US Army Drone Branch & Flight Simulator | May 16, 2024

Paul Rossi (00:00) Welcome to Weekly Wings, your go -to podcast from DroneLife .com, where we soar through the latest in drone technology, regulation updates, and exciting innovations. Each week, join Samuel, Terry, and I as we navigate the drone industry, offering expert insights, interviews with key figures, and a bird's eye view of how drones are shaping our world. From commercial applications to recreational adventures, Weekly Wings delves deep into how these remarkable vehicles are impacting construction, education, filmmaking, agriculture, delivery services, and more. Whether you're a professional drone operator, a hobbyist, or just drone curious, tune in to stay informed and inspired as we explore the heights of what's possible in the world of drones. Subscribe now and never miss an episode of Weekly Wings where the future is looking up. Welcome, welcome, welcome, another week. How's everybody doing? Terry Neff (00:54) Pretty good. Samuel (00:56) Thanks for asking. That intro is actually pretty good. I like the sound of that. I think you're getting it down to a T. Just a note to our viewers, we don't have that pre -recorded just yet, so I'm impressed he did that all in one take. Paul Rossi (01:06) Yeah, ma. It sounds like it though, or just box that up. I feel like I could just see the drone videos, like the ocean waves crashing. Really excited today. Lots going on as always in the industry, and it's really amazing in such a short period of time. So we're going to be talking maybe a little bit about space weather here. Big old KP solar storm has everybody. Samuel (01:13) Yeah. Paul Rossi (01:36) talking about that and how it's impact on GPS. A feature topic we'll discuss is the possibility of an Army drone branch. Tech Spotlight will be looking at a few different things. One, the Zephyr flight simulator. Really, really cool software products available right on a computer. You can use an Xbox, PS4 remote, a... Also a drone controller that has the ability to plug an interface directly into the computer to get some stick time in on that simulation. And then we'll be discussing industry survey that's available. So folks that are tuning in that are doing this from a business standpoint that are conducting drone operations, training, sales, services, manufacturing, software, hardware production, any of that. There's a drone survey, industry survey out. that you may be interested in completing. And on the regulatory side, we will be discussing a subcommittee meeting that is happening tomorrow on the use of drones in emergency management and emergency response. So that should be really exciting. You got folks from AUVSI that are going to be testifying and speaking to the use of drones. in the public safety space to help drive some of this regulatory development. So really exciting episode, some great information to bring today. But I guess just to touch on right here, got a little handheld receiver here for some GPS stuff. Use this as a base station or a rover. Solar Storm. What do you guys think about this solar storm, this thing that happened? Samuel (03:27) Honestly, like, go ahead, Terry. Terry Neff (03:27) very pretty. I was just saying it was very pretty. You can go ahead. Samuel (03:30) you're leaving it at that. Paul Rossi (03:32) He said, well, Terry, you said, yeah, you said, like, I didn't even see it. So I'm like, I didn't even see it. You know, I was whatever one thing or another, whether it was kids or so studying space right now, trying to get that, you know, complete that education. So I've learned a lot over the past year plus, and still got a few more classes left, but I've just been learning about space, launch, LEO. satellites. So when things like this happen and then I miss it and it's like all you had to do is step outside and you kind of could have seen it and it just sucks. So cool to be able to see this but then also understanding like what is happening. See you. Samuel (04:14) Yeah, kind of just touching on what Terry said. It was in fact very pretty not to rub it in your face, Paul. I wouldn't have even noticed either if Terry hadn't texted me some photos of it live. And I'm like, what is this? And a little bit of research later, I'm outside taking photos of my own. But I honestly, it's kind of crazy. I don't know how much of a notice everyone had because I wouldn't have known either unless Terry had said something. And it seemed, I guess I had seen it in an article about a week. before, but it just kind of flew to the back of my head until later that later when Terry told me about it. But it seems like it heavily impacted a significant amount of operations for GPS, the things that are reliant on GPS. Like if you were going to fly your drone, it probably would not have a very accurate GPS routing. I think you mentioned something about tractors too that were reliant on GPS. And in today's I'm trying to think the right word in today's life and pretty much everyday life, you're using your GPS typically. So having that impacted to the where it's not working properly, that's kind of a huge deal for us, even if it's just 24 hours, 48 hours of it being impacted. But a little bit for me. Paul Rossi (05:42) Yeah, you see that with the solar storm and the farmers tractors that you mentioned, which shared on the screen right here. Then also, the... NOAA National Weather Service. This is, you know, what you're seeing on the screen is just that image of the sun, the solar flare visualization, the coronal mass ejects, and then how that impacts the magnetic fields right around Earth. And so there's a lot of great resources. And this, all of a sudden, there's more drones, there's more tractors, there's more... If I go back, right, we've got this chart here. There's more vehicles leveraging GPS than ever before. So if there was ever gonna be a sense of like, hey, what... Seeing an impact, the more there are in use, and then when we have this massive... you know, geomagnetic storm that occurs, you have more users or more receivers online than ever, and you have one of the most significant conditions to have occurred since this number of vehicles are online. And so it's interesting, you know, seeing folks