UAS News Podcast — 2015-03-18
Transcript
All right, hello and welcome to the next installment of the UAS News Podcast series where we interview newsmakers and discuss the news and applications relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. I'm your program host Patrick Egan and as always, let's say hello and welcome to our co-host, Mr. Gene Robinson. Hello, Mr.
Egan. How are you, sir?
We finally are getting through this long, dreary winter and, man, has there been a lot going on since the last time we visited, isn't it? Oh, it's been schnutz, to say the least. It hasn't been dreary out here, man. This California, oh wait, I shouldn't talk it up too much because everybody will be moving here.
It's horrible. Don't come out here. 65, 70 degrees sunshine and the shirt sleeve weather and all the rest of that. It's horrible. You hate it.
You wouldn't want to come out here. Yeah, we wouldn't want to mention anything about the taxes. Okay, the taxes, the property values, the insane politics. I didn't want to go there.
You just have to like pretend that that doesn't exist and the weather's great, you know. We're actually podcasting from the new West Coast SUS News office right here on Second Street in Old Sacramento. That's right. You moved into new digs, didn't you?
I did. We're right next door to, as I told you, the Pony Express stop. The checks, I'm hoping, are going to get here faster. It hasn't come to fruition yet.
They're still taking a long time to get here. But there's hope. I'm holding out hope. Let's see.
What else is going on? Lots of stuff going on in the news, of course, and other things besides just the news. Like the NPRM and, you know, I know you've been out there working the ECO with things. We have a lot to discuss.
I don't know where you want to start, but where do you want to start, Gene? Well, let's go ahead and knock off the big one. I think that the NPRM coming out was probably the biggest thing coming up. You and I have discussed it a little bit here, but I think we have somewhat of a differing view on it.
But the one thing that I've got to say about the whole thing is that it was a gift. I don't really know how to take it. Maybe it's the cynic in me coming out, but this was completely diametrically opposed to everything that we have seen and heard and felt and experienced with the agency for the last 10 years. When this came out, it was like, whoa, what happened?
I agree with all of that. It's kind of funny that you say that. I get feedback from the community because I'm on the phone all the time. I, too, have a cell phone and a pen.
I get a lot of feedback. I thought the same thing. People are like, oh, what do you think about the NPRM?
I'm like, well, gift, total gift. I was on the arc and compared to 1500 people laterally and all the rest of that stuff, this is actually viable. It's kind of interesting that people that are newcomers to this are like, oh, my God, it's so restrictive. People that have been here for a while are like, oh, my God, it's so progressive.
I will say in between that, there's different camps. There's a camp of people who believe that the rule is out, that the NPRM is the rule, and they're out there flying. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's not the case.
No, but there is that camp. And then there's another camp, the other camp that thinks, oh, okay, listen, slam dunk, those are going to be the rules. I'm just going to go operate like that now. There's no enforcement from the FAA.
They're not going to enforce any of this stuff, so I'm going straight ahead. Then we got the other camp. There's some of the, I would call it mainly from the old guard and the safety minded folks are like, wait a minute, this is a little too liberal. 55 pounds and 100 miles an hour might be a little much. I'm kind of in that camp.
Let me just say, I don't have to sign off on this deal. So if that's what you want to do, go for it. I think it's a little much. What do you think, Gene?
Yeah, the 55 pounds, I've always said take an eight pound chicken and throw it down your stairway and let it hit you and see if you like that. It's not going to be fun at 55 pounds if it fell on you. So it's going to be some substantial damage there. And the one thing that I would like to point out, I have visited with the FAA.
I've actually been invited to their offices a couple of times, believe it or not. But the enforcement part of it, they fully intend to start stepping up the enforcement end of it. So flyer beware. If you're out there doing it, they are going to kind of step that up.
So don't be surprised if you don't get your little greetings and be it email or however they deem to address you. But I think it's going to happen. Well, I'm the last pony expressed up. The last one now.
Well, that's right. This is where it ends right up right downstairs over here. So you know, you could send me my cease and desist from St. Joe.
I'll be waiting down there for it. Where there's a telegraph machine down there too, you know, or fax me. I think they have a fax. I don't know ways of corresponding.
Yeah, you know, the enforcement thing is stepped up. There are people who have been told to take down their YouTube videos and all the rest. You know, I don't even get caught in all that stuff. I really don't have time.
You know, we'll see what happens. The other thing is, is talking to people. Oh, yeah, that rules, you know, the people that do think the rules going to be out in a year, we're going to be flying. It's going to be great.
