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EP90 & EP150 — Training

EP90 & EP150 — Training

Section titled “EP90 & EP150 — Training”

RFD-TM-002 · v1.0 · released 23 August 2026. Owner and approver: Joni Sytsma, Chief Remote Pilot. Companion to RFD-OM-002, which is the reference document. Read the operations manual first — this page is the syllabus, not the content.

Who this is for, and what it assumes

Section titled “Who this is for, and what it assumes”

This course is for an operator who is already current on the recovered tail-sitters (EP250 or EP450) under RFD-TM-001. It is deliberately short, because most of the ground school, the GCS work and the battery handling carry across unchanged.

What does not carry across is the flying, and one session below exists specifically to un-teach something the tail-sitter course builds: the expectation that you can take the aircraft and fly it yourself.

Carries across from RFD-TM-001 Does not carry across
Ground school, airspace, crew roles Recovery — there is none
GCS operation, mission planning basics Manual flight — it is not available at all
Battery handling, storage and charging Launch — tube, not pad
Emergency and occurrence reporting Post-flight — you are recovering pieces

Session 1 — The class, and why it is not a tail-sitter

Section titled “Session 1 — The class, and why it is not a tail-sitter”

Ground. No aircraft.

The whole of OM §2, delivered as a briefing rather than read privately. Three points, and the trainee must be able to give all three back in their own words:

  1. One flight per airframe. It does not land softly. That is the designed outcome, every time.
  2. The launch is violent. T/W 1.5–1.6 on the EP90, up to 3.6 on a light EP150.
  3. The operator is never in manual control — and why: the airframe is axisymmetric with no wings, so in a roll there is no visual reference telling you which way up it is.

Assessment: the trainee explains point 3 without being prompted with the word “axisymmetric”. If they reach for “well, if it got into trouble I could…”, the session is not complete.

Session 2 — Aircraft preparation and power-up

Section titled “Session 2 — Aircraft preparation and power-up”

Ground. Aircraft present, prop removed.

  • Undo the bayonet; identify where the battery lead meets the ESC pack.
  • Connect, and understand that connecting the battery is turning it on — there is no switch.
  • Confirm the aircraft wakes and acquires GPS, and wait for lock.
  • Prop-disc discipline and where a powered airframe is allowed to be pointed.
  • LiPo vs Li-ion for this airframe: what changes, and what it costs in launch mass and T/W.
  • 🔴 The two-minute sortie. The EP150 flies a 4S 450 mAh pack drawing ~70 A on boost, which leaves roughly two minutes of flying. The trainee must be able to state that this is a one-circuit aircraft before they are allowed to plan a mission on it in Session 4.

Assessment: power-up performed unassisted, GPS lock confirmed before any further action, and the aircraft never pointed at a person while live.

Session 3 — Links and access

Section titled “Session 3 — Links and access”

Ground. Bench, then in the tube.

Work through every method in OM §6, on the actual variant to be flown:

  • USB through the fuselage port — parameters and log download.
  • The trailing umbilical — three-wire and four-wire, and what the VBAT line does. The trainee must be able to say why leaving an aircraft floated at full charge for a month is a decision and not a convenience.
  • Wi-Fi and the browser GCS — join the access point, confirm the GCS loads without a captive portal, and then state out loud that this link will not survive the aircraft flying away.
  • RFD900, where fitted.
  • The RC receiver tag — SBUS on Team BlackSheep, and what the link is and is not for.

Assessment: the trainee identifies which links the aircraft in front of them actually has, rather than which links the class can have — and states the Wi-Fi range limitation unprompted.

Session 4 — Target setting and mission planning

Section titled “Session 4 — Target setting and mission planning”

Ground.

The sortie is defined by a target location set before launch. This session covers setting it, checking it, and understanding the four-stage profile in OM §3: vertical launch to a velocity gate, pitch-over with throttle ramp, hand-off to fixed wing at a pitch-angle gate, then the run to the target.

Also covered: there is no return leg. The mission plan ends at the target, and the site, the people and the property downrange are planned around that.

Two constraints the plan has to respect, and trainees consistently get both wrong:

  • ~2 minutes of endurance. One circuit. No loiter, no second pass, no diversion.
  • ~200 m turn radius at 38 m/s. Any boundary tighter than that will not contain the aircraft — and a geofence set tighter will simply refuse the mission rather than fly a circuit it cannot complete.

Session 5 — Launch

Section titled “Session 5 — Launch”

Field. Live.

  • Tube preparation, aircraft loading, orientation.
  • The stand-off distance and, specifically, why it must assume the aircraft may depart in an arbitrary direction at control activation — see the 20 g event in OM §3.
  • Fixed thrust, 100% for 3 to 4 seconds, control system inactive, then control activation after a configurable delay.
  • Watch one before running one. The first launch a trainee sees should not be one they command.

Assessment: trainee briefs the launch to the crew, including the terminal outcome and the stand-off, before touching anything.

⚠️ Stand-off distance for this class is set by RFD per configuration — ask for it, and do not assume the tail-sitter figure carries across. It does not.

Session 6 — Abnormals, and the one that has no procedure

Section titled “Session 6 — Abnormals, and the one that has no procedure”

Ground, then applied in the field.

Runs the standard abnormal ladder — link loss, GPS loss, battery, aircraft not responding — but the important content of this session is the absence of one:

There is no manual recovery procedure, and there will not be one. If the aircraft departs controlled flight, it is lost. The trainee’s job at that point is people and property, not the aircraft.

This is the session that undoes the tail-sitter reflex. An operator who has been trained to take manual control when things go wrong will try it here, and it will not work.

Assessment: presented with a departure scenario, the trainee’s first action is crew and ground safety, not a control input.

Session 7 — Post-flight

Section titled “Session 7 — Post-flight”

Field.

  • Wait before approaching; a disturbed lithium pack is the hazard, not the airframe.
  • Recover the pieces, expecting broken servos.
  • Get the log off the aircraft — it is the only evidence of what the aircraft actually did.
  • Sort the wreckage: keep what is not broken for the next airframe.
  • Write the sortie up the same day.

Assessment: log recovered and the sortie written up without being asked.

Assessment and sign-off

Section titled “Assessment and sign-off”
Prerequisite Current on RFD-TM-001 (EP250 or EP450)
Instructor Joni Sytsma, Chief Remote Pilot
Sessions 1–4, 6 Ground. May be run in one day
Sessions 5, 7 Field, and only on a sortie the Chief Remote Pilot has cleared
Pass criteria [TBD] — to be set with the first cohort
Currency [TBD]

⚠️ The competency this course cannot assess is the one that matters most. Every other RFD type check ends with the trainee flying the aircraft. This one cannot, because the aircraft flies itself or it is lost, and because a check flight costs an airframe. What is being assessed here is judgement and preparation, and the syllabus has to be honest that this is a different kind of sign-off.

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