UAS News Podcast — 2012-07-05
Transcript
Hey everyone, welcome to another informative installment in the series of podcasts highlighting the many possibilities for unmanned technologies. This is where the newsmakers come. Today's installment First to Deploy, UAS for search and rescue and law enforcement. I'm your host, Patrick Egan, and we have our series co-host and author of First to Deploy, Gene Robinson.
Hello everyone. Gene, you got a little perk in the step today, I can see it. Um, last week's guest, as you recall, we had to carry on the conversation by ourselves, Gene, and that was a rough one. But I guess Ben was fleeing the fires in Colorado and we're going to have to ask for a rain check or in this case a fire check.
And we're just glad everyone got out safe. I'm supposed to be in Colorado Springs coming up here soon, so I'll have to, I'll get to see some of that devastation firsthand. See what happened there. Let's do some current events.
I want to recap for everyone the AUVSA, AUVSI Board of Directors election and the SUAS news editorial picks. We'll recap those. We got Paul McDuffie, Chad Partridge, and Kyle Snyder. And, you know, I think these guys represent the future of where we need to go.
You can search for AUVSI on the SUAS news website for the candidate statements as well as why they were endorsed. And I think that's important. You should probably check that out and soon as voting closes on July 14th. It's important that you get out there and vote.
Also, I don't know if you caught it, it was up on the site. It was, I wrote, I authored a white paper empowering the public's privacy with ADS-B. Gene, did you check that out by chance or were you busy fishing?
No, no, no, I did happen to check that out, Patrick. And you know, that's going to be one of the things that we're going to have to continue to push is the education of the public and what they can do to identify when aircraft are in the air. And I think you mentioned just the app on your cell phone being able to see what's up there and what's around. I think that's a cool idea.
Well, you know, and like it stated in the paper, I mean, I think that people are just waking up to the fact that, you know, privacy is over and, you know, there's cameras everywhere. It's like that kink song. I forget the name of the, the name of that song, but I'm going to have to go back and relisten to that. But I do agree, you know, the public needs to know what's cooking and anybody, you know, that notion that, you know, well, if you're not doing anything wrong, you got nothing to worry about.
I mean, that's BS as far as I'm concerned. You know, we don't, we don't have to live like that. Oh, I wanted to say happy birthday, USA 236. You know, I hope you guys both had a good 4th of July.
Relaxed. It was quite pleasant not having to do anything for once. That's kind of how I felt. And the other big news is I'm a connection with Kimberly Gafoil from Fox News now on LinkedIn.
And that's the big news of the week. Anyway, moving along, I want to extend a warm welcome to Marcus Min. He is the lead generation guru for Technology Training Corporation. And he's agreed to come on.
He's, he's short on time, but he agreed to come on and give us a little insight into Technology Training Corporation and some of the symposiums that they put on. Hello, Marcus. Hello, Patrick and G. How's it going, buddy?
Have a good 4th of July? It was quiet. Took a couple days off. Finally got away from the office and had a vacation.
And now we're back. And it's weird coming back to the work in the middle of the week. I know exactly what you're saying. Well, okay.
So, you know, for the audience here, I bring these guests on and you're one of the guests we brought on. And I know you've gone back a few years. I'm not sure exactly where we met, but I remember the first time we met in person was at a UAS West in 2009, I think in Vegas. Yeah, we actually met through the Unmanned Systems Group and LinkedIn.
And then you and you, I think I was blogging about how Unmanned Systems should be called RPAs. And you invited me to your RPA group. And we started talking via LinkedIn. And then we actually got a chance to meet up at the UAS West in Vegas.
And that was a good show. I remember getting up there asking a question and I coined the shooting overseas contingency operation when the nomenclature had changed. That still cracks me up till today. But hey, you know, I guess it's all a PR thing.
