UAS News Podcast — 2012-10-13
Transcript
All right, hello everyone and welcome to another installment in a series of podcasts where we discuss the issues and news that are relevant to the unmanned technologies community. The SUAS news is a place you can find the newsmakers. Today we're going to discuss some current events, future shows and we will be broadcasting live from an RPA fly-in. SUAS news, we're trying to blaze a new trail here as we start this series of podcasts like we talked about in the last episode.
We're going to take listeners out in the field to get an idea of what it's like to work in the unmanned aircraft technology application sector. And all you have to do as a listener to be part, is just listen to be part of the history. And that's some real low-impact history making right there from your chair. I'm your program host Patrick Egan and let's say hello as we always do to our co-host Gene Robinson.
Hello from surprisingly overcast and rainy Texas. There's been a couple of guys up but we'll still try to get on with it. All right, sounds good. Yeah, it's been kind of dry out there in Texas, right?
A little dry and hot. Dry is not the word but finally getting a little rain and we're happy for it. We've all got big smiles down in Texas. Well, I think it kind of blew through here.
I'm out at White Sands and we've been having a lot of rain out here. The desert's blooming. It's pretty pretty. It's pretty pretty.
It's very pretty out here. Let's see, I wanted to talk a little bit about the news off of the web page and Gary posted the story about the FAA UAS ConOps and there was a quote from yourself, Gene, and myself. But I wanted to go over that a little bit more. And Gene, I know we talked just before we'd gone live too.
We were kind of laughing a little about that document but would you please? Yeah, maybe you could impart some of your interpretations of the document on us, the listening audience. We've always been kind of the square peg that has been trying to be pounded into the round hole and the FAA has always approached us from a man standpoint. And the ConOps really kind of pushed that out here.
We know that some of the folks at AOPA and of course some of the guys that we worked with on the committees in the ALPA organization were really pushing for equivalent level of competency and equivalent level of quiffage and that sort of thing which we've always felt was a little onerous because how do you put a transponder on a four-pound airplane? It's very difficult to do. So now we get the FAA ConOps document
and throughout the document itself they speak flying under IFR rules. Well, being a pilot myself and having flown under IFR, I know that equipment requirements are significantly different than they are for VFR.
And of course the competency issue has brought itself up in that you would also have to have the same sort of licenses, medical training, the whole nine-yard supply. An IFR aircraft, even though you would be in the bright sunshine of day and it's flying a four-pound foam airplane, which is again a top-down approach. They're looking at it from the predator standpoint, the gray hawks, the large ones, and moving, not even really moving down the scale, but they're painting the entire industry with the same brush.
And it's something that we're going to have to work to get out of that mode. The 55-pound and under mode has just been completely forgotten. Yeah, I would concur with that notion and I'm really, you know, like even here at SUAS News, you know, when we talk about small unmanned aircraft, I'm more on the European mindset with the 150 kilos and under. And I really believe, and I think I've stated this before, that 95% of the market moving into the future is going to be here.
I just, I know, you know, our today's guest Myron is rolling in the cash and can probably afford that $36,000 an hour to fly Golden Hawk, but me, I'm a working stiff and I just can't, and I just can't, I can't seem to find that unless, you know, they're taking bad checks. But I do, it is very telling. I put out a couple of quotes, you know, one of them is, is I can, you know, I can see Mitre's fingerprints on that and it's not bad, but again, you know, you are correct, Gene, when you say, you know, it's a top-down approach, but that's how they've been looking at this.
And really, you know, you know, like that old saying about the guy with the hammer in his hand and sees everything as a nail, that's how they're looking at this. It screams a lack of input from actual end users and small companies. It's got, you know, it's got the Cessna thing or even bigger all over it. And which leads me to, you know, put out the call that if there's anyone out there who wants to slide the rice bowl over and invest, you know, I'm ready to give it a crack.
I'm a little light again to try and fund it by myself, but, you know, I'm game, you know, we can, we can, we could be the Eclipse Company junior or something, you know, and try and build something. It's too bad. It'd be nice if we could, you know, I've been saying this for years. Could we please concentrate on, you know, remember the crack in the door open on the small stuff, but it just seems like everybody's just worried about the big stuff.