report about the John Deere stuff, how much was it really effective? Was it one tractor, two tractors? There's a lot of things at play there. but again, this is something that folks are just kind of starting to look at because drones use and rely on GPS and there's more drones in operation than ever. But I think it's, it's a really neat and exciting, for, for, for someone like myself to know that again, I, I think as I've been sharing is there's a huge overlap here between space and, and not just drones, but vehicles in the ground. So we're, you know, the importance of space, understanding space, valuing space, and, you know, understanding it is important. So when those geomagnetic storms occur, it causes changes in the, you know, the Earth's atmosphere and the ionosphere, which impacts the... the communication and the data that's talking to the receiver itself. RTK is in place in order to help correct some of those variations in real time. But if you have such massive variations, again, it's quite possible that you're pushing the capabilities of this RTK function, which again, is never. is not being tested with these types of magnetic storms on a regular basis. Samuel (08:55) I did want to jump in real quick and just kind of preface for the listeners and viewers that this isn't a normal storm. This was a storm like this hasn't hit since I believe in like 20 years. Like this was a relatively significant storm and that's why it's so heavily impacted the GPS and everything like this. So I just kind of want to throw that out there that it wasn't necessarily faulty technology due to a small storm. This was relatively significant. Terry Neff (09:10) Yeah. Yeah, just to put this out there so you can visualize it, kind of. The last time there was a storm this big was a year before I was born. So it's been a minute. Samuel (09:32) Give some good context. Paul Rossi (09:35) Kind of like the floods, I guess people can visualize like a 100 year floodplain, the 500 year floodplain from the sense of this could happen, but again, the likelihood of it to occur and what is the risk. So I think information was learned, data was kind of collected, but it's also gonna be a challenge to continue to understand. exactly what happened when you can't just recreate, at least not, you know, at a readily available means recreate these types of conditions. and... And with that, transitioning to... Samuel (10:12) We'll be sure to text you as well next time, Paul, so you can go outside and get some photos. Paul Rossi (10:16) Well, that Terry did, but I'm just like, what is this pictures of? I was very, very confused. Samuel (10:20) okay. You give him context, Derry, or do you just send a picture? Terry Neff (10:25) You didn't miss much, I will say that. You didn't miss much. You can't really... You couldn't really see it with your eyes. Your phone definitely picked it up better than your eyes did. It was just kind of like a light red. Yeah, I seen like light red kind of hues of purple. It wasn't too much. Samuel (10:35) I couldn't see anything at all with my eyes. I guess it also depends on the light pollution too, probably, right? That would be kind of one of my assumptions. Paul Rossi (10:49) I saw some really good photos. There was this one site, like all of a sudden that was just all these amazing photos, but it was really hard to tell if these photos had been slightly edited or not edited at all. But they all looked really cool. it's clicking. I need a silent mouse. So moving along for. listeners here that have any military connections or interests maybe currently serving, just like we saw the recent development of the Space Force and recognizing again the here, what's trending, space is trending, right? Recognizing the changes and really the ones that are happening day by day, is the integration and use of small unmanned aircraft systems in the contemporary operating environment these days, which we've seen in Ukraine, in Israel. It looks like there's this possibility that... you know, maybe the army will create a drone branch. in order to continue to adapt and keep up with this ever -changing operational environment. Samuel (12:31) Yeah, I'm kind of surprised. I feel like that would be something like the Air Force, but I guess that most of the operators for drones are currently just Army as far as I'm tracking, but. Paul Rossi (12:32) So. Samuel (12:44) I guess having its own separate branch kind of would make sense to specialize in something like that, especially because drones are becoming so prevalent in warfare. Terry Neff (12:58) Yeah, well, they're probably wanting to use it on the front lines and be interconnected. The Army's kind of like a Swiss Army knife, no pun intended. But they can do a little bit of everything. And the Air Force is kind of particularly the big boy aerial stuff, more or less. So they want this to be on the ground to do reconnaissance or whatever for their squads, most likely. Paul Rossi (13:26) And then also what's super important here is the counter UAS aspect of it. So again, the swarm drones, being able to not just operate, Terry mentioned, to deploy this at the very front line, but also to defend it at the front line. So what equipment needs to be deployed, carried, readily available? for soldiers and understanding how it all ties together. You got to have a lot of plug and place, you know, operational equipment in the military, but you got to have trained folks that understand how to improvise and adapt the technology in, you know, in that war fighting environment. So the counter side and the operational aspect, the maneuver. center of excellence. So I think. I think the technology is well developed, but to balance, you have a group of folks that are all specifically trained to integrate that piece into the... into the fight. So it's kind of neat, I guess. And it's weird because you have aviation, right? But when you look at aviation, the branch itself, it's more large aircraft, it's lots of soldiers working on specific aircraft, and it's not at none of it's really at the front line. Samuel (15:14) I would say I'll just kind of jump in. For the US military, who would be operating those aircraft typically? Like what branch specifically? Manned, I'm talking