UAS News Podcast — 2013-07-16
Transcript
Music Welcome to the next installment, number 55 of the SUAS news podcast series where we interview newsmakers and discuss the news and applications relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. I am your program host Patrick Egan and let's say hello to our co-host with the million dollar smile Mr. Gene Robinson. Gene are you out there?
Oh he's out there but I got him on mute. Can you hear me?
Yes Mr. million dollar smile I can hear you. Okay I was just checking because you know after spending three hours in the dentist chair you know I'm a pretty happy camper at this point. Okay well the show's not like pulling teeth or anything huh?
No no no nothing like that. Cutting it close again. Anyway that's okay we're here and let's see here anyway okay so we uh any any um any other new stuff get you this week Gene that you want to talk about you usually like to bring up the current events besides your teeth what's going on?
Well you know what I have noticed more than anything else I don't know if there are other crises out in the nation that are taking more precedent but I've noticed that there has been a lack of news reporting on drones over the last couple of weeks have you noticed that trend? I have you know it's funny because I was laying in bed last night before I sleep I call it the twilight of the idols there
and I'm thinking about that and I'm like you know what the drone things kind of died down I'd say died down a lot um yeah it is it's very good but uh I mean I I thought wow we went from it seemed like there was a story every 15 minutes about what a drone was doing or or you know a use of a drone somewhere and now you hardly hear a thing about it.
I know well you know we're moving on to other stories but um you know I don't know uh it is good I think maybe we're ready for a fresh new cycle about something good happening uh with with drones and that's kind of one thing I wanted to talk about with this show is the expo show and I wanted to kind of talk about the small unmanned systems business expo which is really again shaping up to be a world-class show the eyes of the global unmanned aircraft systems communities really take notice of this we've got some some great speakers
I wanted to kind of talk about that and we're going to actually have one on I promised to have two on I was going to have uh Ted McGeer speak about um you know what his presentation was going to be like but it looks like Ted's at summer camp today speaking to the kids about unmanned aircraft and that's cool you know I think that's important so I'm all right with that but we still have uh Eileen Shibley on which we'll bring her on a little bit
but I wanted to talk about some of the speakers and people have been asking me well who's going to speak okay day one um we've got uh myself of course going to kind of open it up we got Bruce Parks who's been helping me out with the show I wouldn't be able to have put this uh expo on without Bruce I'm going to have Gary we'll get with an update from the dark continent we're going to have gum in via
Skype we got Chris Norris from Alta devices Gretchen West from AUVSI Carl Hendrick from UC Berkeley Jonathan Downey from Airware Ted McGeer will speak at the uh at the expo if there's not a summer camp where he's at speaking uh Ted Park from 2d3 sensing we got Gus Calderon from ISIS Copter Ted Wairs-Bianowski is going to give an update from the ASTM F38 committee Eileen again from the California UAS portal Sheen Vara from Motion DSP Inc
and they are also sponsoring a uh beer and wine reception after which is nice we can all get together after day one and and uh have a have a nice cold Lone Star I don't know how you guys drink that stuff I tried that one and what's the other one Dixie oh uh and we got um I don't want to massacre uh this gentleman's name but somebody's coming from Airbotics from Germany uh Douglas McQueen from LeClaire
Lyon law firm Ken Giles from UC Davis who has been using the uh the R-Max for for AG Wolfgang uh Jochmann from Velodyne LIDAR he's going to give a 3d LIDAR demonstration on stage that ought to be pretty interesting Jerry Lemieux from the Unmanned Vehicle University Chris Anderson 3d Robotics I'm on day two of course Mr.