Okay, well, for the benefit of the audience, Marcus, maybe you could give us a little bio on yourself and how you got to be the lead generation guru that you are today. I got hired here at LinkedIn at Technology Training Corporation as a marketing manager. And the president of the company, William Budding, saw my people skills, I guess, or go-getter skills as my way of going out there to do different conferences
and whatnot, meeting people, getting information, branding some lead generations, not only for attendees, but future prospects, offenders, and actually some and now a little bit more about speakers like yourself who has spoken at several of our conferences.
Just the kind of person I am going out there and starting things on my own and just going to get the business. Yeah, well, I mean, you guys are, you know, everything that you talked about, you, for me, you know, I had heard about your shows, the Technology Training Corporation shows, and, you know, people were this and that and him and in on but I got to tell you, the Zenith moment for me is that one in Vegas, I'm sitting there or not sitting there, but I'm standing there back with the refreshments.
And I'm side barring with a general from the joint chiefs of staff. And I'm like, okay, well, you know, I like to go to the top tier shows, because I like to talk to the top tier people. And that's a belief about as top tier as it gets, you know. So I knew at that point, I knew you guys were serious and you weren't horsing around.
And you know, that leads me to my next question. Marcus, without giving away secrets, how do you how do you how do you draw these types of folks in these top tier folks in?
Well, we're more of a technical kind of group. I guess you could say the nitty gritty. We sorry, there's another phone call coming in. No problems.
We target those that are like senior level engineers, we're more about the systems, for example, that's why it's called on man aircraft systems rather than vehicles. We grab, you know, chief technical officers, they will come in and give a technical brief rather than a sales pitch. This is nothing lagging or nothing disrespectful to any of our competitors. But we try to keep who we say we're going to have when we confirm somebody like, for example, back in the first week of April, we had the secretary of the Navy come out
and speak and he was confirmed on the brochure was confirmed through our agendas or emails and he stayed all the way through.
And we're very fortunate that we a lot of times we have a speaker that we say was confirmed, they actually stay on board. Now, you know, due to like everybody else, there's times where we'll actually lose a speaker, but we always find a great substitution or replacement for that speaker that we lost that will stay within that program, whether it be BAMs or Global Hawk or the Raven or for the US Army, Navy, Air Force or the Marines. That's something that we've always been able to do.
And I think now people are starting to realize that in the value for the dollar of everyone going to these conferences, people are going to their bosses and say, hey, I need to go to this conference and the boss will say, well, why?
Well, because we can network. We'll network with who?
At least when they come to our conferences, they'll know that they network with the right people. These are the buyers. These are the guys that actually are in acquisition that have the checks that purchase things or these are the guys that are technical enough that will know what programs or what information or answers to any of the problems that are out there. Right.
And, you know, even besides the technical people, I mean, you know, you got the secretary of the Navy, which is, you know, top tier person. Now, I was a speaker at UAS West earlier this year, and that was a heck of a show. I mean, you know, we had two congresspeople speaking at the same show. And, you know, you're talking about technical people and being able to sidebar with them.
Well, you know, here I'm at the show and it was Duncan Hunter and Susan Davis. And I was able to ask after they were done speaking, I asked for some assistance and I was going to try and do a whole show without mentioning the FAA at all. But I guess that's impossible. But I had asked both of them, their office for assistance with the getting on these, the ARC 2.0 and both of them agreed.
So, I mean, that's what I'm talking about with these technology training corporation shows. I mean, you know, you got two congresspeople, you know. That's a good thing. I mean, you're getting your money's worth.
We've been fortunate to have a couple of senators and a couple of congressmen. Like I said, we had the secretary of the Navy. We also had the president of Boeing Phantom Works make his first public appearance at our last Unmanned Aircraft Systems East Conference. So, we've been building a good repertoire of speakers and our reputation has been up and up and up.
So, that's a good thing. Yeah. And it's definitely cost versus value there. I mean, it's, if you go to the show, there's only several shows I go to a year and it's, you know, yours is one of them because you definitely get your money's worth.
Now, you know, I wanted to ask you too, because a lot of people talk about this, you know, there's this social media thing and is anybody making any money and is it working for you? Have you been working at social media angle or is it just kind of a coincidence?