about. Paul Rossi (15:30) Okay, yeah, so that's a really good question. So when you think Air Force, everybody always thinks fly, aviation, right? But Air Force is going to be your fixed wing, like heavy, if you look, do the research on the numbers, the majority of the Air Force's aircraft are going to be large fixed wing aircraft for logistics and transport. The Army is going to have... Samuel (15:37) That's what I thought, yeah. Paul Rossi (15:57) the majority of your rotor wing aircraft, helicopters. So just like boats too, like there's this weird thing where the army I think has more boats than the Navy because the Navy doesn't have boats. The Navy has ships, right? The Navy has battle ships. The army doesn't have battle ships, but the army has a lot of little boats and things to move stuff logistically. Whereas the Navy, they're gonna take you to war with their... Samuel (16:12) Right. Paul Rossi (16:23) rigs, they're like an aircraft carrier. Yeah, that's not a boat, right? So they don't have the most boats, which is most people, what do you mean? So then the Marines, you're going to have a combination fixed wing jet, jet aircraft, and rotorcraft helicopters. But the Marine is not Samuel (16:25) Those massive battleships. Yeah. Paul Rossi (16:49) the largest of the branch by size. So a real combination of all flying aircraft, just not a high volume. And then what? The Navy. And then when you look at the Navy, that's where you've got fighter jets. Navy pilots are operating jets off of the aircraft carriers, things of that nature. That's... Samuel (17:06) So kinda, as it stands right now, if you were gonna get a drone job in the military, you would probably go to the army, right? Paul Rossi (17:13) it Samuel (17:16) Relatively speak. Paul Rossi (17:16) You would. Yep. You would be in the military. Because you're going to be operating the larger Predator, Shadow, Reaper, whatever is in that operation at this point, which is going to be deployed by an army unit at a local level and maintained. And then exactly where the pilot sensor operator is, it's kind of global. So it's a bit different, especially because you're going to run the flight ops 24 -7. And it can be tactically positioned anywhere, just like any other drone operation. You can maintain and manage and keep the vehicle here. And then it's piloted off site from a box. I don't want to call it a box, but I think when you think military, you basically have a... operational container that's readily deployable. the and so and so yeah I think strategically it's the the army those frontline soldiers that could value the most from that short -range reconnaissance you know you know put it out in front of a convoy get it out ahead integrate some different sensors and technologies for earth earth movement detection just just just a lot of neat things. And so a branch, and then again, it's like, if now you have that drone branch, it's really interesting because it's, the way that a student or someone growing up might now see the occupation as opposed to aviation specifically. Terry Neff (18:51) And kind of off topic, you said aircraft carrier. And I remember seeing something earlier about China building the world's first drone aircraft carrier. I don't know how true this is. I think it's kind of, it's just not reported really yet. But there is kind of, there's a little bit of info suggesting that it is a drone aircraft carrier. So, I mean, that's pretty cool. Paul Rossi (19:15) I see, so you're saying like it's like the vehicle itself is autonomous, the aircraft carrier. You can actually... Terry Neff (19:20) I think so. I would like to think... Paul Rossi (19:24) So we're going to have the carrier, the ship itself is going to be remotely operated. And then you're going to be putting remotely piloted jet aircraft launching and recovering from it. Everyone will be behind there. Terry Neff (19:40) Yeah, there's not very much information on this bad boy yet, but yeah, it has two large drone motherships apparently that kind of sit off to the side of it. I have a link. It's a satellite photo of a shipyard. So like I said, there's not very much information on it. I put it in the Discord if you want to look at it. Paul Rossi (19:49) You got a video, you got a photo of it up? I'll have to do some deeper diving on that, Terry. So moving on, talked a little about the RTK and the space weather stuff and the Army launching a drone ranch. And that's the really interesting stuff. That's what you would end up learning. If you went to your MOS, you're going to end up as a small unmanned aircraft systems integrator, counter UAS systems integrator. You're going to end up going to that. your basic training and then you're gonna go through your advanced Whatever a IT your advanced individual training and There you're gonna learn about space weather. my gosh. How cool is that? Because we're learning how it impacts drone operations. So pretty pretty neat stuff But transitioning moving on drone. Yeah, go ahead Samuel (20:49) little just one quick thing before we switched out of curiosity I don't know if you know this I could I should probably look it up but what is a cruising altitude of something like a fixed wing drone for the military or the army per se like I'm cuz you know us casual civilian drone pilots we're cruising at 200 300 400 feet I'm not quite for you know but I'm just I don't know giving a frame of reference, because this isn't just your normal drone. It's a beefy drone that can stay up in the air quite a long time doing stuff us civilians never probably ever would. Paul Rossi (21:26) Yeah, the The current capabilities is you know 10 ,000 12 ,000 15 ,000 feet even higher Because you're using the same, you know hardware to build the vehicle, but you don't have to have those additional systems in place for that the life support of humans on board and then you're really Maxing your altitude out based on the quality of the payloads and sensors on board. So even those military aircraft, if they cost $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, half that cost is likely going into the payload itself, which is going to have some really high quality zoom. So again, it's balancing how high you want the vehicle to go in order