And of course, we're worried about the big stuff because that's where the big paychecks are and the big money's at. But it is really disappointing. And again, some historical perspective has been lost here. You know, that was one thing that I always tried to bring to this process.
And that historical process or that historical perspective, you know, we could look back at, let's say the pre-February 13, 2007 environment, where the FAA policy was that you could fly in Class B airspace. You know, you could fly, you could call the tower and get permission there and fly. Things like that, where it was actually a pragmatic approach that would probably work. It did work.
There were no mishaps. Would you like to add some of that historical perspective, Gene?
Well, I agree completely. Of course, we've been doing search and rescue and search and recovery since 2004. And we have experienced that many times where we did have to fly in controlled airspace. And the tower was typically always very accommodating, and they always allowed us to complete our mission.
We did it very expeditiously. Obviously, we didn't want to hold up any full-scale traffic. But it went very smoothly. It always did go smoothly.
And we didn't have one crossword. No one got upset at us. No one said, you know, we held up anything. And it's frustrating to have to look at what we're going to have to contend with here very shortly if things continue down the same path.
But with the communications that we could perform, especially now with cell phones and that sort of thing in 2004, it was even more difficult to get communications to the tower. But now with cell phones and even handheld radios becoming cheaper and cheaper, there's no reason why we couldn't continue that same thing and continue to fly in spaces with some limitations. There's got to be limitations. We all agree to that.
We don't want to get in the way of manned aviation. We want to stay as clear of that as possible. Yes, this and avoid will help that situation. But we should still be able in certain circumstances and conditions to continue to fly the way we did prior to February 13, 2007.
Well, and the other thing with that, you know, there's been a lot of pushback from AOPA on ADS-B. And I did see that in this document. And I've said that we should use that technology in and out. And you got the freak issues with the commercial guys and the GA guys and everybody squawking different freaks and everything else.
But, you know, in a sense, an avoid thing comes out and we're going to have to pony up. God knows how much that Raytheon or General Atomics or Northrop Grumman is going to want for that system. But are they going to push back on that too?
You know, oh, we don't want to install that aircraft. Those will be future battles. But I do think that it's too bad. Again, we're drawing that parallel to the auto industry circa 1974-5.
And I'm thinking back about grandpa's Impala. And you may just be flying a gremlin in your future, Gene. It's too bad. But, you know, that's what onerous regulation and, you know, not having the right perspective in there will get you.
And I don't want to dwell too much on that. But, you know, it's kind of a Debbie Downer subject. I wish I had happy news for you. You know, I just don't.
Yeah, you know, and the bad part about it is that I did own a gremlin and, you know, it was pretty rough. I got to tell you. It would get you to point A and to point B, but the style points were way down on the west on that one. Oh, come on.
It was like a high karate commercial. You probably had to like, you know, run from the women in the gremlin. That's funny. Okay.
Well, let's move forward. Like I said, I'm out here at White Sands Missile Range for an exercise. And I did catch a radio broadcast from Holloman AFB. And part of that news was that they had trained more RPA pilots than man pilots last year.
And I thought that was pretty impressive. Anyone listening to the podcast from Holloman, I'll be out here for a little while. And I'd love to come and tour the training if that's possible. I do have a security clearance.
It'd be great to see that. I'd like to see what you guys are doing. And I'd like to see the future of what is going to be the future for the Air Force 2047. I'm there with you.
I also got to see some launches when you're out here. And I will say that rockets are cool. It's pretty impressive. It's just like model rocketry, except it is bigger, louder, and there's more smoke.
But it's pretty damn impressive. And moving on to today's topic, where we're actually, like we had promised, we were going to start taking people out in the field here to see what it's like to work in the remotely piloted aircraft or UA technologies application sector. That's what we're doing today. And so Gene, could you please set up on today's event?
Okay. We are out at the lovely Wynn Ranch just outside of Wimberley, Texas. It's been a long time RC farm field. And it's actually the center of our COA that we fly out of as well.
So it has been well documented by the SAA. And we have attempted in the past, with the search and rescue effort, we have tried to produce as much good data and move that area forward as much as we can. And Myron's Foreign Berks has hosted several fly-ins where we have asked people to come in, bring their technology, share what they've done, and come out here and fly with us and do some So we're going to do that again this weekend. We are out here now.
