Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Weekly Wings, your go to Drone podcast, presented by dronelife.com. as always, Paul Rossi here, headquartered in North Carolina, with co hosts Samuel Stansberry and Terry Neff. A really exciting episode this week. How are you doing, Terry?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Doing fantastic. Thank you for asking. Just been living life so far. Not as cool as your week's probably been, but it's been all right.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Right on. Right on. Samuel, how you doing? How's your day?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Doing?
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Well, excited for the fall weather that's incoming. It's cooled down a little bit in North Carolina. Might heat back up a little bit for. For now. Fingers crossed we're entering into the fall months.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's, uh. We're right. It was very, very hot last week and the week before, but then, you know, right there, things are going to turn in Vegas for the past three days in Utah. Before that, the weather in Utah was, like, extremely nice, nice area there, Salt Lake City. But in Vegas, it was super, super hot and extremely dry. Terry, I was right. The Westin, if anybody's going to Vegas and wants a nice view of the sphere, the Westin on Flamingo got into my room and, like, looked out and I could see this sphere. And it was like, for like, the first 20 minutes, I just sat there and watched it like a television.
They had a big advertisement for the UFC.
Yeah. And all these rings are spinning around it like those, the gold rings that they're using and big old fruity, colorful hair on there. What's his name?
[00:01:57] Speaker B: O'Malley.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: Yeah, O'Malley. Geez. I'm just drawing a blank here, but, yeah, that was really cool to see that. Didn't have a chance to go in it.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: I have a question for you. Did you go to the top golf type place that we talked about not too long ago?
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Atomic golf on Thursdays. They only did it on Thursdays. And I left on Wednesday. Got there on Sunday, left on Wednesday. So I didn't. Did not have a chance to check that out. Yeah, it was a bummer, but it was, you know, a great conference there. Commercial UAV expo. I think the turnout, just talking to the exhibitors, the folks that were there showcasing their products, they were mentioning how within the first few hours, you know, seeing people lined up every day for the doors to open in order to get in and flood and just walk around, it was pretty exciting. So, post Covid, we're really seeing everything.
Just picking back up. And so today we're going to talk about a little bit about the expo Perceptos. Type certification that was announced. There's always like, you know, people are kind of waiting for the expos to happen because there's the gathering and they can, you know, share information. So Percepto gets type certification of their aircraft for inspection.
Industrial use. Talk about fruity shoots in Baldwin ACS's Bullfrog counter UA's system, which is really neat. It's like automated. What is that? Asteroid shooter. Just like a really old. It looks like a old game that you might play. Detroit Lions going to be doing a light show here pretty soon with the NFL season kicking off. Ukrainian dragon drone breathing fire. It's. It's interesting. Very interesting.
We'll look at how drones impacted some manned aviation operations in the past week in a negative way.
Look at additional BV loss. That theme from all the weeks past BV loss operations being announced in North Dakota using some state infrastructure. It's really neat. There's something I think Terry, you found or. Pretty sure Terry. I'm just gonna go with Terry on this cloud seeding and drones that are being designed for operations in icing conditions for weather purposes. We'll end the episode in the regulatory corner discussing the countering CCP drones Act and how that's being looked at in Congress very soon being voted on.
So we will jump into things commercial UAV expo was there Tuesday. Things kicked off live flight demonstrations. So for folks who haven't been to commercial UAV expo, haven't been to Vegas, this. It really is an exciting event. Right. It's an informational event, but also just from a travel aspect. You can see the events happening on the Las Vegas Strip, so there's nowhere to fly drones. So what happens is usually it's the first day of the event in order to kind of get people familiarized with the aircraft that are then sitting at the exhibit floor is there's about 20. It's 2025 minutes off site.
Excuse me. It's been moved. It used to be in a less than ideal location. This year it was in a more of a public park. You can see the setting in the backdrop. It's just really nice mountains. Great weather for. But there's always a good chance it's not going to rain. So from not having to reschedule or change, that's, that is a positive. But it gets warm out there. They do it early. They kick things off at 08:00 a.m. and usually wrapped it by eleven. But you got the big screen. Folks are able to come out and demonstrate their products, you know, set up their their pop ups and their. Their booths, kind of like their outdoor booths, which just is a small extension of what they then have set up at the expo hall. When you're. When you're in the expo hall and you can't see it fly. So this. This is an opportunity in the very beginning to connect the dots.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: Stunning landscape, that's for sure.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Pretty big.
A little bigger than the Elon drone days or the Smithfield fly inside.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: What was the temperature when you went there? I know it's not, like, super humid. Probably won't have too strong of winds, but what was the temperature?
[00:06:58] Speaker A: There was no winds, if I recall correctly. And then the temperature had to have been low nineties.
And this is at. This was at 08:00 a.m. oh, my God.
I.
And so, I mean, it was crazy. You get there at 08:00 a.m. and you are trying to find the shade. You know, how, like, over here, 08:00 a.m. you can. You can kind of just bop around and it's not until, like, midday, you know, 01:00, 02:00, you're like, man, I really need to get in the shade. It was like 08:30 a.m. and everybody was collected in the shade.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: The only time I went. Sorry. No, you good?
