Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to another great episode of Weekly Wings, a Dronelife.com podcast. We're going to be jumping into some great topics regarding drones and related to the use of drones. As always, we have a video here that wound up playing for anyone tuning in on YouTube and watching. Recently, Israeli Defense forces took out the leader of Hamas. So we're going to show that. We'll talk about it briefly.
Huge accomplishment by SpaceX using their mechazilla to catch the Falcon Nine heavy rocket booster back here on Earth.
We'll also talk about flock safety and their acquisition of Aerodome and their news that they're going to be producing us NDAA compliant drones for DFR purposes. Really interesting developed circle grammetry. So for the folks that are involved in mapping, using drones for 3d modeling, you're familiar with photogrammetry, point clouds. Well, Circle Grammatry is a new development that we'll discuss.
We're also going to dive into some pretty interesting topics. Man charged, arrested for dropping explosives, explosives from a drone, as well as the New York Post getting involved in drone sales through their online store, which I didn't know the New York Post had a store. I guess times are tough for the news business. We'll also look at a success story with epropel. The us based company jumping into US made NDA a compliant motor propulsion systems. And we'll close the episode out, talking about some mysterious drone sightings that have been taking place and some legislation that Senator Moran is introducing in order to give military installations the ability to be proactive when it comes to unidentified drones operating within those confines of these areas that are, one, restricted and have otherwise sensitive information. So lots of information, lots of great stuff to jump into here first, as always. Joining me is our co host, Terry Neff and Samuel Stans. Barry. Terry, how are you? How are you doing? How's your week been?
[00:02:32] Speaker B: I've been under a rock for the past, since last episode. So I'm going to be honest, haven't seen much of any of this. I've seen the first two things we're going to talk about for about 15 seconds each. That's it. So I'm a little lost this week, but we'll get through it.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: All right, well, we'll get your totally uninformed, uneducated opinions on all of these topics, which, hey, that matters.
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Unfiltered opinion. This is straight from the man himself. Like it's going to be straight from the source.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: So new brand new opinions.
And how are you doing, Samuel?
[00:03:17] Speaker C: I'm good. I put a little bit more time into that FPV simulator. I'm slowly going to get my hours in for that. Finally managed to get the controls how they're supposed to be. Had some issues first setting it up, but now it's Chef's kiss. Perfect. So been playing around with that and it's been good. Excited to do some more simulations with it.
I'm kind of curious how well it's going to translate, but I guess we'll find out, huh?
[00:03:43] Speaker B: I did play the FPV game, so I tried. I tried the one you suggested last week.
It's not the best kind. I kind of refunded it after 15 minutes.
I got uncrashed, I think, pretty good. I like it got a little. It feels like it's been around a little longer. You know, we can breeze through this.
[00:04:06] Speaker C: But I'm just kind of. But not much, I was gonna say I'm curious in terms of, like, the pros and cons that you noticed.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Use your friendliness. I don't want to sit there and just, like, fiddle with a game I just paid $20 for, especially when the other one costs $15.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: Okay, so the price compares.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: The guy that made that other one. But, yeah, it's. It's in it. It looks really nice. So.
[00:04:29] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: It's fast too.
[00:04:33] Speaker C: Good to know.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that is. That is. I'm looking at it now.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: And of course, workshop maps too. They're pretty cool.
[00:04:42] Speaker C: I did hear uncrashed was recommended. Be recommended to me by someone else as well.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Who?
[00:04:50] Speaker C: Multiplayer.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: And I haven't fully explored it, but that. I think that's a.
Wow. Community made maps. So, like, people can make maps and you can just like, you know, play them.
[00:05:02] Speaker C: I got a go wish list.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: I haven't really delved too deep.
Yeah. Manage $15. So.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: And what are you flying with?
[00:05:10] Speaker B: The remote ps five controller. But I'm gonna be honest, you need. You're gonna need an fpv.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: What do you mean you're gonna.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Well, it's like, on my controller, it's like I'll go down and. You know how like, it kind of guides you to go down or up? Like, when I do certain things, it just. It like. It combines the movements and it's not very nice, in my opinion.
[00:05:37] Speaker C: Did you do the. The pinchers calibration?
[00:05:42] Speaker B: The pinchers. I have no idea what you're talking.
[00:05:44] Speaker C: When you use your thumb, that's very loud. But yeah, when you use your thumb and index finger for the sticks, it allows for greater control and movements.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: I ain't playing with no claw grip on a PS five controller.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: Samuel maybe when we move on to the FC, and that makes sense. When you get to the fpv controller, it's gonna feel way more natural.
But don't take up too much time with fpv stuff. I'm just glad to still.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: And I think. And I think it's.
Yeah, and a lot of it is like the real fpv, like. Like a true fpv drone.
Especially what they're simulating here, because what has been common up until DJI introduced the avatar is your left stick. Depending on your mode, like, your throttle stick doesn't center itself.
Whatever stick you use for your throttle should be pegged to the bottom.
And then this way, if you want to give it gas, you move it up. But you have the ability to completely drop your throttle to zero. So when you're using a PS five or Xbox controller, where the stick is centered itself, you only have 50% of the movement of the remote for precision.
Your 50% is only a 25% movement in the remote. So the sensitivity is a lot greater if your stick isn't dropped down.
Does that make sense?