Because like I noticed that there were a lot of my LinkedIn connections were at your show. I do work the social media as far as LinkedIn. I'm not a big believer in Facebook, although we're starting to get into it. But I think LinkedIn is the key to networking and marketing any of your product services or anything like that.
There's professional groups you can get into. You blog articles, you blog with your observations or your opinions and you can get great feedback and vice versa. As far as conferences, another site that I use is called Lanyard, L-A-N-Y-R-D. And through Lanyard, you use your Twitter.
Though Twitter is something that's a little, I still believe personally that it's more of a college thing of, you know, what am I doing now? It does help. And there's a lot of people who follow Twitter and they follow, if you get the right followers, like from CNN, who follow CNN, who follow, you know, AUVSI, follow technology training or IDGA, or who follow, you know, Boeing, Rockwell, Rockwell College,
I still call it Rockwell because my father used to work at Rockwell. You know, the Air Force, the Army, you start following them, they start following you, you start tweeting your, or tweeting, sorry, your information or whatever you have.
And then through Lanyard, you can tweet your conferences. So what I like to do is I like to find an article that has something to do with Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Like for example, I started to bring it up, but the FAA and Congress finally quote unquote saying that they're going to think about allowing UAVs or UASs in the commercial airspace. You tweet that and you tweet, you know, Patrick Egan is going to be speaking at the Unmanned Aircraft Systems West or the FAA will be discussing things at the UAS West Conference.
I do think it works, but there's nothing that beats the old-fashioned going out there and meeting, shaking your hand, they see your face, they have a name and they have a face and they know who you are and if you're a real person or not. Right. Yeah, I agree with you and your take on that too. It's kind of like a plusser, but you still need to get out there.
I've noticed that with you, you know, how you interact with the participants and attendees, you're really comfortable with the crowd and I think people pick up, you're a genuine guy, your business, I think people see that in you and it's definitely something I noticed with you talking to people at the show. And is that, you know, part of your professional ethos, your philosophy, is that just kind of the guy that you are?
A little bit of both, you know, I mean, I am a little bit more of a social butterfly so to speak, but I believe, you know, I'm not afraid to walk up to somebody, shake their hand, introduce myself, get to know them. I mean, I started in this industry as a job, you know, it was a paycheck and then now it's become more of an a passion of going out there and meeting people more because I believe this is where everything is going to go.
I think eventually, and I know I'm going to take some heat for this, but I think eventually a lot of things will become more remote controlled rather than an actual airline pilot in the cockpit.
I think eventually, maybe not for the commercial flights as far as passenger planes, but I do believe that cargo planes, for example, FedEx, UPS, those kinds of things will become more of a remote control piloted thing and that's something that I believe in. And to be honest with you, and this is I think why you and I, you know, get along so well, I believe in small businesses going out there and getting their share of that commercial airspace or that airspace in general. Yeah. And that's a big thing for the future because I think that's where UAVs are going to be.
Yeah, and I definitely agree and that was another thing I noticed at the UAS West Show is, you know, I had a pro-business message and everyone there is like, you know what, we are ready to get to business. We are ready to make money. We're ready to go and, you know, I think that's where people are waiting. I know that that's kind of one of Gene's beefs, although he doesn't really have any beefs, do you Gene?
No, no, not at all. Not at all. Happy as a clam over there. All right, well, and you know, the other thing I wanted you to do, Marcus, if you could, could you give people the web address so they can check out some of these upcoming shows?
Yeah, I mean, for one thing, for our main corporate site, you can go to www.ttcus.com. That's tango-tango-charlie-uniform-sierra.com. If you're interested in specifically the UAS conferences, we have them on both coasts. You can go to www.uaswest.com and www.uaseast.com and you can see the two different conferences, the two different speakers.
It's very different. The East Coast is a little bit more policy driven. As a vendor, possible vendor or an attendee, it's a little bit more the checkbook acquisition, guys, the decision-making guys that say, oh yeah, I want that product. Here's my check for blah, blah, blah.
