Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome, everybody, to another fantastic informational episode of Weekly Wings, a drone life, a dronelife.com podcast. Thank you, everybody, for your time and attention.
I'm Paul Rossi, as always, host co hosted with Terry Neff. Samuel will not be able to join us today. How are you doing, Terry?
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Doing great. Doing great. Just woke up not too long ago, but I'm doing great.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I, uh, I'm in Utah currently traveling just ahead of commercial UAV, and it's been a super busy end of the summer. So I can apologize publicly to Terry and Samuel, who I have just repeatedly changed the times up on these podcast recordings over the last couple weeks.
Yeah, yeah. Things, things happen and we press on. It's really crazy, though, to look back and think, this is the 18th episode. We've been doing this for what, like four months. So learning a lot. Bring you some exciting stuff. Today, we're going to start out with a story about coworkers leaving a hiker behind.
We'll look at some fpv stuff and what the military is doing in order to counter UA's technologies. In the tech spotlight. We're going to look at San Francisco Edie's drone program, as well as discuss how dung beetle navigation is helping space vehicles as well as drones navigate in low light conditions, possibly gps denied environments.
We'll be looking at a success of aero environment, but winning almost a billion dollars in. In funding through government and in our success. Actual success story portion. There's a Steve Harvey drone show that popped up. Unfortunately, Samuel's not jumping on today. And we'll look at lunalight, the company that made that happen. And also, we'll be at the Virginia tech campus during this week's show to talk about a drone camp they're doing. We will end things in the regulatory corner.
Looking at, again, another beyond visual line of sight approval for inspection companies, a theme that we are just kind of seeing over the past three to four weeks here getting started. If we were hiking Terry, and it's too bad Samuel's not here, because it'd be interesting to get his take. You know, if I'm lost, if I get lost and send you a text, you're gonna come find me. Did you see this story?
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Did not. I don't know if I would come find you. If you can text me, you can call the people that can find you, not me.
I'm not going off the beaten track path just to get lost as well.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: So at office retreat. An office retreat, I guess a group of 15 hikers went up, you know, Mount Shavano here, which is a serious, I believe it's over 14,000ft.
The man summoned the mountain alone.
And however, on his way back down, he became disoriented.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Didn't pack enough carbs on that one, did he?
Came back down like, oh, wait, dehydrated now.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: And he sent his coworkers his location. They reportedly told him that he'd gone the wrong way and that he needed to hike back up. He was like, well, I know I went the wrong way. That's why I'm texting you.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: That's an average coworker conversation.
You tell them they, you did something wrong and you need help, and they're like, actually, you can do it yourself.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: And so just after this text went out, I guess pretty poor weather hit the mountainous and the cell service went out, so no more cellular communications. This person became falling down multiple times.
And the search and rescue unit, the chaffee county search and rescue team, activated at 09:00 p.m.
deploying two teams and a drone pilot.
And so that's what I thought was really neat as I was seeing this story unfold, is, boom, this came up on the news.
And so here's another incident where, you know, I don't think the drone wasn't used to find the person, but it was just so interesting. Want to hear how interesting this story was when it came on? Because can you imagine every news outlet, and if you look on Google, like, if you type this in, every headline is like, pitting these 14 co workers against this one person. And they're like, oh, it's like the office. You know what it, you know, first people are like, sympathizing with the, you know, the person who was obviously, you know, had to be found, you know, falling down the wrong side of the mountain, not, clearly, not on the path.
And it's like, oh, you know, they should have gone and got them. And then someone was like, yeah, well, what if this person was like that, that guy in the office?
[00:06:15] Speaker B: You can't use that. I mean, what, well, am I not supposed to save somebody because they're an asshole? I mean, that's not how this works. You're not. You're gonna feel responsible if he's dead.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Well, I think, I think maybe it alludes to, like, you should be nicer. You should be nicer to people around the office, or, I don't go hiking alone during the office retreat.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. He was off by himself. He was like, you guys can't do it. I'm better than y'all. I'm going to the top.
And then it just did not work out well for him when he came back down.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's super interesting, but all these headlines were just like, co workers. Yeah, like this one here. Co workers leave hiker behind.
So if you were one of those co workers, how would you feel about that headline?
[00:07:18] Speaker B: I mean. Yeah, no, that's the media. The media is going to say anything. They want to get people to click on the article. It worked. We're here. We're watching it. We're looking at it.
