Week 2 is the first hands-on build week. Trainees touch real drone components for the first time — the carbon-fibre v1 frame, four brushless motors, the 4-in-1 ESC, the XT60 connector, a 4S battery. Monday morning starts with bare frame plates and hex drivers. By Friday afternoon, each trainee has a powered-up "half drone" — frame, motors, ESC, battery — that spins all four motors in the correct direction at 5% throttle. No flight controller yet; no flight yet. Just the foundation that the FC will sit on next week.
This page is the day-by-day expansion of Week 2 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 2 cohort use this as the lesson plan — block-by-block timing, the rubric for the half-drone assessment, where trainees in earlier cohorts typically introduce cold joints or reverse polarity. Trainees use this as preview-and-review — what to expect tomorrow, what to verify before powering on, what to read tonight before the next morning.
Tone shift from Week 1. Week 1 was foundational and lecture-heavy. Week 2 is hands-on with real components. Less talking, more soldering. The instructor's job shifts from explaining to circulating — coaching individual trainees through specific build steps, catching errors before power-on, building the muscle memory that supports the rest of the program. Most cohort 02 trainees report Week 2 as their favourite week of the program.
Week 2 is hands-on build work. Trainees should arrive Monday with their Week 1 vocabulary fresh and their hands ready to work. Most items are the same as Week 1; the change is the cohort default v1 build kit each trainee receives.
Recommended pre-week reading (optional but useful)
Trainees who arrive having read these track Week 2 content with measurably less confusion:
Total: ~60-90 minutes of pre-reading. Optional. Trainees who skip this aren't behind — Week 2 covers everything practically — but pre-readers ask better questions and produce better builds.
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 can settle in and lay out their Week 1 notes. Workshop closes by 16:30 for tool inventory and build storage. Each trainee's in-progress build stays at their assigned workstation overnight; all builds locked in workshop.
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 is the first hands-on build day. Morning: each trainee assembles the v1 carbon-fibre frame from plates, arms, and standoffs — referencing the build guide and using torque values rather than "feels tight enough." Afternoon: mounting the four brushless motors. Motor screw length matters; too long pierces the windings and ruins the motor. By end of day, each trainee has a frame that holds together and four motors that pass continuity testing.
Common Day 1 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Before leaving, each trainee shows the instructor:
Frames stay locked in workshop overnight at assigned workstations. Trainees take photos of their builds for personal reference but the physical build doesn't leave.
Tonight's prep for Tuesday. Optional: review parts.html Section 3 (ESC types) and the SpeedyBee F405 datasheet (linked in build.html). Tomorrow morning starts with ESC overview before any soldering. Required: bring Week 1 soldering notes; tomorrow's motor-to-ESC soldering is the most demanding solder work of the program (12 joints per trainee, in tight space).
Day 2 is the program's most-demanding soldering day. 12 solder joints per trainee, in the tight space between motor and ESC, with consistent wire lengths required for clean motor positioning. Morning: ESC overview — what a 4-in-1 ESC actually does, the SpeedyBee F405 stack documentation, where each motor wire goes. Afternoon: the soldering work itself, joint by joint, with instructor circulating constantly.
Common Day 2 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Before leaving, each trainee shows the instructor:
Builds stay at workstations. Trainees who finished all 12 are ahead of pace; trainees with 6+ are on pace; trainees below 6 may need extra time tomorrow morning before Wednesday's power distribution work begins.
Tonight's prep for Wednesday. Optional: read build.html Section 4 (power distribution and battery connection). Required: bring Week 1 notes on polarity (red = positive, black = negative) — Wednesday's XT60 work depends on getting polarity right; reversed polarity = smoke. Bring patience; Wednesday is the day where small mistakes have visible consequences.
Day 3 wires the power side of the build. Morning: cutting and soldering the XT60 battery connector with proper polarity and strain relief. Afternoon: full visual QA of every build before tomorrow's first power-on. This is the day where polarity errors get caught; reversed polarity means smoke at first power-on, often with permanent ESC damage. The QA discipline today prevents Thursday from going badly.
Common Day 3 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Each trainee's build passes (or doesn't pass) the QA inspection. Status options:
Cohort experience: ~80% of builds pass QA cleanly; ~15% need minor fixes; ~5% have polarity errors caught at QA. The QA day exists specifically to catch the polarity errors — without it, those builds would smoke at Thursday's power-on.
