On the second day of UVS International’s RPAS 2012 Conference in Paris on June 5 – 7, Ron van de Leijgraaf, from Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, the Netherlands (on behalf of EUROCAE WG 93) will deliver his presentation on “WG on Light RPAS: Introduction & Objectives”.
Ron moved from the Dutch Civil Aviation Authorities to the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment in early 2012, in order to be able to continue his work on the development and international harmonisation of UAS regulations. His primary activity at the Ministry is working on UAS regulations. This means that he will continue his international activities regarding establishing the international harmonisation on airworthiness regulation with other national aviation authorities, EASA and EUROCONTROL. For this harmonisation, Ron created the authorities coordination group JARUS. This group will cooperate with the EUROCAE WG73 and WG93, by providing draft regulation to this group for consultation with industry and stakeholders. Ron is a member of EUROCAE Working Group 73 and chairman of EUROCAE Working Group 93. Furthermore he is the member on behalf of The Netherlands of the ICAO UAS Study Group. Ron graduated from the Technical University of Delft with a degree in Electrical Engineering and an avionics specialisation. Before joining the Dutch CAA, he worked, amongst others, at the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR). Here he worked on the development of flight test instrumentation systems and research on navigation systems and avionics for future ATM applications.
ABSTRACT
In December 2011, the Secretary General of EUROCAE took the decision to create a working group to deal specifically with Light Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS). Consequently, this activity has now shifted from WG73 SG4 to the new WG93 on Lightweight RPAS. The EUROCAE Council agreed with this decision and a small team worked on the Terms of Reference of WG93, which have subsequently been approved by the EUROCAE Council. In May 2012, the kick-off meeting of this new working group was held. The scope of the WG93 activities is to develop standards and recommendations for guidance material for the safe operation of Lightweight RPAS, sequenced in order of priority for the Light RPAS community, and the output is primarily directed towards National Aviation Authorities. The objectives of the working group are to define and describe the current and near future Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) operations and current Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations that are on-going or being planned by the existing Lightweight RPAS user community. These operational scenarios, which are initially focused on VLOS operations, will be described using a structured method. The final documents to be provided by the group will address operational considerations for VLOS operations of RPAS and an overview of BVLOS operations. It will make recommendations that the responsible national authorities can use to establish a common European regulatory baseline and policies for visual line of sight operations. As a next step, the group will work on various different regulatory proposals, a.o. for flight crew licensing, operator approval, organisational approvals, UAS classification and communication needs. It is the intention to have proposals for all these areas available for small RPAS regulation within the next two years.
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