A Chinese unmanned aircraft carried out the country’s first flight of a cargo “drone” between two provinces. The late April flight saw an FP-98 cargo aircraft transport 455 kg of plant seedlings from Haikou on Hainan Island to Zhuhai in Guangdong province, according to the official newspaper China Daily.
The aircraft completed the mission in less than 3 hours. Using a cargo drone, rather than commercial airline or ground transportation, resulted in all seedlings surviving the trip. However, the report does not specify whether the aircraft was carrying professionals as observers.
It is claimed that the FP-98 can carry up to 1.5 tons of payload and has a range of 648 nm (1,200 km). For guidance, the aircraft uses China’s BeiDou-3 satellite navigation system – the country’s alternative to the US global positioning system, GPS.
One image suggests that the FP-98 is derived from the Shifei Y-5B biplane, itself based on the widely produced Antonov An-2, which made its first flight in 1947.
The Haikou-Zhuhai mission comes nearly six years after China’s first flight of the FH-98 cargo plane, also based on the Y-5B. The original FH-98 was modified by the China Academy of Aerospace Electronics Technology, an institute under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
In February, the Civil Aviation Administration of China completed verification tests of the AutoFlight V2000CG CarryAll electric vertical takeoff and landing unmanned cargo plane. The model is in the process of obtaining formal certification. AVIC has also developed the TP500 cargo drone, which has reportedly entered production in Shandong.
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Tags: Chinese transform passenger plane drone carry plant seedlings