Gene Robinson from RP Flight Systems that guy's a hell of a speaker you're going to enjoy that one that's right after him we got uh Dr. John Appleby from DHS uh he's going to talk about um some of the science work that they've done we've got Douglas Hunsaker from Scaled Composites which that ought to be pretty interesting Matthew Scheuer from dronesforgood.com and uh Eli DeElla from Game Theory Robotics which ought to be a really interesting talk those those are the speakers that's day one
and day two um you know without exaggeration I think we're going to be in a once in a lifetime show with there's a lot of knowledge coming out right there in that lineup I'm telling you and and the whole ethos behind this show is that I'm trying to start a conversation and a discussion we're also going to try and stream this and you will be able to twitter in questions or email in questions for the speakers again they've got to kind of be relevant they will probably not bring up questions like what flavor ice cream do
you like stuff like that but uh we are trying to build a conversation and a dialogue here and I'm going to encourage people to ask questions this might be the only chance you've got to uh with with all of these speakers in one room so that's that's kind of the premise there I do want to talk about the sponsors the sponsors have been great thus far uh people are really getting it that the the purposes this show is to change the narrative that uh there are people out here making money doing this as a business um
and we're ready to get to work we're ready to make some money um and you know it's been said but now it's been shown it's going to be shown that we're here it does exist uh and and let's move on and I want to give a shout out to those sponsors because everybody's uh definitely on board with that and we have of course the sus news is the pretty much the the producer of this show um and the podcast of course the rkappa the remote control aerial photography association which gene is a board member of um we've got mlb who makes the super bat which gene talks about that uh
you fly those for nist which ought to be interesting there'll be one in the room they're going to have their whole lineup of of aircraft there and so that might give a little reference of uh to what you're talking about gene yep next you tech is going to actually they're sponsoring the wireless internet we're going to have internet at the new technology show who the fuck it the developed i-light are
3d robotics altered devices 2d3 sensing um leclerc ryan law firm which that's going to be a great chance to ask your legal questions auvsi silicon valley chapter it looks like domino's pizza is going to uh sponsor lunch now i did put in the call i did call um the associate administrator for aviation safety last week and it wasn't really about oh really how uh and still waiting to the call back her uh her lead aide did call me back
and and asked me some questions uh about why i was calling and that was uh basically you know good news is the auvsi is uh going to be allowed onto the current arc which is good news it's a step in the right direction however it the denominated was for the to represent small business in the end user which we've probably all heard that before i don't you know if you've read some of the articles that's kind of what
i was saying i still don't why i don't it's a step in the right direction i still don't i'm still concerned that small business in the end user may not be fully represented so i'm still we're still working on that but anyway that enough on on on that um since tad isn't on of course we are going to move right on to uh eileen and uh eileen are you are you out there i'm here okay eileen is good morning she's heading up an effort to land one of the six u.s test sites um the
and and i guess that's all part of the california u.s portal and i know you do some other stuff too you're you're busy so maybe um you could tell the audience a little about yourself um and how you got to head up the portal and the other projects that you're working on be happy to do that thank you well i have a little over 30 years experience as a my background is technical supporting the department of defense
and about uh the last six years i ran the unmanned systems division at one of the navy's test sites and it was during that time that i kind of developed a passion for unmanned systems our job wasn't so much the platform our job was to integrate stuff onto those systems and when i retired um it became really clear to me that i wanted to continue to work in this area but in something that was completely unrelated to defense
and there's um an airport district here in southern california where i live we're about 140 miles north and east of los angeles in the middle of nowhere not close to any major metropolitan area and so it's a kind of a pristine location for doing research development and testing for any kind of experimental system so we started down that path a little over a year and a half ago and kind of banded together a group of us that that were very excited about the number of commercial applications for unmanned systems we see we see our niches in small unmanned systems arena
and that's what we're focusing on right now so in my presentation i'm not going to talk so much about you know the the potential to be a test site as i am going to talk about what we're actually doing right now at this site all right well um i would agree with you i think that that's pretty much the consensus here on the show is that the the smalls are really besides being the low-hanging fruit i really
you know that's one thing with the s.u.s news people go oh well you guys only deal with the small stuff really we really use the european let's say box when we're say small and that's at about 150 kilos and in the consensus on the show in between most of us and and i know jean and myself has we really feel that that's going to probably be 90 95 percent of the industry compare jean um absolutely that's uh if
