Week 5 is the steepest skill curve of the program. Out of the workshop, into a partner cacao farm 40 minutes outside Davao. Days are longer and start earlier — 07:00 to 13:00 to beat the afternoon thermals that make tropical drone flight unpredictable. Monday is untethered hover; Tuesday is coordinated patterns and FPV-only flying; Wednesday introduces INAV Mission Planner and the first autonomous waypoint mission; Thursday flies real survey grids over real cacao plots with NDVI capture; Friday is the solo survey mission assessment. By Friday afternoon each trainee has logged 25+ minutes of unassisted flight time and flown a complete autonomous survey for a partner cooperative.
This page is the day-by-day expansion of Week 5 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 5 cohort use this as the field lesson plan — block-by-block timing, the rubric for the solo survey mission, where trainees in earlier cohorts typically struggle (FPV-only flying disorientation on Tuesday; over-confidence on Thursday before failure-mode drills land). Trainees use this as preview-and-review — what mission parameters to set, the failure-mode responses to memorise, the platform upload sequence after each flight.
Out of the workshop, into the field. Week 1 was foundational; Week 2 was hands-on hardware; Week 3 was the cognitive grind; Week 4 was the first hover. Week 5 is field school — at a partner cacao farm 40 minutes outside Davao. Days run 07:00–13:00 (early start to beat afternoon thermals; afternoon practice is unpredictable in tropical Mindanao). Cohort and instructors travel together; lunch is the wrap rather than the midpoint. The skill curve is the steepest of the program — different challenge than Week 3's cognitive grind. Historically: Week 5 has higher conditional-pass rate (~25%) than other weeks; ~10-15% benefit from optional Saturday make-up flights or the program's optional 7th week of supervised practice. No graduate flies client missions until they've passed Week 5.
Week 5 is field-based. The cohort travels together to a partner cacao farm 40 minutes outside Davao, runs 07:00–13:00 on the field, and returns to the workshop for end-of-day debrief. Different rhythm; different equipment list; different logistics. Trainees should arrive Monday with their Week 4 builds, the firmware already migrated to INAV (homework assignment over the weekend; instructor-supported), and prepared for early starts under the Mindanao sun.
Recommended pre-week reading (strongly recommended)
Week 5 is the steepest skill curve of the program. Trainees who arrive prepared track Week 5 notably better:
Total: ~110-130 minutes of pre-reading. Strongly recommended this week — most-impactful pre-reading of the program. Trainees who skip this will track Day 1 (open hover) fine but find Wednesday-Friday markedly harder.
Schedule: Mon–Fri, 07:00–13:00 with a 30-min snack break and lunch back at workshop. This is a major shift from prior weeks. Cohort transport leaves workshop at 06:00 (40-min drive). Field setup 06:50; first flight blocks 07:15. End of field day at 12:30; transport back to workshop arriving ~13:15. Lunch + debrief 13:15–14:30 at workshop. Workshop closes by 15:30 (charging starts immediately for next day).
Weather contingency: tropical Mindanao means daily weather variability. Cohort default decision rule: cancel field flying if (a) sustained winds >8 m/s expected, (b) visible rain within 30 min radius, (c) thunderstorm forecast within 50km. On cancellation days, fall back to workshop simulator + Mission Planner desk practice + theory. Historically: ~1 cancellation day per Week 5; mostly recovered by extending Week 5 by half a day or adjusting Week 6 schedule.
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 takes the tether off. Morning: each trainee gets four 8-minute battery slots in clear open terrain at the partner cacao farm. Goals: stable untethered hover, gentle translation across the field, controlled descent. Afternoon (last field block): practising mode switching mid-flight — Angle / Horizon / Acro — feeling how each mode responds. By end of the field day, every trainee has logged ~30 minutes of unassisted flight time.
Common Day 1 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Each trainee logged in field log:
Trainees who didn't reach 60-sec hover: noted for instructor attention Tuesday morning. Trainees who skipped rounds due to fatigue: noted; Tuesday will have lighter pace if pattern persists.
Tonight's prep for Tuesday. Optional: re-read flight-training.html Sections 2-3 (coordinated patterns and FPV-only flying). Required: rest. Tuesday is more demanding than Monday — coordinated patterns require predictability; FPV-only flying introduces visual disorientation that's genuinely hard to prepare for via reading. Hydration and sleep matter.
Tuesday adds two new skills. Morning: coordinated flight patterns — box patterns, figure-8s, orbits at fixed altitude. The "predictable flight path" practice that survey work requires. Afternoon (last field block): FPV-only flying — flying with the goggles down, no line-of-sight. Common failure mode: trainees over-correct using the FPV feed alone. Instructor pairs each trainee with a spotter for safety. By end of day, each trainee has flown one short FPV-only segment and noticed how disorienting it is the first time.
Common Day 2 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Each trainee logged in field log:
Trainees with sustained FPV difficulty: noted; Wednesday's field work is mostly Mission Planner desk-time, giving a break from FPV. Trainees who hit motion sickness: flagged for instructor monitoring through Week 5.
Tonight's prep for Wednesday. Optional: read mission-planner-tool.html in full (~20 min); covers the cohort default INAV Mission Planner functionality. Required: rest. Wednesday has substantial cognitive load (mission planning) plus first autonomous flight; the break from raw stick discipline matters.
