A2Z Drone Delivery Improves RDSX Pelican “With Eye on U.S Manufacturing”
A2Z Drone Delivery, a developer of commercial drone delivery solutions, has announced an improvement to its flagship craft the RDSX Pelican, reports a press release.
The release explains, “The Pelican will now be offered with a more easily modifiable flight controller enabling customers to more readily integrate their customised flight systems and companion software with the extended range hybrid VTOL delivery drone.”
It adds, “The open-source flight controller also represents an important step in A2Z Drone Delivery’s move towards manufacturing the purpose-built commercial drone in the U.S.”
The company says the Pelican combines the reliability and flight stability of a multi-rotor craft with the extended range of a fixed wing airframe. With no control surfaces, the strong yet simple design minimises potential points of failure and decreases maintenance demands, while keeping it flight-ready longer. Also, the payload bay can be factory-integrated with the A2Z Drone Delivery RDS2 winch, to support a variety of operations including deliveries from altitude.
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Aaron Zhang, company Founder and CEO, commented, “Initially, we designed the RDSX Pelican to work with a proprietary flight controller, but we’ve found that customers sought expanded flexibility too.”
He continued, “Moving to the same open-source controller that everyone else uses allows customers to utilise A2Z’s own QGC ground control station by default, or integrate their own control systems. This also means they can tailor the drone to maximise the open-source PX4 framework with Mission Planner and other commonly used software in our industry.”
Engineered to operate within the FAA’s 55-pound max takeoff weight for Part 107 compliance, the Pelican is rated to carry payloads of up to 5 kilograms on operations for an up to 40 kilometres roundtrip.
The flexibility of the Pelican’s cargo bay allows it to be used for many logistics missions including aerial mapping, drone inspection, forestry services, search and rescue operations, water sample collection, offshore deliveries and mining.
The adoption of the open-source flight controller is also an important stepping with the company’s eye on U.S manufacturing. With the more flexible flight controller in place, it can now proceed towards sourcing comparable components for the RDSX Pelican platform which will to satisfy NDAA compliance and eventually seek Blue UAS certification with the U.S DOD Defence Innovation Unit.

Aaron Zhang
Zhang pointed out, “Our Test Facility in Anji County outside Shanghai, with its regulatory environment that encourages BVLOS operations, has enabled us to push the boundaries of autonomous drone capabilities. We are making preparations to serve demand outside private enterprise operators with versions of the Pelican aimed at being manufactured in the United States.”
With a base model starting price of USD29,000, the A2Z Drone Delivery RDSX Pelican can be customised for most customer needs. A popular configuration is the factory-integrated RDS2 winch for deploying and retrieving payloads from a safe altitude. This can also incorporate a simple servo-release mechanism that boosts the drone’s payload capacity or outfit the airframe with sensor arrays for testing missions, specialty camera systems for aerial inspection, autonomous patrol and more.
For more information
https://www.a2zdronedelivery.com
(Images: A2Z Drone Delivery)
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