And as I said before, unfortunately, it's raining a little bit. And we've got one guy that's out. He's already flown his plane to test fly it. He had a little mishap the other day.
It appears to be flying okay. He's got some vibration issues. But we're going to see if we can get some more folks out here. And we're going to do some flying and see what we can see from the air.
All right. And this is just, you guys are just out there today as doing, there's no real exercise. You're just kind of out there like a hobby fly type of thing. Exactly.
Exactly. This is just a kind of a sharing of information, a networking kind of deal. And we can produce in the air. All right.
Well, this is exciting. You know, we're making history. Like I said, in the intro, all you got to do is you can be sitting in your easy chair and you're part of history. And so without further ado, let's bring on our guest Myron.
Myron, are you out there? I am here. Hey, Myron, how's it going, buddy?
I haven't talked to you in a while. You doing okay?
Doing well down here. How are you?
Doing good. Doing good. Crossing all my T's, getting all my I's dotted for our event down here. So we're getting ready for that.
There's a little bit of stuff to do. All right. Well, you know, I know you Myron for many moons now. But the listening audience doesn't know who you are.
So could you please give us a little background, you know, what you're up to and how you got here? Sure. Well, I have been an avid airplane, model airplane and full-scale aviation fan for many, many years. Been flying models for probably close to 30.
And I got into this deal, came out to Wimberley and met up with Gene and we started flying aircraft with cameras. We were doing some, you know, some little real estate shoots every now and then and that kind of flying. And then then came up on the news about a missing person and we thought, well, let's go give this a try. So we went out there and flew a mission for the sheriff's department, helping to look for a missing person.
And then that whole thing kind of snowballed. We have Gene and I founded the RP search services and pretty active in that arena where we go out and, you know, aid in the search and recovery of, you know, missing persons. Interesting. Interesting.
So you're still involved with that? Are you doing your own thing?
You're still working with Gene? What's going on there?
Well, I'm currently self-employed so I have to spend a little bit more time at work, more time than I want to. But when I do have free time, I do go on the occasional search with Gene and I still hang out at the warehouse. And we rub antennas, so to speak, and work on the airplanes and do the flying out here at the Wind Valley Ranch, which is really nice. We do a lot of FPV out here and testing the remotely piloted aircraft with various different electronics and all different kinds of cameras and different gear.
And so I started doing these little fly-ins, I guess about a year ago. This is our third one and unfortunately we're getting a little wet right now. But we do have some people that have come out to fly and hopefully this is going to pass pretty soon and we'll have some more aircraft, maybe some quadcopters up in the air flying around seeing what's going on. Well, it's really interesting.
It is kind of funny how that deal works, you know, where we're doing a live broadcast. Of course it starts raining but, you know, Murphy's Law, you got to roll with it. We've learned, Gene and myself have learned since May that you just got to kind of roll with the punches and that's kind of how it works around here. So, you know, okay, you got your own business going there and it's not building itself.
You're having to work that yourself. Is that what you're saying?
It's requiring some time? Pretty much, yeah. I've got to get out there and beat the streets to make a dollar. So yeah, it takes up, you know, more time than I want it to but, you know, got to do what you got to do.
I hear you, you know. I dream about a 40-hour a week gig. That's what I'm, I've been dreaming about that for years. I just want one of those regular 40-hour deal that pays all the bills and I live in California.
So I'll just leave it right there but, well, that's good. So the business, I'm assuming, is going good. Now, today's event, you guys are out there, I like the premise of this, you're out here. You guys are testing some equipment out there.
You got a bunch of guys out there. You're spotting, you're doing, you're checking out equipment. You got different platforms out there which I like. You know, people still ask me all the time about the different platforms.
There's actually a couple of, I'm doing fact checking for a couple of articles in some pamphlets people may have heard of. One of them being the New Yorker again, turning into being the go-to guy which is fine. I like that little magazine and I'd like to see those kids succeed. Right?
Get their circulation out there. So whoever hasn't heard of the New Yorker magazine, you might want to pick it up. There'll be something else. I think it just went to press the other day.
But anyway, you know, people keep asking, well, you know, what's the difference between a quadcopter and the fixed wing? And you know, there are nuances. Of course, you're going to use these for different things. Maybe we could talk a little bit about since you guys are out there.
