Drone program takes flight with first pilot

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — One student at Racine’s Horlick High School is soaring to new heights as the first in the aviation program to become a certified drone pilot.

“I wasn’t really nervous,” Jacob Thillemann, a senior says. “Since the beginning of the year we’ve been just going through the drone pilot handbook.”

Horlick’s aviation program launched five years ago, and James Bucholtz, the aviation teacher, says lessons were more focused on the maintenance, mechanics and safety of flying. Now Bucholtz, who was a crew chief in the Air Force, says his students are learning so much more.

“We’re really cross-curricular,” Bucholtz says. “You’ve got history. You’ve got physics, a lot of math. And simply government regulations, how to navigate those. That’s a…