you look at where most of the big players are going it's going to be i would say even you know 25 pounds i would i would agree with that but uh i mean you know really that's when you get the economy upscale uh down to the small stuff that's really where it makes sense i just you know i mean i we chuckle about it all the time the uh uh flight hour for the global hawk and i mean nobody really sees a commercial case for that
and whatever that's fine but really i think where the where the rubber really meets the road is on the smalls so that makes sense and everyone talks about uh all the different uses and i think uh dr lamu at the unmanned vehicle university has collected he says he's got 200 plus applications for uh for unmanned aircraft systems how many do you think you have do you have a list going eileen oh do we have a list going up of applications absolutely
and it seems like every time we turn around there's there's an idea about something else when we started seriously going down the path and for example uh about eight months ago when we started working on our first co-applications kind of because of the area that we're in they were seeming to focus um on agriculture we're also looking at a lot of search and rescue um fire suppression and support those are the specific areas that we've kind of focused on
but there's so many others and then that led us into yet another area where we're spending a good bit of time and that has to do with the the research component of all of this so we're we're teamed up with several different universities doing cooperative ventures in areas that are everything from um gps jammies boosting technologies all the way to integration of ads b type environments and looking at different kinds of radars
so we're we're kind of broad you know full spectrum that way but um not having any trouble keeping busy during the day that's for sure there's a tremendous amount of interest and people are people are um anxious to see these these sites um be be uh formalized so that i mean the hope is that some of this will become more clear but even in the absence of that we're filling out applications and putting things in
and and talking to folks on a pretty daily basis and what we see our our area becoming is an innovation hub for unmanned systems research development efforts as well as um a pretty robust environment for testing right and and um you know let me ask you about uh let's say the local support from the area are you having any issues there like say with privacy or is anybody else you know noise or whatever or is everybody pretty receptive um we probably are luckier than most um we have had zero um issues i'm i'm i'm absolutely amazed by that
but uh we when we first started this campaign we were pretty good communicators here locally and again we live in a very remote area and so we went around to all the local clubs in the area we went to the city we went to the county we went to small businesses we talked to the manufacturing side and we explained to folks what we were doing and we live in kind of a high tech area there's a lot of flight testing that gets done in this aerospace valley that we're in
and the the local support has been tremendous um we've had almost a thousand letters of support come into us we had over a hundred of them from small businesses in our local community and i think one of the reasons is because we truly we are technologists we absolutely are all of us have technical backgrounds and have worked in this area for a very long time and we truly care about privacy um we we want to ensure that we're part of the group that makes up a rule set that is going to be very considerate of those kinds of concerns all the way all the way through
and so we uh we consider ourselves to be very nicely supported locally at the county level um we've certainly worked very well with the state big state as you know um but we i think have addressed most of the issues and in the research plan that we built for the place uh as a testing entity we have a privacy plan as a part of that well so it sounds like you uh you're covering most of your bases down there which is even more evolved
i was kind of in you know we actually i think worked for the same nav air group and when i was down there i was working down there in yuma i was part of the the arizona effort and uh you know it was early on but they weren't as evolved as at the time privacy wasn't really an issue at all and and if you think you're out in the middle of nowhere yuma is like like the edge of the earth or something but
anyway it sounds like you've got uh you know your your your base is covered there now how how is the um how is your political support and can you talk about that a little bit um sure locally um it could not possibly be better we have had uh all of the representatives for this district have been to the airport um we have early on we defined an operating area um because the little community that uh
we want to be the center of this is only a part of it we've defined an area that's much broader than just this desert area we have a lot of partners in the san diego area for example and we have tremendous political support san diego county imperial county current county all of those um uh supervisors of the board of supervisors have been briefed on our efforts and are supportive our state representatives are engaged
and supportive our state senators are engaged and very supportive um at the national level our representatives are are very very much interested in seeing us succeed in the particular area that i am represented by um uh kevin mccarthy is our representative he's been to the airport he's heard our briefings he's been involved from the very beginning we've also had the same experience with our san diego partners