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that and it. You can't. You can't just, like, throttle down on the PS five controller. So you're just constantly, like, if you don't hold down, it's just gone.
I don't know. There might be a way to fix that.
[00:07:38] Speaker C: It takes some getting used to, but I've gotten kind of adjusted to keeping my stick below the meat because, I mean, it normally is just kind of hanging out here. Otherwise, on an FPV controller, it's going to be all the way down, hanging out there. Right, Paul? Like, that's where it normally sits.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'll share this screen.
[00:08:00] Speaker C: Yeah. It is a little weird because if you have the finer FPV sticks, you don't have these giant round circles, but there we go.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Crappy.
[00:08:18] Speaker C: A little.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Trying to zoom in, and then it.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: Just a little bit of an entropy, though.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: So that stick stays down, and that's what's giving you 100% throttle control. I mean, that's $209. There's certainly.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: There's definitely cheaper ones, but that's like going straight to thrust master steering wheel from the logitech one.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
And you could even probably go on.
You might be able to find a used, like, FPV remote on Facebook or something like that.
Well, jump into.
We got this video here, and it's just interesting, everything happening.
We've talked about the use of drones. Right. For military purposes. The weaponization of drones in Ukraine, they're producing a ton of drones, american companies, Teledyne, Flir, you know, getting involved in. With their rogue one. But this was really interesting here because, and again, this is a drone that's gonna, what, you know, is likely FPV drone flying into a building in order to confirm the. The target that the IDF was going after, which happened to be Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas. So drones not being just used as the weapon itself, but really, like, what they were first used for is. I don't know, this is insane, seeing this and it just being shared.
Have you guys seen this video?
[00:10:17] Speaker C: This is the first time I'm seeing this.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: This is one of the ones I just scroll on Twitter and I seen this. But. Okay. How did they confirm it was him, though? Because this dude's got a mask on.
They just like, wait until he bled out and went in there. I don't understand.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: It was a. And then they're like. And then they're like, highlighting the person. So it's like they're using all this AI because the ground forces, it wasn't like they just randomly hit this building and randomly flew a drone. There were ground forces. And you can go back and you can listen. Like, the IDF releases released this video, but they did it with statements where there was ground forces that were chasing him and other members of Hamas. So they had people on the ground, but instead of doing what you would have done 30 years ago, continue the chase. They just identified which one was him and then they tracked what they shared. Washington. He broke off by himself. They identified the building that he went into because they were. This was a combination of, you know, ground assets and air assets. Call in the location, strike the building, deploy the drone in order to confirm, and then move in. So I don't know if the drone video was what they used to confirm it was him and. Or the drone video is what they shared. Because there's a chance they may have eventually gone into the building. Right. I'm sure that they didn't just fly the drone away and then leave. That would be my guess. Right? What are you. What do you think? You think, like, they probably ended up going in there?
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I mean. I mean, if you still alive, I mean, you gotta do something about that. I mean, especially if you, you know, an enemy.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: He was still fighting me. He's throwing a stick. That was. That was a crazy video, Samuel. So what he.
[00:12:29] Speaker C: I was gonna say, I do think they have some confirming data that they're just not outwardly showing to confirm his identity.
But I do think that's kind of wild, is just like, that's one of the ways to check. That's one of the ways for information on the battlefield is throwing it. What? Fpv drone up. Throwing that guy out, zooming up. Well, there's our target, essentially being able to get a live feed anywhere in the surrounding proximity, just using a drone. That's crazy to see real life use like that.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, um. I don't know, it's just.
And I. The, the thought to me is there's so much video on YouTube now of, we've, we've kind of played it, but kind of haven't entirely. We've, like, that's not where our show is about. Right. We're not a dive into the military tech and talk about that, the audience. We're more focused on the value add of drones, the benefit of drones, the civil commercial space. But there is a huge overlap. And there's been so much development just since we started the podcast and, you know, as paying attention. I just like, why is this out there? Why is this out there? And it, it breaks down to warfare isn't just physical, it's psychological.
So you put this out there, and it's not so much for the confirmation for me or Israelis or the news, as much as it is to show the other side.
We're going to.
All efforts, all costs, whatever it takes, we are going after you. And so I think it's, it's also put out there in order to discourage. Right. And scare the other side. So on a lighter note, Mechazilla.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I've seen Donald Trump talking about this. There's. I've seen something about it was just dumb. I don't know.
The way he was talking about it was hilarious.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Oh, chopsticks. They called it chopsticks. Right? So we have a 230 foot rocket engine. That rocket engine, the Falcon nine heavy, 230ft coming back to Earth.
And it's caught.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: It's impressive, man, considering he, like, was in it like two years ago. He just, like, crash landed one or like, missed the pad completely.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: This, this was the fifth launch.
This is the fifth launch. This was the first time they tried to catch it.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: It's kind of insane because the video, not like the video doesn't even look real, but we know it is. That's how insane it is.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: You know, boy, look at all those.
Look at all those Tesla shareholders right there as your average. It's it's.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: It is insane.
The. I want to replay this, the fifth launch to catch it. There has been, like Terry mentioned, there has been multiple explosives. Like, like, I. The first thing was not trying to catch it. They were just launching starship. So, like I've had back here, the little starship, as we've talked about it. So the first thing was just testing starship. And starship had the explosion, and the falcon nine heavy blew up on the way back down. And. But they weren't expecting. They didn't really know. So think about this. In five flights, they've gone from this thing blowing up.
