediately and descend; the priority order when a manned aircraft appears without warning.
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Selecting and briefing landing areas before takeoff rather than searching for one under pressure.
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Battery fire on the ground or after a crash, and why containment comes before recovery.
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Securing the site, injury response, and preserving what the investigation will need.
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Deviating as required to meet an in-flight emergency, and the report that can follow.
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Briefing contingencies before flight so the response is recall under stress, not invention.
I. Site survey & operational planning
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Surveying obstacles, surfaces, people, access and egress before anything is unpacked.
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Towers, wires, cranes and guy wires — the hazards hardest to see from the control station.
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Choosing, marking and controlling the takeoff and landing zone.
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Keeping non-participants out of the operating area, and the plan for when someone walks in anyway.
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Verifying airspace class, authorization status and restrictions for the actual site and the actual time.
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Planning against the forecast window and fixing a cut-off time before the day starts.
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Sun angle, shadow and last light as schedule constraints, not photographic preferences.
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Assigning remote PIC, control manipulator and visual observer explicitly rather than by assumption.
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What the pre-flight briefing must cover before anyone touches a controller.
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How the crew will talk, and the fallback when the primary method fails mid-flight.
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Altitude, route and duration planned against battery, airspace and visual-line-of-sight limits together.
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Landowner permission and responsible imagery handling as questions separate from airspace authority.
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What to have on site: certificate, registration evidence, authorization or waiver, and the checklist itself.
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Using a written checklist instead of memory, and the specific error classes it reliably catches.
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