First Flight of the Yak-54 UAS Successful!

McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The first flight of the Yak-54 unmanned aircraft system (UAS) was completed Monday December 13, 2009.  We performed two flights with the Yak Monday night: One mostly manual flight to get our pilots comfortable with the field, and one autonomous flight to verify autopilot performance. Note: We are operating at night down here to deconflict our UAS with other air traffic. This isn't a problem considering the constant daylight, however it does require our team to have a somewhat irregular schedule.

On Tuesday, December 14 Dave Royer and Jon Tom had to report to Snowcraft I ("Happy Camper") training. This is thankfully the last bit of training the team must complete. While this meant that we were unable to fly on Tuesday and Wednesday, it also gave us a few days to review flight data and start planning the next flights. So far everything looks great in the data. The aircraft was maintaining altitude, airspeed, and ground track very well. The next set of flights will expand the mission area and flight time as we begin to simulate Meridian flights. Just as a reminder the primary purpose of the Yak-54 flights in Antarctica is to serve as a low-cost, easy-to-operate method of simulating Meridian missions.

In addition to looking at flight data, we continued to work on getting the Meridian ready for flight this week. Andy Pritchard reinstalled the propeller and spinner and began performing maintenance checks on the engine. We pulled the Meridian out of the hangar to install wings to ensure there are not any cold-weather related problems with our processes. Everything went well and the vehicle is close to being ready for ground testing. While it was outside, the Meridian attracted the attention of a few people working at the airfield. It's nice to see so much local interest in our project.