What is it called, that was like that term, rapid decombustion or instantaneous.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: I know this is. We talked about this a while ago.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So, like, because now on the fifth flight, the heavy, the falcon, the rocket booster comes back and they catch it in the exact spot where it launched from. And starship returned. It went, it orbited in space, and it came back and landed in the ocean.
And so they videoed it landing in the ocean because they had cameras on buoys, like it was too unsafe for people to go sit in the ocean.
They put a bunch of buoys out.
Their buoy was near this landing zone. Well, it landed so accurate, they actually caught the landing on one of the buoy videos.
And so the next step, right, is getting the starship to not land in the water, because until you know, and have that process in place, you know, you keep it away from high risk areas. So the fact on this fifth launch, not necessarily of the falcon nine heavy, but with the starship, it's insane. This is crazy.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Impressive technology.
[00:18:03] Speaker C: Really appreciate. The first video they were showing was actually from the drone. You can see it kind of pan the camera up and then go across on the horizon. Looks like a drone anyways. But.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Elon doing Elon things literally every week.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: And so what I'm showing right here is this. Is it over the water, right? So now it's coming down.
The starship is going to touch down. It's right over the water.
Now it's all blue, right? The camera's underwater.
And so it hit this spot. It goes into the water after an hour and five minutes. And here's a buoy.
This is a buoy that they deployed.
And I'm watching this and I'm going, oh, my gosh, could you see the environmentalist?
Look at all this stuff just spewing into the ocean?
[00:19:05] Speaker B: Well, doesn't he have to clean this up? I mean, surely there's a regulation.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah, no, he just sells, like, 10,000 more ev cars and, you know, call it even.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: 10,000. I don't know. About 10,000. 10,000. Steep.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: No, it's crazy. I was like. So, so they were mentioning how the fact that they pre positioned this buoy in this location speaks to the right. The accuracy of the system.
So cool.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Was that three weeks in a row we've talked about Elon doing something crazy.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: It could be.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: I think it's three weeks, like the space shuttle thing. Then there's the, the robots, and then we got this.
What do you think he's gonna do next week?
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Oh, well, night, that was what he's, his whole thing now he sees. Now he's a campaigning, he's busy campaigning in Pennsylvania.
He's been super pro, but now he's actually doing his own events, which, yeah, it's pretty interesting. Like, he, I've seen him, you know, with Donald Trump, but now it's like just him in Pennsylvania leading ball on stage.
It's. He's, he's, he's like.
And the last one, he says, if Kamala Harris is elected president, we will never get to Mars. It will be. They will make it illegal.
He's so fired up to go to Mars. He's just.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Reminder, everybody, vote. No matter who you vote for. Vote.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Get out and vote. Early voting started in North Carolina.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: I wait for him to give me my card before I can do anything.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: Getting your card. And then also just Fy North Carolina, the state fair started, and there's a TFR around the state fair. So don't try to take your drone to the North Carolina state fair and fly it because there is a temporary flight restriction in place until October 28.
So I came across this. I don't know how I was. Well, I do know how. Right. So regularly I'm looking up drone in the news. Like, drone news stories. And so somehow, because the New York Post is supposed to be how. I don't even know what the New York Post is, right? Because, like, I didn't. The day when I was growing up, we had an actual newspaper that would come to my house, and it was called the day, the new London day. I used to flip through that. The news or the sports section always looked at. I started looking at, like, stuff for sale. At one point, I was like, you know, people used to actually put their I cars and trailers and four wheelers and dirt bikes. You'd have that stuff listed for sale. And, like, the classified ads, I don't think they, they may still do that. No one gets newspapers. So anyway, New York posts, right? I'm like, oh, news, you know, news thing. And I was like, what is this? They're advertising deals for 4k drones. And you're like, this is by stack commerce.
And so I'm like scrolling down, like, look at these piece of crap drones. And they're like talking them up. Windy. Designed for windy conditions.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: And somebody paid for this?
[00:22:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, what is this? And then I started to notice they have this shopping thing right here and gift guides. And I'm like, okay. And then I clicked on one of them. I was like, what is the Phantom Eagle pro? Like, let's, let's see. It looks like they're really copying DJI here. So I clicked on it and I'll be damned. I was like, look at this. The New York Post store. I thought it was going to bring me to a link of somewhere else. The New York Post is selling drones.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Are they? Or is it, is it companies paying? Like they found a way to sell.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Ads again, like a marketplace, you know? Is that what it could be? Just like a marketplace?
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Yeah, look, stat commerce. I'm looking at their website. It's kind of looking like, like a TikTok shop type of thing, I guess. I think they're popular. I mean, I don't know. I've never been on New York Post.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Website, so, so strange, right? Me either. And then, so when I came across this, I was just like. And they talk. I just feel like with the election cycle, I feel like. And I'm gonna have to pay more attention, but I feel like they're talking about, oh, this article that came out in the New York Post. This, this that came out in the New York Post, I feel like. And I may be wrong, maybe it's just because it says New York, but I often feel like that comes up. And then when I see this, this thing where they're selling drones and they're like a marketplace, I'm like, is that a news platform? Like, what is going on here? Because if you're just selling and paying and giving people access to your audience to sell this kind of junk, I'm like, that's pretty bad.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
So it's crazy. I don't know. I would have to do a deeper dive on that to actually figure out what's going on. But it looks like it's a tick tock shop situation.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: But it looks like the New York Post store, right? It looks, it looks, yeah, but it's.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: That'S what it is.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: And it looks like a news article.