You can have a great time. You'll be making money hand over fist. Have a nice day. Yeah, we'll see.
But, you know, I do have to hand it to the FAA total 180 from what I thought, you know, kind of leads into the other subject with the small Unmanned Systems Expo. Jim Williams will be speaking there. Again, we have top tier folks. I mean, you know, if it wasn't my show, I wouldn't sound like I was tooting my horn so much.
But there's no point to even go to any other symposium besides the small Unmanned Systems Business Expo. You want to hear from the top tier folks, right here. So he requested an hour and this is going to be at the end of April. So, you know, he wants to answer questions.
And talk about issues relevant to this community. So I had a great chance to talk to, you know, the guy at the FAA who put this stuff out. It will be too late for comments, really, at that point. But I think we'll get a good, you know, feel for what came back.
And I'm sure that ought to be interesting. The comments. I know there's been a lot of hand ringing from our side, or let's say the proponents of the technology that it's too limiting and we need Beyond Visual Line of Sight, yada yada. I have to say that I was really surprised that some people that are considered like industry leaders and, you know, in the know and all the rest of that were ringing their hands about Beyond Visual Line of Sight.
You weren't in there any illusion that Beyond Visual Line of Sight was going to be in the same PRM, were you, Gene? Not even one iota. There we've, of course, been, you know, like you say, since ARC1, Beyond Line of Sight has always been a contentious issue. And it's going to continue to be.
And we're still talking about instrument ratings and the DREs and the whole design review thing and certification. So, you know, that one has not slipped away and it's not going to, I don't believe. No. And so when I heard people going, oh, well, this is disappointing.
And, you know, I was shocked. It's like, you know, you knew better than us. You didn't know better than us. You've been asleep at the switch for the last, you know, I don't know, eight years, six years, whatever.
Anyway, I mean, I am in on the Beyond Visual Line of Sight action team that the FAA stood up. And I really can't talk about it, but I will say this at the SharePoint only works with Internet Explorer. Wow. And Microsoft just announced yesterday Internet Explorer is going to die.
So, interesting. Well, I think, you know, what I'm using it as, it's kind of, you know, it's funny as people always talk about technology. And I'm, you know, I'm a Mac guy. Everything I have is Mac.
And we won't go there. I'm not going to go out and buy the watch because I think we'll go there. But let me just ask you, would Steve McQueen wear that?
No, he would not wear that. He wouldn't be God dead on it wearing that watch. But besides all of that, I think it kind of shows people that, you know, where the government is on technology. You know, that's what that's meant.
So don't think that common sense is going to prevail and, you know, you're going to come up some software that the FAA is going to sign off on because they're still working on Internet Explorer. Whatever. That's just a side note. Now, the other thing is getting into the airspace beyond visual line of sight.
Some of us over here at SUS News put together a white paper for NASA UTM. And the IKO has put together a group that is called SARP. Don't know what the acronym SARP stands for, but everybody's working on this getting into the NAS and doing beyond visual line of sight operations. And as stated in the white paper, there's, you know, and this kind of goes with the airspace integration timeline.
I did send you a copy of that, right, Gene? I did. And just as to fill you in a little bit, SARP stands for standards and recommended practices. Okay.
So we're going to, I'm still working out on that deal too. So I sent in this white paper, who's going to hold the copyright. But before that all gets worked out, I figured we better publish it so people can see what's up or where we're standing on that. You know, you got to act quick around here.
So my thing is, is really, if you look at the integration timeline, now there's some good stuff in there. And we'll get into that in a second. But the white paper and what I contend is like, until we do the visual acuity study and the kinetic energy studies, the really, the rest of it is kind of superfluous. Even with the NPRM, everybody, oh, you know, you got to make your comments, you got to do this, you got to do that.
You got to tell people what you think. You know, if this industry had real leadership, which we don't, I'm sorry. And again, I keep talking to people and they go, oh, you're kind of cynical. It's like, these aren't my like feelings or, you know, I've come up with this stuff for what I think.
These are the facts. And the facts are that we don't have leadership. If we had leadership, the leadership would already be, have invested in doing some of these studies. And when the NPRM came out, they'd be like, oh, okay, well, you know, we did this study on visual acuity.
We did this study on the kinetic energy. We had a QAQC with this group called NASA. We'll do public private partnerships. Yes, it cost us a few hundred thousand dollars, but now the NPRM is here.
So we don't really have to base our, let's say, comments on conjecture and feelings. We can base it all on facts. Hey. And that would be like, you know, kind of try something new.