It's just they technically did. They didn't say anything wrong. I mean, the new, these news articles have to be easy with what they say because they can get sued very quick.
You say something wrong.
So it's not technically false information.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: And then it's like, co workers leave hiker behind.
Yeah, it's an interesting one.
Chaffee county search and rescue. Shout out to them.
Getting out there fast and ready. And it's good to see they're deploying the drones that we discussed last week, actually help find missing persons.
Oh, got some audio here. Let's share this tab instead.
Terry, you could tell us what we're looking at here. Unless you want me to.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: You can play. He does a pretty good explanation, but I'll give you a short story here. So it's a, we're just watching an FPV drone from the point of view of the soldier that it's hunting down.
So he's driving on like, an ATV type, like quad bike.
He's driving around. It appears it has antennas on it and stuff. I've heard that they're using these to kind of navigate now because they're a little quicker.
But he hops off of it.
He gets a Sega, I'm assuming loaded with birdshot or buckshot, and takes aim at the drone, and he takes it out. So it looks like shotguns are going to be standard issue for anybody out in the field nowadays.
But, yeah, you can play the video now.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: All right.
It's like skeet shooting. You have to practice skeet shooting now. I've seen. There's so many.
There's so many.
If you go on to, like, google and just the new section and type in drone, like, oh, let's just do this for fun. There is every type in just the word drone.
Don't need Jesus, just drone. And then the news section. Like, 95% of these articles are all ukrainian Russian.
And of course, now it's not. But, like, Belarus uses aircraft to down russian attack drone, Iran's new terrorist drone aircraft. How drone attacks are changing the rules and cost of the Ukraine war. Just like every, so many of these articles are just so heavily dominated by Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine. It's pretty wild. So sifting through there to find the stuff that's just like, not so, and then even the things that aren't, they're tied to military, even the stuff that's not necessarily Ukraine. And it's interesting, I've seen a lot of like, vehicles. Now the armor that was put on vehicles previously was more of, you know, a thick armor attached to it designed for the IEDs and then underneath became critical, you know, reinforcing the underneath of vehicles from IEDs. Now you see all these vehicles wrapped with chicken wire.
Because the whole idea is if you can, you know, if you could just stop the drone and the drone hits like 2ft before the actual surface of the vehicle, these fpv drones, it's just going to throw like kind of like munitions out and it's going to protect the whole vehicle itself. But if you can't wrap it, if you don't have those materials and then tires, I've seen cars, the vans that they're taking old tires and they're just laying, they're cutting the tires and laying them flat. And so like that thick rubber is becoming their improvised protection. And then like you mentioned in the video mentioned, you can't make these big vehicles safe. Then being on those atv's, you can like really jump off quick and maneuver and, but you're also very, very open to all your surroundings. And so with that video, I think. Go ahead.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: Well, I was just, I was just going to say when there's war, there's going to be innovation, insane speeds. I mean, happens every time there's a war, somebody will come up with something completely ridiculous and nobody would have thought of it before they had to kill somebody with it, so, or they had to repair a wound a certain way. I mean, most of our medical inventions come from like World War Two. So it's just when there's war, there's going to be, technology will advance faster than if there wasn't war. So that's the reason, that's probably the reason drones have developed so fast over the last few years just because of the ukrainian war. So, I mean, there's some good to it, but it's not, I don't know if you could consider death machine weapons good, but there is development.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: And once you can counter these drones, I think if you, the drones being used on both sides has reduced the amount of humans that have gone in to try to make these missions successful. And when you're downing the other people's drones, it is like a less.
I don't know if that makes sense, but this I found and then realizing that it's kind of like older outdated now as I have it prompted up here was the Marine fusion center for Counter UA's have to do a follow up and see if this marine fusion center is kicking out the put rubber tires on your vehicles or if there's actually some technology.
But yes, certainly a lot like you said, innovation taking place. And so it's, I like to focus more on the commercial side and the things happening on the more positive and but at the same time, this is news, right? That stuff is happening. So it's, it's stuff to cover and we are going to see, you know, the trickle down of those technologies into the commercial space.
So moving into our next topic here, the San Francisco.
This video we have here, San Francisco Police Department has started using drones. The San Francisco is going to start enforcing. They have flock, the flock alert system here can do license plate reading and the cameras are all over the ground. So once the camera hits a license plate, it can notify the drone.
