Flight Plan

It was the gift that kept on giving.

Nine-year-old Ryan Evans was dreaming of a radio-controlled airplane he saw in Toys “R” Us, but his parents did more than make his birthday wish come true. They set him on a career path.

Evans (’03) puts high performance, super-secret new unmanned aircraft through their paces for AAI, an unmanned aircraft systems company that designs, produces, tests, fields, and supports advanced vehicles around the world.

Evans provides demonstration test flights for customers as the last step before a purchase is finalized, including flying the company’s “Shadow” system, currently in service with both the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps.

He didn’t start out flying highly complex military aircraft adept at gathering intelligence or delivering ordnance. It began with that $200 radio-controlled (R/C) airplane he and his dad flew after school and on weekends.

“Basically when I was nine years old we were in Toys “R” Us and I saw a radio-controlled airplane hanging up,” he said. “I wanted it and my parents got me one for my birthday. Back then, $200 was a lot of money for the airplane, but I got it and learned how to fly it for six months. I was getting very discouraged with it, actually,” he said.

One day, he said, “We were flying fairly close to a road and a guy pulled off and introduced himself and invited us to join the local R/C club. I followed their recommendations and by age 10 or so I was flying okay. As time progressed, one thing led to another and I started entering in small competitions around the Southeast. When I was 18, I flew my first master competition which was the second from the highest at the time.” He continued to compete while he was a student at Georgia Southern, and obtained his private pilot’s license. He later earned an instrument rating, allowing him to fly commercial craft.

“Right after I got out in 2003, I did really well at the Masters World Acrobatic Competition which became the highest thing to compete in at the time,” said Evans. “Some of the top guys did stuff with UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) companies and basically that’s how I got introduced to Cubic Corporation. They wanted me to come down and look at flying their Pioneer aircraft. I went there and became an instructor and test flight pilot.”

In 2007, the Pioneer system was superseded by more advanced UAVs adopted by the Army and Marine Corps. “That’s when I went to work for the manufacturer of the Shadow system, AAI,” Evans explained.

Now living in Pennsylvania, Evans said his job is mostly test flying. “Here we do not so much training unless a customer needs us to, but we do flight tests, flight operations and check flights. Then we hand off the system to the customer. He likened it to taking a customer for a test drive in a car. “They want to see an aircraft meet certain objectives during its flight,” he said.

UAVs can be flown manually – like an R/C airplane – or on instruments. “All the good systems have automatic takeoff and recovery,” Evans said. “But during the testing phase when it first rolls out it’s flown manually and they hire test pilots from the top-of-the-line R/C people to test fly these aircraft. If it flies good to those people flying it manually, that means then it’s going to feel good to the autopilot, too. When you’re flying it internally, that’s when you’re flying by instruments and GPS on a map and you have a full set of instruments pretty much like you’d have on full-scale. Where people have a wrong view of it is they think you’re looking out through a camera like you’re looking through the windshield of the airplane.” That’s not the case, he said.

“You have an internal pilot and you have a payload operator,” said Evans. “The payload operator is concerned only about the camera and he can coordinate in case of emergencies with the pilot. He’s telling him where to go and what heading to turn to to get the best view on the target. The pilot is flying by instruments, which is why they want you to have an instrument rating these days. In fact, it’s mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration.”

The potential of UAVs is just starting to be realized, Evans said. It’s a growing field and projections are that in the not-too-distant future, 50 percent of all military applications will be unmanned. “The last manned fighter is already built and that is the F-35,” he said. “There’s no way that a human would be able to endure what a machine can endure if it went into combat. Granted, there are advantages of having a human behind it. People think a UAV goes up and flies by itself, and that’s not the case. There’s a human behind it, too.”

Evans still flies R/C aircraft, performing stunts in aerobatic competition. “I fly R/C every time I get a chance – at least twice a week if I am able,” he said. “I always enjoy flying as a hobby and for work, but with R/C, I fly aerobatics. For work, the aircraft are flown in a very scale manner conducting tests.”

Just for fun, he also flies his own full-sized Cessna 150.