AOPA’s Unmanned Aircraft and the National Airspace System Online Course.

From the traditional enemy of the unmanned aircraft world an awareness course for pilots. Doe’s this represent a softening of attitudes or just an acceptance of the inevitable?

What are unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)? Are they safe? How will they affect your flying? In this course, we’ll go behind the scenes of UAS operations and explore various scenarios to illustrate how you and UAS can safely coexist in our National Airspace System.

http://flash.aopa.org/asf/unmannedaircraft/index.cfm

A free online registration is required and although the course is very much tipped towards the usual sUAS types it is well laid out and should be of interest to anybody flying UA in America. For many people building and flying their own platforms it might even be the first time they see the proposed bins laid out. Much of this was spoken about before and during ARC 1.0 but of course now we don’t really know what is going on behind closed doors. The thing that caught my eye was the 200′ ceiling for sub 20lb airframes. That really is not high enough for decent overlap whilst taking images for GIS. Still the industry is advising them ;-) so I am sure they are aware of that.

All in all an interesting 10 minutes well done AOPA!