Kenya Space Expo & Conference 2022
I am participating in the Kenya Space Expo & Conference 2022, which is being held for three days from June 15-17, with students from the Nakuja project. The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) is the organizer of the event and it is the inaugural event this time, whereas KSA plans to hold it annually. Nakuja students exhibited their N-2 rocket and enjoyed interacting with visitors.
I was invited as a panelist and had the opportunity to speak on the topic of Rocket Development in JKUAT. My session consisted of MIT researcher Gladys, Bell Textron’s Joshua, Prof. Hameer of Kenya Institute of Technology, Lt. Col. Nyawade from KSA, and the moderator was Prof. Mwongera of Kenyatta University. All the panels were fantastic people and we had a good time. After the session, I talked with them about the collaboration in the future. I am grateful to KSA for providing us with this valuable meeting place.
PAUSTI class begins
I just finished the first class today. There were four master’s students registered for this year’s unit, coming from Angola, Tunisia, Central African Republic, and Zimbabwe. The French-speaking students have not seem to have caught up with English yet. This is in fact the first time I have experienced such difficulty with the language in three years. I hope the students will make it through this unit as they need to complete their master’s thesis in English.
Get a drone license in Kenya
In Kenya, drone flights are allowed with the pilot license. The penalties for violations are severe, with a fine of 2 million shillings (about 2 million Japanese yen) for flying without a pilot’s license (called an RPL). This sounds very expensive and even impossible, but in addition to this, flying a drone that is not registered with the Civil Aviation carries an additional 2 million shillings (Wow!). Moreover, if a drone is flown for commercial purposes, such as commercial aerial photography, a separate license (ROC) must be obtained, and a fine of 2 million shillings is also imposed for violations in case of the lack of this license. In conclusion, the maximum fine reaches approximately 6 million.
As of May 2022, there are 7 UTOs in Kenya and they have produced 300 licensed drone pilots (see: Licensed drone pilots rise to 300 – Business Daily (businessdailyafrica.com). The license training takes about two weeks and costs in the range of 160k to 200k shillings, according to a couple of quotations I obtained. Although it is not at a level where travelers can easily apply for a license, it is possible to obtain a license even if you are not a resident of Kenya. The RPL requires applicants to be 1) at least 18 years old, 2) able to read, write, and speak English, and 3) hold a Class 3 medical certificate, and does not require Kenyan residency. On the other hand, the rule that drone aircraft registration is limited to Kenyan residents makes it difficult for short-term visitors to fly a drone in Kenya unless they borrow a drone registered in Kenya (this is my personal understanding, so if you have any doubts, please contact the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority).
After 2020, when the new Civil Aviation Act was put into effect, drones are to be brought into Kenya through the proper import procedures. According to an acquaintance who has actually had a drone confiscated, the drone is stored in a warehouse and will be returned upon departure from Kenya with a storage fee. Drones brought into Kenya before 2020, when the law was enforced, can be used if they are registered with the Civil Aviation Authority. I myself brought two drones into Kenya before such an act was put into effect, so I asked a company to register my drones under the Civil Aviation. Registration can also be done by individuals at the following website: https://rpas.kcaa.or.ke/ . The registration fee is 3,000 shillings per drone. It seems that we can also initiate the import procedures of the drones from this website.
Class 3 medical certificate can be issued by an aviation doctor. I visited a clinic in South C of Nairobi. This medical checkup is basically for the employees who work in the aviation industry. For your information, Class 1 is for pilots of passenger aircraft, Class 2 for cargo aircraft and private jets, and Class 3 for air traffic controllers and drone pilots. When we visited the clinic, several people who seemed to be in the aviation industry were undergoing medical checkups.
- Questionnaire (Does anyone in the family have high blood pressure or diabetes?)
- Color blindness test (Ishihara method)
- Blood pressure
- Stethoscope
- Visual check of the ear
- Visual check of eyes
- Visual check of mouth
- Vision test
- Height and weight measurement
- EKG
- Urinalysis (diabetes)
- HIV blood test
- Chest X-ray
Personally, I was amused to take an HIV test for the first time in my life. But I still don’t know why it is necessary. Some of my friends guessed it is because the HIV weakens the immune system and hinders the operation of the aircraft.