[00:24:33] Speaker B: People into line stuff by these drones.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: It looks like you're reading like a news article where someone is writing this, you know, article and then this product for you and then big 53% off. Like, if it's so great, why is it.
But Terry hit the nail on the head. It's targeting that older demographic that is going to spend just that right amount of money because they don't want to feel like they're being cheap. Right.
But they don't realize it's like, it's like the whole thing where they sell you a playscape and the pictures look huge and big. But then what actually shows up to your house is the complete opposite. But they know it's a gift and so it becomes harder to send something back and get it replaced and that person's not going to use it themselves. And they go, well, who gives a shit? I just need to give some. I just need to give something.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Anyway, there's a very good South park episode on something similar to this.
I forgot the name of it, but I like late night, like a long time ago, late night. You'd be on like adult swim or something and it would be. There'd be like a jewelry. Somebody selling jewelry or something. Like, call now, we'll sell you this jewelry. It's like a modern day version of that. It's insane. And it's targeting old people is just another way. I don't know. Yeah.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: And it's getting to be that time of year, right? Rolling into the Halloween, November, Christmas time. So be. Be careful out there.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: So we missed one. I'm sorry, what did you say? We missed an article, I think kind of skip past it. Did you not want to talk about it?
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I must have had the miss. Oh, I had the misorder here. We'll just jump into the flock safety stuff. Yeah, I'm going to have to go back and we will get to the explosives. But just wanted to bring up flock safety. We've talked about flock safety.
They started a DFR program with the. Was it Phoenix? Phoenix police Department was using flock safety. They were using aerodrome. Aerodrome for their hardware.
And so just recently announced that Flock safety has acquired aerodrome.
Aerodrome was making the software. Using aerodrome has been taking other folks hardware and pairing it with their software in order to provide a DFR solution.
And so what I've started to realize is flock safety is real time crime center.
So they are cameras, body cams, intersection cameras, red light cameras, building cameras. And they feed all that to one, you know, screen, one pane of glass. And so the drone is just another camera and they're feeding that in. Well, what they realize is like for long term, having a chinese, non NDA, non american drone isn't going to work out based on the way things are going.
But it's super hard to manufacture a drone. And so what I'm seeing here is, is, and what's been announced is flock safety is going to bring in all that expertise from aerodome on how to make the drone fly, how to make it compliant, how to make the overlay great. They have the piece to produce that software that's going to make their solution separate from others, better. Right. Differentiate it. What flock safety is going to bring to the table is they're already manufacturing cameras, so they have knowledge, they have understanding on how to produce a product and it's a specific product to do something that they need it to do. And they have the market. Right. They already have customers. The biggest thing when you're trying to create a business or, you know, start a company is who are your customers? What is your market? You can make something great, but you have to then go out and get in front of all these people. When you're flock safety and you already have all these police departments, fire departments, emergency management, you know, using your stuff, all you have to do is bring them the thing that they want. And right now everybody wants a DFR drone in a box solution. So this, this is pretty interesting. And it's probably going to lead to some, some significant development.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very promising company right there. I was looking at their, like, investment rounds. I mean, they're raking in something right now.
[00:29:38] Speaker C: Did Miriam, by the way, mention at all if she would be attending that conference in Boston for it?
[00:29:43] Speaker A: That.
And that was it.
[00:29:46] Speaker C: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:29:48] Speaker C: What I was gonna say is it seems like if I recall correctly, she's over in that area and she covered the article, so I wasn't sure if she would be there covering this story as a follow up.
It seemed related.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good question because, because I kind of saw they did share like as part of the, the announcement that they were going to be the 19th through the 22nd. So this coming weekend, they're going to be in Boston.
I'm going to have to ask her because I know, I think she is in that area.
It will really be neat just to see, like, they have that solution. They already have that base, the emergency operations center, where all the information is coming in. So it's super easy to integrate it. When you try to take something else and plug it in to something that exists, there's more steps involved. So they're certainly going to reduce some of the headaches. But also, I do think that their solution is going to be a little bit on the higher end, considering the size and the quality of the package that they bring to the table.
Circle grammatry drone. Circle grammatry.
Samuel, you've done some mapping before.
Little autonomous flight planning.
[00:31:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
Staring at these circles, getting different variations of flashbacks, but yeah, I mean, kind of.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: I'm so this is a lot different, what we see on the screen here than what you've seen before, right?
Yeah, I'm trying to understand how I.
[00:31:48] Speaker C: Was gonna say, I'm just kind of staring at this, trying to understand what exactly all these circles are meaning. You have a rectangle with overdose. It looks like 40 different circles, overlapping, showcasing some sort of parameter. It's trying to tell you something. I'm just not sure what exactly.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm going with 24 circles. I think I see six times four.
But usually the drone flies right in a lawnmower pattern, and it just goes back and forth, taking images that are, you know, parallel and in line with one another.
