Scotland: John O’ Groats Airport Holds Successful Trial Flight “of Largest UAV in Europe”

The North­ern most part of Scot­land played host to the largest Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cle (UAV) in Europe ear­li­er this month, reports the johnogroat-jour­nal.

Tak­ing place at the Wick John O’ Groats Air­port, the ini­tial teth­ered-flight tri­al aims even­tu­al­ly to deliv­er the blue­print for net-zero region­al avi­a­tion across the UK. The project involves Orkney-based, Sus­tain­able Avi­a­tion Test Envi­ron­ment (SATE), along with its pri­ma­ry part­ner High­lands and Islands Air­ports (HIAL) as well as ARC Aerosys­tems.

The autonomous C‑600, designed and built by ARC is the largest VTOL UAV in Europe, with a wingspan of over eight metres; a 100 kg pay­load capac­i­ty; and the abil­i­ty to trav­el up to 400 kms.

The air­craft is fit­ted with a fixed-wing elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing design which elim­i­nates the need for run­ways, mak­ing it per­fect­ly suit­ed to sup­port the needs of rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in oper­a­tions, includ­ing mail deliv­er­ies, fish­eries and wind­farms.

Dougie Cook, HIAL North Air­ports Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, com­ment­ed, “The team were delight­ed to host this tri­al. HIAL is com­mit­ted to achiev­ing our net zero ambi­tions and also to ensur­ing future con­nec­tiv­i­ty for our region­al air­ports.”

Dr Seyed Mohseni, Founder and CEO of ARC Aerosys­tems, added, “The next step, mov­ing for­ward, is going beyond visu­al line of sight to get us clos­er to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion.”

Please Watch Video of Tri­al

Mean­while, SATE is the UK’s first low car­bon test loca­tion at an oper­a­tional air­field. It is based at Kirk­wall Air­port in Orkney and aims to show­case emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and high­light the envi­ron­men­tal, social and eco­nom­ic con­tri­bu­tion sus­tain­able avi­a­tion can make.

SATE man­ag­er Jayne Gold­ing remarked, “One of our ambi­tions is that suc­cess­ful tri­als mean our part­ners can use the data to help show­case oth­er air­craft and tech­nol­o­gy, allow­ing them to devel­op a case for com­mer­cial use. HIAL’s remote air­ports are ide­al for test­ing such flights and show­ing how rur­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty is vital.”

On Tues­day and Wednes­day this week rep­re­sen­ta­tives of key stake­hold­ers, local high school pupils and col­lege stu­dents inter­est­ed in STEM (sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics), gath­ered at Caith­ness Air­port to look over the ARC C‑600 air­craft, hear about the teth­ered tri­als, and watch the video.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.hial.co.uk/homepage/21/sustainable-aviation-test-environment

(News Source: www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk)

(Top image: The ARC C‑600 at Wick John O’ Groats Air­port this week — Cred­it:  Angus Mack­ay)