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73 primarily in the world of racecars, although from 1999 until 2002 he worked for the Victory Team powerboat racing outfit in Dubai. “An opportunity came up in 2002 to found an aeronautics company, and the first engine we made was a two-cylinder gasoline engine, now known as our GAS 252 product, a supercharged 703 cc solution,” he says. “It was also around then that we created our mechanical, gear-driven supercharger – a centrifugal blower system – and we are now the only company supplying gear-driven centrifugal superchargers for UAVs. “Soon after that, we developed and started selling an upgrade kit for the Rotax 912 ULS, to increase its reliability and power. Our centrifugal supercharger took its power from 100 bhp to 140 bhp, and the kit included a mechanical fuel pump to go with its EFI system, as well as a carburettor. These latter parts were very useful because EFI can fail during long-endurance missions, owing to power failures or disconnections in the 12 V system.” He adds here that since modern UAVs contain so many electronic and RF systems, rising EMI levels can disturb the running of otherwise robust EFI. Carburettors certainly lack the fuel efficiency of EFI, but they are not disrupted by EMI. The redundancy gained from Flygas’ kit and the reliability of its mechanical drives are aimed at guaranteeing that the engine continues working 100% of the time amid EMI- induced failures. “And with the worldwide shortages of silicon for electronics, and a lack of supply chain control over it, we anticipate that using a carburettor as a back-up will enable more UAVs with faltering EFIs to be recovered intact, rather than crashing,” Gamberini says. “Operators will therefore be able to examine them, troubleshoot them and re-use them, which will lower their replacement costs and order times significantly.” Since 2015, the mechanical pump and carburettor have been separate add-ons for engine owners looking for back-up fuel supply systems, as has an in-house produced EFI system designed to be added to otherwise carburetted engines (for similar reasons), although the superchargers remain the company’s best-selling items. Demand for them has traditionally come from Rotax aircraft engine users, along with ultralight users and some automotive customers, for already supercharged engines as Flygas Engineering GAS418S | Dossier With the worldwide shortage of silicon we anticipate that using a carburettor as a back-up will enable more UAVs with faltering EFI to be recovered intact Unmanned Systems Technology | February/March 2022 The GAS418S can be mounted vertically (as pictured here on a test bench) with just a few changes to the oil sump and some ancillary components