In the West, you have those guys, but you also have the end users, because you get a lot of people who, you know, we're in Nevada, we're not that far from Creech and Nellis, where these guys go out there and they actually fly the UAV so they can come and give feedback at the conference. So they'll speak about what's working and what's not working, what they need and what they don't need. I think one of the biggest props, and I know I'm giving you a shout out, is to the Sollipsus, the Zeus program.
That's been something that's really been big out in the UAS West area. Well, and are you, do they have like a directory on that web page where people can get in touch with you?
You want to give your email address? Oh yeah, well if you, those who want to reach me, you can reach me at my email. It's my first initial M as in Mike, and then my last name again, MikeIndianovember at ttcus.com. That's mmin at ttcus.com.
If you want to email me any questions, whether it be exhibiting, attending, possibly speaking, just in more information, please just reach out and, or you can reach me through Patrick. You can do that. You can email me and I will forward your contact on to Marcus. If you're interested in seeing what kind of, let's say programs are happening at their shows, you can download my PowerPoint from UAS West on my LinkedIn page, or you can email me again.
I can send you the link. You could check it out. Marcus, I know you've got some lead generation to do. You have a short time, so I'm going to let you go.
I appreciate you coming on. Thanks a bunch. I hope you had a good time. I did.
Thank you very much, Patrick. I appreciate it. And Gene, good to finally meet you. Marcus, take care and we'll see you at the show.
All right, thanks. Bye-bye. Bye. Well, and, you know, we're going to move on now, Gene.
Let's see here. You know, we're, this, the podcast series is still looking for a sponsor. If you know anyone, don't keep it a secret. There's tons of business development going on out there and I'm kind of, find it hard to believe we don't have a sponsor.
Maybe some. Yeah, that is, that is kind of odd because I would have thought that someone by now would have really jumped on this. We've put a lot of good information out there and it's been kind of fun doing it. It has been fun.
It's kind of, I mean, I look at the numbers and even last, like overall, even yesterday we had about 200 people download the different podcasts and listen to them. And, you know, the day before it was like another 200. You know, I think we have nine of them or something on the scoreboard, eight or nine. I don't know.
Anyway, check them out. It's good legacy advertising piece, but, you know, enough pooch petting there. I want to, I want to move right into the next segment here and the big news and, you know, the milestone that you hit. As far as I'm concerned, this is the industry's first real how-to unmanned aircraft systems application handbook and it's available to the public.
So, you know, it just as a news thing, you know, we've hit a milestone, but how does it feel to be a published author? Well, to be quite honest with you, it doesn't feel much different, but I can tell you I never thought that it would take this much effort and this much time to put together something that I speak about on a daily basis. Seriously, it's almost, I hate to be, you know, use the female end of it, but it was like having a baby because I didn't think we were ever going to get it out. And it kept going on forever and ever.
The edits and the cleaning up, I thought I wrote pretty well until my editor got a hold of it and I kind of felt like it was written by a fifth grader after they were done with it. So, yeah, it's been quite the experience to put all this together and you write, you know, 50, 60,000 words and it gets paired back down to 40,000 words and you're going, wait, you're rewriting my book, what's going on?
Yeah, I know it's, I don't know, sometimes I notice too when I get real busy and I'm trying to write three, four different things and, you know, same deal, I'm trying to keep notes for a book, blah, blah, blah. And I'm just, and some people might have noticed, I start putting out some real things that need some extra editing. I don't know what the deal is, but I know that was a tough one and you, but I know it's a little arduous. I'm glad it's finally out there.
Now, you know, I read the advanced copy and I just got a real copy, but, you know, I've been kind of busy with some other things. Were there any notable changes in the final final?
I hate to admit this, as far as the content was concerned, the content really didn't change that much. However, I will have to admit that after the edits were done and I read over it again, it did read a lot better and it was a lot smoother. So, you know, I have to give them credit. They do what they do well and getting the extraneous these and that's and therefore out of there just really made it sound a lot better.
