Last March, when the restrictions really started to bite, we had a call to help with a cancer treatment. Apparently this treatment has a 4-hour life once created and the supply and the patient were 250 miles apart; treatment made in Birmingham and the patient in the far SW of England. A PA28 collected the treatment delivered by bike to an airfield in the Midlands, landed at our airfield and was collected by our local Blood Bike. Manufacture to patient less than 3 hours.
We stand ready to do this at any time. A PA28 can easily fly in conditions that would ground the present generation of drones to far greater distances and with orders of magnitude greater payload. You could double that payload in our PA32.
I accept that these UAVs need to be worked up to a standard where they can mix with piloted aircraft for future development and no doubt the time will come when they are actually useful but it irritates me to see the trials 'dressed up' as if they can actually be doing anything useful at the moment.
TOO