[00:07:42] Speaker A: You're saying.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: I was just saying, the only time I went to Vegas, it broke record highs for temperature ever. So thank God that didn't happen to you. It was like 117 degrees, I think.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: No, but when I looked to finally pack, like, as if I, you know, it was like, what else? 102 was the low for the four days I was there, but it's a dry heat. This here is the aerial loop. Drone. So, aerial loop did a demonstration.
They're using a drone for delivery and very long distance inspection purposes.
But as you can see, that. That.
That kind of industry standardized parachute canister right there. Parachutes have become a very, very popular topic of conversation because that's the standard. You want to operate beyond visual line of sight. You want to operate over people.
The flight termination system, the FTS trigger that as you talk to these people, that FTS, that is a. It's just a standard.
A couple of companies are building parachutes that meet the standard. So that was really neat to see.
[00:08:59] Speaker C: That thing looks kind of familiar, that yellow cap, huh?
Seeing that a few places.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Exactly.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: How far. I'm sorry if you already mentioned that, but how far was the expo haul from your demonstration area?
[00:09:19] Speaker A: So it's about 20 minutes. And what they do is about 20 minutes. And what they do is when people register, they offer you to sign up for the off site demos. It's free to check. Yes, I'm going to attend. But what they also offer is a bus. So there's a bus that you can pay. It's dollar 50, which sounds crazy. Stay with me, Terry. Stay with me. Dollar 50 for the bus ride to and from the flight demonstrations. But when you do the math, if you were to get a lyft by yourself, like a Lyft Uber, it is a $30 ride to get there because you're going away from this strip.
It is a $20 ride to get back to the strip because the driver will get back to more rides. So it is about $50 to do this individual, you know, Lyft or Uber. So for people coming in from internationally, you know, less inclined to use that if you want to network on the bus, because you're, you know, meeting other people that are going there, you're. You're not really spending more money, and it does seem like a lot. $50. And so where you would benefit is if you went with someone else and you split.
Now, you might save money by splitting a lift with a friend or two, but they do offer that for basic convenience.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: So was this located west of the highway? Kinda, or is it more near Fremont street?
[00:11:05] Speaker A: No, this was to the southeast. So let's see. Let me do this. Let's share this tab instead.
[00:11:16] Speaker C: It's got all maps.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it'll take everybody to Las Vegas.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: There we go.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: So the strip is here.
Here's Caesar's forum. This huge right here. This is where the event is.
Here's the sphere.
Here's the Westin.
Great view of the sphere from the Westin.
And there's also an italian place right here. Baristas. Hole in the wall. If you're looking for Italian in Las Vegas or baristas, Batistas. You can hit up Batista's hole in the wall. All right, now, from here, you're going southeast, and there's a place called Cornerstone park.
Okay, so Cornerstone park was great because you had all this area where they could do their drone demo flights and not have to worry about ops over people.
Cornerstone park to Caesar's forum.
Boom.
13 miles.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: Oh, no wonder it costs so much. You have to go through the airport.
That airport traffic sucks.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know if it's through here. You can go around. I don't remember exactly what path we went, but because I don't remember going under.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: Well, just anywhere near it.
[00:12:54] Speaker A: Honestly, it's at 08:00 a.m. so if you're going to take a lift at. To get there in time, you're getting it at 715. There's not a. I mean, the city doesn't sleep, but there's a whole lot more going on at 715 pm than amstics of planning.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: All of these events can be somewhat of a nightmare for the UAV people, putting it all together and making sure we got to find a place to fly, a place to stay, a place to do all the expo hall stuff, but nice to see it came.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: And so the expo hall stays the same every year. Every. Every year the expo hall stays the same. And every year the conference next to it is the same conference.
It's the same cleaning conference next door. Like the same schedule. The conferences book out like years in advance. Same hotel, same conference hall. And now they're.
Hopefully they'll keep this location for the flight because there was bathrooms there. It was.
It was much better than the location I had been to previously.
There is a little movement, but again, it's always Tuesday morning. They provide buses. They're using the same companies, Sundance Media Group is involved, Las Vegas drone media and production company. And they kind of put on the demo part of it. So it goes well. I mean, the only thing that could improve if it was a little bit cooler temperatures, but like, you know, get over it, sunscreen, hat, water bottles, and they provide a ton of water bottles and snacks. So good time.
So while I was there, had the opportunity to share, you know, a pathway to professionalism presentation, which was geared toward, you know, new pilots just got certified, folks that are thinking about getting certified. And this took place in the pilot hub. And it was really exciting to see in the commercial UAV newsletter this morning. I think it was scrolling down and seeing like, holy cow. Someone wrote about that specific presentation in the pilot hub. And it was really cool because the motivation, if I learned anything in the military, there's like two types of motivation. There's real motivation, true motivation, and there's false motivation. And every day you have to bring the same level of motivation to the table. And whether that's false motivation, meaning you just have to pretend like you're excited, or if you are truly, authentically excited, especially when you're working with others and working in a team, it's part of your responsibility to say, let me put these other things aside. And even if this isn't my main thing or not, something that I'm completely thrilled about, when it is my thing. I want everyone else to bring the same level of motivation. So you have true motivation.