to be undetected, maintain some discreteness, but still see what you need to see. Samuel (22:21) Right. Paul Rossi (22:22) but well above the 400 feet as far as military operations go. But when... Samuel (22:24) I can see why you would want to study all that space weather. Paul Rossi (22:28) But then when you look at the branch, when they're launching this Army branch, I think the focus is not the other drones. These larger drones for a while will likely stay in the current framework. However, you're going to see the launch of this more smaller drone that is operating below 400 feet. These small weaponized drones, these learning how to operate drones that are in a... swarms. That's what this branch is going to be all about. The newest, latest, all the stuff that's happening in the Ukraine. And I always thought it would be like, I had done this research, one of the proposed businesses for the studies that I'm doing that had to do with low Earth orbit was like a deployable cube. So imagine if you could just launch from an aircraft like a box. and it would parachute down, it would land safely, or you could drop it off the back of a truck, but like a cube. And then inside of that would be a bunch of small drones, and it could just sit there for a month, two months, three months, a year. And a year later, you could kind of activate the drones in a swarm or one by one, and it would go out and recon an area or conduct some type of military operation. So it would just sit there for... for a very long time. But if you use satellite communications, you could potentially activate it at a moment's notice. So when they talk about this army drone branch, like that's the, I don't know, I'd like to think that that technology will exist where it's like fully remote. You are never in that location yet you see everything as if you were standing there. So, anywho. Zephyr simulator? Zephyr simulator? What do you think about that? Yeah, only so much time. And so folks on that commercial side, even folks in the military that are currently flying larger drones and don't have experience with the smaller unmanned systems, folks who are... Samuel (24:17) Moving on to the next topic. Paul Rossi (24:39) looking to get their 107 or getting into flying, but don't have a drone, what can you do in order to gain some flight experience? Littering and littering and so what can you do right? You could buy a drone You could meet someone make friends befriend somebody with a drone and fly theirs But there's the simulation aspect and simulators have been in use right for like FPV the first person flying simulator so that you don't have to crash build repeat crash build so You know, we know folks like Tony Bracco. Shout out to milkman, right? The Samuel (25:22) The Milkman FPV. Paul Rossi (25:25) The Milkman FPV. So if you're FPV pilot and you want to see some phenomenal FPV racing, it's at the Milkman FPV, I think. Tony, incredible FPV pilot. But if you talk to those folks, they've been able to use a flight simulator to kind of hone their skills. And that hasn't really existed for the traditional military civilian market. And now what we're here to talk about and what I've had a chance to actually use and get hands on stick time with, and then also more recently, my nephew, I was like, hey here, take this and fly. And he's all confused. He's like, he was crashing and he's like, the sticks are backwards. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, I fly like this. So like a couple button clicks and I was able to switch the PlayStation. I was using a PS4 remote, Bluetooth to a laptop. And I switched to mode three sticks and he was doing the obstacle course in under 45 seconds, you know, in a matter. It took him no time to get it. But if you took the drone remote first and tried to go outside, the, you know, intimidated, the lack of confidence would be there. So having used this and seen, you know, the visual. Right, how well it looks. This is Zephyr. So Zephyr SIM, Zephyr Flight Simulator is phenomenal. It's not just does it look good and then it works with the remote, but the ease of downloading it and getting it onto a device and getting it to come up and operate was very... seamless and straightforward. So really excited about this product for education, folks in schools, high schools, universities, when you got bad weather, it's raining, can't go outside, fly the SIM. Terry Neff (27:32) I'm surprised it's taken this long to get one of these simulators made. I know we've had the FPV ones for a while, but this is definitely needed in the drone world. Samuel (27:33) Just wanted. Terry Neff (27:51) Sorry, Samuel, go ahead. Paul Rossi (27:56) And we got a video popping up here just showing like a screenshot. from the software. Samuel (28:07) I do kind of want to say it looks like you have a select amount of maps that are pre -generated, warehouse, ocean type looking area. I'd say what? Five, six maps, Paul. It seems like there is a $10 entry fee for hobbyist and the professional version coming in, or otherwise known as the full version at $50. Paul Rossi (28:20) Yeah, I don't know why this thing... Like Samuel said, so you can see the warehouse. They've got a lot of different things that are in place. The ability to zoom in and out with the camera. You can see this scenario. It's taking the drone and operating a drone into a confined space. The again, in the integration, the ability to use like a PS4 remote, a PS5, an Xbox controller, an Orca remote. So you're. you know, the remote controllers that are being used for that FPV type of operation. Seeing it fly through. So what you're also seeing here is those rings. You're seeing the control input overlay. So from a standpoint of looking on and seeing from an instruction level, hey, this is what I'm doing. The student, it's hard to look at someone's hands and the sticks and the screen at the same time. So it's a great overlay. You can see the ability to get underneath. You know. gamifying it in a sense to where it keeps it captivating so that you want to continue to do and run that simulation because there's always an objective. If there's no purpose or there's no objective, it just becomes boring. There has to be a challenge there. As you can