Warbird Information Exchange

I am asking this in the main section as I would assume that most of them would be military. Do any of you guys fly at an airport that has UAV operations? There is conversation about UAV's coming into our airport. I am wondering how this will work with other traffic. Does the tower talk with the operator?

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

We were test flying a modified Hawker 800XP in Victorville, CA last summer and had to deal with these in the pattern.

USAF UAVs operate with a local control van and a ground support team that is actually on location. Once the aircraft is out of the airport traffic area, they hand over operations to one of the centralized control locations (Creech AFB, Cannon AFB, etc).

So, airport controllers will talk via VHF/UHF to a pilot who is physically located somewhere there locally.

When it's being controlled from much further away, the radio comms are with that operator, but relayed through the satellite link on the UAV itself such that it's coming from the antennas on the aircraft.

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OK, sounds like I would just work them like any other type of aircraft right? Can they take instructions like hold short and such?

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

yes. They have a local controller/handler eyeballing on the ground.

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All I did was press this red button here...

Thanks guys. If this happens I will be sure to get some pics.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Director

Somewhat-related article from Air Force Times:

AF, firms seek UAV flights in civil air space

Anthony

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The FAA is working to get UAS rules put together, so I would think that you'll be getting guideance from Washington shortly if anything goes ahead.

This was in the AVWEB News Flash this morning-

http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/FA ... 137-1.html

a week ago, I watched a UAV practicing landings at Victorville, along with a Mooney flying next to it. Never seen that before.

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Roger Cain
www.sfahistory.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Stearman/


We must limit politicians to two terms:
one in office and one in jail.

I've flown with both civilian and military UAV's (civilian at LRU) in the pattern. My first experience was back in 2003, I once had to wait for 15 minutes on the ground while a Predator took it's sweet-ass time on an approach into a base in Kuwait. In more recent times, the UAV, operated by CBP, was almost normal traffic.
In LRU, the local college was operating UAV's, and had a CT Designs chase plane. That was the first I had seen that. Since this was a non-towered field, others in the pattern gladly made way for them to depart.

UAVs act like normal traffic, to include the radio chatter. Someone who didn't see the airplane, but heard the comms, would never suspect a UAV was mixed in. Enroute they typically squawk, so TCAS/TIS, etc should display them.

My complaint, although mission oriented, is that they seemed unable or unwilling to move from their preprogrammed orbits, forcing the manned airplanes to make large heading or altitude changes to accommodate them. Sometimes I realize this was necessary, but sometimes I think it was willfull inflexibility. My other beef was that ATC would block large working areas for them and not allow us to cut through any of it, even though the UAV was clearly on the other end of the airspace and at a speed that would prevent a conflict ... even if he pointed straight at us. Although that occurred in the AOR, I can see a UAV in a "police orbit" (or equivalent) causing a similar issue stateside.

Ken

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"Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves."

Another recent article from USA Today:

FAA told to make room for drones in U.S. skies

Anthony

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I agree, our experience in Victorville was the airplanes with real people in the cockpit had to wait on the UAVs. In fact our FAA test pilot commented that this experience was the first time he had to hold short for an R/C airplane.

While I can empathize with the rather large block of airspace they would tend to use I can see, as a pilot, the reason. Most of the time the irritations are in VFR space. I can say that the situational awareness of these aircraft is a little on the dull side. What I mean is that unlike normal VFR pilots there is no rapidly swivelling head in the cockpit with the same resolution or depth of field perception of a pair of human eyes. The sensor ball(s) are exceptional at multi-spectrum observation of ground targets but are somewhat lacking in the resolution and 3-D department. The ground operators have to rely on pure numbers much like a hard-core IFR aircraft. A good analogy would be if you wanted to share the airspace with a Cessna 172 with only slits for windows or if you happen to life in the "sunny" North driving your vehicle around with the windows frosted up.(Don't tell me you've never done that... ) I personally would be glad to be out of it's airspace "box".

I think that we as in-the-seat pilots will have to adapt to life with our quasi robotic friends. I regularly fly in a very complex space with lots of research flights as well as VFR and commercial traffic going on with two languages being spoken on the radio (I'm in Canada. Probably the only country in the world that allows this ) and you get real adept at working with Ground Control or Terminal Control to make sure that Newton's Laws don't get re-tested.

Mark

My experience with some (most) of the UAV's has been that they are not very fast, so expect to wait awhile if one is landing and you are holding short. A T-38 or F-16 they aren't.
Best to just think of them as a Diamond Katana if you are in the pattern with one and extend your downwind, etc to give them plenty of time to grind on in.

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All I did was press this red button here...