COA Day Oct 21st: Helping Agencies Learn About and Write COAs

Posted by admin on Sep 22, 2014 at 10:36 am America/Chicago

On Oct 21st, CRASAR will have the first "COA Day"-- a free one day hands-on workshop for agencies to help them with the COA process. CRASAR has over 20 COAs and an emergency COA for fixed and rotor craft UAS. We've been helping agencies on a case by case basis with the process, which has been a drain on Brittany Duncan (our fantastic graduate student and pilot in command who does the real work)-- so we decided to do this as a batch process. Contact kimberly@cse.tamu.edu for the complete flyer (which we will post soon) and the agenda. Here's a short version: Objectives: The purpose of this workshop is to guide fire rescue, law enforcement, and other agencies through the FAA certificate of authorization (COA) and emergency COA process needed to fly small unmanned aerial systems (SUAS). By the end of the day, participants will:

• Complete a COA for their system (or for a mock system) for flying in their jurisdiction
• Become familiar with SUAS, how they have been used, hidden costs such as manpower, maintenance, and training, and issues such as privacy

Organization: The workshop sections will generally be organized as short 10-20 minute lectures by representatives from the FAA Central Service Center and CRASAR, followed by exercises where responders will work on their COAs or on mock COAs. Participants will have pre-workshop homework so that they will have the basic information for a COA on hand. Responders can ask questions and get help either in person or through chat. The preferred form of participation is to come to College Station but there will be a concurrent webinar.  Each participant who completes the workshop will receive a certificate of completion. Free registration: Contact Kimberly@cse.tamu.edu or (979) 845-8737 by Oct. 8 for the registration materials so that we can make sure we have enough space and enough seats for the webinar.  However, we will accept on-site/day-of registration. Who should attend: The workshop is for public agencies only, industry is not permitted at this event (we will be happy to hold a separate event through the Lone Star UASC).  No experience with SUAS or flying is required, the purpose is to serve as a complete introduction to SUAS for homeland security professionals. If you do not have a specific SUAS you are considering, we will have spec sheets on representative SUAS from CRASAR’s Roboticists Without Borders members.