Windracers ULTRA Flights “Do NOT Affect Scottish Seabird Colonies” 

eVTOL Insights cov­ers Win­drac­ers part­ly because the com­pa­ny rep­re­sents the British pio­neer­ing spir­it of old and part­ly because its autonomous air­craft is help­ing to bring about the green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion of the future.

There­fore, it is encour­ag­ing to see Win­drac­ers sus­tain­able cre­den­tials have been approved by a respect­ed ecol­o­gist, wor­ried the air­craft could upset and dam­age seabirds in Scot­land, where it present­ly does much off its fly­ing. 

A study on seabird colonies con­duct­ed by ornithol­o­gist Dr. Roy Arm­strong and ecol­o­gist Caitlin Hen­der­son has found “no signs of dis­tur­bance as a result of recent drone flights oper­at­ed by Win­drac­ers to and from Eday in Orkney,” says the report. The find­ings are sig­nif­i­cant giv­en drone com­pa­nies are look­ing to serve Scotland’s remote island com­mu­ni­ties, where numer­ous sen­si­tive bird species are locat­ed.

Win­drac­ers actu­al­ly com­mis­sioned the study along­side its recent drone deliv­ery tri­al in Orkney, which saw its ULTRA air­craft – a robust, twin-engine fixed-wing air­craft with a 10-metre wingspan – mov­ing autonomous­ly between the islands of Eday, Westray and North Ronald­say in Orkney, a num­ber of times each week. 

The ornithol­o­gist and ecol­o­gist close­ly mon­i­tored a num­ber of colonies before, dur­ing and after drone flights over the Calf of Eday, an unin­hab­it­ed island which sup­ports 32 species of breed­ing birds and is des­ig­nat­ed as a Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area for its impor­tance as a nest­ing area. 

This includ­ed the cor­morant colony and nest­ing Ful­mars, as well as a wider range of nest­ing seabirds around the cliffs to the North of the Calf of Eday – such as guille­mots, razor­bills, kit­ti­wakes and gulls.

Calf of Eday (Cred­it: theresagreen.me)

The study found that “nei­ther the audi­to­ry nor visu­al impact of the drone caused any adverse effect to the behav­iour of any species dur­ing time of sur­vey, although the taxi­ing drone appeared to attract for­ag­ing com­mon gulls – a species known to fol­low agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery dur­ing hay cut­ting.” Adding though, “The study did iden­ti­fy dis­tur­bances as a result of a pass­ing sheep, some passers-by and a boat.” 

Accord­ing to Dr. Arm­strong, one of the country’s most expe­ri­enced ornithol­o­gists with over 30 years of com­mer­cial expe­ri­ence includ­ing numer­ous bird sur­veys at and around UK air­ports, the obser­va­tion that no species were dis­turbed by the drone flights is con­sis­tent with oth­er obser­va­tions of drone/bird inter­ac­tions. 

This includes drone mon­i­tor­ing of gull breed­ing colonies in which breed­ing birds appear to be obliv­i­ous to the pres­ence of the drone. The ornithol­o­gist also point­ed out the noise lev­els pro­duced by Win­drac­ers ULTRA are very low com­pared with com­mer­cial or mil­i­tary air­craft and would not be expect­ed to pro­duce an adverse impact. 

Dr Arm­strong com­ment­ed, “The tri­als clear­ly demon­strat­ed that there was no dis­tur­bance effect observed at the chick rear­ing stage of a wide range of species. This is an impor­tant stage as  dis­tur­bance has the poten­tial to inter­fere with chick feed­ing and shel­ter­ing of chicks by adults dur­ing adverse weath­er con­di­tion.”

Puf­fin Colony (Cred­it: theresagreen.me)

Rob Dat­son, Chief Oper­a­tions Offi­cer at Win­drac­ers, added, “In con­tin­u­al advance­ment and improve­ment of ULTRA, Win­drac­ers is keen to under­stand any poten­tial impacts from our flights on bird colonies and oth­er wildlife in the areas where we oper­ate. The find­ings of this study will no doubt be of reas­sur­ance to Orkney res­i­dents as well as the bird­watch­ing com­mu­ni­ty around the world.” 

The car­go deliv­ery tri­al using Win­drac­ers ULTRA is part of the Sus­tain­able Avi­a­tion Test Envi­ron­ment (SATE) pro­gramme and is part-fund­ed by the UK Research and Inno­va­tion (UKRI) Future Flight Chal­lenge, deliv­ered by Inno­vate UK and the Eco­nom­ic and Social Research Coun­cil. 

Its aim is to demon­strate readi­ness to oper­ate a com­mer­cial drone ser­vice that can trans­port pay­loads reli­ably, cost-effec­tive­ly and sus­tain­ably for the ben­e­fit of com­mu­ni­ties in remote loca­tions, such as the High­lands and Islands. 

The Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA) recent­ly announced that SATE is among six projects that have been select­ed for tri­als to help safe­ly inte­grate drones fly­ing beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) of their oper­a­tor into UK air­space.

Cor­morant Colony (Cred­it: theresagreen.me)

Win­drac­ers ULTRA which has a pay­load capac­i­ty of up to 100 kg and can trav­el mid­dle-mile dis­tances of up to 1,000 km, is able to take off, fly and land safe­ly with­out the need of a remote pilot thanks to its autopi­lot and mis­sion con­trol soft­ware. Its sys­tems are dual or triple redun­dant to ensure it can fly safe­ly in all con­di­tions.

For more infor­ma­tion

https:windracers.com/

(Top image: Win­drac­ers)

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