so we feel like we've got um a lot of political support yeah um you know they're calling that san diego area the silicon valley of drones which is kind of interesting because i'm i'm a little partial to northern california and i'd like to make silicon valley the silicon valley of drones but there are a lot of people down there uh manufacturing and in the business so it's good to hear that you have that kind of support
but um well you know one of the things i think along those lines too is um the interest that we've received here in our little corner of the world is any indication um i think the u.s is is ready to embrace this new technology and and really get going because business is pushing this and these these efforts are going to succeed because it's what business wants to do because those commercial applications are out there they're going to make life easier
and they're going to be uh they're going to be cost-saving measures for a lot of the business sector so i i think that's what's going to drive it and i think that we're going to probably see a whole bunch of silicon valleys and it'll be very good for everybody that's my view of it right yeah and i mean you know definitely the uh the economy and productivity that it brings to every one of those um highlighted sectors yeah
you know we're we need that we're ready for it's a revolution the rest of the world has embraced it and i i do believe that um i mean that's what my presentation is going to be on at the expo is basically how we need to say okay well you know business and high tech it's time to take the the uh let's say become advocate prime for this technology and you know as even just a little statistics that the computer
and internet industry spends about as much money lobbying as defense does in in the 2012 election was almost on par and you know another interesting fact is is that the lobbying money from silicon valley the amount of money just coming out of silicon valley is is much more than the defense aerospace business uh it's based on lobbying and i thought that was a pretty interesting statistic it's like this seems like a no-brainer to me
so it's just up to us to change that narrative and i believe the same that it's going to be business that's going to say hey we're ready to embrace um the savings gene what do you have to say there's absolutely no doubt about it uh the business and one of the things that uh you touched on there was the research end of it i mean if you can get a package into the air to do the research you're going to see a lot more breakthroughs coming out there's going to be a lot more experimentation with uh with aerial packages
you know it's not just the unmanned aircraft industry that's set to take off there's a lot of peripheral businesses that are that are ready to embrace the technology just to proceed with the research that they've got going right and that's a common thread that we have on the show with all these guys it's like oh well we're you know we're gathering and i mean that's the that is kind of the the the crux of the biscuit on the deal is this self-guided data collection
you know um i can i can send it into a plume of the volcano i can send it into the eye of the hurricane i can send it out there and not disturb the animals i can collect the data that no one ever has has been unable to collect i mean you know it's uh i i call it the lotus flower it just keeps giving and giving and and i mean that is like you said gene i think it's just uh what we're what we're going to learn about our own environs
and the earth it's going to be it's going to blow our mind you know and we're just sitting back here uh you know waiting playing politics and i definitely think uh that's going to be my whole new drive let's go business let's grab the football and let's say you know what we're tired of uh horsing around let's do it let's start let's let's make it um let's embrace it and and and start reaping the rewards of the transformative technology that that this represents
and uh i think we're all in violent agreement with that um so eileen what do you what do you think the chances are let's say california's chances are of getting a test site oh i think that uh i'm extremely confident i guess i'll um i'll say that right off the bat i'm very very confident if you look at what california brings to the table um we have the best airspace and in the particular area where i'm at not only do we have pristine class e airspace it's unencumbered we have no environmental concerns just because that haven't already been adjudicated we are
right next door to two premier unmanned systems facilities that have been doing research and testing in the area of unmanned systems for over 50 years um we have uh as far as diversity of climate is concerned we have desert we have maritime we have mountains we have the highest point in the lowest point in the united states we have hot we have cold um i don't think you could find a better environment to do this in
and that coupled with the preponderance of unmanned systems background expertise intellectual capital i i feel like we ought to be very confident about our chances yeah and i would agree with you i mean that you know the other thing is i try and tell people is california has already you know had so many firsts in aviation you know we've we've done so much and you are right the the the uh let's say intellectual capital that's here like even more
and more i get uh exposed to these i'm gonna call them whiz kids in uh silicon valley and these these guys are working on some amazing stuff and they're really out there um kind of working on their own in the dark you know and and really that's another thing that needs to be worked on i think is uh and that's another thing i want to do is try to have some sort of of network or value added where these guys could come from mentoring there's a lot of people like yourself
