Dufour Aerospace’s First Flight in Sweden – sUAS News

This week, Dufour Aerospace carried out a series of customer demonstrations and tests in Sweden. The flights took place at the Västervik airfield in Sweden, supported by the Västervik Drone Science Park and Savback Helicopters, one of our strategic partners. It was the first deployment of Dufour’s newly created Operations Team. The AeroMini10, Dufour’s small-sized test and validation platform, proved its worth in real-world flying.

In a total of 12 autonomous flights, Dufour’s team demonstrated the capabilities of unmanned tilt-wing aircraft in general and the in-house flight control system in particular. The tests went as planned, and so the team was able to collect a lot of valuable operational experience – outside the comfort zone of our home base in Switzerland.

The AeroMini10 used in this campaign is the smallest member of the Dufour Aerospace tilt-wing family. It is a scaled-down version of the 6-metre-wingspan Aero2. From a systems perspective, it is fully comparable to Dufour’s flagship product, the Aero2. The AeroMini10 allows for carrying out very meaningful flight operations with relatively little effort. This is helpful for proof-of-concept operations or to familiarize potential operators with the system. The platform also has great value for pilot and operator training purposes.

While the system is capable of BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight), the flights of this campaign were carried out within the drone pilots’ visual range. All in all, it was a successful first flight in the backyard of our neighbours to the north.