Aerial View of the Site
A well-kept secret is the new CESVA UAS flight test centre which opened last year in Spain. Juan Secades, Director of the site, told UAS Vision: “We’ve had a lot of local clients – both military and commercial – who have been very satisfied with the experience, and now its time to open up the centre to international clients. We have a privileged location in an area with very low population and air traffic densities, good weather conditions and a large restricted airspace for flying UAS under the authorization of the Spanish Ministry of Defence.”
The centre is located at the Virgen del Camino Airbase, León, 110 km south of the Bay of Biscay and 330 km north of Madrid and is run by INSA, a Spanish company owned by the Ministry of Defence through the National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA). INSA has wide experience in this field. Its most notable projects are related to GCS for INTA’s UAS as a response to the latest required functionalities, such as the implementation of satellite communications between GCS and Logistic HQ, the design of X-band satellite communications for the UAV Milano, the development of new automatic landing and manoeuvres functionalities, the mission planning and validation, the control software for the UAS Diana and the development of client adapted interfaces.
Partaking in the SIVA (Integrated Aerial Surveillance System) programme has provided INSA with a unique know-how in experimental flights support, maintenance tasks and the training of pilots and operators for the Spanish Army. The company also benefits from the support of the Spanish Air Force Air Basic Academy (ABA), whose main mission is to give general and specialized training to its students, particularly in the specializations of Aircraft Maintenance Technician and Weapons Technician.
In addition to a safe airspace to perform flight tests and compliance with the air traffic regulations that apply to certification, CESVA offers the following services:
- Full support for experimental flights with specialized personnel
- Logistics and flight permissions
- Technical support during campaigns
- Help obtaining certifications
- Engineering and development of applications
- Payload design, configuration and integration
- Ground Control Stations (GCS)
- Satellite communications
- Integration in GIS platforms and data processing
- Training of pilots, operators and maintenance and auxiliary personnel
- Training materials development
- Theory courses and practice session
- Integral simulation
- Mission, payload and GCS planning
- Operations requested by customer with CESVA’s UAS and personnel
- Maintenance Services
- Preventive maintenance plans and periodic inspections
- Corrective maintenance
- System configuration control