and jean and myself that could mentor some of these kids that have some really uh excellent ideas i've met a few of them i'm um you know i i'm going to try and help these people bring some of these technologies to market because i think that they could change aviation could change the way we live could change the way we farm i mean it sometimes i stand back and i look at it and i just say wow you know it's
so simple i can see it how can we just can't embrace this today anybody want to comment on that i agree i think that the applications are limited only by our imagination and and i think that uh part of our job right now for those of us that have been in this world for a while who do have that kind of picture of the future i think part of our job is just just educating because i think that there are a lot of people out there who would really embrace this if um uh if there were a um a deeper understanding
so i think that's something that we can all give back but i think again these things are going to you know it would be 15 years from now the conversation that we're having would be like what they would have had 15 years ago about cell phones uh do you think you could ever see the weather on your cell phone are you kidding no you know nobody could most people wouldn't have seen that and i think 15 years from
now we're having the same kind of conversation about these systems jane jump in there buddy i i think that's a super analogy eileen uh you know we're definitely in moore's law territory here because every 18 months it seems like there's something new and and really exciting coming out with uh with the technology and i'm kind of starting to get more involved in the near-earth sciences that uh unmanned aircraft can participate in
and and i got to tell you that the education part of it you hit the nail on the head right there if you let people know that they can put something into one of these aircraft and get some good data out of it they'll start demanding it especially when you can give it at an economical price or more economical than they would expect from a manned asset and that's a natural progression and that's exactly
you know patrick and i've been talking about this and now everybody is starting to get on the bandwagon thank goodness and and we're going to start seeing more and more things like every 18 months there's going to be something really trick come out there's going to be an unmanned aircraft that's going to be doing some really wonderful things well and yeah and that's part of the the thing with the
shows getting people together like these uh these guys that alter devices or they have um they have a thin film um solar panel that they're saying they're getting 29 efficiency out of be perfect to put on wings of uh unmanned aircraft they said that you know that they're they're talking about um you know upping the endurance and you know what is everyone talking about it's endurance and payload uh
and kind of on the morse law thing i think you're going to have the technology is really already you know we talk about the lack of regulation or the and even the lack of imagination slowing this this sector down but man the technology is just going leaps and bounds and i i just i can't see where people when they start seeing this stuff in action and say oh wait a minute hey you know look at these robots are farming
and you got the uavs are are getting data and you know we're counting fish and monitoring our levees i mean water in california is a big issue and we could use them for for all kinds of things related to that you know i think people will go hey wait a minute uh wow i didn't realize that i i think that the other thing that's been really kind of a kick in the shins the industry is everybody says oh this is military technology that's being brought home from the war which is not really true
you know a lot of this stuff i keep talking about that people have been doing this prior to the big military build-up of this technology or even like scan eagle which ted was uh you know came up with that he invented it to uh find fish you know tuna fish chipboard uh you know um data collection so i think we need to to tone that rhetoric down a little bit and tell people now hey this is this is kind of where this came from
and what people were doing especially tads work it's too bad he's not here they could talk about he was doing stuff back in the in the 90s and i know jean you've been at this for you know it seems like forever probably yeah well it's been a long way since i've been messing with this stuff you know even 10 years ago you know i can't imagine ted being back in the 90s i mean we were flying things you know back in the 90s
but nowhere near the sophistication or even stabilization that you can get available today for a little or nothing oh yeah well that's part of that the technology uh leap but yeah i mean they did uh i want to say it was 1997 or 98 they did at the transatlantic and you know put new farmland ireland yeah remember that was well that's exciting yeah and you know i'm sorry go ahead well i'm sorry i was
just going to say where where we're at um cal uas is is centered at an airport called in your current in your current airport center california in the early 80s did some of the pioneering work with with drones right at this little airport and and again the interest was in technology transfer in those days so focus was all about the ground control station and operators and that kind of thing so we've come a long way
and yet we borrowed a lot along the way too uh you know we have and and i think that uh it's it's a good amount of automation of the technologies and whatever else i just think it's people as soon as you talk drones the military they're thinking they're superiority gray and the missiles and i'm trying to avoid that one and i mean not that we can deny it and it has its place and all the rest of that