At the end of the day, you just need to be able to get to a level of extreme motivation. And whether that means sprinkling in a little more false motivation or a little less, depending on where our authenticity of motivation is at, that's just how I started looking at things. So energy. Bring energy.
When you go to these conferences, my whole thought here was just, you know, when people come here and spend money to travel and pay for tickets, what do they want to leave with?
You know, they want to leave thinking, I can do this.
There is hope, there is opportunity. And so if you're talking to folks who have paid to be there and they're willing to give their time and attention, you can be like, yeah, so I started my company in 2019, and we do photo, and, yeah, it's good. And that's how you see these presentations. And sometimes these panels go, and it's like, bring the energy. Otherwise this person's gonna start drifting and looking at their phone and some TikTok. So you gotta hold their excitement. And I don't know, that's the response was really cool. The message, I think, came across, I just kind of communicated what my path was, and if that resonated, what I found is people are just skipping all the steps in the middle. They're getting certified, and then they're immediately attending national conferences and wondering where, you know, how come my business isn't growing? And it's like, well, if you're from Jersey and Vegas, there's not a whole lot you gotta grow. And so networking, volunteering, building your brand, networking, attend local events, host local events, become the local professional and volunteer. Right? Build the brand, people. And so everybody just wants to jump.
[00:18:05] Speaker C: To the end, skip the fun part.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: You know, it's on that side.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: I don't know, it's.
I myself, straight to Vegas. Straight to Vegas, I was gonna say. I myself don't always. I'm not always the most social person, I should say. But I can understand the importance of sitting down with you, the local businesses, and just saying, hey, this is, this is what I'm about. This is what I do. If you guys ever need anything, let me know. And just word of mouth goes a long ways. I know at the end of the day, that's not the end all, be all. But if you're gonna start somewhere, you.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Know, I like that fake motivation saying you had. I'm gonna start using that in my everyday life.
[00:18:45] Speaker C: Yeah, sounds like that goes a long ways, to be honest.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Just fake it till you make it. Basically.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Not even. Not even fake it till you make it, because you're not faking what you know and who you are. You're faking this idea of, like, getting, getting yourself out of bed. Like, hey, you may not be completely motivated, but you gotta do it anyway. I ended up tattooing. Just do it on my.
Yeah, like, I tattooed just do it on my arm. Right? Cause it's like, there's, there's way more things. And I tell this to everyone, they're like, they're looking at me like, are you serious? Like, there's way more things in my life that I don't want to do, but I have to do in order to be able to do the things that I want to do. And so having this tattoo on my arm that says just do it is a reminder.
Like, when you think about Nike, they're not saying like, oh, just do it. Just show up to the championship game and make the shot. They're saying, just do it. Get your ass out of bed and practice. Just do the things that you don't want to in order to accomplish the things that you want to. And that's where you bring that false motivation in the sense of like. Or that is. It's still motivation, but it's just digging deeper, I guess, like that. Digging. Digging a little bit deeper when you're, when you kind of don't want to.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: On the surface, it's not motivation, it's consistency.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: And so, yeah, it was, it was a good, it was a good time getting the part 107 certificate. It was really neat because people get the certificate and then they come there. There's, there's a handful of people who don't, who were, like, in attending that are just still figuring it out. I think before they even commit to getting a certificate, they're like, well, that's kind of a lot of money and time. It's like, really a lot of resources out there, but all the work in between, you gotta, there's no shortcut to success.
All the small things that are important and the consistency is, Terry, head on. So, changing up gears here, percepto here during the conference announces that they've secured types FAA type certificate enhancing safety and reliability in drone operations.
So that type certificate that they've been awarded is, you know, confirms the safety and reliability of their drones that are being used in the energy sector.
This is the third type certificate that has been issued by the FAA. And so their drones are pictured here. It's a drone in a box that is used for industrial commercial inspections.
And so traditionally, we've seen initially when folks were talking type certification, it was all revolving around delivery drones for operations over people. Right. The big thing with drone delivery was the especially last mile delivery is delivering to backyards, right, crossing roadways, all those things that you just couldn't do under part 107. And they were looking at these drones as being operated similar to traditional manned aircraft, where they're certified in order to just fly across a large geographical region without having to worry, reducing the risk to. To the ground.
[00:22:36] Speaker C: So I dropped.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: This was a neat one, this to say.
[00:22:39] Speaker C: I was gonna say for people that are watching, I dropped the link to the website. If we want to check out the video they have on there in the chat, it's basically showing off the drone in the box and some of the features like the real time analysis and showing a very practical aspect of the mission it can undergo.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: And.
Right, critical infrastructure. So also, not only is this type certificate, no affiliation with chinese country of origin.
So from a facilities management standpoint, you know, these large tanks, you have floating tanks where depending on the amount of petrol oil in these tanks, it'll vary. And then conducting these inspections, remote operations command.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: I mean, the use cases too, like gas leak detection, solar construction turnaround, inspection arounds, remote operations, modeling and measurements, security. They made sure to list all sorts of stuff there. That's kind of cool.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a, there's a lot happening, and it's just hard for these places to adopt it one by one when it requires specialized exemptions, waivers, and not even exemptions, but just the waivers that are required. And now, as the article points out, this is so cool how these, the lids of these tanks just float up and down.