see, You know, from a public safety aspect, if folks are operating in the public safety space, you have any kind of incident indoors, a hostage situation, a standoff situation, fires, things of that nature. Really, really neat. But those rings, and it's got that LMS. So it keeps those students, it keeps that new pilot. And even that experienced pilot really engaged to want to continue to get better. This is amazing. It is unreal. Terry Neff (30:50) What's the certificate on their website? Do you know what that's about? Paul Rossi (30:55) So that's which the airborne, the B, P, E, R, P, I think that might be for a different country, APSA or the APSA -ness. So the B perp, that's. If it has to do with the airborne, okay, so the Airborne Public Safety Association. So the NIST buckets, if folks aren't familiar with, let's see. easiest way to... NIST is the national standards group and what has been created. is kind of like a course. Are either of you familiar with the NIST buckets? Okay. Terry Neff (31:37) It's like a practice kind of like course thing you can set up in your backyard or something Paul Rossi (31:43) It is, I'm trying to get a video. Terry Neff (31:46) I haven't seen the exact angles. Samuel (31:48) I've seen some of it, but I actually haven't had a chance to... I was gonna say I haven't personally had a chance to actually participate with that, but it's a... Paul Rossi (31:49) It's so it's all about learning how to control. So you can see here in this video that I brought up is these are buckets. They've got numbers on them. You can put them in various situations. They have lettering, and it's designed kind of like at the doctor's office when you're like read the third line or read the fourth line. So when you're looking inside the box, go ahead. Terry Neff (32:21) Turn down the video a little bit. Turn down the video a little bit. Sorry. Yeah, so it was hard to hear you. Paul Rossi (32:28) Yeah, so you've got the buckets and then the pilot is going to fly the drone in different locations and angles and get photographs. And their ability to kind of read the rings is determining like a proficiency, how close, how far, if it's blurry. So it's this method of training that's been developed to help. Pilots learn how to move and manipulate the drone and the sticks while also controlling the gimbal in order to make sure that you're seeing and capturing detailed quality imagery, if that makes sense. And you can see here, it's the actual drone screen overlaid. flying to the bucket, it's out of focus, but I don't know, it's an individual's head. So what they've created is like an actual standard course. And what you do is you fly that course and they can then grade the operator objectively saying you scored a seven out of 10 or an eight out of 10 or a 10 out of 10. You passed or you failed. And they've developed that into this Zephyr simulator so that you can actually pay. and go in and the SIM can confirm or deny if you pass that scenario. And using this simulator for the advancements of like beyond visual line of sight, how can you simulate scenarios when you don't actually have to put the drone in the air in the traditional side of aviation? You know, being an instrument rated pilot, I have a handful of hours in my log book that were conducted in a sim. There's a lot of scenarios that you want that you would prefer to allow to play out in a simulator. There's a lot of scenarios that you can allow to play out in a simulator that you would never want to carry on in actual flight operations. You can't have a full engine failure. If you actually have an alternator failure, if you actually have a system failure in an aircraft in training, now all of a sudden it gets real, but you don't continue the training. So being able to simulate various things for these advanced drone operations beyond visual and sight, especially when you're trying to simulate multiple vehicles at one time, right? Hey, we want to simulate five or six vehicles. And how do you do that? So what Zephyr has put together is really, really neat. You can take someone that's never flown a drone before and is familiar with you know, at least remote input and comfortably introduce them to flight operations. Samuel (35:31) Well said. Terry Neff (35:32) I was looking on the supported controllers and it doesn't look like my drone's controller is supported but I'm sure they'll get there soon. It's just a Mavic controller, the Mavic Air 2. Yeah. Samuel (35:42) It's also supporting multiple drones, right? Silly. Paul Rossi (35:47) So they have a ton of drones that can show up in the simulator from that visual standpoint. So kind of like the skin, right, that overlay of the drone itself. Samuel (36:00) I can imagine it's not just a skin though, I think it would handle differently too, right? I don't know, I personally think it would. Right. Paul Rossi (36:06) The performance, right. The performance characteristics, because they've created a very lifelike scenario. So if it has higher performance standards and you have various settings that you can input. And what's also neat to speak to the GPS aspect, they have the ability to put it in ADDIE mode. So we talk KP, solar, like. You lose GPS function on your drone, and now it no longer knows where it is. So they have that ability to where you can turn it GPS off, and that drone is going to sway and move, and you're going to have to constantly give corrective input. It's a really cool software. I was trying to find the list of supported controllers. Yeah, quite a bit there. And so what you're going to end up seeing is the majority of it'll be your most recent FPV controllers and then all of your... Here, I can share this. Terry Neff (36:51) There's a ton, just not mine, unfortunately. Paul Rossi (37:06) We're just looking at the screen here of the supported controllers. You know, a lot of your traditional FPV... remotes and What's neat is you've been using these remotes plugged into a computer Connected to the drone in order to program the drone itself So when these you know when you're building your own, you know FPV drone from the ground up You know, you're actually going in you know most of the time and you're saying all right left stick does this right stick does this