So the drone just automatically deployed to that red vehicle it's videoing. This is called blipping for those of you that didn't know.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Very advanced.
I mean it was so there was no human behind this interaction at all until the drone got up in the air. Or is this still.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Once the drone got up in the air, there was at the remote, the command center.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: An airport that I was.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: Just about to say, holy cow, look how stuff. Look at these people are just walking. Did you see the people just walking right by?
[00:16:41] Speaker B: I mean, it's San Francisco, man. I mean they're used to it.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: And so then the drone is able to disable the vehicle with the spike tires because they can see where it was driving to.
And then it goes on to say.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: They were tackled and there's no way they thought they were being followed. Like they didn't see the drone 300ft in there while they're inside of a car.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: All three in one of those. Did you see one had the.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Does it have a switch on it?
[00:17:17] Speaker A: The.
What do they call the hot dogs?
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Hot dog.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: Like glippy, glitty clip. What is. I don't know what the trend is.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Glizzy.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Glizzy. Yeah.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: I don't know if you want to go down this rabbit hole.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: No, no, now, glizzy and hot dogs. And they. The clip, the extended magazine was like the. The length of a hot dog.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: The stick. Yeah, that's what I've heard it been called.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: So that video is incredible that they shared it because you could see those, those, those criminals are very efficient. They're.
They had a plan. This bipping, you know, this smash and grab, it's happening. So for San Francisco to use this automated system that allows them to catch this in the act, this is pretty incredible.
We're seeing this pop up. We talked about Scottsdale, Arizona, a couple weeks ago and how they have flock safety.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: And that's what this is.
Is it the same, like, brand or is it like. It's flocky, a bunch of stuff.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: It's flock safety. I have to do a little more digging to find out what the DFR system they're using. So, as you can see, they're, they're showing DJI drones, but their DFR system, I'm not entirely sure what drone they're using. And what is neat is I guess we could always.
We got this awesome video here.
This is all about being forward facing. You want the town and the community to know smoke, but then here's their log. So it's also, like, another reason I wanted to show this and bring this and highlight this is they're posting their flight logs. Now.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: You were not showing the flight logs. I don't know if you were trying to.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: So here's the flight logs. I thought I was showing this screen here. This is their mavic three. They're showing their DJI stuff. They've got the video. They want the community to know that they're using drones. It's not a secret. And so they're posting their flight logs. And we're seeing this with, you know, a lot more departments in order to be very public facing DFR trial. So you can see they were, they were practicing DFR through the month of July.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: Well, couldn't. I mean, if you're like, I don't know, maybe this is going to, like, conspiracy theory deep, but, like, couldn't if you were a criminal, like, in the future, figure out where they're flying the most and just stay away from those areas when you're breaking in the cars.
Just figure out where it's not covered.
[00:20:39] Speaker A: Exactly. If you map these different addresses, you could start to see. And then all you got to do is look up, like, once it's public information, what system did they buy? And just look up the, you know, the limitations and the capabilities. But that's no different than when you learn how long it takes an officer to respond to a certain area. People can do that time things. When you're robbing a bank, you're like, all right, based on where the units are at and where they could possibly be patrolling, and if you do it during shift change, there's less likely the response time. So I think, yeah, you could do the same thing that you could do with people and vehicles with the drone. But they mentioned here a 70% decrease in auto break ins between this year and last year. And that's the stuff that maybe we'll see on the news, because most people, when they hear about San Francisco, I don't think they're thinking a 70% decrease in auto break in and drones getting out there and making stuff happen.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: You know what's interesting about that?
They just so happen to hit somebody not from San Francisco.
So it was just somebody visiting. So it just made San Francisco look even worse to those people.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: That.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Insane statistics. I mean, I'm glad it's working. They definitely seem like they're at least trying to go down the route.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: And you even said to yourself, like, like in the very beginning, I think when, like in our very first episode, Miriam was on and we talked about Aslan robotics, you're like, man, in ten years, it's going to be so hard to break into somewhere. So we're starting to see that, or.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: At least get away. It might be easy to break in. It might not be easy to get away.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: And so something really cool here now to discuss, especially for myself as I'm studying for my doing all my space studies, is this coming out of sci tech daily, it's 130 million year old navigation trick could transform space and drone technology.