Tonight's prep for Thursday. Optional: read fc-setup.html Section 1 (the SpeedyBee app and Bluetooth pairing). Required: come ready for the most exciting day of Week 2 — the build powers up for the first time. Bring patience for any builds that need additional fixes; the cohort waits together for everyone to be ready before the first batteries get plugged in.
Day 4 is the day each build comes alive. Each trainee plugs in a battery for the first time, watches for smoke (cohort default ~95% don't smoke), confirms ESC voltage readings via SpeedyBee app, and spins each motor at 5% throttle to verify direction. Most cohort 02 trainees describe this as the most satisfying moment of the program — the abstract becomes physical. Builds with issues get diagnosed and fixed before Friday's assessment.
Common Day 4 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Each trainee demonstrates:
Trainees whose builds didn't reach all four checks today: documented remaining work for Friday morning. Cohort default: most builds pass all four checks Thursday; the exceptions get a short Friday-morning diagnosis session before Friday's formal assessment.
Tonight's prep for Friday. Friday is assessment + troubleshooting drill. Optional: review build.html Section 5 (common build issues and diagnostics). Required: rest. Today was the most cognitively-demanding day of Week 2; tomorrow combines that with the formal assessment under instructor observation. Trainees report higher Friday performance after a good night of sleep.
Friday consolidates Week 2. Morning: the half-drone assessment — each trainee demonstrates a powered-up build with all four motors spinning correct direction, no fault codes, voltage reading correctly. Afternoon: the troubleshooting drill — instructors sabotage 4 demonstration builds with common faults (cold joint, reversed polarity, wrong motor direction, loose connector); trainees diagnose in pairs. Builds the diagnostic muscle that becomes critical when graduates operate independently.
Common Day 5 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Each trainee's assessment rubric is signed and goes in their cohort folder. Status options:
Cohort default historical: ~80% pass cleanly Friday morning, ~15% conditional pass, ~5% Saturday session. No trainee is removed from the cohort over Week 2 assessment. The curriculum continues to bring everyone forward.
Weekend. Optional self-study: read fc-setup.html in full (will significantly accelerate Week 3). Builds stay in workshop. Saturday session for trainees who need it. Otherwise: rest. Week 3 reintroduces software work alongside hardware; cognitive load shifts.
Aggregated materials list for an instructor running Week 2 with 6 trainees. Cohort default budget: ~₱14,500 per trainee for Week 2, dominated by the v1 build kit each trainee receives (and keeps as their drone for the rest of the program). Workshop tools and consumables are largely shared from Week 1.
Per-cohort cost: ~₱90,000-100,000 total for 6 trainees (dominated by 6 × ₱14,500 build kits). The build kit is the trainee's drone for the rest of the program; the per-trainee cost is essentially the cost of the drone they keep, not a consumable training cost. Steady-state per-cohort consumables: ~₱2,000-3,000 (solder, heat shrink, replacement small hardware, capacitors, occasional motor or connector for damage repair).
The Week 2 assessment is the half-drone power-on demonstration. Eight specific checks performed by each trainee on their own build. Like Week 1, the assessment is diagnostic — trainees who don't pass cleanly get targeted support during Week 3, not removal from the cohort.
Half-drone assessment rubric
Each trainee performs the following eight demonstrations on their own build, in sequence, with instructor observing:
Pass: 8/8. Conditional pass: 6-7/8 with documented issues. Saturday session: less than 6/8.
Troubleshooting drill assessment (afternoon)
Each pair rotates through 4 sabotaged demo builds. For each build, the pair must:
Cohort default expectation: each pair correctly identifies at least 2 of 4 faults. The drill is graded on diagnostic process more than perfect identification — pairs that miss a fault but show good diagnostic discipline pass; pairs that randomly guess and happen to be right do not.
Cohort default historical: ~80% of trainees pass the half-drone assessment cleanly Friday morning; ~15% pass conditionally with minor issues; ~5% need Saturday session. The Saturday rate is higher than Week 1's (5% vs 5%) because Week 2 has more places where small mistakes accumulate. All cohort 02 trainees who needed Saturday Week 2 sessions completed the program.