After obtaining a medical certificate, the applicant actually goes to a training school (UTO) to complete registration. The standard schedule seems to be five days of classroom training and five days of flight training. The classroom training mainly covers the following topics
- Air law
- Flight planning
- Human performance
- Meteorology
- Navigation
- Theory of flight
- Battery Procedure
- Radio telephony (out of scope of the exam)
I had to pass the exam in the classroom, but it was not easy because I could only take some of the lectures due to the tight schedule so the rest I needed to study by myself using the lecture slides and the practice exams. The exam consisted of multiple choice questions (100 questions in total) and lasted 3 hours. I was allowed to leave early after the first 20-30 minutes of the exam, so I don’t remember the detailed exam duration. It might have been 2 hours. The minimum required score was 70. The examiner was present in the exam room, and the students’ activities were thoroughly recorded while answering the questions. Apparently, they record for the purpose of compliance with the Civil Aviation.
In flight training, a total of 300 minutes of accumulated flight time must be achieved. 300 minutes(= 5 hours) may sound short, but it is actually not. One hour of flying a drone in Kenya, where the sun is very strong, can be quite exhausting. As each battery lasts less than 20 minutes (about 18~19 minutes), you start to feel fatigue after just three flights. At the end of the day, I found it hard to stand holding the controller, so I was wishing to end the work as soon as possible.
The flight training focuses on mastering manual operations using a controller, and does not deal with any waypoint flights in which the pilot checks the camera image on the app or specifies the flight path using GPS. They insist on manual flight training although the drones are normally flown automatically using an app, since pilots are required to have the skills to safely return the aircraft to the ground in the event of an emergency. The aircraft used for flight training were the Phantom 3 and Phantom 4. In the beginning, I was given the Phantom 3 all the time, so when I was allowed to use the Phantom 4, I was surprised at its much better attitude stability.
The basic content of the flight training is to move on the sides of the triangular cones placed at the four corners (Horizontal Box). There are two types of flight training: Tail in Hover and Directional flight. The difference is whether or not the drone’s yaw direction is changed (Tail in Hover is to keep looking at the drone’s back, Directional flight is to turn it in the yaw direction). There are two additional challenges. The first is the point of interest, which is a smoother version of the Horizontal Box (Directional flight), where the object is in the center of the cone and the camera keeps shooting while circling it. The other one, whose name I have forgotten, is a movement in which the camera rises sharply forward at 45 degrees and then descends back at 45 degrees. I struggled with this task at first. Flying the drone forward was easy, but I had a challenge for descending the drone at 45 degrees.
After completing the prescribed hours of flight training, an on-site examination is conducted by a flight examiner from the Civil Aviation. Although the it is called an exam, it is unlikely that the applicants will be dropped at this point. But if they crash a drone or their flight controls are too unstable, their training have to be redone. There is also an oral exam before the practical exam. According to the information provided by the school instructor, if you cannot answer a question, someone else can answer on your behalf since it is a group test… In reality, this was not the case. When they asked me about the METAR (weather forecast code), I confused the part showing temperature/dew point with the TAF forecast period. And no one was guided to assist me. Anyway, our group with four students was questioned for about 40 minutes, and we were finally let go.
The flight examiner instructed us to report the current status of the flight area, check the condition of the aircraft, turn on the power, perform basic operations of the aircraft, the horizontal box, point of interest, and 45-degree ascent and descent. In addition to this, I was also requested to perform an automatic landing, assuming that I had lost sight of the aircraft. My turn was relatively easy because I was the fourth out of four examinees.
After all the steps are completed, a certificate is issued by the Civil Aviation.
RPL is valid for two years and must be renewed every two years. Class 3 Medical certificate is also valid for 2 years.
By the way, I have not yet flown a drone once since I obtained my RPL. I expect that I will have more opportunities to fly it in the future as the research groups on campus become more active.