The dung beetle.
What do you know about the dung beetle, Terry?
[00:23:08] Speaker B: I know they roll balls of feces together. And, you know, the only thing I really know about dung beetles is I think they were in the ice age movie, and that was pretty comical. That's about all I know about them.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: This right here is like this picture for anyone who's on audio only. It is like the most gross dung beetle ball. And there's a dung beetle, but it has like this epic Milky Way stars.
This. I don't. I don't think so.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Do believe that? AI.
There's ways to figure it out. Let's see.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: I think that's real.
And so I have to say it's interesting this story comes up because I live just off a farm and I've started to realize that we have dung beetles.
And my dog's poop has just been, like, rolling across the yard. And I'm like, what is that? And I've. And I have these little horns. Some of them have little horns. They're color colorful. But anyway, this topic is about. Look, the photos credited to the University of South Australia. Man, that's a real a.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: It said a.
I think it did. It doesn't look, because you see that, like, blue speck right there next to the beetle? It looks like a star was accidentally placed there when it was supposed to be in the sky.
It looks too AI.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: No, that looks like a light reflection. Like the. Because you can tell that someone might have flashed. You got, like the.
That looks placed correctly for the shadow.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Her real thing.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: The dung beetle. What it does is it uses the Milky Way at night to navigate.
And the development of an AI sensor is happening that accurately measures the orientation of the Milky Way in the dung beetle that's evolved over 130 million years.
And they're using that Milky Way navigation to enhance drones, robots and orbiting satellites. Because when the satellites out there, when a spacecraft is in the middle of space, how are you navigating? You're navigating by reference to the stars, and the stars are the Milky Way.
So this is going on at the University of South Australia.
Isn't that crazy?
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, so we went from ant navigation to dung beetle navigation.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: We did.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: What's next?
[00:26:16] Speaker A: I'm gonna play this here.
It now, that looked like an AI generated photo.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: That's definitely a generated.
But I have a question for you, Paul. So in your yard. So you said you have dung beetles in your yard.
So with the information this man just gave me, the balls of poop in your yard shouldn't be straight because they have no reference to go off of. There's a lot of light pollution where you are.
How do they see the Milky Way? Are they going off a street? Lance. And just kind of, like, walking towards it?
[00:28:51] Speaker A: I don't know if they're straight. And I don't think they roll very far.
It's really. It's pretty gross. They, like, they live underground. I haven't.
Haven't done a whole lot of research in diving into it. I just thought I should have recorded it and posted it on YouTube. Like, really in close, because I feel like that's the kind of stuff people are watching these days is, like, really weird, you know, up close, this poop rolling across the yard. And it's very. It's terrible.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Look, how.
Get your drone out there and then just kind of like, fly above them about 10ft up, get one that can, like, zoom in real nice and close and just watch them like the guy was watching the sharks. And then figure out exactly what they do every day.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I am. Let me just. Just hold your breath.
Exciting. And so just moving back to the military.
Moving right back to that military side of things. We're looking at aero environment, which is a UA's manufacturer that has been around for many, many, many years, working not on aircraft that are sold in Best Buy, not drones that many people are familiar with. More of a fixed wing aircraft, more of an Isrhennae, you know, type of operation. Loitering, longer range, easily deployable in a remote or austere location. So they have won almost a billion dollars in contract to supply the switchblade to the army.
What you think about that, Terry? A couple switchblades?
[00:30:53] Speaker B: I mean, it's the most. I would say that is one of the scariest names you could put on a drone because you're like, what does that mean? What does it shoot metal projectiles at me?
Is it how it opens its drops?
[00:31:07] Speaker A: Which.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: That's probably what it is. Or its wings?
I don't know. It's just nine $990 million.
And they wouldn't be giving them this type of money unless they were effective.
So, I mean, I mean, it's very exciting technology. I just hate that it's in destruction form.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: As a switchblade. It goes right into one of these canisters. So just like those other.
I think it was the rogue. Like, the rogue one drone.
You know, this canister and the drone that folds into a tube is supposed to be easily attached to and carried by, like, a ground unit and switchblade, because when the canister opens, this thing kind of fires out, pops out, and those.
The wings just fly out as if they were a switchblade. And like you mentioned the name, this one is the switchblade. 300 block 20.