These exemptions that are created are beginning to lay the foundation for standards.
And so with standards, it's way easier to develop and manufacturer products. It's easier to establish operating procedures.
Right. Standard operating procedures need standards.
Aircraft operated must have standards. And then getting risk mitigation, getting decision makers at these high level organizations to sign off on this stuff. So this is really exciting. And really what we saw, or what I saw as a theme for the expo was beyond visual line of sight.
50% of the presentations were titled subtitled beyond visual line of sight, and 70% of the conversations were all probably leading toward beyond visual line of sight operations. So it hasn't taken, it's taken more time than people would have liked for sure. But I think the pathways is laid out for equipment and operator standards. That don't require special waivers or, you know, it's going to take a lot of the workload off folks in the beginning, which will in turn allow more adoption.
And so also talking about beyond visual line of sight, with the beyond visual line of sight, what we're seeing as part of the standard is a parachute recovery system. So in the event of a failure or in the event that there is a high risk. Right. Aircraft has gotten too close. Drone has gotten too close to an aircraft. Your final and last measure in mitigation is to deploy a parachute.
So this article here that came out a little over a week ago discusses a partnership between two companies in order to develop and meet parachute standards, or develop a parachute that meets the standards. Baldwin Safety and compliance is a company based on or focusing on safety management system solutions, and helping organizations meet compliancy standards. And then fruity chutes, which I just thought was really, really neat, like fruity, fruity shoots.
They're the parachute manufacturer, so they're just manufacturing the parachutes. And now they're getting involved with Baldwin so that Baldwin can help write the documentation and create a total package they can sell to their clients, which would primarily be drone manufacturers.
Like that theme, that cap that you mentioned, Samuel, that cap becomes common because the drone manufacturers don't make the parachute. They're actually working with a manufacturer who makes the parachute that they integrate into their.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: What was the other parachute company we were talking about not too long ago.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Seem, I remember that AVSs, the canadian company.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: Yeah, that ready to.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: They were kind of, they were more like designed for like retail.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: And this is more like business to business. Yeah, this is business to business versus business to consumer.
And you're right. AVSs out of Canada is building and manufacturing parachutes that can be sold individually for $2,000.
And so the individual user can just add that to their drone, whereas fruity.
And what's really cool is when you look at their website, it's not like, you know, it's certainly not the most current and popping site. But when you look at who they've worked with, ooh, zipline and Matternet, Asex, Google, NASA, they say they have over 4000 customers in over 50 countries on every continent on earth. So they've been doing this for a long time. It's just now a market is starting to exist in the UA's industry because of industry standards.
So industry standards are good, they set a pathway and then it helps create market opportunity for manufacturers that are meeting specific standards. Otherwise, you're just making a product and one day, you know, if a standard comes out, it might not meet it. So this is. It's really cool. Fruity. Fruity.
[00:30:35] Speaker C: I'm assuming the name fruity just comes from the color of the parachutes themselves. This little logo there. But that's, that's my thought process. I don't know if there's any. Anything I major. I was missing.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I couldn't figure that out. And then I looked at it, I looked at this, the actual logo, I was like, oh, you know what it is? Kind of deployed parachute from the side kind of does look like they use.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: On some of their models, they use small CO2 canisters so you can reuse the parachutes.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: And we got this little video here we'll play.
So we're just seeing this video here. The fruity shoots showing their canisters off. You got small quadcopter that looks like a. Gosh, that looks like a three doctor solo drone.
That thing.
Minimum deployment altitude 20ft.
See, so they got model rocketry stuff that they've done. Look at this fixed wing drone.
Oof. Oof. Remember people used to say that?
[00:31:59] Speaker C: Oh, they still do.
I think they did. That's right on. That's a thing, right, Terry? Oof.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: Every, every once in a while, I think you might be stuck a little bit in the past, but we'll be right.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: So all about reducing the kinetic energy, that's the whole purpose of a parachute, reducing the kinetic energy in order to reduce the severity.
Right. The severity of injury. Should a drone ever need to perform an FTS maneuver.
There's something really cool now, you guys ready for this? Is the audience ready for this?
[00:32:42] Speaker C: We're ready for this.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: This is really, really, really like just asteroid. I think that was the name of the game, right? Asteroid. This is a counter UA's system. It's an autonomous counter UA's system. And we've talked a lot about detection. And once you detect it, what do you do? You know, what are you allowed to do? Can you tell it to go home? Can you make it? Well, this system, what it does is it just obliterates it so it detects it and then it completely obliterates it with a 240 saw machine gun. So Allen control systems demonstrates autonomous drone targeting and destruction.
Targeting and destruction with bullfrog counter drone system at a DOD event. This article came out about four days ago.
So the Bullfrog system by Allen control systems ACs.
Would you look at that thing?
[00:33:56] Speaker C: Do you have any video of this one?
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Look how big the motors are to tilt it.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:02] Speaker C: That's insane.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: There is on their site. So that's a 240 right there.
