Royal Thai Airforce, Aerial Vehicle Challenge 2013

On this year 2013 Royal Thai AirForce Academy is celebrating their 60 years celebration, to honor this celebration, the first UAV Contest was set-up by RTAFA here in Thailand.

It was a thrilling 3 days at Royal Thai AirForce base September this year. Thailands first UAV Contest was finally real. As it was initiated by AirForce Academy and aimed for other Academies, commercial operators and manufacturers like jDrones were not allowed to participate on the challenge it self but jDrones were one of the supporters of this happening along with Royal Thai AirForce.

There were total 8 applicants, only 6 teams were ready to fight over the 2013 UAV Challenge trophies when 3-day competition started. On first two days consisted mainly of final build, presentations to the military officials and test flights on competition area. Last way was day of competition.

2 of the teams were from local AirForce Academy and 4 other teams came from universities surrounding Bangkok area. Local teams used their own autopilot and software. Outside universities all had APM platform in various ways and installations.

Jani from jDrones and Royal Thai AIrForce Generals discussed long about the current development status on UAVs and also the UAVs on participating contest. Some of officials we met during contest have already seen how well jDrones UAVs work and they were really thrilled to see and compare how Academic driven systems can compete against commercial systems and commercial developers.  jDrones is here to stay.

In overall message from military is clear, military is seeking easy to use and expandable UAVs for their every day needs.

The Mission:

Flight mission had 3 main tasks:

• Fly 100m circle at 60meters altitude, 2 laps (O)
• Take photos from 6 waypoint locations (1-6)
• Drop small 50gr payload as close as possible of the target (T)

Flying area was rather small and challenging for this type UAV Contests but small makes it even more interesting. And also when planes can handle small tight turns, bigger turns is generally a lot easier.

Flying area was around 500 x 500m box (Red box) and pilots were not allowed to cross that border. If you did, you get points penalty from every second outside of the box.

Missions had 5 sections that every operator had to do on same order

1. Takeoff, fully automatic or manually. fully automatic gave more points
2. Fly 2 laps of 100m circle around O waypoint
3. Fly all 6 waypoint cordinates in order and have pictures on waypoint locations
4. Drop small bag full of Maizen flour to target (T)
5. Landing, automatic landing gives extra points

You had to repeat mission in 5 minutes after first run was done.

All UAV Operators were able to plan their own missions as long as you fulfilled main 5 sections in correct order. Some of the mission that we saw had close to 40 waypoints. Why? We are still wondering that. Hopefully on later recap with university people we will find out from them why they choose to have so many waypoints on their missions.

Both RTAFA teams had their own electronics and software running. Rest of the teams had various APM installations.

This year University teams tried to be on their own while RTAFA had several consultants helping them on making their planes finely tuned. This boost was clearly seen on challenge outcome.

Another thing we noticed during competition was overall readiness of the teams. RTAFA planes were really nice build. No loose wires or electronics, everything were installed properly and in nice manner. Other University teams still have some path ahead to learn how to install their flight electronics as most of them used fiberglass tape and similar "not so good" ways.

In overall this UAV contest was really good starting ground and I am sure that next year level will be more even between teams and now all teams have base-level to compare.

Till next challenging event....

Jani / jDrones