Has anyone obtained, or considering obtaining a commerical UAV Operator's Certificate (OC) here in Australia? I am interested in peoples experience in obtaining an OC, and any challenges they may have faced.
More info regarding the OC here:www.casa.gov.au
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Hi Michael, I have spoken to Phil Presgrave at CASA regarding this - he was extremely helpful with information, it seems that CASA is in a bit of a limbo state at the moment - they are (were) currently working on a more formal means of integrating UAVs in the national airspace and as a result some of the controller licensing was very heavily based on normall aircraft licensing... Phil said they were working on streamlining this to make it easier for UAV operators and controllers to become licensed without the traditional overhead of a PPL etc.
Most of the work required for licensing will be in the paperwork, manuals, safety procedures and log books etc. I have been doing a bit of research in this area but haven't yet produced any documents. I was thinking it might be interesting to produce an opensource set of documentation that could be used as a baseline for people wanting to proceed down this path.