It's an autonomous 240 connected to motors, servos and a sensor package.
This thing is going to swing, pivot 360 degrees and destroy anything airborne threat. So. Yes. So let's go to the website here, this pop up video. Just check this out. Here comes drones. Not one drone or two drones. Here comes a bunch of drones. Boom.
Nothing's, nothing inside the inner ring.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: And something I noticed is that it said it's around $10 per kill is the way they described it. So I can only. I think 556 probably is like 40 cent around. So it's shooting quite a few at them.
I wish there was a video. I want to see a video of it in action.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Yeah. This simulation that pops up, it just really, like I said, it looks like the game asteroid where you just 360 degrees, don't let anything get close.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: That is balloon towers, defense, anybody.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: And so it looks like they create acs here, creates a lot of just interesting technology.
Cheap fixed wing drones meant to move in swarm formation. The scourge, GPS denied environments.
But you know, this is a lot like a mobile cram. I think that's what it is.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: It reminds me of the Iron Dome a little bit. It's like a small version of the Iron Dome kinda, or that. That's a better.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Yeah, the craminalization.
But this here is made for like rockets.
Right.
I remember hearing this go off in Afghanistan.
[00:36:43] Speaker C: Whoa.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like R.
[00:36:50] Speaker C: I'd hate to.
[00:36:50] Speaker A: See our two position those.
[00:36:53] Speaker C: That's some serious firepower right there.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: So they, they position and I have to have some sound here.
There we go.
Like, that's insane. So this thing is able to detect large, it's made for detecting large objects. Not like ten pounds, 15 pound drones.
Not. I didn't make it, so I'm not saying that it couldn't. I just. It's not what it's built for.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: I think it would work.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: And when you see this fire at night, it literally looks like a laser. Like it's firing a laser.
[00:38:01] Speaker C: Molten lead.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: They're taking this kind of con, they're taking this concept from, you know, what I could say. And they're just, you know, designing it in order to target a much smaller threat. Like a small min aircraft.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: I wonder. So like we've seen the progression from the bigger kind of 360 turn for like bigger aircraft rockets, stuff like that. And now we're seeing like the smaller drone type thing. I wonder if we're ever going to see one that is, like, in a backpack that just. You just hold on your back. Like, one person in the squad just carries on their back, and it just is constantly scanning.
[00:38:39] Speaker A: You know what it should be is like, it's not the weapon. You would just have the system with the mount, and then you would put your own, because, like, the unit's gonna have a 240 machine gun, and then you would also have, like, your.
Your whatever they're using nowadays. Not an m 16, but the, like an m two, right? Is that the m two alpha whatever, something, something. Yeah, an m two, a one or something. Like. So you could almost just carry the tripod with the sensor, and. And then you would, like, mount a weapon that you're already carrying so you wouldn't have to carry, like, a separate. That's. That's a. That's like the super down size. Because when you think of the drones, those c rams are around the base. Like, youre. Your. Your base, where you have thousands of soldiers, tons, dozens of aircraft, and they're not mobile. And then that trailer, what ace acs is putting together, like you mentioned, it's more mobile. Like, hey, we're deploying. It's a convoy, or we're, you know, towing this system. It's part of. It's one of the vehicles in the convoy we're stopping. It would also be cool to see if you could do that while it was moving. Like, what if you could just drive down the road with that system?
[00:40:00] Speaker B: It kind of looks like it might be designed for that. Like, it doesn't say too much about it, but if you look, it's like a. Yeah. On their website, it has it on the. In a truck.
[00:40:10] Speaker A: Right. But I wonder if when you're driving, it's still gonna. I guess it could work, but it wouldn't be.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: As depends on how good their software is, I guess, and hardware, the detection.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And then the accuracy once you shoot, like. Like the. The drones moving and the guns moving versus just the guns moving or just the drones moving. Well, Samuel, we kind of missed you last week. I did apologize to you and Terry.
Well, yeah, we entirely missed you in your whole last week and all the changes going on with the travel and stuff. So we talked a little bit about drone light shows and drone light shows popping up again. One thing I didn't mention last week was Disney had put out, like, come get. Come see your light show last call. I think the drone.
Yeah, that resident, that residency is ending, which kind of makes sense, because the travel season is coming to a close.
Hey, if you're starting a drone light show business, just remember things could be seasonal. Unless they own the drones and they're going to go maybe do different shows, it like another spot or they might just throw it in their warehouse with all their other seasonal crap.
Anyway, I feel like that's what a.
[00:41:35] Speaker C: Lot of the backlot stuff is for, you know?
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The backlot stuff where the. Where they. They protect and monitor with their dragons. Right. Orlando. They're like, yeah, they're trying to be looking at our back lot. We got dragons patrolling.
[00:41:55] Speaker C: It's crazy. To be honest. I still can't believe that's dragons. They have dragons. But yeah.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: Dragons lions. So the Detroit Lions announced that they'd be hosting a drone show ahead of the week. One kickoff last night, the NFL season kicked off. And so today, I don't know if it's the lines playing. I know there's a game and then we'll see the NFL kick off all week, but yeah. So the drone show here in Detroit is scheduled for 845 on Saturday, 400ft above Ford Field.
