Drone technology — and career opportunities — in spotlight with Baldwin High course, Cradle of Aviation Museum exhibition
Somewhere in America someone just received a package delivered by a drone. Food, medicine, clothes. A birthday present.
Crops are being dusted in a farm field. Not by airplane, but by drone. Scientists are making observations using drones. Movies, television shows and weddings are being filmed using drones.
Earlier this month, the FDNY used a drone to assess the damage caused by a parking garage collapse in lower Manhattan. And to help search for possible survivors.
“All of this,” Joshua Stoff, curator at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Uniondale, said, “was unthinkable just a few years ago. But drones are every place now, and the technology is progressing dramatically, every day, it seems. … It’s like the Jetsons.”
WHAT TO KNOW
- The Cradle of Aviation is hosting “The Future is Now: Drones!” — one of the largest museum exhibitions of unmanned aerial vehicles ever in the United States, with more than a dozen different types of UAVs — or, drones — in a gallery display.
- Students at Baldwin High School are getting a firsthand education in droning in a class that teaches them the ins and outs of drones, and how to operate and fly UAVs.
- Many of the Baldwin students have passed the FAA exam needed to attain their recreational — or, line of sight — licenses to fly a drone.
A drone on display at the "The Future is Now: Drones!" exhibition at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Uniondale. Credit: Newsday / John Valenti
This Saturday marks the annual Federal Aviation Administration Drone Safety Day and next Saturday is International Drone Day. For the next year, the Cradle of Aviation will host “The Future is Now: Drones!” — one of the largest museum exhibitions of unmanned aerial vehicles ever in the United States, with more than a dozen different types of UAVs — or, drones — in a gallery display.
Learn to fly drones
The museum also features an interactive “Drone Zone,” where visitors can test their piloting skills, learning to fly drones.
Just a few miles south of the Cradle of Aviation, as the drone flies, students at Baldwin High School are getting a firsthand education in drones. That class curriculum not only teaches them the ins and outs of drones, but they also learn to operate and fly drones en route to taking exams required to earn them recreational and professional commercial licenses needed to fly drones.
Students Frantz Byron, left, Nichealla Fong-Woo and Amonni Forde fly a drone at Baldwin High School on Friday. Credit: Howard Schnapp
Now in its fifth year, Baldwin school district Superintendent Shari Camhi said Friday that in those drone courses, students were learning the career opportunities associated with droning — from the TV and film industry to utility inspections, agriculture, mining, real estate, mapping, delivery systems and even sporting events that include professional drone racing.
“It’s not just the industry of drones,” Camhi said, “it’s every other career that will be impacted … Here at Baldwin, we’d like to think of ourselves as future-focused. Everything we do in our education system really has a focus on the future. This is one example of that.”
On Friday, students in the drone program, many of whom already have passed the FAA exam needed to attain their recreational — or, line of sight — licenses to fly a UAV, showed off their skills as they operated small, frisbee-size drones through an obstacle course in the high school lobby.
“What we do,” said Anthony DeAngelis, 38, who teaches Introduction to Drones, “is not only teach where you can and cannot fly but also, ‘How do you fly with precision, how do you fly with safety?’ The do’s and don'ts.”
'A different perspective'
Ninth-grader Frantz Byron, 15, said he took the class on the recommendation of a guidance counselor and said that while he is unsure if drones would play a part in a career choice — he is interested in science and coding — he was certain he would use what he had learned to fly drones for recreation. He has already passed his FAA exam and has a recreational license.
“When you’re flying you see things from a different perspective,” Byron said. “You see everything from a different perspective.”
Baldwin High senior Nichealla Fong-Woo practices flying a drone at the school Friday. Credit: Howard Schnapp
Senior Nichealla Fong-Woo, 17, who also has a recreational line-of-sight license, said she had owned drones for many years — and had even used them to shoot a family wedding.
“I love taking pictures with a drone,” she said. “Still pictures and video. It’s amazing what you can do.”
Though Fong-Woo plans to study biology at St. Thomas Aquinas College in upstate Orangeburg, she also plans to keep the door open on career and recreational drone-related options.
“I would continue using one for fun, at the very least,” she said.
Junior Amonni Forde, 16, doesn’t have a learner’s permit yet to drive a car. But she does have her recreational drone license.
“I think I’m pretty good at it,” she said, when asked about her drone piloting skills. “Better at it than I think I’d be as a driver.”
From all she has learned, Forde said, she is certain that drones will bring untold changes to daily life.
“I think drones are going to have a big impact on my life and the lives of my friends,” she said. “They’re changing the world.”
Drones have evolved
Drone-related industries won’t just involve operating drones and flying them, Stoff said, but also jobs related to their design, construction, maintenance — and even the coding needed to program their uses. Those roles won’t just be in civilian operations.
“Right now,” Stoff said, “what you’re seeing in the Ukraine is the first drone war.”
In fact, one of the UAVs on display as part of the Cradle of Aviation exhibition is a nano drone that can be pinched between a forefinger and thumb and is carried by soldiers in a belly pack. It can be operated on the battlefield, day or night with infrared night-vision capabilities — and is already in use by armed forces of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Norway, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, Turkey, South Africa, Algeria and the Netherlands.
“It’s really advanced tech,” Stoff said. “But it’s just another example of how drones have evolved, even within the last five years. There’s such a wide variety of drones, all shapes and sizes. Some drones look like a helicopter, some like an airplane. There are military drones, civilian drones, scientific drones, delivery drones. We have drones that carry weapons and drones that deliver pizza.
“Drones really are the future.”
John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”