That just sounds even more loitering. Munition.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: That's insane. I mean, war. So scary. Now there's just a drone patrolling the sky, waiting to kill somebody.
Get out of here.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: And so also, this is covering over a five year period, so, you know, roughly $200 million per year. That's significant. That's huge. You talk about the cost of payroll, right? If you're going to.
If you're going to run a company with, you know, 400 employees, your. Your payroll every two weeks is going to be a million dollars in order to produce things, you have to have money coming in, 200 million a year is significant compared to what we see the small UA's manufacturers getting. No, here's $4 million, here's $2 million, $5 million, and that's it. It's not like here's $10 million for the next five years. So as you mentioned, this is a reputable company. It has some proven technology.
And here we go. They're talking about Ukraine.
Which blades going to Ukraine.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: Well, it's already been in Ukraine. That's why it's getting this contract.
They used it in Ukraine and they're like, well, this is actually pretty good. Maybe we should give them a contract.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Of all the drones over there, this one's actually working.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: And it, I think it said Australia, the United Kingdom, France, and Lithuania. So the United Kingdom currently use them. And then France, Lithuania and Australia have signed, signed up to buy it. But that's all happened since it was used in Ukraine.
This company is having a great time right now to say the least.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Yeah, they have some growth plans that they're gonna, this is like them.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: This is a modern Lockheed Martin. Like this new Lockheed Martin coming up right now.
I wonder if they have stock. I might should buy some. Might should buy some.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Go check it out. I'm pretty sure they're public.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: By a little back quick thousand of that.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: And moving away entirely from military.
Looking at the more positive news for folks that were in Atlanta maybe like a week ago, somebody's face popped up. Steve Harvey.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just, it's so funny for the people. So it was in Atlanta. And imagine you're, you're going outside and I don't know what day of the week this took place on. Let's just say you woke up in the middle of night and let's say you're addicted to nicotine. So you go outside and you're smoking a cigarette and you just look up and then there's just Steve Harvey just looking at you, just staring you in the eyes.
What's your reaction to that? Do you just sit there and you just go back in, act like you didn't see it?
[00:35:51] Speaker A: And for folks who are on audio only and aren't, aren't going to see this video until maybe later when they look it up themselves. If you didn't know that kind of looks like Deadpool with a mustache in a tuxedo.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: I mean, I think it's just the angle.
I don't know. Yeah, it does kind of look like.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Deadpool or just like a burglar. Somebody with like a ski. Ski mask. Like a ski mask.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: It kind of looks demonic. Like it has the overall Steve Harvey shape, but like you could definitely like make that into like a horror villain.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: For sure, but really neat. In Atlanta, Steve Harvey. There was a, like an investment, I think if I read correctly, it was like an investors meetup.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: Invest fest, I think is what it was called.
[00:36:52] Speaker A: Invest fest. So people driving down the highway, social media was blowing up with all these viral videos. Like, what the heck is that? It's me, Steve Harvey. So again, just more drone light show stuff in the company.
There was this video that Steve Harvey put out on social media where he said he's like, you know, all fired up and excited and took pictures with the team that did this. But Luna light drone light shows is the company. So Steve Harvey was one thing. If you go to their website, they say they have about 1000 drones and it looks like they're creating some pretty exciting.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: That Santa Claus won't look scary. It looks like he's about to crush the.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: So I don't know how we missed. They got Univision. They did it with Univision. 4 July. I don't know how we missed that. Look at that.
It's like a combination of all the things we talked about in the past. Like 4 July, the baseball, the athletes. That was really cool.
But even when we're searching it and looking it up and this thing's out there, we're still not even seeing every single thing that's happening. And look, they've got the FPV drone flying through it. That was a sweet astronaut. Samuel's gonna be bummed that he missed this episode.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Do you know where this company is based out of?
I'm just a little curious. I couldn't find anything on their website.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Oh, 305, I think is Miami the area code?
[00:39:26] Speaker B: You know, that's Miami Dade, something in Atlanta, right? About the phone number? Yeah. Now that's, uh. Yeah, that should be Miami.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Yeah, they did the show in Atlanta.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: They count.
[00:39:43] Speaker A: So you got a couple, couple more things before we wrap this, this episode up here.
The drone Jones coming back. And I think drone shown shows are coming back. They're attempting to push out the beyond visual line of sight stuff.
