CASA (Australian) UAV controller / operator certificate

dazzab

Member
+1. Completed my RPAS certification course with FPV Australia today (that's Fly Photograph Video not FPV flying). I can't recommend the course enough for anyone in Australia. Very relevant, great opportunity to meet others working in the same industry and presented in an interesting and professional manner. John Fleming who runs the company and has been in RC forever is one switched on individual.

So now I'm off to start the paper work maze of obtaining an Operator's Certificate for my little one man business so I can finally get out there and do some interesting projects. As they say, stay tuned...
 

Rentakill

Member
The price of the training is actually more than $1,000 less than the other two providers of the RPAS course in Australia. And it's the only training to date in Australia that is multlirotor based. So right now, it's very good value. I'm signed up to take it in October and can't wait. I don't know any training that includes the OC application but most of them do include guidance on how to complete the process required to obtain an OC. There are consultants available to assist in the submission of an OC application but you are looking at around $2,000 to employ them. The real cost in all of this is liability insurance. I haven't been able to find that for less than $5,000 per year so far. Hopefully that will come down as more people become involved but for the time being it's quite expensive.

Try these people, went to get my insurance just for peace of mine while doing my ppl. OC required for insurance DAM....email Sonya Wilesmith Broker sonya@billowen.com.au

This was my liability for 10 million, they also do the full insurance for your UAV and parts at a gr8 price.

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Rentakill

Member
+1. Completed my RPAS certification course with FPV Australia today (that's Fly Photograph Video not FPV flying). I can't recommend the course enough for anyone in Australia. Very relevant, great opportunity to meet others working in the same industry and presented in an interesting and professional manner. John Fleming who runs the company and has been in RC forever is one switched on individual.

So now I'm off to start the paper work maze of obtaining an Operator's Certificate for my little one man business so I can finally get out there and do some interesting projects. As they say, stay tuned...

Look up the just culture frame work used by the American Airline industry. Casa has been using it for a little while.http://www.casa.gov.au/wcmswr/_assets/main/sms/download/2012-sms-book5-safety-training-promotion.pdf
The SMS side is pretty easy, coming from a goverment background at Railcorp. we lived and breathed this stuff :livid:
 



Has anyone else been waiting ages for their CASA Controller Certificate, mine was submitted on 9 Sept and just received it today, (nearly 8 weeks) very slow service at the moment, could not even get much response from emails or get someone to answer the phone.... I know there are some changes going on with licensing at the moment but they should at least let people know if there is long delays.


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Fat Corgi

Member
From memory I think it took me about 6 weeks. I'm sure that we're not that high on their list of priorities though.
 

Rentakill

Member
Has anyone else been waiting ages for their CASA Controller Certificate, mine was submitted on 9 Sept and just received it today, (nearly 8 weeks) very slow service at the moment, could not even get much response from emails or get someone to answer the phone.... I know there are some changes going on with licensing at the moment but they should at least let people know if there is long delays.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Talked again to CASA and the answer was big backlog on the AROC part of the application. Time to bring in some bureaucracy busters to clean this up. CASA new this was approaching, love to see the rosters to see if any increase in staff was engaged.
 

Bluerex

Member
My RPAS finally arrived yesterday. Many thanks to John and Chantal for chasing our submissions though the CASA maze.

C
 



dazzab

Member
Just more evidence that CASA is not the right agency to be handling the licensing of commercial UAV operators. They keep saying this is all in the name of safety but I haven't seen any evidence of this at all. Hopefully Australians will become aware of how much of their money is being tied up in all this. I really don't think it would be difficult to come up with a more efficient and cost-effective solution. That's what the peak bodies should be pushing rather than spending so much time protecting their own interests, IMHO.
 

dazzab

Member
And to put this in context, the 157.8 days processing time for UAV controllers is to process around 100 applications.
 


Bluerex

Member
Well done Rentakill!!!!
Just out of curiosity, did you have to do the English Language Proficiency test? Or did you provide secondary/tertiary evidence.

C
 

Rentakill

Member
Well done Rentakill!!!!
Just out of curiosity, did you have to do the English Language Proficiency test? Or did you provide secondary/tertiary evidence.

C
Thought I had too but did a course back in May for the PPL, this included the old AROC64. Just had to chase it down as the company did not send them to CASA.
 


Rentakill

Member
Has anyone had the chance to work under another operators OC. I need to raise funds as all my camera gear got stolen, UAV useless without a payload :( also wasn't insured I know.
 

Shelipso

Member
Hi guys, I just got passed PPL and got AROC via training offered by RPAS Training. I now have to submit my application to CASA. What I hear from is that the processing time is really long, 8 weeks is so!?!?, is this true? How long does the operator certificate processing would take then? I am based in Perth and hoping to start a one man business. Cheers.
 

dazzab

Member
Hi guys, I just got passed PPL and got AROC via training offered by RPAS Training. I now have to submit my application to CASA. What I hear from is that the processing time is really long, 8 weeks is so!?!?, is this true?
I think mine took about 5 weeks. I've heard that CASA hired more staff so maybe yours will go quicker. Seems odd to me that your trainer didn't submit it for you.

As for the OC processing, see my post above. CASA have a huge backlog of applications and is quoting around 4 months to process them.
 

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