Now that goes back to the timeline. You know, this only started in 1992, you know, so, you know, I figured we got to mix things up, try something new, you know, a little science. I don't know. You know, there's a scientific method.
And I think if we did that and we made the comments based on the science, then we can talk about hardware, software, firmware for, you know, sense and avoid. So we could do beyond visual line of sight in the NAS. Kind of funny. Most people don't want to invest the money in that.
They just want to sit around and wring hands and, you know, go on junkets or whatever. I don't know what they want to do. Anyway, keep your feelings for Valentine's Day. Show me the data.
You know, that's what I want to see. And I think we'd be in a lot better position. What do you think, Gene?
I agree. You know, and I don't understand what happened to that because back in 2005, we were asked to do some frangibility studies. You know, can you run a spectra through the windshield of a Cessna?
And we got some Plexiglas and, you know, we got out there in the field and had a good time, you know, flying our spectras at the Plexiglas. And it just kind of went away. I don't know why, because it just seemed logical to do something like that. But somebody lost interest, I guess.
Well, you know, it kind of goes back to, you know, what I was saying in the integration timeline. I mean, there's actually been some work that has been done. But what happened to this data?
Where did it go? What did everybody do with it?
You know, I think that the timeline kind of shows that some of this work has been done. But, you know, where is it?
And really, what we should do, the other thing that I think we should do as an industry, again, if we had some, you know, leadership is probably go out here and build some kind of case for all this information and do have some kind of kick butt report. You could say, bring it to Congress and go, here's everything that's been done. Here are the findings. Here's what we did.
We reviewed all of this. These are the recommendations based on the work that's been done and the data that's been collected and the science that's been done. And this is what we want to do. What I repeatedly see, and again, I think people think that I'm kind of cynical, but I see people get up in front of Congress.
I see them talk to their Congress people or whoever, wherever, get on the news and talk about how they feel about things or what they think is going on or what they think this market's going to be or how they feel about what drones can do and all the rest of this stuff. That means nothing as far as I'm concerned. Those are just stories you're going to go tell somebody and maybe they'll listen and maybe they won't. Maybe you shelled out 50, 60, $100,000 to get your message out there.
But again, it's just wasted effort. Am I being too cynical, Gene?
You know, Patrick, don't hold back. I think you should just let it all out, bud. That was pretty good. Well, that's just where we are.
And again, it's a leadership thing. I've talked to people. There's different groups. People say, oh, you know, we need to start a new group, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, this guy. Ooh, ooh, hi, ooh. I'm not seeing that. I will say, you know who I think is the type of, let's say, if it's not him, the type of guy we need.
And I'm going to put it out there because everybody goes, oh, is it Patrick Egan? I don't know that I'm good for the leadership position because I'm too realistic. But the dude that I think is the dude that is the president of the Consumer Electronics Association, Gary Shapiro. There's some video.
I don't know if I caught him at CES. The dude's sharp, man. He's polished. He got out there.
He didn't really know anything about drones. He didn't call it killer technology. He didn't say it was military. He didn't say any of that.
This dude is polished. He's smooth. And I'm sure at CEA, they're paying him a lot of money, but he's worth it. So that's the kind of guy we need.
We don't need some hack. We don't need somebody that doesn't know what they're talking about or is not polished, can't talk to the media, can't talk to elected representatives. At CEA, a lot of what they do is advocacy work. I think we'd be better off to throw in with those cats and say, hey, we need, because by and large, a lot of these are consumer electronics products.
I think we'd be better thrown in with them than horsing around with the Hellfire guys or horsing around. Just the other groups that are coming to, let's say, bubbling up that want to be the UAS guys, it's laughable. Not to be mean, but I got to watch what kind of, what clown cars I get into anyway. I don't know.
That's where I'm at on this deal. And I think it's time for a change. It's time for some real leadership. So hopefully we'll get that.
I think it's going to happen. I think some people are waking up, taking notice and saying, hey, we have to do something here. I will say, I don't want to deride everybody because I do think the small UAE coalition, I have to hand it to them. They've been here for six months or a little bit longer, plus, we'll call it.
They told me, oh, we're going to get the White House to say this and we're going to get people to do this and we're going to get meetings on the Hill and we're going to do that. And I was like, okay, well, show me because, Gene, you've been here long enough. How many blowhards have we heard come in and say they were going to do everything, crack this open in 10 minutes and do all of that?
I stopped counting at 182. He's got, he was ticking him off. He's got the piece of paper next to the computer. How many times?