And in the end, it made the entire book a lot better. But I will say that it's still an ongoing profit. They're still saying that there's more that they could do and the beauty about it being an ebook is that we can put the new version up and really nobody even notices until they download it. And if they've already downloaded, they've read it and they will have to sum up my grammar and my mistakes.
But those folks that get it as we edit it will be getting a more polished version and we're continuing to do that. Yeah, well, it's a process and I know, you know, if nothing else, you know, you got to get a few sets of eyes on these things and, you know, you start rolling through there. I have to reread my stuff several times. If I don't, it just slips through there and I don't really have anybody editing my stuff.
I used to have the my wife edit some of that stuff, although she used to smirk and grimace and beat me up and I just couldn't take it anymore. I can look at that. Yeah, you're like, all right, I get it. I get it.
I get it. But it's kind of a funny thing. It's good to have someone objectively look at it. Okay, now I know it was a fast launch.
We had talked about it. We'd been, you'd been working on it and everything else. And I was just wondering, you know, did it correspond with any other special occasion or were you just like, hey, you know what, let's just put it to bed. Let's put it in the can.
Let's get it out. You know, that was more it than anything else because you can work on a project until the cows come home and you have to reach a point where you finally say, this is done. I'm going to get this out, you know, next day and let people read it and then we'll take the feedback and work from there. And to be honest with you, that's worked out pretty well because we've sent a couple of complimentary copies out to some of our favorite people and we've gotten some comments back that were pretty good.
And as we had discussed last year when we were even kicking the idea around and putting this book together, we thought about just doing nothing but missions. And I've already gotten some comments back saying, you know, the missions were really great. Are you going to do one with nothing but missions in there?
So I'm going to have to take a deep breath and sit down in front of the old piper again and start typing about. I've got about 10 missions that I would like to see in print that I think that people would find enjoyable just from, you know, the human perspective. Even as macabre as they can be, there's still some humor that can be found in it. And of course, there's a lot of technical data to be had too.
Yeah. And you know, that was the one thing I was saying with even the advanced copy, you know, the thing kind of begs to, let's say, be transformed into a training manual. And I think we had kind of talked about that early on. And so yeah, you may have to kind of go back, you know, but that's okay.
You know, take a little break, do a little fishing, go back and turn that puppy into a real training manual. I think, you know, the community is really thirsting for information. And like I was saying about this being a milestone is there are no how to, how do you apply this?
I mean, I get these questions all the time, you know, wow, how exactly does that work? You know, well, here's a book that will give you those case studies. We'll talk about what you need to do. There's so many, you know, there's so many different nuances or, you know, little details that come with experience that even after reading your book, it would be something that someone would have to take out in the field and almost, you know, take, let's say a page from the book and say, okay, well, I'm going to try this.
And I'm going to try these different things that Gene's talking about here and see how that kind of works for me. And I think that, you know, they could just keep getting more and more out of that book. I mean, but you, but you think that that'd be a good way to maybe apply that book?
Absolutely. You know, that's, and you talk about revisiting the book there, the experience, the eight years experience that we have flying in the mass and doing search and rescue search and recovery is sort of a double edged sword. We've done it so long, it's become rote. I don't even really think about some of the processes that we do.
And as we've gone through this book, and we've written some of the processes out in longhand and had to dissect them, each and every one to see what's going on. I discovered that there were little tweaks and little things that could be done as we went. And we've taken them out in the field. And sure enough, they were.
So yeah, the training manual situation is definitely something that has to be looked at. And there are people that are already interested in that, to turn it into some sort of syllabus. I think the addition of more missions, more environments, different places that we've been, interesting places like Mongolia and Mexico and Jamaica. I mean, there's just not every day that you hear about people flying, a specter flying, laying on the steps of Mongolia looking for the Tumagangas Khan.
