written by Greg Barnes
In the beginning of February, we published a blog post about our brand new intern, Josh Hauge, and how his internship was just beginning. Less than 1 month later, we posted about how Josh passed his Part 107 exam and became an FAA-certified remote pilot! (Feel free to go back and check out those blog posts.) Today, we are excited to announce that Josh’s internship has been completed, and we are very happy with his work!
As we said in our blog post announcing the start of his internship, “Josh does not know any drone regulations and is only somewhat familiar with the capabilities of what a drone can do (and that’s only because he watched some of our videos online!). He has never flown a drone and is not familiar with any aspect of the inner working of drone operations.” That was true. And wow, does time change things!
We started Josh out with learning FAA aviation and sUAS (drone) rules and regulations — a thorough preparation for his Part 107 exam, which he passed with flying colors.
After that, we got Josh onto a drone flight simulator. He flew both cinematic and FPV drones virtually. This way, he learned drone flight controls and became quite talented at controlling a drone without ever putting any drone, property, or lives at risk.
Once he became proficient on the simulator, we had Josh take off using a real one! Now it was time for him to practice with a real drone some of the same maneuvers he’d mastered in the simulator.
But it wasn’t all manual flight: Josh also watched us and assisted in a number of our autonomous drone missions — flights that are directly controlled by a computer. With these missions, Josh learned everything that goes into planning and executing an autonomous flight, and during the flights themselves, he assisted us as a VO (visual observer).
Finally, Josh was ready to take on a behemoth of a project: An orthomosaic mapping mission of the entire University of Guam campus. As the RPIC (remote pilot in command), it was Josh’s responsibility to lead the project and ensure operational safety. Josh did a great job on his mapping mission and even stayed a few hours late so he could work on the post-processing. The finished product — the full-resolution, extremely high-quality orthomosaic map of University of Guam — is absolutely stunning.
We are thrilled that Josh was here with us and with all that he learned, and we are so pleased with the job he did — not just on the orthomosaic map, but on everything overall.
Please watch the fun video we put together commemorating Josh’s internship and featuring him at different stages in his drone journey!
blog written by
Greg Barnes
Operations Manager, 2cofly
(671) 689-7939
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