Class in summer semester
I will be also taking Integrated product design class this term as the past two years. I will be sharing the unit with the same colleague as last year. In considering the content for this semester, I decided to look back at the previous two semesters.
Schedule for 2020: (1st and 2nd) 3D modeling, 3D printing (3rd and 4th) PCB design & fabrication (5th and 6th) Embedded programming (7th and 8th) Web programming and communication networks (9th and 10th) CNC element technology and control (11th and 12th) FEM (13th and 14th) Reliability engineering (15th) Final presentation (9th and 10th) CNC elemental technology and control (11th and 12th) FEM (13th and 14th) Reliability engineering (15th) Final presentation
Schedule for 2021 (1st) Product development process (2nd) 3D modeling Part I (3rd) 3D modeling Part II (4th) Mechatronic design (5th) 1st half: LCA, 2nd half: opportunity discovery (6th) Prototyping (7th) 1st half: control, 2nd half: final presentation
In the first year, a series of elements necessary for CNC design were lectured. The final assignment was for all students to present the design of a product (the final proposal was to design a food 3D printer.) While student response was generally positive in the first year, some students complained that the area of web programming was outside their expertise. There was also feedback that they wanted to know more about patents.
In considering the content of the second year, I carefully read the relevant literature given in the syllabus once again. I found that the term “integrated product design” refers to a comprehensive design action that includes the definition of needs upstream of product design and manufacturing design that takes into account the downstream manufacturing part. Therefore, in the second year, the course was made more comprehensive by including the perspectives of “discovering opportunities” and “assessing environmental impact (LCA)”. The final assignment for the second year was an individual project for each student, which required them to create a product plan and the 3D model. The unit was taken over by the faculty members in charge of the latter half of the class and the 3D data could be used for strength analysis. After teaching the second year, I felt that embedded programming (conditional branching, hardware interrupt) should be reinforced.
Considering the above, I examined the contents of the third year. As a result, I decided that the content would be similar to that of the first year, with emphasis on 3D modeling and embedded programming.
Draft schedule for 2022: (1st) Mechatronics Design (2nd) 3D Modeling Part I (3rd) 3D Modeling Part II (4th) Embedded Programming Part I (5th) Embedded Programming Part II (6th) Fabrication (7th) Final Presentation
P.S. The department coordinator sent me a timetable. I see that practical training is allocated on Monday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon. If Wednesday afternoon could be allocated for practical training, there would be no need to increase the number of sessions for 3D modeling and embedded programming. Therefore, I ultimately decided to keep most of the content the same as last year. This means that the form of the lecture was almost complete at the time of last year.
Schedule for 2022 (to be confirmed): (1st) Product development process (2nd) Mechatronics design (3rd) 3D modeling (4th) Embedded system (5th) Fabrication (6th) Discovering opportunities (7th) Life cycle assessment, final presentation
Final presentation by interns
Final presentations were held for the internships at Nakuja project (rocket) and Jibebe (electric vehicle). This year, 24 interns (19 from JKUAT, 2 from KU, and 3 from KSA) were accepted at Rocket and 12 at Electric Vehicle. The students who participated in the internship program will be presenting their achievement they have done for four months from January to April.
As guests at the presentation, we invited the DG of the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) and the CEO of an NGO (APDK) that manufactures wheelchairs and tricycles for the disabled. Since DG of KSA suddenly informed that he would attend, so we became very busy with reporting it to the VC’s office and arranging for tea and snacks. Eventually, in the evening of a day before, DG told us that he could not make it and he would send his deputy.
The students’ presentations at the results briefing were a success. Since we had three rehearsals for the rocket and two for the electric vehicle, we were not particularly worried about the presentation. What was good about the rocket was that the KSA director gave us positive words about support for the launch of the N-2 rocket and collaboration with JKUAT, and about the electric vehicle, he expressed great expectations for the commercialization of the electric tricycle.
The speech by the CEO of APDK was particularly passionate and moving. I reaffirmed that it is a very interesting challenge for me as an engineer to work on Nakuja, which pursues the distant dream of space, and Jibebe, which aims to solve a down-to-earth problem of supporting the handicapped in Kenya.