I got to make one phone call to Senator Bagot donuts and this thing is going to be, it'll be over. You'll be flying. Not so much, but I will say, you know, the White House did say something. I know that the small UAV coalition went out there and I heard, you know, there were meetings all over the Hill, people from the drone industry talking to these senators, congressmen, whatever.
Hey, this is what's going on. This is what we want to do. Yada, yada, yada. It's a wide exposure.
And so I got to give credit where credit's due. It's not all bad over here, but it does confirm what I was saying about AUBSI and its poor leadership. It's had years and years and millions of dollars and nothing happened, you know. Very disappointing, but on the other hand, I think it kind of confirms what I've been saying all these years.
Too bad we couldn't get AUBSI to turn around. I think they're in desperation mode right now. I don't understand how you can have a show where you've got, you know, weapons contractor with a $50,000 UAV sitting next to a, you know, commercial guy that's got a thousand dollar UAV. I don't see how that works.
There does seem to be a dichotomy there. That's going to be interesting to see how that works out at the, I guess it's the show in Georgia. But yeah, that's a good one. And they have lost some people too that, you know, needed to go.
But again, we just don't see any replacement as, you know, as dynamic as needed. No. And, you know, even the leadership that's out there still taking their marching orders from the old leadership who's signed on as a consultant. It's just, it's another travesty.
I think they're in desperation mode. I don't know. We'll see what happens. I just can't see those two models working though.
I mean, if I was the guy with the $50,000 UAV and I'm paying $50,000 for a boost and I got the guy next to me with a thousand dollar UAV that can almost do the same thing, I don't know how that's going to work, but you know, I don't have a degree in economics, so I don't, can't say that, you know, I got that all worked out. Anyway, moving on from that, I do think, you know, if you look at the timeline
and the years, you know, you remember when we got into this thing, people were talking about, like when I was in the arc, I remember people saying, wow, geez, well, we didn't, you know, the AC 9157 thing, we didn't really, we didn't know what RC hobby was doing.
And this is like in 2008, which is not the case because if you go back and you look at the timeline, that July 30th, 1992, the genesis of the integration effort, that was a meeting about AC 9157. So you're talking, you know, you're talking 23 years of shenanigans on unnamed aircraft. At the time drones, they were called drones at the time, and then they went to UAVs and, you know, UAS, and now we're moving into our past and yada yada, unicorns, whatever you want to call them. But you can see that there's a lot of different work here.
A lot of this work too, you know, some of this has already been done. And that was one of the points with this integration timeline is for people to kind of look at it and go, you know, when you hear, oh, we need data or, oh, we need to do this, you can go back on the timeline and you can start looking at this, you know, access five back there in 2004 or co is for Global Hawk back in 2000, pardon me, 2003.
You know, I mean, this goes way back and all of this stuff, you know, we came in, remember that it was 2005 on this deal, you know, and they were talking, you know, about like integration in 2009.
So we're not there yet, but it ought to be interesting. A lot of positive stuff in the NPRM and I guess we never really talked about that. What do you, what do you, I know I have feelings about, let's say the manned aviation side, but what do you think some of the potential pushback might be, Gene?
Gene Well, again, I'm so surprised that the AOPA and ALPA haven't, you know, pushed back even harder than they have. If you read some of the comments and some of the things there, manned aviation, unfortunately, is suffering a decline. General aviation, train pilots have dropped significantly because it's just so expensive and laden with regulations to that it's difficult to get through it. And, you know, there was even a push,
I don't know if you recall, but they were talking about making a pilot's license much easier to get and wouldn't take much more than getting your driver's license and you wouldn't even have to get a medical to try to get pilots back into the airspace again.
So, you know, I think they may be kind of fighting a losing battle there with unmanned aircraft, but I think there's going to be segregation. There's going to be airspace segregation that manned aviation is probably not going to like. I really don't think that the NPRM is going to come out the other end looking anything like it is today. To be honest with you, I think there's going to be some pretty significant forces exerted on that particular document to change it significantly.
That's just my view of it. And I'm going to make a little prediction here. I'm going to bet that just like the model aircraft comment period, I bet you the UA comment period is going to be extended. That's my prediction.
I like all those predictions and I concur with all those predictions. I will say one other thing, talking to aviation people and the FAA people and whatever else, you know, this demographic is really kind of an interesting thing. I mean, the demographic of the people that read the SUS news is primarily from about 25 and outside to 40. That is the main demographic, which puts me outside of that.