Because we talked about drone shows for too long, right. They were like stalking Samuel. Just all the stories. And now all of a sudden, for the past four weeks or so, all it's been is like, beyond visual on a site. Beyond visual on a site. So back in the regulatory corner here, 38 event, 38 drone secures BV loss waiver for pipeline inspection.
FAA approval enables advanced pipeline monitoring with extended flight ops. Event 38 drone is a drone manufacturer or event 38 unmanned systems.
They produce aircraft, fixed wing, long range drones that are, like, fully customizable for various mission sets. The article here mentions that they've sold about 500 drones in their, their time of operations. But I would guess that their drones, again, they're not $5,000 drones. These are here, even their site. Right? 500 plus aircraft, seven continents, six to 600 pounds of, with up to 8 hours of endurance. So this isn't just a little tiny drone. Some of the drones, some of these 500 aircraft are probably reaching $400,000.
And so fully capable ADSBN technology.
What do you think about that system?
[00:41:49] Speaker B: I'm looking at their mapping drone right now, and it's. I like the way it's like, payload can be like, hot swapped very easily, and it's not like super complicated or anything. It's just kind of like the bottom of the hall.
You kind of just pull it back and then down and it comes out, and then you can just swap another one in there. I mean, that's a genius design for that.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: So the e 455 drones ability to carry, detect, and avoid sensors and meaningful payloads for an extended duration demonstrates the full capability.
So how are they doing this beyond visual on a site? It's because this aircraft is outfitted with detect and avoid sensors and payloads for extended duration and beyond visual on a site.
Again, really exciting, because with this, it means that this aircraft, they can now sell this aircraft, they can solicit more services to businesses knowing that this aircraft is approved for this type of operation. They're doing thermal multispectral lidar, live video streaming in order to go to areas where people just can't get to, where it becomes very hard and difficult to get to. So instead of inspecting it on a more regular basis, it's being done few and far between.
This is exciting. Again, it's going to mean potential growth for the company. Right. Hopefully. Event 38 unmanned systems starts producing more aircraft, they'll need more technicians. They're going to drive the market for parts. Right. We're trying to create this ecosystem of american manufacturing. Well, if there's no demand, it doesn't matter how good your ESC's or your motors or your flight controllers are, because no one is buying them.
So manufacturing plus here and then also jobs if they have more missions that they need to accomplish. And now that could mean more pilots.
So this regulatory approval for not one but many companies really is going to drive workforce, labor markets and the supply chain demand exciting times ahead.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And I actually found. So they have something on their website called low cost legacy drones.
So the e 8384 is $5,900 and the e 386 is $8,900.
So that's what the low cost drones cost. So if you're in the market for a high quality system, I'm sure their new ones are fantastic.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that's like I tell everybody, like, if you're in the market for less expensive, you can always go on the refurbished. You know, these manufacturers have and sell their own refurbished technology.
And it's just a drone that somebody, you know, dinged or dent or crashed. It's like buying a scratch and dent washer or dryer. You can go to Lowe's right now, Home Depot.
You can buy something that was slightly dinged in shipping or the floor model and save hundreds of dollars.
Yeah. Check out for our listeners built tough in the US. Check out event three unmanned systems.
They're doing some pretty neat and exciting things. And I'm sure that with this advanced regulatory approval, you may even see jobs popping up here or there. And even though jobs aren't there, if this is the type of technology that energizes you and gets you excited for the future, reach out to these companies, because event 38 is going to be all us based staff and employees. And if you think there's a way that you can integrate this system into your operations or you can help them from a technical or piloting or training standpoint, it all starts with conversations. So I encourage people to do that.
And I keep clicking. Stop sharing instead of share this tab instead. We've got a couple more pieces of news here, stories to cover back on campus. As you can see, the drone net here. So this is kind of what drew me to this is we talked about in the past, one university, I can't remember what it was. Was it Virginia Tech? I don't think it was. I think Virginia Tech's had theirs for a while, but it was another university spent about 150,000 to put their net up.
Elizabeth City.
Yeah, Elizabeth City state in North Carolina. They have their net up that they use for research purposes and student flights. And we see Beaufort Community College, North Carolina. I think they're potentially looking up, putting up a net, but there's a lot of organizations, especially universities, colleges that are putting these up. And so I'm just going to play this video here because Virginia Tech is launching a drone camp. And so folks in that area in Virginia Tech or folks that are listening and with universities, this could be something that you maybe reach out or get some bits of information that could help you advance things you're doing in the education space can't always have what you want. Terry.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: It looks like he developed a lot during the camp. I mean, he learned a lot of life lessons. You know, you got to pray when it.
