R7 completes 400 hours of alpine field trials

Between April and October, three R7 crews flew 412 hours with the Valais and Graubünden rescue services and a cantonal border unit. Every sortie was a real task: a missing walker, a gully after an avalanche, a valley road at night. None of it was a demonstration.

What we were testing

Lab numbers are easy. We wanted to know three things you only learn on a mountain: how the airframe copes with cold, thin air and gusts off a ridge; whether operators trust the track proposals enough to act on them; and how quickly a crew of one can get from the vehicle to eyes on target.

The answers were mostly good. Median time from case-open to first image was 2 min 41 s. Endurance at altitude held at 7 h 50 min against 9 h at sea level, close to our model. Batteries pre-warmed in the case lost under 4% to the cold.

“We used to wait for the helicopter to tell us whether it was safe to send people up. Now we know before they’ve finished putting their boots on.”

— Team leader, alpine rescue service

What we changed

Operators dismissed 31% of thermal tracks in the first month, mostly warm rock after sunset. We retrained the perception model on the trial footage and that fell to 9%. We also moved the hand-launch grip 4 cm aft after crews told us the nose felt heavy with gloves on.

One aircraft came home on its own twice after its link was cut by terrain. Both times it climbed to its safe altitude, flew the reverse route and landed within 3 m of the launch point. That is the behaviour we designed; it is still reassuring to see it in the field.

What happens next

The trial aircraft go back to Zürich for teardown. Production units built to the revised design ship to the first three customers in the second quarter of 2027.