What this new SPH engineering has come out with a flight profile, a flight path that they are dubbing circle grammetry. So instead of the drone just flying a traditional. I wish they had a photo here. They don't.
Instead of a drone just flying back and forth on a traditional parallel lawn mower pattern, they are programming the drone to fly in a series of circles.
And so each time it's flying a circle, it's pointing the camera at the center of the circle during the whole orbit of. And what they're saying is, for 3d models, this is going to give you better detail as you are able to capture more angles and perspectives.
And so, looking at these two images, right, they flew over an area that you could call it like an eggo or a waffle shape. Right. A lot of individual rooms, basically.
And so you can see where you get good overhead. You can kind of see where all the. The walls are. But then you get all this, like, melting or.
Yeah. Loss of data. And so, like this interpolation or it doesn't see inside here. So it's just assuming that that's like a flat surface when in reality, that's a clean cavity.
Now, scrolling down what we're seeing, which is the same location, except they flew a bunch of circles because they flew a lot of circles at different perspectives.
You're able to capture more data inside these, these cavities here.
Pretty neat.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: Trying to pull up.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Does it take longer than the, like, lawnmower grout or is it.
[00:35:08] Speaker C: Can imagine it a little bit longer, more battery life. But, I mean, it's coming at the cost for greater.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: Shorter flight times.
[00:35:17] Speaker C: Yeah, shorter flight times.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: But no, it says shorter flight times.
[00:35:23] Speaker C: Go ahead, Paul.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: But it's, it's just strange because I don't understand and maybe I just need to see it side by side because. Because the shorter flight time to me doesn't make sense because you're doing all these circles instead of just, you know.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Sure, they did the math. I mean.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: Well, you just. Will you just cover an area. The biggest way to do it is you just plan this flight and you plan that flight. And, I mean, I guess what they're saying based on overlap, it's just really cool because, like, I.
When you think something is great and works well, right, like, so many things have been improved and developed from, you know, side to side, traditional photogrammetry data capture.
The, the one thing I would say is there is a sky browse.
I've got to jump on here. Sky browse. Well, it looks like.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: I don't think that website exists, Paul.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: I don't think it does. I think I left a e off of it. Skybrowse is.
Skybrows has been doing videogrammetry. So instead of photos, it records a video. And when they first started, it was doing a three, like a circle, like their whole, their whole.
Now they're just all about interior. It looks like their whole approach in the beginning was just real fast mapping. So you'd press a button, you'd do it right over the top of the car accident. And then the drone would just do two circles. It would do two circles around a car accident. 92nd video. And you would have this 3d model.
So when you are trying to do 3d, it makes sense to do circles. It's just crazy to think that you would do a bunch of circles.
But if you're trying to see inside all these cavities and not just one central object, it's, it's really cool. Circle, grammatry, they're, they're finding ways to continue to make things that are already good even better. Who wants to go to Maine?
[00:37:58] Speaker C: Put it on the list.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: You ready to go to Maine, Terry? Terry, tell us what's going on in Maine.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Uh, so there is unique individual dropping explosives or accused of dropping explosives.
That's about as good as I can sum that up, too. Honestly, this is like, something you'd see out of Florida, I feel like not Maine.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:30] Speaker A: And so we go to these states often, and traditionally, it's on a positive note. But I. In Maine. Joshua Bryden, 37 years old, 18 months. So this. The thing that really sparked interest here is they've had an investigation going on for 18 months. It wasn't like this dude dropped a bomb from a drone, and they were like, all right, you're under arrest.
This person was stalking someone.
[00:38:58] Speaker C: He was invested. This is. This is a side quest, essentially. This is like, there's a whole nother story.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: A Woodland man.
That's the way they're describing this guy. It's like he's out in the woods all the time.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: He's from Woodland main, Terry.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: Oh, well, it's been a long week, Paul.
[00:39:20] Speaker C: I'm not gonna say, like, it is kind of giving you the bomber just a little bit.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: A woodsman.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: A woodsman.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: Joshua, 37. Yeah. This is crazy. Five counts of arson, one account of attempted arson, six counts of criminal use of exposure explosive, two counts of stalking, and one count of endangering the welfare of a child. Holy shit, dude.
What?
The first few I can get over, but it's like, dude, you add the child to it. Lock him up.
[00:39:54] Speaker C: What's he been doing?
[00:39:55] Speaker B: What's going on with serial?
[00:39:58] Speaker C: What's going on?
[00:39:59] Speaker A: So over a year and a half, they've been several. Several incidents. The only first thing when I saw this and thought I was like, his baby mama is hanging. This is, you know, with a new wood woodland person.
She found her a new lumberjack. And so he's pissed. Instead of going over there and punching the guy in the mouth, he's, you know, they're going out to have cigarettes, and I, you know, chat with each other, and he's over there harassing them with drone bombs.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: Two things.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: Well, it's weird. It's. It's not that, because it says multiple people.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: What? Two things?
Two things?
[00:40:44] Speaker C: Yeah. No, I was going to say two things, basically. Uh, the. I mean, I kind of want to see the cop footage, because I think the footage for Dennis, our Florida local man who shot down the Walmart drone for. Drone up. That footage got released this earlier this month, in October. So if you want to check that out, you can look that up. So I'm curious what Joshua Braden's footage is going to look like when he tries to explain the explosives from the drone. And the second thing, I can't remember because the two caught up with the cop footage, but, yeah, that's.
