Skyway Range Begins Planning for Traffic Early On

Skyway 36 is shaping up to be a handy UAV development location, boasting a 3,000-foot runway a short hop from downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The facility offers hangar and office space, with vertical takeoff pads for any type of rotary-wing aircraft. Additional space is devoted to aircraft refueling, parking, and an Osage Nation-owned 40-acre industrial park that will hopefully be devoted to advanced aerial manufacturing in the coming years. ` As a part of Skyway 36, the Nation has been on the hunt for traffic management systems, hoping to secure the local airspace and institute some kind of control scheme before it gets too crowded. They picked Flight Horizon to do the honors, an uncrewed traffic management system created by Vigilant Aerospace. The system will help bolster Skyway 36's case as the premier "airport for drones" and later AAM aircraft.

FlightHorizon will track and coordinate drones both in the immediate vicinity of the airport and beyond, providing BVLOS support that's already becoming a vital part of the UAS industry. FlightHorizon is based on a pair of NASA patents, and fuses data from multiple inputs, gobbling up everything from transponder data and radar returns to ADS-B and autopilot-outs. The complete picture it provides shows the predicted trajectory and location of each UAV under its umbrella.

The Skyway 36 site is managed by DronePort Network, under contract from Osage's LLC. It's supposed to be the first of a 114-nm drone corridor in the region, a stretch to be called the Skyway Range. Once complete, it will boast 4 nodes for autonomous flight testing along the route. DronePort CEO Craig Mahaney spoke highly of the project, seeing a strong future for such an offering. "As autonomous flight gathers momentum, we're seeing a growing number of flights from droneports like Skyway36. To scale safely and successfully, we must ensure an environment designed to enable long-distance drone flights, air traffic monitoring and advanced safety systems. Vigilant Aerospace's FlightHorizon allows Skyway36 to provide these services and to attract more operators by providing a world-class facility and technology for a wide variety of uncrewed flight operations and testing."

FMI: www.osagellc.com