Growers in the western Corn Belt and parts of the Southern Plains may notice a strange, slow, high-wing spray plane at work this summer over row-crop fields and some pastures – a sight that likely will become commonplace soon.

Heinen Brothers, a regional aerial application service based in Seneca, Kan., will be flying various application sorties with the newly-FFA-approved Pelican 2 unmanned aerial system (UAS) in eastern Kansas and parts of the Midwest. 

Lukas Koch, CEO of Kelly Hills Unmanned Systems (a Heinen Brothers spinoff) says the firm is working closely with the parent company to help commercialize the Pelican 2 in the U.S. for its San Francisco-area manufacturer Pyka. 

Currently, Pyka has an initial order for 20 of the new fixed-wing drones to be shipped to Brazil over the next year. And with FFA approval of the new platform for commercial heavy lift applications in the U.S., Pyka is collaborating with Heinen Brothers to test and introduce the technology in the Great Plains and Corn Belt, says Pyka CEO Michael Norcia.

Koch says unmanned aerial application aircraft offer an avenue for reduced pilot risk typically associated with traditional turbo-prop application planes like the Air Tractor 802 and the Thrush.

“In our business we all know and miss individuals lost to aerial application accidents, and we’re confident UAS technology will allow us to put pilotless aircraft into the most dangerous situations in the future to reduce those risks,” he says. “We don’t see drones replacing airplanes or helicopters but certainly envision pilotless technology to be part of our hangar inventories.

“Cowboys still ride horses, despite the advent of dirt bikes and 4-wheelers,” he explains. “Each of these technologies have their place and all can coexist well together. I think it will be the same for UAS machines like the Pelican 2, turbo-props, rotary wing aircraft as well as smaller multi-rotor drones.”

Meet the Pelican 2

Norcia says the Pelican 2, developed over the past 30 months, is the second generation UAS that Pyka has produced in its 8-year history, which was launched with the now-discontinued initial three-motor Pelican model in 2021.

The carbon-composite Pelican 2 is roughly the size and appearance of a Cessna 172 with a 38-foot wingspan and is currently the world’s largest autonomous crop protection aircraft. It has a product payload of roughly 80 gallons, a 59-foot swath and a work rate of more than 200 acres per hour at a working cruise of 70 knots.

Advanced LIDAR (laser distance and obstacle measurement) and RADAR (radio wave obstacle and distance measurement) enable fully autonomous day-and-night spraying for increased application times and efficiency within proper environmental conditions, Norcia says. Under current FAA regulations, however, operations must be overseen by a pilot within line-of-sight proximity.

The new model can be fitted with spray booms equipped with either traditional hydraulic nozzles or electric rotary atomizers.

Pyka’s rotary atomizers offer on-the-go droplet size control from 150 to 350 microns, as well as automated dynamic droplet size adjustments for various field conditions and locations or variations in aircraft altitude. The aircraft ships with five automotive-style sealed battery packs, which allow for 24/7 operation and carry a four-year life expectancy under typical U.S. duty cycles. 

Norcia says testing of the Pelican 2 has been and continues to be an ongoing daily routine at the Almeda, Calif., factory and four nearby airfields. 

“We do a lot of structural testing at the factory,” he says. “We drop the aircraft from varying heights to ensure the landing gear assemblies (steel and aluminum) will absorb enough impact to protect the airframe from serious damage. We’ve done full-wing fatigue testing with the wing mounted in a fixture with two gantries pulling up and down over and over thousands of times to simulate a 10-year useful life of the aircraft taking off and landing.

“We also have an airplane strapped down inside a room and run flight profiles over and over. We fill it with liquid, it pumps it out, swap its battery, so it’s representative of real missions but in a closed, very turbulent environment.”

Globally, Pyka’s aircraft are in commercial operations with Dole in Honduras working in banana crop production, and the company is slated to fill the 20-unit order for SLC Agricola, one of Brazil’s largest agricultural producers.

Meanwhile, Koch says flights of the Pelican 2 in the U.S. this summer will further “harden” the technology under real-world operations and help UAS technology carve out its own niche in the crop protection business.

“The scale will be different with an aircraft that carries 80 gallons of product vs. one that carries 4 tons, but the experiences we have going forward with the Pelican 2 will go a long way to helping us determine where such technology fits in our business model,” he explains. 

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