but you know hey uh now is the time where well i think that we would already almost have the same advances i got to be honest if the policy clarification or change that that happened in 2007 did not happen i think we would have avoided all of the the privacy issues if the smalls were already in the air from say like 2009 when the arc concluded we would have avoided most of those uh we'd already be
and see uh technology leaps and this stuff would be integrated into the business world already and the only thing that's really slowed it is that lack of regulation which is why we need the test centers so we can validate the data because that's another thing is even and are you doing any standards work or are you too busy to be part of that aileen we definitely want to be part of that um and that's one of the main things that we hope to be able to give back when we become a test site is to to take a look at that
and again drawing from the background of a lot of folks that are part of this uh pretty impressive team um there's an awful lot to be learned again if you want to just use the analogy of cell phones look at what we went through before we finally standardized just on plug-in devices and i think that we can once again from a technology perspective we've got a lot of lessons learned and we can put some of those to good use uh coming up with standards for a small ui community
right and and you know i think everyone's starting to realize that even the standards work a lot of that i mean i've been part of this and gene has and whatnot for for many many moons um you know i think that a lot of that stuff comes up and people kind of put things out there write papers or whatever and and uh and that's nice and everything but really you can have a standard but if the information or supposed data contained therein is not validated in my mind
you don't really have much but anyone dare to comment on that well i'm i'm not certainly not going to disagree with you and in my experience there are a couple things that that are challenges uh one of the challenges that you know you're always going to face and there's good and bad in this and that has to do with uh proprietary type stuff um it's just it's just a challenge and it's something that you've got to work around
and something that you sometimes have to work harder to get people to see where the benefit is in having a standard but um unless you do that part right you're going to you're going to cost yourself time and energy and effort in the long haul right gene well there is a the very real need for a standard but then by the same token if you've been in the business for a while that standard is very closely aligned with your business plan
and the business and is what makes you money and that's where the the end goal is if you have investors that business plan is a basis for your roi and uh you know it's it's there's a fine line there and you know i kind of i can kind of sympathize with the folks that want to pull back from the standards because they don't want to give anything away from a business standpoint but then by the same token
you have those that have so much clout that they want to push their standards on so that you know you their product is the only thing you'll be able to buy once the standard is is uh established well it's a little bit of a go for it yeah it's a little bit in my mind it's like that the game with the the shells and the p you know because on one end you know they're the the fa says well we can't use data from over there in uh let's say iraq
and afghanistan which on a side note i don't know if you caught that but i i did a story about the findings where the c 130 overtook the shadow right right yeah that i think if that was the other way around we'd be this guy would be falling um but whatever that's conjecture but i will say that you do have you know everybody's brought us some good points and you have the shell with the p and they're moving that around on one hand
you know this is these numbers are are edged in granite the fa wouldn't really use them because they happen somewhere else but we know this to be true okay we'll show us the data and the information and then they're going to come back and say well it's proprietary and i can't i mean i've already asked for it you know if i'm going to open up a school to train people how to fly these systems it's not
you know i don't think it's going to be like the single engine model and a multi-engine model rating like ferment i have different sizes different classes different v and i got my v talls i got my whatever and i've asked okay well i'm going to need all the manuals the maintenance manuals the training manuals the system manuals and basically they looked at me and said you're you're uh you're crazy i'm not giving
you that stuff so you're not really playing a let's say a square game in the sense that we were trying to build these standards but you're just taking asking us to take this data on face value not going to work that is not going to work on or off maggie's farm okay so what's going to have to happen is it's going to have to be the business community and people oh i hit the business community in here
well the business community i can't there's no way i mean and this is one of the reasons i've given up with standards is i can't i can't justify hanging out for 10 years going to meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting and as in the case with the rtca sc203 they they folded up like the pup tent and now and now we're going to rebrand and we're doing the extreme makeover great and i wish them all the best
and the luck but i'm not signing up i just can't sign up for another five years with no legal income stream and that haven't wait yeah i mean you know i got the paperwork right here under the desk i haven't even broken out from astm 2005 and and i don't i still don't think they have a published standard dad's going to enlighten us um but you know even that stuff i you know i hear from inside the belt way that there's concerns from the the regulator that that some of the stuff in those standards will be very hard to verify