So they've done this before in Detroit and they're doing it again.
Motor City.
[00:42:44] Speaker C: This, uh, might be a weird side note, but I just find this, like, I think this part specifically that it's in such an urban area. I know we've had one in Colorado and a few other drone light shows, but the fact that they're doing it in this park, which is in downtown, I did a quick little Google Maps search and it's like, it's a decent park, but still, I just. I think that's pretty impressive they're doing it in such an urban area. You know, he kind of surprised me when I looked at it, like, near the heart of downtown Detroit.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: I think because they're using the stadiums like they did this before, during a Red Wings Golden Knights game earlier in the year on the. In January.
[00:43:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:30] Speaker A: And so I think that they're, they're able to use like, the football field was probably maybe where they launched the drones for the Red Wings game. And now, you know, they can't use the football field. So they're finding another, as you mentioned, nearby location. But yeah, I think that over time, the risk. Right. Even though it's downtown, these are small drones, somewhat confined space.
[00:44:01] Speaker C: And of course, the event is weather dependent. Something to note.
[00:44:10] Speaker A: And it's funny, this article also brings up something that we'll bring. We'll talk. We'll talk about later in a second here. Good old green day in Detroit. But yeah. Drone light shows. If you want to see a drone light show, you can fly to Detroit.
Well, by the time this comes out, the drone light show already have happened, so.
Still exciting that these. So, so anyone in Detroit is. They're probably not going to see Steve Harvey, but they're certainly going to see a lion tomorrow night in Detroit.
And so from lions to dragons to lions and back to dragons again. A ukrainian drone is showering russian positions with molten thermite.
Molten thermite. We're gonna have Terry. I'm gonna go ahead and play this video here, and we'll have Terry kick this one off.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: All right? Yeah. So I don't know what drone they're using. This probably came from telegram. This is just something somebody recorded of a war crime in action. I think it's wrong. But here we are. There's a drone, probably some type of DJI drone, throwing, molting thermite on a position. I don't know if there's people there, but there's definitely mugenicians there because it just explodes. Something exploded after thermite got on it. So it's probably like a base that potentially is deserted.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: And I.
I don't think this is a DJI drone.
I think this is legitimately. Like, they are making a.
[00:45:56] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: Like, just the resourcefulness.
It just has to lift this stuff up in the air. It's. And this is terrible. Like, the. The whole purpose and stuff. But, like, if you think about controlled burns, like, sometimes in the United States, like, you want to burn something, there's a reason. Like, you burn things ahead of time, you create fire breaks so that this way, if something ever happens, it's not going to go to the populated areas. You create a fire break in order to break the movement of the fire. In order to create a fire break, they burn it. They go in and they burn it ahead of time, and they're using these handheld things to burn. So I could see where a solution like this could actually be used in a valuable or in a value added scenario in the United States. It's just awful to see this, but again, it speaks to the innovation. But, yeah, I wouldn't think that's a DJI drone just because of the cost that goes into it, and then, you know, it's probably just gonna go down. But, yeah. Didn't see any thermite throwing drones this past week in Vegas, didn't. I didn't happen to catch any on the floor.
[00:47:19] Speaker C: That's the universal dragon. And then you're in a fantasy setting you know?
[00:47:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe a little thermite on the drone there. Just not too much to make it to the ground.
[00:47:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I know. I'm definitely terrified by what I saw. It's just like. That was scary, was it not?
[00:47:38] Speaker A: It is. It's kind of crazy. Like it just dystopian. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It really makes you think like this is happening right now, today. So in other negative news.
Yeah, green day. So we had a couple drone incidents here which is gonna. I don't know if it's good or bad. At the end of the day, I think drones are gonna stick with us. But some stupid things like this, it's just gonna really speed up the, the, the regulatory requirements for remote id. Network based remote id.
People are talking about insurance requirements for drones and just a lot more barriers to entry, a lot more costs that are going to get involved in taxes and stuff in order to pay for this infrastructure. But a drone keeps life flight helicopter from assisting in a deadly rollover crash. There was a deadly a rollover crash.
[00:48:40] Speaker C: From a week ago.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: And so, you know, this whole article goes through talks to the folks involved here. There's no video from the incident. They're showing their drones, but just to dive into it, car flips over. Right.
Emergency responders show up.
The decision was made based on the staff captain Sean Johnson with Halsey Shedd, rural fire department protection or fire protection District was on the scene. And when he assessed what was going on, he decided to call in life flight.
Once life flight got there, there's a drone hovering the scene at about 30ft and just continued to move all over the area. They were unable to determine who the drone operator was, so they had to call off the life flight.
And so we're still having to tell people, like, if there's an accident, stay away. But people want to get pictures and videos and they have no idea what's going on underneath. So articles like this not so positive for just drones in general.
[00:50:08] Speaker C: Did they, does. I'm scanning the article, I didn't see any mention of whether they got the person to safety, the person in critical condition.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: The.
There was one individual who was determined dead on the scene.
I believe they ended up, they ended up having to drive the two passengers, two patients to the nearby hospital and I didn't see if it mentioned.