So that's pretty good. That's a good application there. And then there are some things that we did in Jamaica that were not so much UAS related, but they were, it's a good story. Unfortunately, it's driven by the loss of someone's brother.
But you have to kind of take all that and stride, or you'd go crazy trying to do this work. Yeah, well, there's some points in there that you're making that I think I want to expand on. And that is, like you said, you've got eight years of experience. There's a lot of stuff that's probably become second nature to you.
And I noticed too that the different people in this field, when they're talking to, let's say, people who don't really know the technology, and you listen to them speak, and they just are rattling this stuff off like it's second nature, you know, it's instinctive. And it's like hitting these people with the fire hose. And I'm sure that there's a lot of that too. Like you said, when you were writing the book, coming through there and go, Hey, you know, I forgot about this, or I forgot about that, or x, y, z, or how you do this or whatever else.
And I think, you know, even going back and thinking about that and turning that into a manual, probably extract more of that. And those are the little details, you know, I think that that last 20% the details that are that really are hard to nail down, but really pull things together. Now, the other thing with that, you know, I was thinking about doing a I had had mold this one over with Gary, but even doing a video type of training videos,
you know, or series of them or whatever else, man, that you get that manual together and a syllabus together, I think you could put together a training program, put it on video, and then also take the show on the road and start training people on how to really ring ring the last dollar out of their system, especially now that law enforcement's ready to roll any plans like that.
You know, that's an excellent idea. I've always been kind of a big proponent of CDTS or computer directed training systems. And the online systems have expanded to the point, as you know, when we did with our tap of using the flash plugins and that sort of thing, you can really do some incredible stuff with it. And being able to use streaming video now, you can actually go out into the field, you can you can take the video, you can see what's happening and get an explanation at the same time.
I think it's a great idea. I think that if you could find someone to sponsor that sort of thing and put together that entire series, it would be very helpful to law enforcement, fire and first responders. These people are trying to figure out what the best way is to spend their FEMA money, their grant money. And this would help them make better decisions.
Yeah, you know, I thought about maybe teaming with a university, it's got like some sort of film production. Because, you know, really, you know, there are a lot of technologies out there now where you can produce a lot of this stuff yourself. But you know, you get you get a crew that you know, no sound who know how to roll the camera and can edit. And, you know, the teleprompter makes you look like you know what you're talking about.
Couple of folks are using them. But they do work. You can speak to the camera and say, you know, it's a lot of the lower productions, people are reading off of a script and, you know, yada yada. So it'd be nice to do a real production that you could get out there.
And then, yeah, again, you know, put that together with some some live training. I think it'd be a slam dunk moneymaker. It's low hanging fruit, especially with all of the police departments coming online, that would be a real foot in the door for them, especially with the privacy issues. To say, okay, well, we're going to use this for search and rescue.
And every every town has like, we have like a dart, which is that they have the water rescue people. And we have groups that go out and look for missing people and like you guys, I mean, you did some work with that Texas EquiSearch, right?
Yes, we've done plenty of work with Texas EquiSearch. And they, they have a lot of different technologies that they bring there like side cam sonar. And, and just because it's water doesn't mean that we don't get get called in because we have to water recovery shortcut it as well. I saw those pictures.
Yeah, that that exposure to that sort of environment has been really, really helpful in formulating how we approach searches as well. Well, yeah, you're working with other professionals. And I'm sure you know, you fit into a certain part of that and what the process is and how the process works and who you talk to and, and how to efficiently apply the different assets, you know, I and I think that that's that that translates in the book too. And people can read that and you're getting again, it's distilled down, you don't have to spend the next five years doing it.
You, you call Gene, and you get a copy of his book, and you go through there and you you learn through his experience. And that's, you know, that's what we're trying to do at UAS news too. It's, it's impart that knowledge, the empirical knowledge on people so they don't have to reinvent the wheel. And I think that it's, you distilled it down, you put it in the book, it's a great deal.
How's it being received? Are you, are you, are people downloading?