Go ahead, Terry.
[00:41:26] Speaker B: I was just pointing out, you said they were. Let's say. Let's read the exact.
Let's see. Police say they have been investigating for the last year and a half after several incidents of improvised explosive devices being used to target several people in woodland. So he's like a serial IED bomb dropper. I don't know. Aspiring Ukraine drone.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: Yeah, dude, in the wrong place. This is.
[00:41:59] Speaker B: Man. A little too far. But, I mean, you know what I'm getting?
[00:42:03] Speaker A: This is literally, like, people's worst nightmare. And it's been going on, and it's crazy to think that again for a year and a half, but they're saying it's been a combination of things. So it wasn't just, like, every day for the past year and a half.
And I'm not. I'm not vouching for Joshua.
[00:42:23] Speaker C: It's crazy. It's not like, oh, there goes Joshua again, blowing up the neighborhood. It's like, this man is trying to drop bombs on people. That's crazy.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: I'm still convinced it's a couple. Like, it says multiple people, but I'm just thinking, who has that, like, just going around town, just randomly harassing people versus, like, you know, specific people.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Psychopaths. You mean. You're talking about psychopaths.
[00:42:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Um, and to have not have heard any of this, like, to. For this to not even made news.
Um.
That's. That's crazy.
That is nuts.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, don't go to Maine. I guess I was very excited when.
[00:43:18] Speaker C: You brought up Maine. I didn't see the full headline for this. I thought we were going to have a good place to check off for the road trip, but now it's like, oh, don't know about that. That's not the happiest title.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: You can go visit him.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: You go bring your hard hat.
[00:43:33] Speaker C: I'm curious, what type of drone do you think the guy are using?
[00:43:40] Speaker A: Um.
That's a good. I was trying to. I was. Maybe it was one of those New York post drones, because, um, they are the, you know, people are being successful with drones in the Ukraine, so it didn't say that even hurt anybody.
It just said, like, huh, he's got.
[00:44:05] Speaker B: To brush up on his FPZ. Fpv skills, bro. He's got it. I mean, gotta play uncrashed, you know?
[00:44:13] Speaker A: Goodness. Yeah. I'm just like, his. It was, like, accounts of arson, so it seems like he was trying to start fires that would they, like, cause damage it.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: Firebug.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Yeah. It just didn't seem like the article is just missing a lot. Right. It just leaves so much information.
[00:44:38] Speaker C: We have a lot of questions.
[00:44:43] Speaker A: So, Samuel, you get assigned to that story, go dive in. We're going to send Samuel to Maine.
We're deploying Samuel to Maine with a safety vest and a hard hat for safe purposes. So all the drone pilots who have their safety vests and hard hats, that's exactly what it's for. It's for whenever you need to go to Maine. And in order to cover insane news stories. Right, just in Maine. What? Anyway, moving on. Still.
Still in New England here for this story, a company, epropelled, introduces new Falcon propulsion systems supporting made in american drone technology. So we, you know, I've been saying it, folks have been saying it. If we're gonna have american made drones, we have to have american parts, we have to have american components.
So their motor ranges from one to 20. Meet the growing demand for the shift in the global market.
And epropelled is a propulsion and energy management company based in Laconia, New Hampshire.
And so its first Falcon product line will be coming out.
This is pretty exciting news. I mean, it's not like, you know, it's not like the drone itself, but, you know, you got to have the pieces to put it together.
[00:46:19] Speaker C: I was going to say, this is one of those pieces that we've been wanting for a while.
I know it's not the biggest headline in the world, but, I mean, it seems like a first or not a first, but a great step to moving us towards that goal of American made.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: And it seems like, you know, recently China has started to adjust their export allowance, limiting motor exports up to 16 kw. So the fact that they're producing a motor up to 20 kw is, you know, potentially going to fill that gap not just in the United States, but globally for folks that are trying to produce, you know, big, bigger, more heavy lift capability, UA's. And.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: I don't know much about motors and stuff, but these little motors look cool. They look cooler than most of the ones I've seen, at least. I mean, they got like, it's red, got nice vents on it.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: My very base level observation there, 98% efficiency.
[00:47:36] Speaker B: I sent the link to their website in the chat.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: This it?
[00:47:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that's it products.
And then they should have a little tab for it. Yeah.
And then the Falcon series, that's, I think that's their older stuff. The Falcon series is under the second tab there.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: You can see how much it's, like, developed from a commercial standpoint. Open motors, are just susceptible. Right.
They have these little scoops in them. You see that?
[00:48:17] Speaker B: Yes. The little vent I was talking about.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: So as it's moving, it's basically like, just like an automobile.
You have a.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: The Ferrari of, uh, electric motors.
[00:48:31] Speaker A: Like a hood scoop. Wow.
It's a big boy.
Yeah. I mean, it's so it's just, again, individually, it's just, it's just another part. Right. It's like a motor and it's like, yay, the motors. Yes. One more thing that, you know, we aren't relying on another country, but that it always brings into question is like sourcing of the components to make it itself.
You know, how do we maintain the access to raw materials in order to keep, keep costs down? Because labor costs in the US is just high.
And so you have to factor in all those other costs. Energy. Right. What is. How much is the cost of energy?
