Unmanned Vehicles

After a fashion, airplanes are toys. No, not all of them, because an Air Tractor earns its keep applying chemicals and Caravans haul skydivers and boxes. But if you own an old taildragger or a beater Cherokee, it’s a recreational toy. With that in mind, I’ve noticed some new developments in the toy market and […]

The Airbus team A^3, or A-cubed, based in Silicon Valley, plans to start flight tests of a prototype of its full-scale VTOL air-taxi, Vahana,in November, according to a report this week by KUOW. The flight tests will be conducted from the Eastern Oregon Regional Airport, in Pendleton, where the company recently occupied a new 9,600-square-foot […]

Airbus is in the electric airplane business for at least the medium term and the next few years could see the first flight of a BAE 146 regional jet converted to fly on electric power. Ken McKenzie, senior VP of strategy and corporate development for Airbus, said what started with a quirky rear-engine ducted fan […]

As the FAA sorts out the mess created when its drone registration rule was struck down by the courts, it’s already thinking about taking the registration requirement to the next level and requiring operators to transmit their registration information. The drone website wetalkuav.com reported that the first meeting of the FAA’s UAS Identification and Tracking […]

Some owners of drones who registered their aircraft with the FAA will be eligible for a refund of their $5 registration fee and deletion of their data, says the agency. Starting just before Christmas 2015, the FAA started requiring operators of unmanned aerial systems weighing more than 0.55 pounds (one quarter of a kilogram) to […]

As drones get ever more capable, a company called ARA has married them to a system of ground sensors that can automatically dispatch a drone to monitor suspicious foot traffic. That means border protection and military perimeter monitoring. view on YouTube

As the drone industry gears up to produce technology to knock down their own products, they may find a big customer in the U.S. government. The Trump administration is circulating draft legislation that would give the government sweeping powers to track and destroy drones over the U.S., according to The New York Times. The proposed […]

All I can say is, I want my $28 back. That’s what the FAA dinged me when I registered my drone, probably because I checked the commercial-use box. Or for some other reason I wasn’t paying attention to. Now, as you’ve read, a court has declared the FAA registration program null and void because it […]

A Washington court has quashed the FAA’s drone registration program. The court ruled Friday that the registration rule violates the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, passed by Congress in 2012, that specifically bars the FAA from creating “any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft.” Since December of 2015, the FAA has required drone owners […]

Aerones, a drone company based in Latvia, has posted a video online showing a custom drone with 28 rotors carrying a skydiver aloft to about 1,000 feet, where he lets go and parachutes to a safe landing. The drone launches from a pond, then picks up skydiver Ingus Augstkalns from a nearby tower. The company […]