Wednesday introduces the autonomous-mission stack. Morning: INAV Configurator's Mission Planner tab — drawing an AOI polygon on a satellite map, generating a survey grid with appropriate overlap, uploading to the FC, understanding what the mission file contains. Afternoon (last field block): each trainee plans, uploads, and executes a small (50m × 50m) autonomous mission with their own drone. Instructor on standby with TX in failsafe-trigger position. By end of day, every trainee has watched their drone fly a programmed path on its own.
Common Day 3 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Each trainee logged in field log:
Trainees who hit Mission Planner difficulties: noted; Thursday repeats the workflow over real cacao plots — additional practice opportunity.
Tonight's prep for Thursday. Optional: read missions.html in full (covers what real survey missions look like for cooperatives) and emergencies.html (covers in-flight emergency response). Required: rest. Thursday is the most cognitively demanding day of Week 5 — real surveys + failure-mode drills. Trainees who arrive rested perform better.
Thursday flies real surveys for the first time. Morning: each trainee executes a 200m × 200m mission over an actual cacao plot, NDVI rig capturing imagery, data uploaded to the platform within 30 minutes of landing. Afternoon (last field block): failure-mode response drills — instructor triggers RTH mid-mission, then simulates radio-loss, then triggers low-battery alarm. Trainees practise calm response to each scenario. By end of day, every trainee has flown real survey data and handled three deliberate emergencies.
Common Day 4 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Each trainee logged in field log:
Trainees with failsafe issues from radio-loss drill: build goes to workshop bench tonight for re-verification; resolved before Friday solo mission. Historically: ~5% of builds need this; all resolved within 2-3 hours.
Tonight's prep for Friday. Optional: review Mission Planner workflow + platform upload sequence end-to-end. Required: rest. Friday is the program's second-most-significant day (after Week 4 Friday's first hover) — the solo survey mission is the assessment. Trainees who arrive rested and prepared perform measurably better.
Friday is Week 5's final assessment. Morning: each trainee plans and flies a complete solo survey mission. Pre-flight, mission upload, autonomous flight, post-flight data review on the platform — all without instructor intervention except for safety. This is the assessment that determines whether a graduate is ready to fly client missions for cooperatives. Afternoon: cohort debrief at workshop. Each trainee presents their NDVI imagery, what they observed about the surveyed plot, and what they'd improve on the next mission. The platform's outputs become real this afternoon — visible on screens, in the cohort's hands, with cooperative implications.
Common Day 5 pitfalls
End-of-day check. Each trainee's Week 5 solo survey mission rubric is signed and goes in their cohort folder. Status options:
Cohort default historical: ~65% pass cleanly Friday, ~20% conditional pass, ~10-15% Saturday make-up or Week 7. No graduate flies client missions until they've passed Week 5 cleanly or via make-up. The optional Week 7 is supportive, not punitive — cohort 02 graduates who took Week 7 graduated with the same cohort.
Weekend. Builds stay locked in workshop. Saturday make-up sessions for trainees who need them (one-on-one with instructor; ~2-3 hours; ~80% of trainees who need this resolve it on Saturday). Trainees taking Week 7 join Week 6 cohort partially (observation, simulator practice) while continuing supervised flight practice. Otherwise: rest. Week 6 introduces real cooperative clients; trainees benefit from being well-rested and prepared.
Aggregated materials list for an instructor running Week 5 with 6 trainees. Cohort default budget: ~₱9,500 per trainee for Week 5, dominated by extra batteries (8/trainee/day × 5 days = 40 cycles × ₱120 amortised), transport, partner farm honorarium, and food. Workshop laptops, FPV equipment, and chargers are reused from prior weeks.
Per-cohort cost: ~₱60,000-70,000 total for 6 trainees (transport ~₱5,000; food ~₱13,000; partner honorarium ~₱3,000; battery wear ~₱6,000; props ~₱5,000; cohort default Saturday make-up sessions ~₱2,000-5,000 if needed; misc workshop overhead ~₱5,000). Field equipment + workshop laptops amortise across many cohorts; partner farm relationship is reciprocal (cohort delivers NDVI imagery as part of honorarium).
The Week 5 assessment is the solo survey mission. Four specific demonstrations performed by each trainee Friday morning, without instructor intervention except for safety. Higher conditional-pass rate than other weeks (~25%); higher Saturday/Week 7 rate (~10-15%) — the curriculum acknowledges Week 5 is a steeper skill curve. No trainee flies client missions until passing Week 5 cleanly or via make-up; this is a real gate, not just diagnostic.
Solo survey mission rubric
Each trainee performs the following four demonstrations Friday morning, autonomous from start to platform upload:
Pass: 4/4 cleanly. Conditional pass: 4/4 with minor issue documented (e.g., upload took 35 min instead of 30; observation thin). Saturday make-up: one specific failure point. Extended Week 7: multiple issues or sustained difficulty.
Cumulative end-of-week verification (passive)
By Friday morning, each trainee's build should also have demonstrated (during the week, not as separate Friday assessment items):
If any of these have unresolved issues by Friday morning: trainee gets Friday afternoon open-lab time to verify before Week 5 sign-off. Historically: ~5% have unresolved Mon-Thu items at Friday morning; most resolve in 30-60 min of Friday afternoon practice.
Cohort default historical for Week 5: ~65% pass cleanly Friday morning; ~20% conditional pass; ~10-15% Saturday make-up or extended Week 7. The Saturday/Week 7 rate is the highest of any week — Week 5 is the steepest skill curve. All cohort 02 trainees who took Saturday or Week 7 ultimately graduated and flew client missions. The optional Week 7 has been used by ~5-10% of cohorts; cohort default doesn't penalise it.