Maybe you can explain, let's say, the different types of operations or applications for something that's fixed wing and then the quadcopter for the lay person. Would either one of you guys like to field that?
Sure, I can field that. I guess we're out here looking at various different platforms. There's obviously quadcopters, hexacopters, tricopters, you know, lots of different multi-rotor type aircraft that typically are used for more close-in support if you're looking at, for example, a law enforcement situation or something of that nature where you don't really need a real broad view. You know, the quadcopters can get up there.
Typically, they don't run for more than, you know, seven to, you know, ten minutes tops probably. And, you know, you can stick a, you know, like a GoPro camera type deal on there, transmit that back to the ground. And so they work really well for close-in support. The fixed-wing aircraft, which, you know, are a lot better for, you know, higher altitude flying a little bit further away and getting a much broader scope of what's going on.
Right, cover more area. Absolutely. You know, it would probably be a good thing for us to describe some of the efforts that we've done on the last one. We, you know, we ended up putting out the, what, five targets, typical targets.
We put a bicycle. We put a pair of blue jeans out. We put some t-shirts and brightly colored things and some not so brightly colored things. And these guys came out here and that was their task.
Their task was to go out and to see how many of these they could find. And, you know, there's a lot of learning that went on in that. We found out what worked and what didn't work. That's pretty interesting.
And, you know, these guys or participants who you're talking about, what, you know, what are these people that are just trying to get their feet wet? You have anybody there that may try and apply this, let's say, as part of their job in the future or are they testing out equipment?
What type of people are showing up to this event? Well, we have a pretty broad range of guys. You know, we've met most of these guys online, primarily as hobbyists. But with the rapid advancement in electronics and the prices coming down, you can put so much more instrumentation on a small aircraft to do a lot of different things.
As Gene mentioned, you know, we kind of help these guys and do some training for search and recovery or public service type mission where, you know, they're going to go out and look for missing person or if there's any other kind of thing, you know, fire, events like that. So we're trying to help these guys understand what it takes to interface with law enforcement or fire or emergency management. And then what, like Gene said, what gear works best for which application. You've got to have the right tool for the job.
And there's a broad range of tools out here. And then, you know, a pretty broad range of guys. You know, they've come from, we've had guys come from as far away as the other side of Houston, Baytown, and then from Dallas, from San Antonio. And we all get together and, you know, kind of bump ideas off of each other and do the show and tell different stuff and put them up in the air.
And everybody gets to kind of watch and see how different aircraft fly, number one, and then, you know, what kind of data they can gather. So there's a practical takeaway at the end of the day. You've seen, okay, well, this is how you're going to operate a multi-rotor type of platform to find targets XYZ. And I'm sure that if you have these spread out a little bit, that's probably multiple missions, I would assume.
And then to fix wing guys, too, to fly within the VLOS and all the rest of that. And so at the end of the day, there's kind of a practical takeaway to you guys, like, you know, go to the pizza joint after and talk about it. You know, how does that work when that scenario, the wrap up, let's say?
Well, typically, I... Well, I have a lot of... Oh, here's mine. Okay.
Typically, I bring my RV out here and the barbecue pit or grill and we'll sit around the RV and tell stories. Throw some hot dogs on the grill and do it that way. That's cool. So kind of at the end there, you guys are, you know, wrapping up the lessons learned, huh?
Absolutely. And then Gene, you were going to add something. Yeah, I think that the last time when everybody came out here, the biggest majority of them were flying video systems. And both in the quadcopters and the fixed wing because everyone seems to like video.
And it is... The concentration is on first person view. But when we put them to task and we asked them to go out and find these targets, one which, by the way, was only 50 feet off of the active runway, there was a group of folks that flew. And at the end of the day, we had one that, correct me if I'm wrong, but he found three total of the five.
That's correct. That's not good. Yeah, and there were... But there were a lot of guys out there that didn't even find the one that was 50 feet off the runway.
Well, we had one that found it when he stumbled over it because his quadcopter ran out of juice and landed on the other side of the runway and he had to walk through the weeds to get it and he found it. But, you know, that was kind of serendipitous on his part. But I think at the end of the day, everybody was like, whoa, you know, this is an eye opener for us because we figured we could come out with our GoPros. And, you know, they do high res digital and all that good stuff and all of a sudden it's not as high res as it needs to be.