so you're having to plug these remotes into the computer to begin with. But it's really cool. Your gamepad remote controllers. You know, Xbox 360, the PS4, PS5. I can at least... Go ahead. Terry Neff (37:59) boys on it. You can use one of these bad boys on it. Just a regular PlayStation 5 controller. It's pretty cool. Paul Rossi (38:07) Yeah. And then also to say it, I was using just like a Mac laptop, Macbook laptop, PS4 controller, connected via Bluetooth, fly in, had it sharing to the TV too. So it was like, my nephew's flying on a TV and I'm like, all right, enough. You got to leave now as he's beating my time. I was like, look at my 50 seconds. He's like 42. I was like, yeah, time to go, kid. See you later. I'm the fastest. Speaking of that, I walked out the. Samuel (38:34) I think you're done. So that's available on Windows, on Mac OS. Not sure if they're Linux, probably not, but good to know that it's on those two. Terry Neff (38:41) you Mac and Windows. I don't see anything about Linux. Samuel (38:52) And it looks like it's a separate download. I was a nerd and I checked Steam. I don't see it on the Steam page. Steam is a gaming digital platform where you can buy digital games. So simulators too, like what is the aviation simulator, Terry? Flight simulator for Windows, Microsoft Flight Simulator. there we go. Took me a minute, but yeah, that's available. Paul Rossi (39:14) Microsoft. Terry Neff (39:13) Yeah. So you've played this ball, would you recommend it? Paul Rossi (39:21) The Zephyr, 100%, yeah. Terry Neff (39:23) Which level would you recommend? Paul Rossi (39:25) So. Samuel (39:25) Getting into the weeds. Paul Rossi (39:27) The... Terry Neff (39:29) I'm gonna buy whatever you say, so. Samuel (39:30) You Paul Rossi (39:31) I would, I would, Man, I mean... the I would say probably the professional because it's going to give you like all the you know the offscores is the hill like if you if you hadn't any if you had no I mean how much have you flown like are you a newbie? Terry Neff (39:50) I'm okay, I don't fly often though. Kinda, huh? Nah, but I'm proficient around the sticks, don't worry. Paul Rossi (39:51) Sorry, I don't... Siri said, -huh. Are you a newbie? Samuel (39:56) huh. Paul Rossi (39:59) Yeah, like if you're proficient with the skills on the sticks, I would say the professional because you're going to be able to get right to the obstacle courses, the challenging fun aspects. You already know that you like drones and that it's a part of your future. So that would be my recommendation. The... The hobbyist level, I would say for folks who really have never flown before, if you're in that category where you want to get some basic training and have it teach you some of the fundamentals in order to learn just a little bit more, get started. I'm looking at it as if it's on the screen. But. Terry Neff (40:45) There's also a free option if you just like wanted to test it out and see if you're about that. Paul Rossi (40:49) Yep, that's what I was just looking at. So like, go the free option, make sure it works on your computer you have, make sure you have a remote that it works with. And then once you do that, and you're like, all right, you know, I've never flown before, and I want to do the one time fee and go through the basic training. And I would be willing to bet that. Well, it looks like, say you could buy these individually, but kids with drones, you know, so they have some other neat little packages here. But yeah, do the beginner and get started. And then at your own pace, if you're employed, you got a decent job. Maybe you go for the professional if you're trying to become a professional operator. But if you're really just like, yeah, I enjoy this for fun times, go hobbyist. I don't know. That's my recommendation. Samuel (41:44) Do you think you would recommend like for someone to be able to like, Hey, I logged this many hours in the simulator with this aircraft. Like, do you think it's at that level yet? Or do you think there's still got a little ways to go? Paul Rossi (42:01) That is where you are getting some of those log features. I don't know. There is the enterprise, so from the classroom management, so for businesses and organizations, you're looking at more of a learning management system to where it's tracking individual user, you're making sure that the students are completing the assignments, you're making sure the employees are. doing what they're supposed to. It's got all kinds of additional data collection. I don't know. I'd be curious, but I would say yes, just at a minimum like I've always told folks when they're flying at a hobbyist, if you're flying an airplane as a private pilot for fun, you are logging those hours. Flight experience is flight experience. Anytime an aircraft goes in the air, you are performing the same safety. mitigation, the awareness, the attentiveness is always the same. It's just you're not selling data to an end user or you're not using it to advance a business, but the safety aspect is always the same. Being able to track the sim hours is important when you interview or have those future jobs and you do sit down and you're like, Samuel (43:19) What? Paul Rossi (43:29) Yeah, I've done this, and I also have this many hours of doing a flight simulator. And you can create and use what you've learned in those scenarios to say, I've done that, and I'm trained to handle those situations, or equipped to handle those situations. Does that make sense? Samuel (43:48) I think it's also too is like when you're doing those simulations, you're literally kind of setting your brain up to be rewired saying, Hey, you're in this mode. I need you to act this way. You're telling it because it's going to be instinctual at that point. Once you hit so many flight hours, you're not going to question what you need to do. You're going to do it, you know? And I think that's what one of the reasons why it's so important, but yeah, especially showing it to an employer and being like, yeah, I definitely have enough hours for something like this, you know? Paul Rossi (44:17) Muscle, it's the muscle memory. It's exactly what you just said. It's just building the muscle memory, the stick skills, and then being able to sit down and