Are people checking it out? Yeah, I think that the, the, the, I think the real issue right now is, is yes, we're getting some folks that are downloading it and I'm getting some very positive comments back. Again, you know, like I said, the missions comment has been the most prevalent. I've had a couple of manufacturers download the book and they said it was very good and they're looking at integration, that sort of thing, which gives them some ideas to move ahead on.
So, well received? Yes, absolutely. You know, one of the things I think that kind of slowed us down a little bit is we released it on July 2nd, which July 4th happens to fall in the middle of the week and everybody's either taking Monday, Tuesday off for a long weekend or they're going to take Thursday, Friday off for a long weekend. So, it, we've got to get over that holiday situation and get people back into the groove again and then we'll probably see a lot more input.
But other than that, I mean, it, I've had some folks read it that, that I gave, I let them read it with great trepidation because I consider them to be very, very well established writers and have a lot of expertise in that field, which I do not. And they said that it was well written and they liked it. You know, obviously a few tweets here and there that need to be done, which my editors are working on. But, you know, other than that, I've been very pleased with the comments that we've gotten.
Yeah, the week might be a little rough, but as soon as you're on Oprah and I know that Oprah's people called you and your schedule. I don't think I'll be jumping the couch on Oprah any time soon. Right. Really?
Hmm. I figured it'd be right up her, right up her viewer's alley. Yeah. No.
Well, you know, it is a rough weekend and also summertime. I noticed it's really hard to pin guests down in the summertime and this week and people being off kind of like Marcus was saying too with, you know, coming back to work in the middle of the week, trying to catch up and the phone calls and the emails is driving me schnitz. I got telecoms all day myself, but, you know, that's good news that it's being well received. I knew it would be, you know, you got the goods.
It's hard to put that all down and what's important and what to leave out, but, you know, it's good. People can get it. They can read it over the summer. And then again, you know, if you need to come back and revisit it.
Plus I think in the future, as you progress and you go on, there might be a part two or whatever. So, you know, just keep your eyes out peeled for that. I know that I wanted to talk about also that we are doing a promotion. SUIS News is doing a promotion and our audience listening, writing, or I'm sorry, reading or writing.
I mean, you can always write something for SUIS News and submit it. We may even print it. You never know. But our audience has a chance to win a free copy of the book.
If you go on to our Facebook page and like us, we're going to pick at least one random winner that likes us during the month of July and you'll get a free download of First to Deploy. And you can't beat that. Everyone loves free. Some people, it may not be your cup of tea.
Some guys are doing other stuff. I would suggest even people that are just going to use this for whatever, Ag, even aerial photography, whatever, get the book, read some of the processes that are in there because it's going to give you some food for thought. It's going to save you some time. That was one thing I noticed even doing the aerial photography.
Learning the, let's say, the cone of view from my camera and what angle and what height and time of day and all these considerations, I think those are in your book and they overlay onto other applications. Do you agree?
Yeah. I mean, when you get right down to it, Patrick, we're just really being photographers and we've just changed the tripod up a little bit. The tripod is several hundred feet in the air rather than sitting right in front of us, which makes it a little bit more of a challenge. That's a part of taking aerial photography.
You've got to keep up with all those variables. Yeah, there's that. And there's also, I would say people are, I notice some people would be jumping on to new systems and a new system and a new system, but the thing is, is really you have to pick the right system for your application and you have to learn that system and even getting the right shot is kind of a perishable skill. I noticed that for myself.
It's like, you got to keep getting on that. I even hardly fly. It's just kind of ridiculous. I took the Cracker Barrel out and it's been in the box for two years and the wing was all warped and the kids wanted to fly.
The robotics club wanted to fly it and it was, it needs some work. Let's just put it that way. But it is perishable. But I do think that that overlays and I think that you're impart some excellent procedures and whatnot and people would gain even if that's the SAR thing is not their thing.
Yep. Well, you're going to have to keep us aware of that. Hopefully next week we're going to try and get Peter Hunt Blienberg on. He said he would do it.
