Appearing in a festive nighttime garb of red and green lights, Pyka’s aerial sprayer has been authorized by Costa Rica’s General Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGAC) to fly unpiloted aerial spraying missions at night. Pelican night spray missions are a go! Pyka recently secured the world’s first regulatory approval for nighttime aerial spray operations with a fixed-wing UAS. Read more about this industry breakthrough here – https://t.co/3SdOndk6pu#flypyka pic.twitter.com/c6aZv8vWhs — Pyka (@flypyka) November 2, 2022 The fully autonomous, all electric craft is now approved to spray large banana plantations – both day and night. Since the aircraft flies well-defined routes daily, spraying crops at night should be no different. This first-ever regulatory approval to fly unmanned aerial spray missions at night with a fixed wing aircraft is a simple expansion of what Pyka’s been doing in New Zealand and Central America for the last few years. As reported in 2020, “Pyka seems as much about software as aerodynamics. Its FPGA (Field …
Pyka: Electric, Autonomous, and Capable
“The Autonomous Airplane of the Future” Conceived in Oakland and Palo Alto, California but flying in New Zealand, Pyka’s fixed-wing electric aircraft represents a new approach in its design and application. Its makers say, “We’re building the autonomous electric airplanes of the future,” and its complement of innovative on-board electronics certainly seems to bear that out. eVTOL News reports Pyka co-founder and CEO Michael Norcia interned with Joby Aviation and moved on to spend two years as a power systems engineer with Wisk. Having experienced the difficulties with vertical lift, “…when Norcia and his co-founders — Chuma Ogunwole, Kyle Moore, and Nathan White — struck out on their own three years ago, they decided to take a more practical approach: sidestepping the technical challenges specific to VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) aircraft with an STOL (Short Take Off and Landing) design, and the regulatory hurdles by seeking out unmanned applications to serve as stepping stones to future passenger-carrying operations.” …