This company is DAS Danish Aviation Systems. They are approachable and keen to work with any new or current UK operators who would like to develop microdrone solutions tailored to their service delivery requirements.

Introduction

Since our commercial decision to drop the use of the microdrones MD4-200 from the development of our Remote Aerial Imagery support service, we have had a steady stream of queries about our experiences and findings. This interest may be because the UK Distributor continues to have a link to our website. We have put the losses in capital and resource down to useful but costly experience.

The aim of this entry is really to save our time responding individually to these queries and also to help out those requiring our view point of our experiences by summarising our journey with the MD4-200. More detail is contained within the individual entries of the blog. You will find specifics of some of the issues in there. Please also feel free to contact us for clarification or other specifics of this type of service delivery.

Initial System Requirements

We are looking to take our engineering and defence background, and provide a security cleared Aerial Survey support service to government agencies, commercial businesses and domestic customers. This is purely a commercial decision which is required to provide a return and profit on our investment.

Key Requirements (KR)

KR1 – For all of the potential services, reliability is key to seeing a return on our investment. It needs to be in the air providing a stable platform for the onboard imagery equipment to supply acceptable images for a client.

KR2 – This leads neatly on to the requirement to deliver clear reliable live images from each flight , but also a workable image at a client viewed ground station. This is particularly important for security but equally important in all other situations.

KR3 – Types and quality of imagery. The system is required to be able to deliver a range of image types from still, HD video through to specialist FLIR etc that a client would pay for.

Features with the MD4-200 we liked

Overall the equipment and support was no where near close to our expectations. and our expectations were wholly based on the UK Distributors sales pitch. We did like a number of features of the MD4-200 :-

Operation – The systems and control is easy to pick up basic operation in 2 days. A business can have one of these in the air very soon after purchase with the necessary approvals.

Ground software – The ground station GUI is user friendly.

Rain Tolerant – It can operate in the rain with care.

Stability – It is a stable platform for very low wind conditions.

The MD4-200 challenges to it being commercially successful to us.

After Sales Support – A number of issues made us cut our losses after 6 months of attempting to operate it commercially. The first and possibly the most significant was the attitude of the UK Distributor and German Manufacturer towards helping once we had handed over the money.

Very expensive – When ultimately the system was there to provide a stable platform for imagery equipment, the cost per lb pay load is very poor compared to other platforms. It became very difficult to see how the system would pay for itself before it became obsolete and unsupportable.

Wind tolerance – The systems wind tolerance is poor with the SW average annual wind speed of 6-7 m/s the 3 m/s limit on the MD4-200 means it spend more time on the ground.

Power Packs – Batteries poor quality and unreliable. Made them more sensetive to temperature change. At £250 each, high failure rates and limited by number of cycles, these consumables are a considerable through life operation factor for the system.

Image quality – Limited payload limits the image quality. The MD4-200 had a limited range of manufacturer agreed cameras.

Payload mounting – Cameras are held on by 2 sided sticky tape. On a number of occasions the camera became detached and hanging by the cable.

Downlink – The downlink can only be described as flakey. Poor quality signal meant intermittent viewing of the onboard images at the ground station.

Software crashing – The ground station software crashed regularly both in flight and before flight. This meant terminating the flight task.

Economical with he truth – During our technical problems with the system the UK distributor lead us to believe is was only our company with eacjh of the issues. Once we made contact with what was at the time all of the UK operators that I could find of the MD4-200, we soon found out we were all in the same situation with the same issues.

Most of these operators have now bought other systems to satisfy their needs. A couple continue with the equipment to attempt to recoupe their investment.

CAA Considerations (Please ensure you read the CAA website for further detail before you buy an UAS)

Operators need to be aware of current CAA rules which changed in Jan this year and continue to change with regards operator certification for commercial use of systems like the MD4-200.

Just to clarify some misinformation that has been published and voiced by certain manufactures and distributors – As a commercial operator of a microdrone you cannot obtain a generic CAA approval for the equipment. The CAA approval is for the equipment, how it will be used, where it will be used and which operators use it. Difficult to blanket approve unless you are going to use it in the same places for the same reasons etc….

The CAA requires that for autonomous use of these types of UAS, an operator is required to be able to take control at any time from the control system. So if using several, you would need an operator for each.

The microdrone has to be in line of sight at all times and must not be flown on goggles only.

Also, even though the microdrone is small, it cannot be flown over people or populated areas without approval (If at all).

Summary

We have built our current Consultancy support services in the high tech Defence Procurement arena. Based on our experience, when purchasing this type of new high tech system we were not expecting everything to be perfect, but we did expect the manufacturer and distributer to acknowledge that there were issues and work with us to resolve. This cooperation never happened and believe me we tried !

We invested £25K not including service development resource in this equipment, and it left us very disappointed, dropping well short of the sales pitch implied performance and envisaged applications.

We have been involved in development of this type of service for a while now, and one thing is certain, one size does not fit all. You may need different platforms to fulfill your particular service capability. We hope these notes help with your choice of UAS fro low level aerial work. Please feel free to drop us a line or give us a call for you r specific situation.

Please also feel free to comment if this has been useful or indeed have had a more positive experience with the MD4-200 and the suppliers.

We have been researching and trailing UAS equipments to deliver aerial survey support. When we originally started research there were very limited commercially available VTOL SUAS. We started this challenge back in March 09 with a microdrones GmbH MD4-200 delivered and supported through their sole UK distributer MW Power Ltd. After 7 months of service development effort devoted to attempting to work around the poor UK support, poor wind tolerance, very poor battery performance and weak downlink; we finally called it a day in October 2009.

