Trainees arrive with a wide range of backgrounds — some have built radios as kids, most have never soldered. Week 1 is the equaliser: drone fundamentals, electronics safety, the soldering iron, the first hour on a flight simulator, and the LiPo battery safety primer. Nobody touches a real drone yet. By Friday everyone has clean solder joints, can hover in the simulator, and understands why a 4S LiPo deserves respect. This page is the day-by-day instructor and trainee reference for that week.
This page is the day-by-day expansion of Week 1 in the curriculum overview. Each day is its own panel below — click a day tab to see the morning and afternoon schedules in detail, the hands-on activities with steps, the materials list, common pitfalls, and the end-of-day check.
Designed for two audiences. Cohort instructors running a Week 1 cohort use this as the lesson plan — minute-by-minute timing, the rubric for the soldering checkpoint, where trainees in earlier cohorts typically struggle. Trainees use this as preview-and-review — what to expect tomorrow, what to make sure they understood today, what to read tonight before the next morning.
Trainees should arrive Day 1 ready to work. Some items are essential; others are nice-to-have. Cohort engineering supplies all technical equipment; trainees supply themselves.
Recommended pre-week reading (optional)
None of this is required, but trainees who arrive having read these tend to track Day 1 content more comfortably:
Total: ~45-60 minutes of pre-reading. Trainees who don't do this are not behind — Day 1 covers everything from scratch — but pre-readers find Day 1 less overwhelming.
Schedule: Mon–Fri, 09:00–16:00 with a 1-hour lunch break. 4 contact hours per day; 20 hours total for the week. Workshop opens at 08:30; trainees who arrive early can settle in. Workshop closes by 16:30 for cleanup and tool inventory.
Each day below is a self-contained lesson plan. Click a day to see the morning and afternoon detailed schedules, the hands-on activities with specific steps, materials, common pitfalls, and the end-of-day check that confirms learning. Days are sequenced — running them out of order will produce gaps.
Day 1 establishes shared vocabulary and orientation. By end of day, trainees can name every major component on a quadcopter, understand what each one does, and have laid eyes (and hands) on a complete v1 reference drone disassembled into its parts. No technical work yet — the goal is mental model, not assembly. The day is gentler than the rest of the week to give trainees space to settle into the cohort and ask basic questions without pressure.
Common Day 1 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Before leaving, trainees should be able to:
Don't make this a quiz; make it a conversational close-out around the demo drone. ~10 minutes; the trainees who can't hit these get a quick re-walk through the disassembled parts before going home.
Tonight's prep for Tuesday. Optional: trainees can review build.html and parts.html overviews at home. Required: come back tomorrow ready for hands-on electronics. No homework worksheet.
Day 2 is the first hands-on day. Morning: electronics fundamentals — voltage, current, resistance, watts — taught through a small breadboard circuit. Afternoon: the soldering iron. Each trainee solders 12 practice joints; the last 4 get pull-tested. Most trainees have never soldered; the goal is comfort with the iron and clean joints, not speed. By end of day everyone has at least 6 acceptable joints in their notebook as proof of progress.
Common Day 2 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Before leaving, each trainee shows the instructor:
Trainees who didn't produce any acceptable joints get 30 minutes of one-on-one practice with an instructor before going home. Goal isn't Friday assessment yet — goal is "you can make a joint that holds." Almost everyone gets there with practice.
Tonight's prep for Wednesday. Trainees who want to read ahead: build.html Section 1 (assembly logic). Required: come back ready for schematics in the morning and LiPo safety in the afternoon. Wednesday's LiPo demo includes a controlled puncture test; trainees who are squeamish should know it's coming.
Day 3 splits between two important orientations. Morning: schematics — how to read the v1 wiring diagram, identifying power, ground, and signal lines, and tracing the path from battery to motor. Afternoon: LiPo battery safety, the most-feared and most-respected component on a drone. Includes a controlled puncture-test demonstration (outdoors, gloves, fire blanket) so trainees see firsthand what thermal runaway looks like. The day is information-dense but not hands-on demanding.
Common Day 3 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Before leaving, trainees should be able to:
This is the densest day of Week 1; some trainees will be tired. Don't push.
Tonight's prep for Thursday. Trainees should bring any reading glasses needed for screen work — Thursday is simulator day, and the screen sessions can strain eyes if reading glasses are usually required. Optional: install LiftOff or Velocidrone trial on home computer if they have one. Required: come ready to spend significant time on a screen.
Day 4 is screen-and-sticks day. Each trainee gets significant time on a flight simulator (LiftOff or Velocidrone) and learns the basics of the FlySky FS-i6X transmitter. The goal is not to become a good pilot — that takes weeks; the goal is to feel the relationship between sticks and rotation, build the muscle memory of throttle control, and survive a hover for 30 seconds without crashing. Most trainees will crash a lot. That's expected. The simulator costs nothing when crashed.
Common Day 4 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Before leaving, each trainee shows the instructor:
Trainees who can't hold 10 seconds get an additional 30-minute session before the workshop closes; goal is "you've held a hover" before going home.
Tonight's prep for Friday. Friday is assessment day plus week review. Trainees can practice in the simulator at home if they have the setup. Required: arrive ready for the soldering checkpoint and the figure-8 sim challenge. No new material Friday; consolidation only.
Friday consolidates the week. Morning: the soldering checkpoint — each trainee solders 6 joints independently; rated for visual quality and pull-tested. Afternoon: the simulator challenge — figure-8 around two cones in 60 seconds without crashing, plus week recap and QandA. The day is lower-stakes than it sounds; the curriculum is designed so weak skills get extra practice during Weeks 2-3 build work, not held back here.
Common Day 5 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Each trainee's rubric is signed by the instructor and goes in their cohort folder. Status options:
Cohort default historical pass rates: ~75% clean pass, ~20% conditional, ~5% Saturday session. No trainee is removed from the cohort over Week 1 assessment. The curriculum is designed to bring everyone forward.
Weekend. Optional self-study: read build.html and parts.html in full (will significantly accelerate Week 2). LiftOff or Velocidrone home practice if available. Saturday session for trainees who need it. Otherwise: rest. Week 2 is more demanding than Week 1.
Aggregated materials list for an instructor running Week 1 with 6 trainees. Cohort default budget: ~₱4,500 per trainee for Week 1 (much of which carries forward — soldering tools, multimeters, simulator licences are reused across cohorts). Per-cohort consumables (solder, wire, LEDs, broken practice joints) are smaller portion.
First-cohort capital cost: ~₱40,000-55,000 for permanent equipment (soldering stations, multimeters, transmitters, simulator setup, demo drone). Per-cohort consumable cost: ~₱5,000-8,000 (wire, solder, components, retired LiPos, printing). The capital amortises over 4-6 cohorts; the per-cohort cost is the steady-state.
The Week 1 assessment exists to diagnose where each trainee needs reinforcement, not to decide who continues. Cohort default: nobody is removed from the program based on Week 1. Trainees who struggle get extra support during Weeks 2-3 build work, where solder skills get reinforced through real assembly.
Soldering checkpoint rubric
6 joints on the standardised assessment board:
Simulator checkpoint rubric
Two attempts allowed; best attempt counts:
Trainees who don't pass either checkpoint cleanly are not behind — they're identified for targeted support. Earlier cohorts show that participants who did Saturday sessions in Week 1 graduated at the same rate as cleanly-passing trainees. The intervention works.