Pray that it works.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just like, it's so interesting, these camps we do. Elizabeth City State University does some drone camps here in the. In the state.
It's just. It's just intriguing that.
That there's.
I didn't do any of this growing up, and yet I'm still fascinated with it. And I wonder if I did do camps like this growing up, if I would have been nothing, if I would have found it challenging and then shied away from it.
You know, kids and adults, they like things that are difficult. So they found the right combination of making it challenging but also making it possible, you know, university working with the right partner in order to understand the technology and finding the right, you know, kits where students can walk through it. But it's not so easy that you just do it in two, in 30 minutes, and then there's nothing else. It's like you want them to kind of fail and have to work together, and it's like, it's like people going through basic training. You know, you all come together, you don't know each other. It's the hard part, the challenges that builds the camaraderie and the teamwork. And it's like SpaceX. They launched the starship, it blows up. They launched the second one, it goes a little bit further. It blows up. They launch the third one, it goes all the way into orbit and comes back, and it's like, yes, we're doing this together. So that's really cool. Shout out to Virginia Tech. Virginia, they've been doing huge things, and Virginia Tech has been certainly a leader in UA's for a while. Any final thoughts there, Terry, on colleges, universities, drone nets?
[00:51:00] Speaker B: I mean, other than it looking weird, I think it's a great step in the right direction. Now, if I had, I couldn't even imagine, like, learning about drones when I was a kid. I mean, I don't exactly remember what we did, but it wasn't nearly as cool as that because I would remember that if it was cool. But I mean, that. I mean, that's starting, like, future careers. Like, if, let's say you had that when you were a kid, you're. You're nuts about drones. Would you be more nuts about drones or would you, like you said, like, would you like it as much?
Just my thought process on it.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I went out to a pond. We did like a pond and aquatic stuff. And that's what kind of. I never ended up. I don't like the water now, but we would go out to like, the marshlands and catch fish eggs or frog eggs. Well, we had a fantastic episode here. Co workers leaving, leaving their guy behind in the mountains of Colorado. People will argue that for the next two weeks, whether or not he was the good guy or the bad guy in the office, and there was a reason to not help him get out. Russian soldiers shooting, jumping off quad and shooting.
Fpv drone is showing just how much warfare is advancing. And again, as we mentioned each week that goes by looking just like the video games. We were in San Francisco where most people, my wife has always said she wanted to go, but more recent years has said that she don't think she ever would. It looks like they are using drones and flock safety and technology to, you know, catch these people that are doing these dipping activities, these smash and grabs, and it looks like it's working and they're communicating things to the public in an appropriate manner somehow. We talked about what I never thought we ever would. My dogs poop on our podcast here in reference to dung beetles using the Milky Way in order to navigate as they roll dung across the australian outback. Very, very interesting. Very, very awkward, too. So apologies to any listeners who found that we didn't have a disclaimer at the beginning of the.
[00:53:17] Speaker B: Hopefully nobody is eating.
[00:53:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We might need to put it do not eat and listen disclaimer up in Atlanta, Steve Harvey. There is pretty, there's a significant public safety drone responders event that happened in Atlanta. So when I heard Steve Harvey's face, it was up in a drone light show. I almost thought it was at that event. But investors, folks learning about investment. I got to see a pretty neat Steve Harvey drone light show just last week. Luna Light is the company that did that show. So if you're interested and want to see more of what they're doing, the website shows some pretty, pretty cool videos. We discussed event 38 in their beyond visual on a site waiver that hopefully will help them manufacture more drones, create more demand for supply chain items in the drone space, and even drive more missions, more flights, and create a demand for more pilots. Then I think we wrap things up on campus at Virginia Tech, their drone camp. That is, you know, hopefully going to help produce more educated students and future employees to work at companies like event 38 in order to make sure they're manufacturing these aircraft that are going to do the beyond visual line of sight inspections, mapping missions, ISR and the like. So thank you, everybody for your time and attention.
Thank you for, you know, reading and tuning into dronelife.com content. Thank you, Terry, for joining us. And we'll see everybody next time. Fly safe.
