On Thursday 27th of April, an RPAS demonstration day was hosted by FADA-CATEC in ATLAS Experimental Flight Center, located in Villacarrillo (Jaén), as as part of the dissemination activities in the framework of REAL project.

Along the day, the REAL project was presented to all the attendants, emphasizing the project main objective, which is to promote the use of EGNOS in RPAS sector in order to contribute to the integration of drones into airspace and their use in advance operations. In particular, it was widely explained the specific operation that will be demonstrated in REAL Scenario 2, that will be performed in ATLAS by FADA-CATEC: the use of a drone during fire fighting emergency for coordination labours.

These coordination tasks are nowadays carried out by a manned rotorcraft, mainly under visual control, without using any other technology than radio communication between pilots. However, according to the regulations (aimed at safeguarding pilot integrity), coordination tasks can only be offered continuously by a maximum time of 3 hours, followed by a break of 2 hours, and 3 more hours of operation (in total 6 hours of daily operation).

In this framework, the use of RPAS rises like a suitable solution to cover the coordination and observation aircraft role with less restrictive operational times, being able to operate continuously during 4 hours, followed by a stop of 15 minutes for refuelling, post-flight evaluation and pilot change. Besides, the RPAS will be able to fly at night time, operating a maximum of 12 hours a day per shift, being able to work 24 hours a day with two pilot teams.

Furthermore, various RPAS flight demonstrations were conducted in place, showing the RPAS great potential for performing critical operations like the ones proposed in REAL scenarios.

Several personalities attended to the event: José Sánchez Maldonado (Minister of Employment, Enterprise and Commerce of La Junta de Andalucía), Juan Gómez Ortega (Principal of the University of Jaén), Manuel Hueso (Employment deputy in La Diputación de Jaén), and Francisco Miralles (Mayor of Villacarrillo), accompanied by Joaquín Rodríguez Grau (Director of FADA), and Anastasio Sánchez (Director of the ATLAS Center). At the same time, agents from other companies and entities related and interested in the unmanned airplanes sector, were present.