The Dutch SME High Eye is now ready to meet Malaysian Armed Forces' requirement for unmanned aerial platforms with its HEF 32 VTOL UAV, being showcased this week at DSA 2018 exhibition, April 16-19. The HEF 32 is an unmanned helicopter with a two-blade single rotor.
High Eye HEF-32 UAV being promoted at DSA 2018
The HEF-32 strength lies in the fact that it weighs less than 25 kg and it will fit in any small van or estate car without any prior disassembly, whilst still being able to easily outperform all electric competitors. It offers flight times up to 4.5 hours even when carrying modest payloads. It never needs a recharge, which means that except for some short refuelling stops, the mission can always continue.
The system operates fully automatic and through nearly all weather conditions. Several sensors are used to improve safety, the pilot's orientation and to aid his navigational capabilities.
A wide variety of options is available to further increase its operational capabilities. Flexible payload interfaces allow the integration of multiple sensors at once.
High Eye offers the HEF 32 UAV and all the periphery required for a basic mission operation, in one basic system package. This includes a flight ready HEF 32, Ground Control Station, omni-directional ground antenna, Operations Manual, Maintenance Manual, Illustrated Parts Breakdown, checklists, maintenance frame, tools, transportation box and parts required for the first 200 hours of operation.
The propulsion is provided by a 32cc two-stroke petrol engine, which drives the rotors via a maintenance-free, industrial quality, hybrid transmission. Fuel is supplied via a large fueltank and a simple gravity-feed system.
The HEF 32 will fly beyond 4.5 hours with a payload of 2 kg, without refuelling. In hover, it will easily fly 3 hours, whilst only using 5 litres of petrol. It is currently limited at 70 knots, which equals 130 km/h. Because of a safe excess of power, it can fly comparatively high and altitudes in excess of 6000 feet offer no problem for the system.
The datalink is supplied by Silvus Technologies and provides a dual MIMO IP link, which is used for the telemetry, flight controls and the payload. The data-link is fully redundant and acts as a self-healing mesh network, allowing data-relaying and multi-location payload streaming. Operations in reduced line-of-sight conditions are made possible through the MIMO capabilities. The system can be provided in many different frequency bands and output strengths can be tuned to local regulatory requirements. With the normal antenna systems, as supplied with the HEF 32, the datalink range exceeds 15 km with live streaming video. A tracking antenna can be supplied as an off-the-shelf upgrade, which can increase the range up to 50 km with moderate bandwidth capabilities.
