• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
General Aviation News

General Aviation News

Because flying is cool

  • Pictures of the Day
    • Submit Picture of the Day
  • Stories
    • News
    • Features
    • Opinion
    • Products
    • NTSB Accidents
    • ASRS Reports
  • Comments
  • Classifieds
    • Place Classified Ad
  • Events
  • Digital Archives
  • Subscribe
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Solar electric prototype makes first flight

By General Aviation News Staff · August 20, 2018 ·

Bye Aerospace’s solar electric “StratoAirNet” prototype recently completed its first flight at Northern Colorado Regional Airport in Colorado.

The piloted prototype is the solar electric technology demonstrator for the company’s “StratoAirNet” and “Solesa” families of medium-altitude aircraft systems.

Bye Aerospace’s StratoAirNet unmanned aerial vehicle.

The aircraft systems are intended to provide support for long-endurance commercial and government security requirements, including patrol, observation, utility, mapping, agriculture, search and rescue and surveillance missions.

The Solesa aircraft system will be piloted, performing similar patrol and survey missions for shorter flight durations. It also provides an R&D test platform for new customer payloads, company officials explained.

StratoAirNet is intended to be a longer-endurance unmanned aerial system.

Bye Aerospace is collaborating with SolAero, integrating its high-efficiency solar cell technologies on the advanced graphite composite wing.

The wing of Bye Aerospace’s StratoAirNet.

Bye Aerospace completed the first flight of its “Sun Flyer 2” aircraft in April. The Sun Flyer family of aircraft aims to be the first FAA-certified, U.S.-sponsored, all-electric airplanes to serve the flight training and general aviation markets. The company is collaborating with Siemens on the electric propulsion system for Sun Flyer 2.

The Sun Flyer.

Reader Interactions

Share this story

  • Share on Twitter Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook Share on Facebook
  • Share on LinkedIn Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Reddit Share on Reddit
  • Share via Email Share via Email

Become better informed pilot.

Join 110,000 readers each month and get the latest news and entertainment from the world of general aviation direct to your inbox, daily.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Curious to know what fellow pilots think on random stories on the General Aviation News website? Click on our Recent Comments page to find out. Read our Comment Policy here.

Comments

  1. Adam Santic says

    September 4, 2018 at 11:20 am

    I hope they can bring this design, the Bye Aerospace’s StratoAirNet unmanned aerial vehicle to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019 so that the public can see this.

© 2025 Flyer Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy.

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Comment Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Writer’s Guidelines
  • Photographer’s Guidelines