communicate and not say you've done something you haven't, but having that knowledge and the confidence to communicate that you've been through some of those scenarios. and then challenging yourself flying through, you know, you don't want to go fly through the monkey bars in your first day with your new drone, you know, if you have never, but you have these environments where you can do things that wouldn't necessarily be entirely the safest with a lack of experience because, you know, when you lack experience, risk goes up. How do you get experience? Well, You either do it in a safe way or you simulate it. And the simulation is important because if it's crappy, pixelated, if the proportions are off, if the inputs aren't right, then just, again, having flown it now, I'm like, no, this is it. This is going to help schools. This is going to help public safety departments. This is going to help organizations just develop experienced, confident, safe pilots. Terry Neff (45:05) Yeah, and like wrecking. Paul Rossi (45:30) And it's fun, it's engaging, right? That's the whole part that I also think is neat. Terry Neff (45:35) I mean it's definitely beneficial I mean would you rather spend fifty dollars for the fully loaded game or smack your fifteen hundred dollar drone into the side of a building and break it completely and wait three months for DJI to give it back to you. Paul Rossi (45:51) And then the improvements and the updates, it's software. So it's only going to get better. And from what I understand and what's been communicated to me, they're doing everything in -house. They're a software development company. They're a small US company. They're doing everything out of the state of Virginia. They're trying to make a global impact. The state of Virginia is helping them get out there because they want to see a Virginia business, not just grow and stay in the US, but also be able to say, Hey, this is software based. We can support you remotely. This is gonna help pilots not just part 107 because it's not, this isn't part 107 based. This is actual stick flying skills and it's cross border going to help make better, safer pilots. With that said, we can roll into a final segment. Looking at dronelife .com here, an article came out yesterday, participate in the Drone2 Global Drone Industry Survey, shaping the future together. This here is a survey. It's going to be... open to businesses and organizations globally since 2018, launched to a 9, 10 drones has launched great year 2018. This has been going out and what it is, it's taking input. It's the seventh annual global drone industry survey. So operators, small companies, big companies alike can apply, not apply, can complete this survey. and all that information is compiled. There's going to be, for people who complete the survey, they're going to be given away, and not people, but businesses, organizations, drone give away, some global drone event passes as far as Amsterdam Drone Week, commercial UAV. So participating in this survey. puts you in the runnings for some pretty neat stuff. It helps the industry grow when folks are giving insightful information. So if you are part of an organization or know somebody that is working with a drone company anywhere across the globe, share this with them so that... you know, this information can come in and the industry can benefit from, you know, what's working and what's not working. Samuel (48:39) And where can people fill that out? Paul Rossi (48:45) There's a link here on the DroneLife .com website so folks are able to get to DroneLife. Samuel (48:52) So for anyone that wants to. Right. Paul Rossi (48:56) dot com. Yep. So anyone operating drone businesses, small businesses, or large businesses, go ahead, get yourself in here for the runnings for an Avada 2 FPV drone. Super cool drone. Samuel (49:12) Hmm. I know where I'm going after this. Paul Rossi (49:15) super super cool drone. The... One last thing, public safety folks, UAS operators in the public safety space. where we at. There is going to be... right there. tomorrow. Tune in on YouTube. Four, media advisory, Homeland Security, media advisory chairman, DS Bezito, Flugger announced hearing on the impact of drones, emerging technology on law enforcement. Samuel (49:49) You said tune in tomorrow, so this is coming out probably Friday or so for this will already be out. Paul Rossi (49:49) So, tomorrow at 10am? So, yeah, right. I see what you're saying there. Yeah, so what's happening is as far as this will come out right, so Thursday this week, May 16th, there's going to be a subcommittee hearing on drones and the impact on emergency response. So... Samuel (50:02) Yeah. Paul Rossi (50:30) This is really significant here for lawmakers and folks to really get out there and start promoting at a large scale how drones are advancing that emergency response. And it's really interesting because we have the FA Reauthorization Act, which has put the four month... a very short time period on the proposed rulemaking for Beyond Visual Line of Sight. Beyond Visual Line of Sight flight operations are going to drastically advance the way... Public safety operators integrate this technology by having rapid deployment of pre -positioned drones that are ready to go at a moment's notice. So you have all this really coming together at the same time where folks are going to get up there and they're going to start to say at a very high level, not, this threat, that threat, China this, you know. You ask this, we need this. But just to say in general, hopefully, what I hope we hear is just a generalized drones are saving people's lives. And for that to be heard, not from delivery or real estate and how great and all the CJ, the growth rates and the numbers and the dollars, but to actually hear that this is saving lives. you know, red, blue, just it's non -discriminatory drones are helping everybody. So it's really neat to know that this is coming up and this is going to be part of a conversation this week. Samuel (52:32) Definitely exciting news. Paul Rossi (52:32) And Terry, you got the ACLU, chatting it up, protecting your rights. Everybody's talking. Terry Neff (52:44) Yeah, should be interesting hearing. Paul Rossi (52:46) Yeah. Any other