Dubai Air Navigation Services asked us to demonstrate drone-based calibration of an Instrument Landing System antenna array at Al Maktoum International.
The hard part is not the flying
An ILS array sits inside the most tightly controlled airspace there is, at a live international airport, next to equipment aircraft depend on to land. Getting a drone into that environment is not a question of airmanship. It is a question of who has approved it, under what conditions, with what contingency, and who is on the radio when it happens.
That coordination is the work. Airspace approval, the operating window, the exclusion arrangements, the abort criteria and the liaison with the tower all have to be settled before anything is switched on — and every one of them involves a different party who can say no.
Why anyone would want this
ILS calibration is conventionally done from a flight-inspection aircraft: a specially equipped aeroplane flying approach profiles while its instruments record what the array is transmitting. It works, and it is expensive and slow to schedule, because it needs an aircraft, a crew and a slot.
A drone can hold a position in three dimensions, return to exactly the same point repeatedly, and fly patterns an aeroplane cannot — which is why air navigation providers internationally have been evaluating it for the checks that do not require a full inspection flight.
What this demonstrated
That the operation is feasible in practice, at an operating international airport, with the approvals in place and the aircraft flown to the positions a calibration task requires.
AirTech is a registered RPAS operator across all seven emirates with DCAA and GCAA certified pilots and USD 5 million public liability. Work in controlled or restricted airspace is a large part of what we do — see our inspection services and drone survey work.
