Getting a PFCO License with Airborne Platforms LTD
In June last year I posted this photo of Thurlestone Beach in Devon on my Instagram account.
89 Likes, 11 Comments - Charlie Woodall (@woodallc26) on Instagram: "South Devon sunrise 🌄"
Soon after I received a DM from the local hotel who liked the pic so much they wanted to buy it. How exciting, I thought, I can get rich off this and quit my job. So I Googled “how much to charge for a drone photo” and soon discovered I could not in fact sell it at all, as I did not possess a PfCO (Permission for Commercial Operations). This certificate is provided by the CAA and prevents anyone from making financial or any other kind of gain from use of a drone without having the qualification. So I didn’t sell the photo, but I did look into courses to get a PfCO.
There seemed to be plenty of options, but most involved a 2-3 day intensive course in the region of £1200-£1400 payable in a one off hit, which is a fair whack given I had no idea if I’d really even use it or recoup any of the investment if nobody else ever asked to buy a photo again. I also have an attention span of about 9 minutes, so spending 3 days in a classroom didn’t seem the best use of my time compared to learning at my own pace at home (or work).
So I left it for a bit, and then the same thing happened again when I posted another photo a couple of months later and I looked into it once more.
This time, I found Airborne Platforms somewhere near the top of Google. What they offered was a remote learning course which could be bought in chunks over 6 different sections. This was more like it, and they offer a free trial of the first section to see how you like the way it works.
I did the free trial, and it all made sense and seemed to be a more practical way to learn than losing 3 days and a load of moolah at a course, so I went ahead and purchased the first module, PFCO1000. The online learning hub looks like this, with each module broken down into a series of short sections with quizzes at the end of each one to test your learning, and longer quizzes at the end of each module covering everything, and also replicating the kind of questions you face in the actual exam at the end of the course.
This content all lives on an easy to use digital hub. The main content is in a non-downloadable format, understandably, to protect their IP, but there are a number of PDFs available for further reading with each module.
The course content is both broad and thorough. A lot of the theory is the same you are required to learn to gain an actual pilot’s license from the CAA, so can be pretty heavy hitting and detailed. Some of this is fascinating, including things like weather patterns, navigation,and mapping systems, particularly if, like me, you enjoyed GCSE Geography in your past. As much as there are interesting things, there’s also some parts which are necessarily detail driven such as learning the specific differences between a MATZ, an ATZ and an AIAA and the implications they have on where you can fly, how high and who you need to speak to before you do. You also need to know your ANO2016 from your CAP722. But none of it is actually that complex in itself, things like this are generally a string of logical processes which are put in place to ensure safety rather than something which makes your brain hurt.
Once you work your way through the 6 modules, which can take weeks or months depending on how fast you want to do it, you end up at PFCO6000 which requires you to complete your own Operations Manual. This is a document which details absolutely everything about your drone flying business, from what you plan to do, how you will mitigate risk at every step of the process, what you will do before, during and after every flight and a whole lot more in between. This is quite overwhelming at the start, however there are a number of templates available both within the course and online which can provide you with a good outline of what is required here and help you structure it in the way it needs to be presented. My Ops Manual ended up being a solid 48 pages long once it was complete, with around half of that being images and tables in the appendix which covered things like the pre-flight checks, log books and emergency procedures.
It’s worth noting that throughout this whole process there’s help at hand from the team at UAV Platforms, in particular Chris who was really helpful with any questions I had, particularly around the Ops Manual.
With this complete, the only thing left is the Practical test. These guys are based near Peterborough, so I booked a date in for early April and headed up on the train from London with my bike to get it done. First up you need to complete a closed book theory test which covers the entire course syllabus over 60 multiple choice questions. With some revision and practice on the mock exams, you should be able to pass this exam without too much trouble. I got two wrong, which left me with 97% and a pass.
The practical element of the test is conducted a short drive away into the countryside. Before you come for the test, you can read a brief on the online material about the defined task at hand. For me it was to survey a nearby field to assess it’s suitability for the installation of a solar panel array. Despite this brief, you actually don’t need to complete this survey on the day. What the brief gives you is enough direction to be able to conduct all of your pre-flight risk assessments and surveys which allow you to demonstrate you understand the procedures involved. This includes things like checking OS maps to see if there are any Gas Venting Sites or bridleways nearby, using NATS to see if there are any airfields nearby with specific warnings for the day, using Google Earth to identify any ground level hazards like radio masts and spotting human activity such as a Pick Your Own farm which was near the flying field. You put all this info into your risk assessment template and then establish how you will mitigate each one to make sure your flight is as safe as possible. Most of this is pretty obvious once you work out what you’re doing, but the course tutors are there to help if you need it, like I did, to get it right.
Once at the flying field, you need to run through all your pre-flight procedures, such as a visual on-site survey to complement the pre-flight survey and see if there are any new hazards or risks which you couldn’t spot online such as new radio masts not yet photographed on Google Earth, or a small airfield on a nearby farm which I hadn’t noticed previously.
With this complete, you are nearly ready to fly. You need to take the examiner (who plays both the role of client and observer) through all your emergency procedures as detailed in the Ops Manual, brief them on the task at hand and ensure every procedure has been followed.
The flight test involves following a number of pre-defined flight paths such as figure of 8s, squares and oval ellipses. I learnt that my banked turns need a bit of practice to perfect, but as long as you fly in a safe and controlled manner, you should have no issue passing this part of the test. During the flying test you will be asked to do a couple of emergency procedures, where the examiner will say something like “your drone is on fire” and you then run through the process of what you would do in that situation, fortunately without the bit where your expensive toy helicopter plunges from the sky in a fireball.
With that safely negotiated, you should be on the brink of owning your PfCO. After the practical test, there’s still some hoops to jump through with the CAA. You need to send in your Ops Manual, Insurance documents, the various certificates you gain from the process to show you have passed both theory and practical elements and then wait for them to approve everything. You also need to purchase and prove ownership of some basic safety equipment as detailed in your Ops Manual, which includes things like a fire extinguisher, cones, boundary tape and warning signs that you will need to mark out things like your take off point on a commercial operation.
So that’s that, license in the bag (after 6 weeks wait and a minor tweak to the Ops Manual, they definitely read every single word of the thing!). Now how to use it? It lasts 12 months before needing a renewal so I guess there’s going to be a follow up post around then….
It’s worth noting there are some changes on the horizon. The EASA (European air space people) have something in the pipeline which will supercede the CAA and therefore the PfCO. The precise impact of this still seems to be a bit of a mystery. The CAA have issued a document called CAP1789 which is 32 pages long and outlines how the commercial drone market in the UK could look after June 2020, but I’ve not studied it in too much detail, and nobody really seems to know exactly what it will mean. Worth a google for the latest before you dive in head first for your PfCO.
Let me know any questions below. It was pretty much a blind process I went into at the start so would be more than happy to answer anything if you want to know more about it.