How can we keep the cost of energy down? Because you don't want to cut, you don't want to pay people less.
And when it costs a lot of money to move and ship stuff and acquire, it just increases cost.
Let's just keep moving forward. We're gonna be on top, on, on topic here on time, right. We usually run about 70 minutes. Usually. Usually about 70 minutes. We're gonna steal a little less, less of people's time. This episode.
Give people a couple minutes, they make.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: It to the end. They like being tortured. So it's all right.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: Oh, yes. It's.
That is torture. It's one way to describe it.
So recently, multiple incursions of mystery drones near us military installations has been taking place. I don't know if anybody's tracking this.
This video here says a chinese drone has been spying on us and allies.
I didn't even.
June 25. Oh, this was out in the, all these sorties. But what we're talking about here, and we'll look at this map, is drones in what seems to be like swarms have been near Langley airbase.
So this map shows recently in Nevada, in Virginia, there have been drone swarms detected.
Langley Air Base and Naval Station Norfolk is in Virginia, 2023.
And so with all of this happening, with these drone sightings having occurred, and the reason why we're talking about this kind of last is we have now seen legislation, senators, politicians are discussing the.
[00:51:57] Speaker C: Need.
[00:52:00] Speaker A: For there to be a more proactive measure or a proactive policy in place for these installations to eliminate a threat before it becomes a very significant threat.
I don't know how exactly this falls in line with a lot of what we've seen with. Talked about with the counter UA's stuff.
But at what point does a drone go from being far enough away or not close enough?
And at what point does it become close enough to microwave it? Like, where should the microwave wall be?
Right at the. At the. At the fence line. And drones have really good zoom capability, so is there need to be a buffer?
[00:53:04] Speaker B: These. These, like, sightings of these drones? This doesn't really make sense to me, because if there was a country that wanted to do something to these military bases, unless it's purely surveillance, why would they.
I don't know. Why would they, like, go ahead and give up their hand so we can prepare? I don't. It doesn't make sense to me. It's like that. The balloon thing, there's like a conspiracy that has China trying to see how far they could get before the Us noticed or whatever.
[00:53:38] Speaker A: Yeah, the. The balloon thing is crazy. The.
The. The drone thing is kind of weird to see it. And not just one drone, but, like a swarm of drones and.
[00:53:56] Speaker B: Covered.
[00:53:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And then for days, it just doesn't make sense that you can't.
[00:54:07] Speaker B: For days, like, what, they. They couldn't try? You're telling me they stayed in the air for 17 days? Or they were. They, you know, like, going back to where they came from, landing, getting recharged.
[00:54:19] Speaker A: I think it says hovered over Langley and Virginia. Go ahead, Sammy.
[00:54:23] Speaker C: I was going to say multiple sightings make sense. Like, going in and out of visual line of sight, probably. Like, they can't. They can probably spot it, but then it disappears, pops up somewhere else again in the area. But how would they effectively track it if it's not broadcasting? Like, how are they supposed to know where they should be looking if it's.
It seems like it's just to see how much confusion they can cause and how effective it can be. But just prodding. I don't know. That's my personal thoughts.
How much can they actually.
[00:54:56] Speaker A: I'm thinking, like, drone. Drone, dude.
[00:54:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:00] Speaker A: And I'm thinking, like, drone light shows. Like, you know, you're testing. People are testing their drone light show. They're testing something, but only five or six, you know, drone light shows are well beyond that. People testing their. Their own products. But who in their right mind, if you were trying to start a company would, you know, I think there's enough information out here nowadays that anyone operating drones for a business knows.
Like, and then if you see, if you were doing it and you saw these articles, you would be like, oh, hey, if we want to be legal, we should probably stop this. And then it's also, like, the person lighting the fires and then, you know, seeing it being reported on the news and getting away with it, and then lighting another fire and then showing up at the, you know, at the scene and talking to the firemen and interjecting yourself into it. It's like, is that is what's happening here? Kind of like you mentioned, Samuel, like, just trying to see how.
How far it could go. But the fact that this is happening at multiple woods locations, there should have.
[00:56:12] Speaker B: Been, like, it happened 17 days in one month, I believe. Right? You know, like, even if you, like, caught it at the fifth time, you'd be like, all right, next time we see that drone, I mean, you have to think, they're there, they're coming there, they're flying around. Drone doesn't have that great a battery, no matter what. Like, I mean, the battery's not gonna be sick. He's got to be somewhat close, especially if he's getting any valuable data.
Send a few grunts. I mean, just, like, kind of station a few dudes, just, like, outside waiting for it to follow it.
I don't know. I just feel like 17 times is a lot to not be able to do.
[00:56:47] Speaker A: At least something like, what is the threat? How great is it and how much resources are you going to apply to catching it?
[00:57:00] Speaker B: However much military base is worth is what I would put the value at.
[00:57:03] Speaker A: And after day five, how are they monitoring this? Was it just somebody staring there 24/7 waiting for it? Is there some sort of radar system in place that automatically detects it? It seems like they're not flying with remote id, the thing. So having a remote id detection is.
[00:57:26] Speaker C: From just a.
I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. But from a standpoint of, like, going to tackle that situation, do you. Someone send someone to go look for the drone, or do you send someone to go look for the operator? Because, I mean, how do you know the drone isn't dangerous in and of its operator? Right, but how do you. How remote can you actually fly with.
