A group of young people in Norman Wells recently learned how to operate drones thanks to a new course offered by the Sahtu Secretariat Incorporated (SSI).
SSI's new drone basics course ran from July 2-4 in the community. It was instructed by Breaking Ice Productions owner and CEO Josh Ferguson, who regularly uses drones for his film and photography projects.
Three young people enrolled in the course, in addition to one adult who also helped out with instruction.
"We're giving them photography advice and videography advice and talking about how to download footage off your drone and things like that," Ferguson said on the second day of the course. "We're also covering basic handling of the drone repairs, and then obviously the laws [for drone use] and weather and things like that — where you can fly and where you can't fly."
The course was facilitated at several locations around Norman Wells. Each participant received "a great starter drone" called a DJI Mini 3 to practice with, according to Ferguson. They will be allowed to keep their drones once the course concludes and will be given an opportunity to apply for the licence required to fly the machines.
"If all goes well and the students pay attention, they get to write the Transport Canada drone pilot licence [test] — the basic operations [licence] which would allow them to fly drones up to 25 kilos," Ferguson said.
He uses drones frequently in his work.
"They're basically just another means to capture a different angle for storytelling for me," he said. "I like to use them to access places that would be either be difficult or impossible for me to get to just by foot or with a regular camera.
"Then obviously they are fantastic for establishing shots and things like that, just because you can kind of get these grand sweeping views of the land that you need a helicopter otherwise for.
The students that receive their drone certification following SSI's course will be well positioned to do similar film and photography work with their drones, but that is certainly not the only kind of work it will help them with, according to Ferguson.
These days, drones are used in a great many industries.
"The nice thing about drone operations and getting into the drone world is that it opens up economic opportunities to people from the very basic level of flying drones all the way up to like super, super advanced levels," Ferguson said.
"On the super basic end, sometimes people just want aerial pictures of something," he added. "They don't need much skill to get that done. You just need the drone and the know-how. Also on the basic end, you'd have something like real estate photography.
"Then as you move up in complexity, depending on what drone you have, they have different tools attached to them such as Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) or heat cameras, so you could use drones in search and rescue operations or for remote inspection of different kinds of equipment and things like that — power lines being a very good use case for drones. Then when you get to bigger stuff where drones can haul payload, you can even paint roofs and things like that with drones. Obviously, these come with more advanced licence [requirements] and much, much, much more expensive drones, but all of this is definitely within the realm of the possible if you commit to this line of work."
Overall, Ferguson said the students in SSI's drone basics course have "all been engaged entirely through the whole thing."
There are currently no plans for a follow-up course, but the instructor would be happy to do it again if SSI deems it worthwhile.
"I'd be open to it," he said. "Given the lack of opportunity in the North, it's something that I like to be able to provide."