After looking at an number of options available we narrowed selection down to two ‘off the shelf’ systems. The Ascending Falcon 8 and the Carvec Kestrel 1000ES.

By far the most value for kg payload was the Kestrel, that coupled with the standard RC airframe and flexible payload mount led us to select the Kestrel for future service development.

We acquired the Kestrel system at the beginning of Feb 2010 and since then have gained CAA approval to operate the system. We are now working on Alan getting an operator certificate through an CAA approved body.

Since collecting the system we have been trying to identify land to fly and develop our support service on. Writing to local farmers was not successful, Longleat agreed but wanted rent plus all of the images from the flights. A local Radio Controlled Modellers offer of use of his field fell through at the 11th hour. Finally, through a local business network, I made contact with a land owner who is now renting us a small field which will suit our initial setup and flight trials.

After 2 months we are finally airborne and flying.

Cover of C4ISR Journal

A percentage of the US Army’s AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters will be equipped with a communications system called the Unmanned Aerial Systems Tactical Common Data Link Assembly (UTA). The UTA’s antenna would be fitted inside a dome over the aircraft rotor blades in place of a radar on some Apaches. With the UTA antenna and modem, an Apache copilot-gunner would be able to control a UAV, steer its sensors and order it to fire weapons. UAV ground controllers would continue to direct takeoffs and landings.

The copilot-gunner, rather than the pilot, would be the primary UAV operator on the Apaches.

Deploying the UTA in Afghanistan and Iraq would be the next step in the Army’s long-range vision to link the Apaches to UAVs, something that would keep the Apache crews kilometers away from potential ground fire and improve ISR coverage. The UTA would extend the vision and targeting reach of Apache crews to 40 kilometers.

MoD Abbeywood Bristol

We continue to provide technical consultancy support to the Defence Industry for a major rotary winged weapon capability. The contract has 2 months to run and is due completion at the end of June 10.

We have provided technical assistance to both the Defence Industry suppliers and the MoD on many Land, Sea and Air equipment management teams over the years.

We continually seek, welcome and discuss opportunities for future equipment support contracts. One of our the aims for our consultancy service is to support the MoD procurement teams in Abbeywood and ideally on unmanned equipments. In support of this aim, in 2009 AJS qualified as a supplier under the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Framework Agreement for Technical Support (FATS3) So all opportunities in this area will be considered.

Spoof or scoop? We came across this intriguing article on the Shephard website. It is suggesting that a new UAV type has been spotted operating in Afghanistan. Amongst the distinctive features of the type is the ‘fat’ wing chord, and a large central fuselage fairing.

We have completed our second week of desk top simulator training for our rotary winged UAS. The basic airframe is a tried and tested radio controlled model with enhancements including a suite of auto stabilisation and auto flight control systems. We have therefore chosen to spend some initial training time on a desktop rc simulator using the UAS controller to gain experience of bare back helicopter control.

I have been pleasantly surprised at the graphics quality and airvehicle control response from the software. It can become tedious when atempting to hover and land over and over again in the same surroundings day after day, so the range of sites to fly around is good. 

The simulator software also has some invaluable features to help a novice learn to fly. For example the system can fly in Teacher / Student mode. This allows a student to have one or more controls which makes the initial experience less over whelming.

After two weeks we are taking off, hovering (Loosely) and landing. The crashes are less frequent now

…. phew!

AJS has received a contract to provide additional short term support to the Apache Integrated Operation Support (IOS) Management Information System solution.

This contract is to continue previous work to develop and mature the governance and policy plans for the Information and Data management for the Apache IOS support service.

Today AJS successfully completed its latest Defence Aerospace Industry support contract. The contract delivered technical support to a member of the UK Defence Industry’s business implementation team for the Apache Integrated Operation Support (IOS). The support was delivered under 3 work packages:

• Contract Due diligence auditing.
• Management Information System facilitation.
• Information and data management facilitation.

Contract Due Diligence – We completed a work package for contract Due Diligence. Due Diligence is an essential activity allowing our customer to conduct an audit of the existing health of the service achieved under the current contract and acts as a risk reduction exercise prior to delivery of the support solution.

The purpose of conducting the DD Audits is to establish the accuracy of the resources including facilities, assets and information provided by the Authority and to confirm that a “going concern” exists, which will enable the customer to provide the support services in accordance with the Contract.  This is achieved by conducting an analysis and review of performance, resources, assets, information, documents, data, facilities, equipment, supplies, personnel and procedures.

Management Information System– AJS has completed a work package for transitional support to the Apache Integrated Operation Support (IOS) solution. Providing support to process mapping of sensitive information and data that are subject to controls of: International Traffic in Arms Regulations, UK RESTRICTED, Technical Assistance Agreement (TAA), Manufacturing Licence Agreement (MLA), Export Control Act, Confidentiality Agreement (CA), Security Policy Document (SPD 2), Commercially Sensitive.

Information and Data Management Planning – Facilitating the development and production of the business support service information and data governance documents and management plans.

This has been a enjoyable and challenging contract with the activity taking place to tight budgets and reduced time scales. This work looks to lead to some additional work packages to further development of the governance and management of SharePoint collaborative working areas, and the development of the support solutions information and management plan.