BUAA Sino-France

BUAA Sino-France is a family of Chinese UAVs developed by students of École centrale de Pékin (ECDP), an engineering college setup jointly by Centrale Graduate School and Beihang University (BUAA), as part of Petit Drone program jointly developed by both universities that begun in October 2008.

Sino-France I
Sino-France I (Zhong-Fan Yi-Hao, 中法一号) is the first model of the Sino-France series UAV, and it is develop by a team of students of class of 05 of ECDP totaling eight team members, and the instructor overseeing the team is Professor Li Lin (李琳). Sino-France I is in conventional layout with high wing configuration and tricycle landing gear, and propulsion is provided by a two-blade propeller driven tractor engine mounted in the nose. Development of Sino-France I took seven months and the maiden flight was successfully completed on June 12, 2009. Sino-France I UAV is primarily intended for aerial photography and survey missions and thus equipped with camera as payload.

Sino-France II
Sino-France II (Zhong-Fan Er-Hao, 中法二号) is the development of earlier Sino-France I, and it is develop by a team of students of class of 06 of ECDP totaling six team members, and the instructor overseeing the team are Professor Li Lin (李琳) and Lecturer Gu Guang-Yao (顾广耀). As with its predecessor Sino-France I, Sino-France II is also in conventional layout with high wing configuration and tricycle landing gear, and propulsion is provided by a propeller driven tractor engine mounted in the nose. Development of Sino-France II took five months and the maiden flight was successfully completed on May 22, 2010. In comparison to earlier Sino-France I, Sino-France II has the following improvement in better aerodynamics and reliability, reduced electromagnetic interference among avionics, and greater payload. Communication between the ground control station and the UAV is lso improved when the GPS data is transmitted and processed in real time. Like its predecessor Sino-France I, Sino-France II is also primarily intended for aerial photography and survey missions.