I guess, you know, I've been out at it for that long, but, you know, it puts me outside the demographic. Anyway, you talk to people, I've talked to people at the California Ag Aviation Association. They're proud about being pilots and flying around. Younger people, you know, even like my assistant, you know, she's like, I got student loan debt.
You know, I don't have $10,000 to go get a pilot's license and I don't care. I'll watch it on the screen. So the younger generation is grown up watching it on the screen and doing it virtually. They don't care, you know, and the people that are proud about being pilots, you know, yeah, that's great and all, but that's an old notion.
It's an expensive notion, but I will say this with the NPRM. I think that the manned groups have put out some statements. I do believe they're thinking, well, this is probably safer than what's transpiring today in the NAS, which we contended on since 2004. You know, if you had something out there.
So I think there's some of that. But on the other hand, I cannot see a situation where we don't have hard pushback because let's say anything that a manned aircraft can do business wise that a drone can do now, there is just no way on God's green earth you would be able to compete. You might as well just pack it in and go sell your aircraft. There's just no way with all the regulation and the licensing and everything else and the cost associated with, you know, keeping the aircraft registered, certified and all that.
It's just no contest. So I cannot believe that all of these groups are going to take this one land down. Do you agree or disagree?
Well, you can't discount, I agree, and you can't discount the fact that the door is still open for the commercial unmanned side to fall under the same sort of owners regulation that is out right now for general aviation. So, you know, it could be just as difficult. It could be just as expensive in the long run. So, you know, don't be so quick to say that it couldn't happen because I believe it could.
And the one last thing I wanted to touch on before we end and we only have a few minutes left. You know, you've been out there working the ECOA thing and the ECOA has been heralded as the, you know, the cure-all to, let's say, for those missing out there in the hinterlands. Maybe you could tell us what your experience has been with the ECOAs. Yeah, give us an overview.
Sure. And, you know, folks know that I do a lot of search and rescue stuff and we have continued to do that and we have continued to do it with the approval of the FAA. Interestingly enough, though, the last couple of ECOAs that we've gotten, understanding COAs, the first one took them 23 hours to approve and the second one that we just did here recently a couple weeks ago here in Texas, it took them from first contact to us flying. It was 19 hours, so they did improve.
They did improve. However, you know, in an exigent circumstance where you really need to get out there and fly, 24 hours is a long time to be in the cold, in the woods, lost when it's 22 degrees, which has been kind of stupid around here with that kind of temperatures. So, that's still not working. Do you have any advice for those that plan on getting lost?
Are there any hours that you shouldn't get lost? Are there days you should?
Yes, a nice lead-in question there. I was contacted at 8 30 in the evening and as I tried to go through the emergency process and did get to talk to DC after I woke someone up by about 9 30 central time, which was 11 30 there, I was told that, you know what, there's nobody in the office and you're going to have to wait until 8 o'clock eastern tomorrow so we can get this thing approved. So, don't get lost at night, don't get lost on the weekend. It could be problematic.
You'll see the old ECO through to go help you out there, but you know, hopefully that's going to change and we're looking to work with them and get that changed so that we can go out and do a little bit different. I'm sorry to laugh about something so serious, but it is kind of funny because I know that usually when most people get lost is during business hours. I usually get lost on my way to the post office or the bank or downtown. And I'm relating true experience and facts here.
I'm not trying to embellish anything. This is what happened and right, wrong or indifferent. It is the way it is. And unfortunately, if you're lost, it could be life threatening.
I'm sorry. I hate to be dramatic about it, but when it's 22 degrees and you're 11 years old and you're in your pajamas lost, you know, you're looking at a pretty critical situation. Yeah. Well, yeah, again, I don't want to make light of that situation because that is critical, but it's kind of interesting.
But anyway, I appreciate the insight from that, Gene. Again, it's another information packed half hour on the podcast and we've got to do more. It's just really busy with the expo and all the other projects that are going on. I mean, geez Louise.
But anyway, we'll have to try and do another one before the expo, but you're coming out. You're going to do the SAR workshop. We don't have to sign up for that. It's included with the price of admission.
You got to hear it. Last year, people were standing out in the hallway and you were giving them the straight stuff. And I hope we're going to get that again this year. Well, I know we are.
Gene Robinson. Okay, Gene, well, you know, that's enough for this week. Hopefully maybe we can do this next week. Well, no, I'm in Montreal for the IKO things.
We can't do it next week, but soon, we will do it again. Thank you, sir, for being on. Keep the right stick back. All right.
Talk to you later. Adios.