Procyon Commentary With regards to the comments from BartUAV on 8020 that seem to have raised concern amongst shareholders. I was not involved in whatever incident occured as it happened after I left. And I do not understand Global UAV's communication strategy.
However, strictly speaking as a general statement about the Procyon system, and in response to statements that it cannot fly: this is completely unfounded. There exist untold hours of video which would prove otherwise. I recorded hours of video during flight testing. There also exist tons of flight recorder data from each and every machine in service. Further, when I was running NOVAerial, I had developed a policy, where each and every unit sold was test flown for 30-60 minutes before shipping. And I recorded a "proof of life" video for each and every unit.
I did this because I had learned before I even developed the Procyon system, when I was doing development work and support for other companies, that well more than 90% of UAV crashes are due to user error. And helicopters in particular present a greater chance for problems due to operator mishandling. They are simply more fragile than multirotor systems.
The Procyon flew, and flew well. It had higher performance than it's competitors in many areas, particularly speed. In fact it had roughly double the top speed of other similar helicopters drones. And I think it's wind performance, reliability and flight stability beat others too, though I have no data on this.
To this day, the Procyon has legendary status amongst some of the other Ardupilot developers.
Am I making this statement out of pride? You're darn right. But it's also the truth, and can easily be proven with objective evidence.