[00:57:45] Speaker B: When you follow the drone till it starts? Don't know. You try to follow the drone as best as you can until you get to an area. I don't know.
[00:57:53] Speaker C: It's just we've been. We've seen things where drones can go and hide into, like, fake scenery. You know, it can go into a rock. It can go into a tree, a fake tree, a fake rock. I know I'm getting conspiracy theory here, but I'm just saying, is like, it's.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: Insanely the owl drone.
[00:58:11] Speaker C: Exactly. No, that's. Yeah, exactly it. But I think that made my first.
[00:58:16] Speaker A: Swedish owl hugging drone.
[00:58:20] Speaker B: Weird.
[00:58:23] Speaker A: It is. But it just goes to me, if you can't figure things out here, how the hell are you supposed to figure things out downrange? How are you supposed to secure.
And even earlier this year, I don't remember how long ago there was a failure where a drone was able to just fly right into a forward operating base and kill us soldiers. And so now someone's toying around.
But also, is, is it them flying the stuff? Because they're sitting here going, oh, we don't know what's going on. And it's like, are you also just playing along the 3d chest right here?
[00:58:58] Speaker B: I mean, 4d chest. I mean, they're just doing whatever they want to, probably.
[00:59:03] Speaker A: And then people ask, and instead of telling them, you're just like, oh. And then you, you know, eight months from now, no one's gonna talk about it. I mean, they just said there's no UFO's and whatever. I was just. It's just, who knows? Who knows?
[00:59:21] Speaker B: We should bring it up in eight months.
[00:59:23] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll bring it up in eight months. And then. So, on your way, on your way to Maine, stop at Norfolk, stop at Langley. Samuel. Yeah, and throw your drone up, because obviously, what happens.
[00:59:39] Speaker C: See if they're gonna come get me.
I'm here for research. I just wanted to put a really.
[00:59:45] Speaker A: Good job when they show up. Good job. Good job. You didn't have a timer. Have your timer in your hand. Good job.
[00:59:53] Speaker C: You passed this time.
[00:59:54] Speaker A: Or be like, that was terrible. That was terrible. Oh, look.
[00:59:57] Speaker B: Minutes.
[00:59:58] Speaker A: We'll keep this between us, all right?
[01:00:01] Speaker C: I bet they'd love that.
[01:00:02] Speaker A: Oh, goodness. They'd be.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Don't do that. We didn't say to do that. And if you do get caught, you say, hey, Paul said it was okay.
[01:00:15] Speaker B: This is all in Minecraft.
[01:00:19] Speaker A: Well, that was a great episode. Let's go, Yankees. That's one thing I would add here, is, let's go, Yankees. We'll see how that turns out. You know, come, come episode publishing episode publish day.
Quite a few games between now and then. Well, thank you, everybody, for your time and attention. It's been a.
Another interesting, informational filled episode. We looked at a couple videos here in the beginning. Drones being used in the battlefield for visual confirmation of various things.
Seeing the falcon nine heavy recovered by the mechazilla in a chopstick type fashion. Truly exciting, really energizing. And for anyone that is into aerospace or technology.
Boy, I said to my brother, can you imagine what we're going to be seeing 30 years from now if that's what we just saw today? It's, it's crazy. It's going to be, it's going to be really interesting to kind of see how, how things progress and how this technology gets integrated into, you know, more space operations, but just into other, you know, drone technologies and things like that. To have drones coming in. We've talked about vertical, horizontal landing. Having drones come in instead of landing vertically, they're kind of caught for better wind. So this is really interesting stuff. Fox safety taking in aerodrome in order to produce a more complete DFR solution is really exciting. So it'll be neat to see how they move forward and how they bring potentially NDA American made UA's systems to, excuse me, fruition circle grammatree. Check it out. If you're on the mapping, modeling, visual design side of UA's operations, just type circle grammetry into your drone search and check that out. It'll be interesting to see where that goes.
Don't attach anything to your drone and drop explosives because that is not okay. And I, it's, it's just bad. So. Okay, that's the last, yeah, that's the last time we're talking about that. That main man. And then don't buy your drones from the New York Post. Please don't buy your drones from the New York Post. Don't buy anyone a drone gift from the New York Post.
Go to DJI's website. You're better off buying a refurbished mini drone for like the same price. And I, and you'll have it for many years to come, so stay away from the New York Post for your drones.
E propelled us made electric motors for propulsion. It's going to help companies produce those NDA compliant systems. Maybe even companies like flock safety. Right? So flock safety might have access to cameras. They're going to have access to boards and molding and modeling. But what do they need? They need motors, right? They don't make motors for their cameras currently. So, hey, maybe we're going to see that come to fruition. And then these mystery sightings of UA's around military installations is certainly puzzling. And, you know, someone's not saying something. Someone knows what's going on and someone's not talking. But Senator Moran and some of these other legislators are going to try to put some things in place to allow these military installations to potentially take these drones down and be a little bit more proactive on how we respond.
So wow, what a packed, great episode. We again appreciate everybody who tunes in and gets spent some time with us on a weekly basis in order to get a little insight into this industry that is moving at an absolutely rapid pace. So it was a great time. Samuel, Terry, really appreciate all your input and insight and look forward to talking with you guys next week. Thank you everybody.