[00:50:52] Speaker C: Certainly puts it into perspective.
More casual audience for drones. Just like how serious it can be, like how impactful a drone flight can be, especially when it's just like over an accident like that. You would think like emergency services are on their way. Let me, like, if you're on the road, you get out of the way, you know?
[00:51:13] Speaker A: And then a green day. Green Day was having a concert in funny detroit earlier this week, I believe, over the weekend. And it's a really funny video. Green day. If you look it up, it's like the drummer's like, face. She just was looking around, then just runs off the stage. But they actually had to pull Green Day off stage in Detroit because security identified a drone that they didn't know whose it was. So in the same week, drone forces green day to run off stage and delays their show, like 20 minutes. And then also drone operated causes a life flight helicopter to.
To cancel its. Its response. So not a good week for the.
[00:52:02] Speaker B: I would compare it to, like, the soul train kind of like idea where it's like a train blocks an ambulance. It's like a. Not saying that still doesn't happen, but it's like a modern day version of that almost soul drone. Can't get the helicopter to land.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, uh. I don't know. I don't know. I would have. Yeah, that's a tough one. I'd have been like, yeah, helicopter drone, right on top of you. Crush, squash.
[00:52:29] Speaker C: Yeah, but.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: So, North Carolina or North Carolina? We're in North Dakota this week.
Eyesight BV lost waiver in North Carolina is going to allow the company to expand its operations. How is this working? How does isight eyesight? Drone Services has received a waiver for beyond visual, out of sight flight in North Dakota. So what is going on in North Dakota? This is funny. They're flying out of an old ambulance. Yeah, yeah. Drone services.
So they're operating this fixed wing, longer range system.
Received authorization for beyond visual line of sight. So what is happening here in North Dakota?
And as you read into the article, you realize this BV loss waiver was issued through the FAA's near term approval process.
It's one of the first operators to secure this BV loss approval under the NTAP.
And how they did this is they're using Vantas's statewide DAA network.
So the company, Vantas, has partnered with North Dakota, and they have put up a statewide detect and avoid network that they are making accessible to companies that come to North Dakota.
Eyesight is operating the super Bolo aircraft, and they can operate it anywhere in the state covered by the Vantas network. Beyond visual line of sight. They provide agriculture, critical infrastructure, wildlife management, and insurance industries with UA's data collection.
So a network, a radar network that has been established by Vantis is what they are using.
[00:54:51] Speaker B: They chose North Dakota.
Fantastic.
[00:54:55] Speaker A: It's easy for radar, it's flat, right. So your radar is going to have good quality coverage versus more varying geographical terrain, less population, so value of long range drone operations, less ground risk, and you're going to have less air risk because there's not going to be a lot of people flying around at 501,000ft. It's what I think.
I don't know if North Dakota would be considered a flyover state.
So it's. It's good in the fact that, like, you have little risk, but it's also not as good because you might not have as much market. The market for services might not be that large. But when you consider what they do. Right. They're not doing drone delivery, they're. They're doing infrastructure, agriculture. So flying long pipelines, flying long transmission lines probably be super valuable in the state of North Dakota, especially with the severe weather. If this thing can operate in, you know, really cold temperatures when you got a lot of snow on the ground.
[00:56:08] Speaker C: And it seems like that's what we're seeing.
[00:56:10] Speaker A: We're seeing a lot of states.
Yeah, go ahead.
[00:56:13] Speaker C: I was just going to say too, like, it seems like that's. It's one of the smallest, I shouldn't say small. It's one of the steps that is being taken, too. It's not like they're going to immediately just throw all caution in the wind and do these extreme beyond visual, line of sight flights. It seems like it's a very controlled pace of learning how to integrate the BV loss into their operation safely and show them, you know, but. Yeah, exactly. Delivery of medical supplies. That seems incredibly useful, advantageous. What's the risk over this sparsely populated area?
[00:56:46] Speaker A: But.
Right. And then they can conduct longer distance light. It opens the door for more use cases. And what they're doing initially is these roads, they have these mining operations, I believe is what it said. And so they're moving product. They're moving things on big trucks, heavy trucks on gravel roads. And these gravel roads in inclement weather become unpassable. The trucks get stuck, the trucks dig the road up. You got to fix the roads, you got to get the trucks unstuck so they can use the drones to fly ahead and assess the roads in real time, and they can divert trucks and make sure that the items are still getting where they need to go to without tearing up roads and pissing off the locals. So really neat use case. Really. Again, just another example of how ground based systems, DAA systems are facilitating beyond visual line of sight. And we're moving toward a more standardized framework for future operations.
A couple of last topics here before we wrap up the episode.
This here article that came out that I think, Terry, was this. You found this one, right?
[00:58:07] Speaker B: I know exactly nothing about cloud seeding.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: So and so.
And if you have a day or two, go ahead and read through this. This is like a full on research university type, you know, abstract this thing is in. You know, he's a big artist. A lot of detail here. But at the end of.
Yes, at the end of the day, what, what is happening is they are researching the use of drones for cloud seeding.
