DURANT, Oklahoma — The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (CNO) BEYOND Program has received approval from the FAA for an expanded Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operational waiver.
This expands the original waiver to an approximately 43-mile-long area covering CNO medical clinics, CNO’s Emerging Aviation Technology Center testing site, and various other facilities. It is one of the largest of its type in the United States, according to CNO officials.
The waiver covers approximately 377 square miles within the CNO Reservation.
The multi-faceted waiver includes a combination of true BVLOS without Visual Observers (VOs) and BVLOS with VOs, officials continued.
The waiver utilizes ground-based Detect and Avoid (DAA). CNO will be using uAvionix SkyLine Managed C2 and DAA sensors.
The CNO waiver is also the first of its kind to utilize the uAvionix C2 Skylink 5060 radio system for full connectivity in the expanded BVLOS area, officials noted.
The newly approved waiver signifies that CNO and uAvionix have demonstrated to the FAA the aircraft DAA systems, procedures, and the control network meet the safety threshold for operations in the national airspace, officials explained.
Key components of the system deployed in the expanded waiver area include the uAvionix SkyLine C2 management platform and pingStation3 dual-mode ADS-B receivers. The SkyLine C2 management platform is integrated with the DeTect Harrier radar as part of the surveillance layer and used to control several CNO owned UAS / eVTOL aircraft through the uAvionix muLTElink and SkyLink series of C2 radios.
“This approval is a major milestone for the Choctaw Nation’s Emerging Aviation Technology Center and the CNO Reservation,” said James Grimsley, Executive Director of Advanced Technology Initiatives for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. “With this approval we continue to achieve major milestones in the FAA BEYOND Program by enabling BVLOS test flights for our partners and customers by leveraging the permanently deployed hardware and software from uAvionix.”
“CNO’s continued success of demonstrating safe and controlled Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations is critical to meet the growing demand for the many use cases of drones including, but not limited to, package delivery, search and rescue operations, infrastructure inspection, and much more,” adds Marcus Hartman, Aviation Operations Senior Manager for CNO.
About The Choctaw Nation
The Choctaw Nation is the third-largest Indian Nation in the United States with more than 225,000 tribal members and 11,000-plus associates. The first tribe over the Trail of Tears, its historic reservation boundaries are in the southeast corner of Oklahoma, covering 10,923 square miles.
For more information: ChoctawNation.com
About The BEYOND Program
A Presidential Memorandum established the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration Pilot Program (IPP) Oct. 25, 2017. The nine IPP lead participants accomplished many achievements, but there were still challenges to be met.
Once the program concluded on Oct. 25, 2020, as mandated by statute, the FAA established a new program called BEYOND to address remaining challenges and continue the partnerships and progress made under IPP.
The BEYOND program launched Oct. 26, 2020, as a four-year initiative. It focuses on working toward operating under established rules rather than waivers, collecting data to develop performance-based standards, collecting and addressing community feedback, understanding the potential and realized benefits of drone use and streamlining the approval processes for drone integration.
For more information: FAA.gov
I hate drones. I don’t have real reasons for this attitude. Well maybe a few. My friend had a nice photo business using his camera and his C 182. He was in the middle of raising his family using these two machines, now it’s gone. Twice I took evasive action in my C 150 to avoid these flying vermin. And I get tired of the drone operators at my airport coffee shop telling their drone flying stories as if they knew what flying was about. I miss the Goodyear blimp over my head at a football game. Old school stuff for sure, but there it is.