Day 1: Drone Pilot

1. Day 1 (today) — Flight School. Get certified, fly a quad.
2. Day 2 — Code the Mission. Program autonomous flight + ground robotics.
3. Day 3 — Humanitarian Drones + AI. Design a real delivery mission.
4. Day 4 — Drone Startup Pitch. Build a company. Pitch it.

This isn't a Woven Learning quiz. It's a Federal Aviation Administration test. The cert you earn in the next 45 minutes is the same one a 40-year-old hobbyist in Redding has to carry. Take it seriously, keep it forever.

1. On your phone, go to trust.modelaircraft.com. (Pilot Institute is one of the FAA's approved free test administrators.)
2. Click Start the FREE TRUST Test.
3. Enter your real name (matches your school records) and an email you can actually check today. Your certificate is emailed to that address.
4. Don't have email handy? Borrow your partner's phone for now — we'll fix the cert problem before Day 4.

The test has 7 short sections. Each section has 3–5 pages of reading, then 1–8 quick questions. Read the section before answering — the questions come straight from the text.

If you get a question wrong, that's fine. TRUST is "answer-until-correct" — it explains the right answer, then asks you again. You can't fail. But you do have to actually read the material to finish in under 45 minutes.

1. At the end you'll get a PDF cert with your name on it. Screenshot it now. Don't trust the email — screenshot it.
2. Save the screenshot somewhere you won't lose it — Google Drive, Photos, email to yourself.
3. Show your cert to Rich. He'll check you off. You're now FAA-certified.

• Propellers spin fast enough to cut skin. Hands away from the drone whenever the props are spinning.
• Never grab a drone out of the air. Tell it to land. Wait.
• Eyes on your own drone. If you're not the pilot, you're the spotter — eyes up, calling obstacles.
• When Rich calls "PROPS DOWN," every drone lands. No exceptions, no last try.
• No flying near faces. No flying near the basketball hoops. No flying at people.

Rich will hold up a Tello and walk you through:

• Propellers — two spin clockwise, two counter. Don't mix them up if one breaks.
• Battery slot — slides in one way only. Don't force it.
• Power button — one press. Wait for the LED to pulse.
• Camera + vision sensors — the bottom camera is what keeps the drone stable. Keep it clean.
• LED status light — green = ready, blinking yellow = pairing, red = problem.

• 1 Tello drone, numbered 1–20 (that's your drone today — remember the number)
• 2 charged batteries
• 1 phone with the Tello app already installed
• 📋 Pilot's Log (1 per pair)
• 2 paper landing targets (cross taped to the gym floor)

1. Find your partner. Pick a Pilot (flies the drone) and a Spotter (eyes on the drone, calls obstacles, watches the battery).
2. You swap roles every 5 minutes. Spotter is not "the boring job" — Rich is watching how good a spotter you are, because real drone teams need both.
3. Write your drone number, your name, your partner's name on the Pilot's Log.

1. Slide a charged battery into your drone. Press power. LED pulses amber.
2. On your phone: Settings → WiFi. Find TELLO-XXXXXX in the list. Tap it.
3. Your phone may say "no internet." That's fine — drones don't need internet.
4. Open the Tello app. You should see a live video feed from the drone's front camera.
5. If you don't see the feed, check that you're on the Tello WiFi (not the school WiFi). 80% of "my drone won't work" is this.

Put the drone on the floor in your station, props clear of any furniture, and stand back about 4 feet.

1. Tap "Takeoff." The drone climbs to about 4 feet and hovers. Don't touch the joysticks.
2. Watch it hover for 10 seconds. The drone is using its bottom camera to hold position — that's why it can hover indoors without GPS.
3. Tap "Land." The drone descends slowly and stops.
4. Switch pilot/spotter roles. Do it again.
5. Each pilot completes 3 clean takeoffs and landings before moving on. Mark them on the Pilot's Log.

A drone moves in six directions: up, down, left, right, forward, back. Plus two rotations: yaw left, yaw right. The left joystick controls up/down + yaw. The right joystick controls forward/back + left/right.

You will overshoot. Everyone overshoots. Tellos respond to tiny joystick pressure. Light touch. If your drone is bouncing all over the gym, you're squeezing the stick like a video game controller — relax your thumbs.

Two paper targets are taped to the gym floor at your station — one near, one far.

1. Takeoff from the near target.
2. Fly to the far target. Hover over it.
3. Land. Score: how close to center? Perfect = within 6 inches.
4. Repeat. Each pilot gets 5 tries. Mark your best score.

Rich will call two groups of four out to the football field today to fly the big drone — a DJI Phantom 4. That's a $1,200 professional aircraft. You'll feel the difference: it's loud, it's stable in wind, it has a real 4K camera. Each group gets ~15 minutes outside. When your name is called, follow Rich. Spotter handles the Tello while their partner is outside.

1. Earned a real federal aviation certificate. It's in your email and on your phone. Don't lose it.
2. Flew a drone manually. Not pretended. Actually did it.
3. Did the same drill the Zipline pilots and Cal Fire crews do during recurrent training.

Day 2 you stop touching the joystick. You'll write code — actual block-based code — that tells the drone where to fly, by itself. No pilot. The drone takes off, flies a pattern you wrote, and lands. We're also bringing in RoboMaster ground robots for a search-and-rescue station.

Take a Post-it. Write the answer to one of these. Stick it on the gym door on your way out.

• What was the hardest part of flying?
• What's one drone job you'd actually want?
• What surprised you about the TRUST test?