so it's not just me thinking this stuff up so you know the test centers are an integral part of this you know the standards are going to come out who's going to validate it who's going to have a plan to validate it and i i mean that's that's something that i did want to talk about because even the the part of the effort that i had with arizona is have you have you come up with a plan to say okay here's the standards let's plug these standards in
and let's start working this data have you have you got that far ahead um i'm not going to say we're on that page have we completely talked through that thought through that come up with a proposed um idea about just exactly how we do this yes we've done that have we implemented that no it's just we're not there yet i don't know that anybody is i think that it is way more complicated um and and necessarily
so but i think i think the challenge i think the challenge is to figure out how to not make it cumbersome you know you can do a lot of that kind of stuff in the background when you come up with rule sets and most of us have lots and lots of experience doing that so we can do that um all day long whether we can get those kinds of things through the system and implemented is going to be the first challenge
and if we do then the second challenge is how do we implement these in a business-friendly environment because you can regulate something to the point that you can't get anything done so i think it's going to be a huge huge challenge for us to define that balancing act but we're absolutely determined to have a business-friendly environment and so um i think that we're going to probably have to put um at least another full-time person on that one because it's going to it's going to need that just to get us through the whip it
i concur and i'm glad to hear that you're thinking that way because i think that's some of the other test sites i don't think that they really thought it out and i'm not deriding anyone but you know the business case making it work for small business i've been beating at drum for years and i think some people totally lose sight of that they just they just don't get that and that's one but i also think it's a very uh let's say integral part of the test site application should be hey
you know here's here is how we're thinking uh this thing needs to be done and this is how we would tackle it and i think that's almost as important as the airspace and uh some of the other factors for determining test test centers now and i don't well go ahead oh i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt i was just going to say i i completely concur i think that uh what we put together um is probably a very very good start at something like that
i just don't want to say that we think we've got the whole thing figured out neither do i want to to imply that uh we know all the answers i think we've got some really good ideas about how to do this but we'll have to temper all of that by what comes back um and and you know what kind of relationships we have with the fa and right now they're they're very very good um but i i i i guess my main point is we're walking into this with our eyes open knowing that this is not going to be straightforward or simple
and that it's going to take some time um but we're determined to do that right and to remain business friendly while we're doing it excellent that's excellent that's that's you know refreshing to hear that because like i said you know sometimes that uh that message gets lost in the um shuffle and i and you know from day one my thing is small business small business small business small business um they're the ones that can really um benefit from this technology as
you know upstream let's say of the consumer so the other thing i want to ask and i don't want to i don't want to put you on the spot none of this is meant to put you on the spot but have you have you heard any updates about um i mean because we know you know gary runs the missamatic on the uh sus news webpage uh any updates on um on on possible dates we're not going to pick these test sites are you addressing this to me yes oh
okay i'm sorry uh we have we have no information at all we don't have any insight uh or information i guess the one thing i will tell you um is that we know that that on the fa's official website um it did change i'm not exactly sure when we noticed a couple maybe a month and a half ago and it now says that there are 25 applicants um from 24 states that's on their official fa website we have we have no other information at all
well that's interesting only 25 because i i know that even from the fa they were saying they had uh they had calls and interest from from every congressional district at one time or two when this uh when the applications closed on the 6th of may when the last volume was submitted um their their websites that they had 50 applicants from 37 states and we just noted recently that it says 25 so that's changed
i have no insight into what that means um i i don't know all right well you know great conversation as always and in closing maybe you could give the listeners your your website where they could learn a little bit more about what's going on you have one absolutely and and we're updating it it's uh uh going to have a completely different look and feel here in about four or five days but the address is cal uas.com
okay that's simple enough l a s dot com i like that simple nothing that long-winded on that one okay well that's all the time we have for today i want to thank you for being on a gene thank you and uh i guess we'll we'll see everyone at the expo next week i don't know if there'll be a podcast i'm a little busy thank you very much patrick appreciate the opportunity hey thanks so much for coming on everyone have a good week
and we'll see you next week see you next week