And so they're demonstrating here how clouds can be used for, one, the seeding, like the plume, into open air as well as into, so what they call out of cloud and then also in cloud. And they can use a second drone inside these environments to then measure the effectiveness of the seeding. So what materials are we using to seed? And then how effective are those materials versus others?
And so why this is interesting is because whenever you're talking clouding, we're talking visible moisture, we're talking about lower temperatures, and you're talking about icing.
So in my brief review of what was sent over, what I learned is they're using drone that actually exists. It's by medio mattox.
And so if you have time, if you're, if you're audio only, you're not seeing what's on the screen showing this drone flying. It's got to be photoshopped over just like some beautiful snowy mountains in the clouds. And meteomatics, they are manufacturing drones for adverse weather conditions.
It's really, really exciting. So when you look at this, they're talking about heated propellers, they're talking about anti icing technology and using these drones in order to measure and collect data conditions within the six kilometer and under. Right. Your micro weather and using this for cloud seeding.
[01:00:44] Speaker B: This looks a lot similar to the drone we were talking about not too.
[01:00:48] Speaker C: Long ago in Colorado, right.
[01:00:50] Speaker B: It was kind of like a plug and play.
[01:00:54] Speaker A: The one, the Lockheed drone, we ended up finding out. Right. It was like, yeah, in Colorado, because they were doing weather measurements.
[01:01:05] Speaker B: I think it might just be the same drone and they're just putting their own software on it.
[01:01:10] Speaker A: And so what do we got?
PRS parachute recovery system. What is the value of a parachute recovery system?
Oh, no.
Do, do do, do do do. Parachute recovery system is essential for beyond visual line of sight operations. Goodness. You so, anywho, the industry's learned, if you're going to make a drone, it's going to be operated beyond visual line of sight. You got to put a parachute on it.
And finally, the final piece of information to wrap up today's episode is a regulatory corner. It was something people were talking about in Vegas about Djihdev. However, the presence of DGI was very, very, very right there. Everyone was talking about how it's in all the booths. This is what we're using. Can't take this away. There's got to be a middle ground. How do we move forward? And so Congress wants to cut off China made drones. This article here is just discussing how Congress is likely to vote on the countering CCP drones Act during what House Speaker Mike Johnson's office has dubbed China Week, which is slated for later this month. So later this month in September here, we could be seeing that the Reauthorization act, which includes the countering CCP Drones act language in it, which was sponsored by Elise Stefanik, who has noted that DJI drones pose the national security threat of TikTok, but with wings. So DJI drones are creating brain rot and ruining child's relationships with their parents and totally creating irresponsible workers who are just sucking time away from their employer. Right. That's exactly what DJI drones are like.
Wow. Wow. Right?
So I hope that same language to ban TikTok is written into somewhere. We're going to Ban X from Brazil, right? For whatever reasons. But we can't ban TikTok brain rot from destroying the United States because TikTok has helped so many businesses and so many people's lives have been saved because of TikTok.
Come on. Come on now.
Anyway, any thoughts on that?
[01:03:54] Speaker C: I don't have any big thoughts. I mean, it sounds. I think what you said about the expo, specifically about, hey, like, there is this presence. We like the middle ground part. It's just like, what do you expect us to do? The people that are actually using this product, how are you going to say we can't use the thing we bought anymore and, like, essentially kind of screw us over?
[01:04:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens during China week. And until then, stay tuned. So, fantastic episode again today. Talked about commercial UAV, the expo, how things were looked at, Percepto's type certification. We were talking parachutes and fruity, fruity shoots. We looked at the Bullfrog counter us system, which is like adult asteroid, but it's automated, no user input involved. Detroit lines doing a drone show this weekend. I'm sure even, even as we move into the winter and the holiday season, we'll probably see even more drone shows, say Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's we're probably headed into. Even though the summer and some of these seasonal things like Disney and their residencies, these companies will probably find work in other areas during the holidays. But anyway, ukrainian dragon drone dispensing thermite?
Yeah, just, just another interesting development that certainly makes people scratch their heads and just wonder what the hell is going on in this dystopian time. But life flight interference. Don't fly your drone around emergency incidents. Let people do their jobs. Let folks save people's lives. Nobody wants watch your picture or video of cars crashed and, you know, negative things happening. So just find the positive stuff to film and photograph beyond visual light and beyond visual light, beyond visual line of sight in North Dakota, due to some infrastructure that the state is supporting. So it'll be neat to see how eyesight continues to grow and advance their operations.
Weather drones for cloud seeding. Really, really neat to see how that's advancing and how the uses and the need for the drones in the various segments of the industry is driving the manufacturing. So drones that can go into icing environments. Not a huge market right now, but I think just after the couple stories we've touched on in the past couple weeks, there will be a, a growing demand. So companies like meteomatics being able to produce those types of drones is really exciting.
And then again, stay tuned.
We'll see where things go with the NDAA and the countering CCP drones act in the house as they move closer to China week. But thank you everybody for tuning in. As always, we appreciate your time and attention. Be sure to check out dronelife.com. sign up for the newsletter get the daily information. If you have any questions or comments, reach out and let us know what you are thinking or what you want to know more about. Thank you, Samuel, and thank you Terry for both your times and insight. See everybody next week. Fly safe.