Although he's out of town too. That should be an interesting 45 minutes. We're going to talk about the global airspace integration effort, four corners of the world, China, India, South America, Russia, Europe, of course. We're going to talk about the IKO process, Euro K, European Commission.
We'll probably run long on that one. That'll be difficult to cram that all into 45 minutes. But we're going to give it a whirl. The last thing I want to talk about, Gene, was I noticed that you grabbed one of those X8s, which is, for you, should look a little familiar.
I know you're working it over at Groups. I saw that. I'm kind of impressed. I'm seeing you're putting your years of experience in that.
You want to give us the skinny on that. Sure. When they announced that aircraft back last December, I could obviously see the similarities. Oh, yeah, just a little.
But when they announced the price of the aircraft, I think the opening price was $169, I sent them an email and said I wanted to buy a dozen of them. That didn't receive any sort of comment at all from them. I don't know why, but it may be that they didn't want to answer the guy that they spent the most time on his website. I had to wait this long to actually get one.
They've done a lot of really good things with this. We've discussed how the PacRAM and the Asian countries are going to be coming up in UA and UA technology because they're so good at reverse engineering things that have already been done. They've done that with this wing. It's a nice wing.
It's perfect for a hobbyist to start out with. My approach was, what would I need to do to take it out into the field and make it work for me and make it useful for me?
That's what I've been doing. We've gotten a long way on it. It's probably going to maiden this week. A lot of the work is done for you, obviously with the EPO construction.
It's going to be tough. We've toughened it up a little bit more because we know that we can be really hard on aircraft. It's a good aircraft. I'm going to say that right now.
From the outset, it looks good. The X5 has gotten panned quite widely as not being a very good flyer. I'm hoping that it's not a knockoff of the X5. I hope that they've made some improvements on the X8 to make it a better flyer.
Initial reports are looking good. We're continuing on with our improvements to it, adding aluminum spars and reinforcing and doing the ABS. I've already made the molds for the ABS kit plates and that sort of thing. Looking forward to getting that one in the air.
My impression is that it's going to be a good flyer. We had talked about that before. Like I said, I've seen the improvements that you're making. The years of experience are shining right on through there.
I can see that. Maybe they'll say, what is that?
Imitation is the best form of flattery. Be nice, I guess, if you could get some improvements on that and you got something that you could actually work with. I know you're a manufacturer, but I don't know how you're going to beat $169. It's got to be a tough one.
I know you don't get as robust a bird, but... When you can throw several birds at it for the same price that you'd spend on one, you have to look at that. Attrition is not as big of a deal, especially if you can protect your equipment. It looks like it's going to be quite capable of protecting the equipment.
Again, the proof is going to be in the pudding. I plan on taking the aircraft out and get some altitude and point the nose right straight at the alfalfa just to see if we can get the dreaded flap or the flutter going on. That's always been a problem with the wing and not being able to make the wing stiff enough to keep it from fluttering when it gets into a certain unusual attitude. We always get them in unusual attitudes.
If they flutter catastrophically, we're going to lose some equipment, and that's just not a good thing to do. Hopefully, you'll get something that is at least usable, and it'd be nice if you could work with one of these companies. I know that a lot of them are kind of independent. It's a kind of a funny thing, the progression.
They've got on the boards. They've obviously seen what the community wants and is using and tried to build to that. It'd be interesting if we could get these things nailed down. You guys could use something like that.
I don't know. It'd be great collaboration, but who knows?
Moving out into the future, you could spend more time on finding people than building planes or, let's say, doing engineering work for people for gratis. I wish you all the success with the book. We're coming down here on 30 seconds. I'm going to be able to say that I knew Gene when before he was an author of a best-selling book.
I wish you all the greatest success with it, Gene. I think, again, you've done something for the community. It's a real milestone. Good luck with that, buddy.
I guess we'll talk again next week. Okay. Sounds good. I've enjoyed the show, and it was great having Marcus on.
The guy seems really dynamic. You should check out his shows. See you next week. Bye.