And it was quite an eye opener for a lot of the guys. They saw what, you know, we were doing and what we've done in the past and the kind of things that it takes. And it's not just, you know, you get your quad running and, you know, you're in the search and rescue business or you're in the law enforcement support. It's a little bit more than that.
You have to work at it stuff and you have to get the right equipment. And I think that was a big takeaway from the last one. We had it in the summer and it worked really, really well. Had a bunch of folks out here.
And I think that given the chance that some of these folks will probably be using those lessons learned today. And it looks like we might have a little bit of a weather window. I saw quadcopters coming out. Of course, they're fixed wing out there already flying.
So we might get to get a little flying action in here pretty quick. Well, that's pretty cool. And I'm liking, you know, what I'm hearing. You know, you got to go out there.
And I know, you know, there's also the first person view thing is kind of interesting. And I know that the equipment's gotten better. But these guys that are recording the HD, I guess, from the GoPro or whatever. And now they're going to come back and they're going to try and look through their video and find these targets.
It's not easy to do. No, there's a lot of training right there. Just looking, squinting photos or looking at video. And video things happen pretty quick, you know.
So there's part of that in it too. I mean, and I guess, you know, let me ask on the setup here. So you just, you kind of go out there. Yeah, you preset your targets.
You kind of tell people that there's some stuff out there. We got X amount of targets. Or do you tell them how many targets you got out there?
We told them, yeah, the last go around, we told them we had five targets. And we kind of wanted to see their reactions as far as, okay, well, there's five targets. What approach did each team have in going out and trying to find this?
Did they just, you know, put the plane up and just randomly fly around? Or did, you know, they say, okay, well, did they put a whole lot of thought process into, okay, I want to find these five targets. I'm going to fly from here at this area for this area for so long. And just to kind of see, number one, you know, how people kind of process that type of task, which is interesting because everybody kind of did it a little bit different.
And so it's one of those things where we're trying to, you know, get everybody kind of on the same page to where they know and have a good method to going out and getting the data that they've been tasked to get. And so it worked out really well. Obviously, the video is much harder to analyze when you're trying to go back and forth on a DVR and your, you know, your slow motion when you're stopping your freeze frame. It's definitely a process to do.
And we're discovering, you know, actually that, you know, video is great for a live type event. Again, it would be a fire. You know, you're going to want live video feed of a police situation or some sort of emergency deal where, you know, you want to be able to see that live happening. Whereas a search and recovery of a missing person, you want high res digital stills because you can zoom in, you know, with a 12 megapixel camera.
You know, you can pick out somebody's tennis shoes from 350 feet, you know, as long as your, you know, your camera is functioning properly. And, you know, you've got good, you know, good sunlight and whatnot. So it's just, again, it's getting everybody ramped up in knowing what is going to work for what they're trying to do. Right.
Now, you know, and it's funny as you're talking about these cameras at 12 megapixel. Now, you guys remember, because I remember I was doing it and I'm like, oh my God, the 1.2 megapixel came out. You know, they're ranting and raving about the quality of that thing. And now, you know, we're looking at, you know, the 12 megapixel.
I like the Panasonic Luminex with the Leica lens. What do you guys use?
Oh, that's, yeah, that's exactly what we use. The Leica lenses are one of the best in the market, obviously. And there are several other cameras out there that we've tried. We've tried the Nikons and the Fuji's and the others.
And it seems that Panasonic does best at, you know, freezing the image and getting the widest view that has the least distortion in it. And, you know, and we're constantly looking. I bought a couple of cameras here recently and there's just nothing that compares to that Lumix line for size and weight. And now we haven't tried any of the 4-thirds format yet and that might be something that could be better.
But for, you know, anyone to get into the field right now, the LX2, LX3 are great. You can get them on eBay and they're not that expensive. Now, and they've got... Well, one of the things that I wanted to bring up that we got from the last go-round is how innovative these guys that come out here are.
They come up with some of the wildest things that you'd never think about because they're electrical engineers and they think about, you know, how, you know, radio waves radiate off an antenna. And we've seen these toroid antennas and the cloverleaf antennas and all these wild things to extend their range. And I was in awe of some of the things that these guys came up with. And that's another thing that we're pushing these guys to do is, you know, use that brain power that you got and come up with these innovations like these antennas because some of them are really cool.
