(Un-)Crewed Operations
California
I lead sUAS operations and stan/eval for the California Wing of the Civil Air Patrol / USAF Auxiliary, as well as training for our FLIR sensor operations.
Stan/eval refers to training standards and evaluations, to ensure consistency of knowledge and proficiency.
Karin is one of the most technically competent, professional, and hard-working people I’ve ever worked with and learned from. Her leadership and mentoring skills are superb. I have had the pleasure of serving with her in Civil Air Patrol as she led the advancement of our small unmanned aerial systems (SUAS) program within California for several years now.
sUAS Operations and Stan/Eval.
All of our operations are under part 107, and we have an incredible more than 140 part 107 pilots in the Wing. Training includes knowledge as well as basic flight proficiency and mission-oriented training, both before “mission pilot” rating completion and additional advanced training after someone earns their rating.
For safety, we require visual observers (“technicians”) for each flight. Technicians follow their own training track. I encourage cross-training and many of our team members are rated in both. In fact, I encourage cross-training to additional ground team ratings, to help keep our members safe when training or conducting missions in for example the mountainous terrain of California.
I’m happy that we now have instructor pilots in all but one of our groups and check pilots in most of them. Many thanks go to my team of 3 (4 if I include myself) check pilot examiners across the state.
In keeping with our overall mission, we train primarily for disaster relief (primarily imaging) and search and rescue / SAR and fly a combination of “blue list” sUAS and others. Most of our UAS are multi-copters, with a few fixed wing.
We have also incorporated the NIST standards for assessment of basic flight proficiency (not the same as mission-based) into our training procedures. Plus, they are fun!
FLIR Sensor (Crewed Aircraft)
On the crewed aircraft side, I’m in charge of training for our FLIR sensor enabled aircraft. Although I have that title, in reality I co-lead the program with another highly capable member! We develop and deliver training for all of our aircrew members participating in missions using this sensor.
I try to only talk about aspects of our missions and equipment that can be found elsewhere online. Since I can’t find anything from California Wing, here is instead an example of an old article from Wyoming Wing – looks like they at the time had two aircraft with (much) older versions of these sensors!