thoughts in closing here as we wrap up? Samuel (52:50) Kind of excited to see where that goes. I mean, a few companies are currently doing beyond visual line of sight, but from my understanding, they're not getting compensation with that. It's kind of like a trial period, right? Paul Rossi (53:03) Well, there's difference and I thought I was sharing this screen the whole time as I was talking, but what's really cool YouTube, so it's going to be at like 10 10 AM, but how cool is YouTube? You can watch it live, but it's going to be right there to watch. So I'm looking forward to actually, you know, popping some popcorn, you know, late Thursday night and just watching the committee on Homeland Security discuss drones. But you said. The delivery aspect beyond me just like comment. So I think the beyond visual line of sight that they're talking about pushing forward is not the delivery aspect because the delivery, if you're going to carry someone's goods for compensation or hire, you're from what I understand and I see long term, short term, mid term, that's part 135. The FA Reauthorization Act, which we can dive into on next week's episode, so go ahead and read up. That beyond visual line of sight. push is for your non -package carrying, your drone as a first responder, your pipeline inspection, your transmission inspection, your environmental analysis, not the carrying of consumer goods. Does that make sense? Samuel (54:22) I do feel like it was kind of that gentle first step though, being like, hey, you know, you guys try this out. Let us know what you think. Let's see if anything blows up and you know, we'll see. It's a test run, you know? And since nothing has extensively blown up or there's been no major incidences, it's kind of opening that door up to the smaller individual folks who want to do this, you know? And that's specifically why I brought that up, but. Paul Rossi (54:47) And that is too, because you can't, it's like, you can't really just allow this to happen in this space and say, well, it's okay, and this is why, and then not also lay out the framework for one person to just do it over here for something that's a little bit different. So as much as people have been frustrated over the last few years saying, well, how come these companies can do it in this and that, it's because they've been, you know, putting a lot of resources into helping determine what technologies, what systems, what needs to be in place, not just for an individual to do this, but for a large organization. Everybody knows the one individual is always... You only want... going to be an individual for so long. And then all of a sudden, like, you know, let me hire one other person and then let me and now all of a sudden you're like, we got 40 people and 10 sites and this and we have no standards. We have no training. We have no records. That's what the FAA has been, in my opinion, you know, taking a progressive crawl, walk, run approach in order to make sure that you don't end up in those scenarios where it's like, my gosh, what happened? These things grew too fast. So. Yeah, lots, lots happening at all different levels at the federal level, states levels, Michigan Supreme Court's handling drone cases, the FA Reauthorization Act is getting pushed. We've got congressional hearings on the value of drones in emergency response. It's really cool. It's a great time to be in the drone industry. So for anybody who just joined today, welcome. And anyone who's been here, you know exactly what to expect. And that's, you don't know what to expect. No. So, well, we really appreciate everybody. Samuel (56:46) One thing Tony Barocco used to, I was just going to say when I was with Tony Barocco, worked with him in the past before and something we had is drone industry, something new every day. Cause like it's rapidly evolving. There's a lot of stuff going on. So that just my closing remarks there. Paul Rossi (57:05) and it covers the Milkman FPV, Tony Bracco. And that's the amazing part too about the drones is that they overlap so many arenas. So it's not just outside, it's not just inside, it's now just not visual on a site, it's this industry, it's that industry. And all these industries are integrating drones differently and that just creates just so much rapid development. and really interesting things happening on that daily level. So appreciate everybody tuning in. We had a chance to talk a little bit more about the space weather and what's happening there. And it'll be exciting to kind of see as folks continue to go, we need this, we need this, we need this. And that becomes more part of the conversation. And people start to realize how, you know, There's a huge connection between what's happening in low Earth orbit and space and how we live our daily lives. The possibility of an army drone branch, really neat, intriguing, probably needed in order to not just bring small drones to the front lines, but also the counter drone technology that's going to help keep our soldiers safe from a defense standpoint. Tech side, we talked about the Zephyr. Flight Simulator, really awesome, really cool, innovative. They've got that free option. Go check it out, download it, make sure you've got some compatible equipment, and let us know what you think about the simulator itself. Check out the Drone Industry Survey if you own, operate a business, work for a company that wants to help provide that information and get in the runnings for some. Neat prizes, get you out to one of these drone events, expos, conventions. Regulations, subcommittee on emergency management and technology. That's going to be really interesting to kind of see where that conversation goes. And then next week, we'll hopefully take a little bit more time to maybe unpack the FA Reauthorization Act. And really appreciate everybody tuning in. And please reach out. Any questions, Paul Rossi. at 910drones .com. You can also reach out to Miriam at dronelife .com with any questions, suggestions that you have for future episodes. We appreciate you tuning in. Make sure to check out dronelife .com throughout the week to stay updated on what's happening in the drone industry. We will see you next week. Appreciate everyone's time and attention. Fly safely.