Now, do you have anything in the shape of some longhorns? No, no, no longhorns yet, but, you know, it would probably happen if somebody could get it done. Turns out it works, you know. This is the Texas antenna right here.
And I think people would know that right off the bat. So that's pretty interesting. And I'm sure so every time these guys come out, you see, let's say, a new crop of innovations or is a building on what they have or people just trying new stuff or people just they've got their, this is my set working equipment here and I'm sticking to it and it works and I'm doing that. Or is it kind of like a spectrum of all of that, Myron?
It's definitely a spectrum of all of that. Just by nature of these guys, you know, we're all tinkers. We like to experiment and play with different electronics and whatnot. So every time these guys come out, somebody has got something different.
Sometimes it's way different than the norm or what they're used to. And then sometimes they're all guys that are a little bit more, you know, they have their security blanket on and they have their tried and true equipment. But for the most part, everybody's kind of pushing the envelope. They're trying to get better range.
Like Gene said, with the antennas, they're trying to get a better camera, CCDs or CMOS. There's always different ones of those that are cropping up, different stabilization systems, on-screen display type systems. Some guys write their own code to do their own glass cockpit, so to speak. So yeah, there's always new innovations coming out.
That's one of the reasons we have these. Once every, say, six months or so, depending on the weather, I like to get as many people out here as I can. The last one, we had a great turnout. We probably had, I would say, 20 guys that came out with different aircraft and different configurations and different electronics and the whole bit.
So obviously the weather has kind of taken a turn for the worse and scared a few people off, but we just had three more show up a few minutes ago. So it's very cool to see the different equipment and the innovation that comes with it because as we come out, I can't afford to go by one of each type of on-screen display or each type of autopilot or stabilization system or camera or whatever, but when
you get a group of 20 guys out and when one guy, he's got the latest and greatest stuff, everybody goes and looks at that makes a decision, hey, I want this or I don't like it because of this or that.
So it definitely is a cool thing to have so many different mindsets out here and pocketbooks really because everybody wants different stuff. So you kind of get to see it. It's a big show and tell type deal and it helps everybody come up with more ideas and better gear. Well, you know, and I'm just having a little brainstorm here while you're saying that.
You know, this would be a cheap date for DARPA and I will say that DARPA is getting more innovative. They're looking at different ways and boy, this would be something right here. I mean, a lot of people listen to this podcast, but this is another golden ideal for DARPA. I mean, pennies on the dollar, what they're spending now, they could have people come out and do a couple of regional fly-ins and it'd be great if we could team
you guys up with them and, you know, come up with this criteria because it sounds like you guys have already kind of sussed out what works, what kind of doesn't work as far as the set up, the targets, the con ops, the SOPs and I know that, you know, there's all kinds of different procedures that you guys have already worked out to round this thing out.
Man, this would be a slam dunk like a kind of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup with the chocolate and the peanut butter, you're putting it together. So that'd be cool if we could make that connection because it sounds like you guys are making a lot of headway for relatively low investment. Correct. It's very low.
Gene? And we've just had our first quadcopter take off and they are headed off down field and he is flying first person view video and he's got his link set up and boy, that is just one stable looking copter out there and he is just far into the field, just at the end of my vision right now and it is very, oh, he's inspecting some of the artwork down at the other end of the field there and I'd say he's removed by about 200 yards. So he is doing some good work with that quadcopter. Now has anybody thus far already found any of the targets or did you guys just get things rolling?
That was an event we did the last fly in, I can't remember, it was probably, I don't know, six months ago and we had, that's when we had the really big turnout. So yeah, all those targets Gene and I laid out around the ranch out here. Our flying field is about 180 acres and we've got pretty much free roam to do whatever. So we stashed these five targets all over the ranch and then obviously the guys went out, they located three of them.
So we already rounded that up and brought it back in and we'll have another one. This one is more of a show and tell, just kind of a fun fly so to speak. The next one that we put on will probably be more of a training type mission as well. We'll plan on doing some controlled burns out here and monitoring that from the air from a remotely piloted aircraft and we're going to kind of see what happens with the fire going and we'll probably have some guys come out for that.
