70 UAVE (pronounced ‘wave’) is a UAV manufacturer and operator that has been active for some time, during which it has accrued an eclectic range of missions and capabilities, flying many extreme environments and advanced payloads with its Prion UAVs. At the centre of all its works has been the DS120, a four-stroke, single-cylinder, spark-ignited engine, unique to this UK-based company and its aircraft. While UAVE does not sell this engine (its business is focused on a range of surveying services and it has been granted BVLOS flight clearances in select locations), the DS120 recently grabbed our attention for having received over 15 years of optimisation, making it worth a considerable deep dive to understand the wealth of engineering techniques used and high-end components inside. UAVE was founded in September 2013, following a management buyout from TGS-NOPEC (now TGS), a Norwayheadquartered specialist in offshore oil and gas exploration, focused mainly on the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. As ships for such work could cost $200,000 per day (at 30-60 days per mission), TGS-NOPEC had grown interested in UAVs for improving offshore survey precision and hence shortening such missions by potentially tens of days (and millions of dollars) per year. Thus, in 2006, TGS-NOPEC acquired MagSurvey, a UK company that was focused on onshore mineral explorations with a small (2.8 m wingspan), fixedwing UAV, with the intent of scaling up its tech to a large, fixed-wing UAV suited to long-endurance offshore flights. It injected r&d capital into MagSurvey and put Phillip Slater in charge of managing the project. Today, Slater is managing director of UAVE, which relocated from Dorset to the Aberporth Technology Park in Wales in 2014, to be near its primary airfield and key suppliers. As he recounts: “Within MagSurvey’s supply chain was DGS Engineering, an engine company in Daventry, and part of the hotbed of engineering competence that grew around the huge Ford car production plant there.” DGS Engineering was founded and led by David Short (now retired), who, in addition to supporting the production of large engines for Ford and other businesses, also produced small, efficient, lightweight engines as in-house r&d side projects. Among these was a single-cylinder gasoline engine, which was intended for diverse, Rory Jackson takes a deep dive into the DS120 and 15 years of optimisation To the extreme December/January 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology The DS120 is a four-stroke, singlecylinder engine that has seen UAVE through a vast range of commercial uncrewed operations around the world (Images courtesy of UAVE except where stated otherwise)
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