According to China Aviation News, China’s AR-500B carrier-based unmanned helicopter made its maiden flight on November 27 at the Poyang test flight base, and analysts believe that the successful development of this model fills a gap in the field of small and light shipborne unmanned helicopters in China.
The entire test flight took about 30 minutes. The unmanned helicopter was manually controlled to take off and land, and the landing was very stable. During the flight test, the AR-500B successively completed test flight subjects such as take-off, automatic hovering, hover-to-stop motion, and landing, and the first flight was a complete success.
It’s reported that in order to meet the requirements for the use of ships, the China Helicopter Design and Research Institute has carried out the design and development of small electric landing assistance devices for unmanned helicopters, ship landing guidance systems, and automatic landing control systems; for the offshore operating environment, it has developed anti-humidity and anti-mold, anti-salt fog and three anti-environment tests, so that the AR-500B carrier-based unmanned helicopter basically adapts to the marine environment and ship use requirements.
In order to solve the disadvantages of small parking space, harsh working environment, high risk of take-off and landing, and complex electromagnetic environment at sea, China Helicopter Design Institute changed to a heavy fuel engine on the basis of the prototype and carried out adaptive modification design for fuel, structure, electrical and flight control systems.
Developed independently by the China Helicopter Design and Research Institute, AR-500B’s maximum take-off weight is 500 kg, the mission load weight is 70 kg, and the maximum endurance time is 4 hours; the operating radius is 100 km, the maximum endurance speed is 140 km/h, and the cruising speed is 120. Kilometers per hour, the practical ceiling is 4000 meters, and can be widely used for wide-area surveillance and identification tasks on the sea.
In addition, AVIC also exhibited the AV500W unmanned aerial helicopter at the Tianjin Direct Expo, which opened on October 10. The helicopter is an unmanned aerial vehicle independently developed by China, capable of carrying observation equipment, small laser-guided missiles and machine gun weapons, and can perform military tasks such as tactical intelligence reconnaissance and surveillance, and target precision strikes.