Well now I got another question. Now I know you guys are flying, you got your spotters for VLOS and all the rest of that and you're staying within the AC9157 and I'm just having this flash. Now I know you're trying to get these guys to find these targets and you've got your spotters out there and then we got all these limitations. Is it kind of giving away the position of these targets or is it hindering the search in any way or are you overcoming this and if you're overcoming it how or is this even an issue?
Byron first. It's not really an issue. The area is so big and typically for example if we're looking for a missing person, you know, person's pretty small spec sitting on 180 acres. It takes a lot of skill and a fair amount of luck to be able to actually find that person.
So the limitations with AC9157 obviously in looking at the future and the grand scope of things, yeah it's going to be a problem but when it comes to the training type stuff that we're doing and then the searches that I have been on and Gene, he's been away more than I have but typically law enforcement comes and they say okay we've got an area, we found the victim's car in this parking lot and there's 10 acres a block away. Well you kind of know that you're going to be flying over that 10 acres and you can cover that in no time flat all within the AC9157 regulations.
It's really easy to do. Obviously moving forward as electronics get bigger and better and hopefully the FAA opens the skyways up a little bit then yeah then there's then things are going to change. Gene. Well I am just amazed at watching this guy fly this quadcopter.
I'm a fixed winger, I'm a planker as they say and he is well within line of sight but he is at the top of the hill now looking at one of the memorials that is up there and the technology that he's using is just amazing. It's working out very well and it looks very steady and I'm sure he's getting good video back to his goggles but yeah another thing to add to what Myron said is that we really don't have to go that far. I mean we can cover within the limitations of 400 feet altitude and 1500 square feet laterally.
We can cover a lot of young and typically a missing person is within a couple of miles of where they were last seen and it's easy to walk those areas at 1500 feet at a time. You can walk those areas and fly the inaccessible areas very quickly and very easily. So he's up about 200 feet now so this is pretty amazing. This is a good flight on this one.
Sounds like we might have a multi-rotor convert in the making here. Oh no, don't get me wrong. They have their place. The tool in the toolbox, I've always been appreciative of being able to do the persistent stair and just hover in one spot but I've never been really enamored with the technology because gyro's drift, the GPS hold has never been very solid and from what I understand this is a fairly new Chinese entry and that quadcopter is just about as solid as any quadcopter I've seen fly.
You can probably hear it if he's hovering in for his final approach and I'm pretty impressed with that. I mean I can't fly. I want it to save my life and it can't but he sure makes it look easy. Well you know I think that technology is going to get better and better and I do think that it's useful again the tools in the toolbox and I'm all about different tools for different jobs you know and that's really cool.
So in the future I mean I know that we want to try and do more of these and I'm going to try and do one here from White Sands and then I'm going to go to the space show and then you guys are going to be back out there in December and there's a real event where you're going to be flying doing a burn right? Yes we will be doing a full-scale burn. They're going to burn 12,000 acres of Texas on purpose this time and we're going to try to get as much of that data on some sort of file anyway either via electro-optical IR, steel imagery or all of the above.
Yeah it'd be cool. We'll see if we can pull this off. I know everybody's really busy but it would be cool if we could host that somewhere off of the website and people could kind of go to that website and check out pictures and what now what's kind of happen as it's going on. Again we're trying to make history here and over the next few months I think that we're going to pull that off.
This one is definitely very enlightening. You guys are out there actually doing it in the field watching people operate and see how they overcome some of these issues. I'm really kind of looking forward to the next couple of months here. We're down to 60 seconds and again I was thinking wow are we going to be able to squeeze 45 minutes out of this program and we do it every time and we always run out of time at the end.
It just amazes me but I want to say a big thank you to Myron. Myron thanks for being on. Well thanks for having me. Hey no problem and I hope to see and talk to you in the future.
Gene any closing words? No I think I'm going to sit out here and enjoy some of this this good flying that we're seeing and we'll get with you next time and hopefully have a website up. Yeah that'd be excellent and then we could reference what's what's going on in the background. Well again as always I'd like to thank everyone for listening in.
I hope you enjoyed this. You got any ideas you want to hear anything let me know. I've invited Code Pink on to talk about drones. That could be interesting.
We'll see what happens till next week everyone. See you later. Adios. See ya.