UAS News Podcast — 2013-01-29
Transcript
Music Alright hello everyone and welcome to the next installment of the UAS News Podcast series where we interview news makers and discuss news and applications important to the global unmanned technologies community. I'm your program host and I'm not from Essex if you couldn't tell, Patrick Egan and I'd like to say hello to our co-host Gene Robinson. Gene. Hello sir, how are you today sir?
Hey you know it's another beautiful day here in California, glad to be back from cold southern South Dakota. You know it is a little bit, I like a little bit better here to climb. Anyway we're going to march right on into this. I know that Gene is calling in live from where are you Gene?
I am in sunny San Diego as well Patrick. We're at the AFCEA show that's the Armed Forces Communications and Engineering Association show. It's typically where you have you know a lot of vendors that are you know looking to go to the military and show their wares. We've got obviously the big names like Flexora and you know Whitby and those folks who are here.
I should probably be there but you know we're trying to save some money right now with the Army. I think that's pretty well understood. Everybody out here is talking the same buzz that the budgets have dried up and there's not any money to really do much shopping today but they are still here and they are still going to put as many wares as they can out in front of them. Well you can always window shop if you could get the money to travel.
All right well hey that's good. Well you know I'm glad to see that you're there. You were there, are you vending or are you part of a panel?
What are you doing there Gene? Actually I'm a guest of a company called Information Processing Systems. We are putting together an integrated package to be able to use unmanned aircraft ROV, UUV and UGV data into a cohesive package and distribute it. Working with some of the Esri folks and the GIS stuff trying to get some of that integrated as well.
So I mean it's as much fun for me to come and work with these guys and integrate some of the stuff that we do and it's been pretty educational so far just in the day that we've spent setting up and working with them. Excellent, excellent. We'll have to hear a report about that next week. Any other news stories catch your attention this week?
I mean there's always a lot of stuff going on but anything in particular catch you this week? Well of course you know the military budget thing has probably been the first and foremost on my mind and that has apparently taken quite a toll. There's a lot of folks that are in the air aerospace industry that are beginning to lay off people which is pretty interesting and I'm sure you since you work for the warfighter and are in that game you can probably comment a little bit further on that can't you?
Yeah well it's just you know I had the I got the sit down and the you know that's not we're not spending anything until further notice. We got we got to wait for a budget. I'm a little let's say I'm a little I got some concern there because I don't think we've had a budget for what we're almost five years in now with no budget. So I'm a little concerned there but you know hey I'm a hustler man.
I'm out here and I'll make it you know. I got other things going on and you know we'll get it together. One thing I did want to talk about I've been you know talking to people around the world and you know one lots of positive feedback about the podcast. People really think we're providing a service to the community that has never existed and that with that we have a responsibility and there's always there's always this responsibility you know but we have a responsibility to disseminate this information to the public.
Try and help people understand what's really going on out here you know in the in the community and I understand that and I think we do that. Mr. Kitty knock it off. Jesus I work for this guy over here.
Anyway one other one other thing I wanted to talk about is I did hear some scuttlebutt about the test centers and we may hear some information in mid to late February about that. That's what I'm hearing. Now I'm going to venture a guess that several of these test centers will be in close proximity to certain DOD vendors maybe where they're currently testing or you know current or convenient proximity for their needs.
You know that's what I'm that's that's the if I had to do my car knack that's what I would do but you know if you tell me am I wrong you think it'll be subsidized for small business guys to come out like you and fly for five hundred dollars a week am I all wrong what do you think?
All right that's pretty unlikely but I think you'll probably make it for pretty safe bets. Go ahead and throw a couple out there I'm going to say Fort Sill and New Mexico State what do you think?
I'm going to throw those two out. What do you think?
New Mexico State's already got pretty much has a test center you can go out there and you can get you know as Doug Doug came on and told us you you could come out there and get in the program but I have a feeling there's going to be one up there somewhere close to the the Boeing Institute facility because where they fly now technically yeah yeah technically up there uh you know what they're doing is uh
I don't know that's that doesn't really jive with current policy but that's a show for another time then I'm thinking down here you know people were telling me anything in California was crazy talk but the more I look at that China Lake uh Southern California deal boy you get you get a hit a couple of big vendors right there and you know that's all I'm going to say for right now on that one I don't think we're going to see five hundred up or a week thing
you know uh I don't think that's going to work it's hard to hard to support you know radar and infrastructure and roads and people and but that's me we'll see what happens for sure anyway I want to march into this this week's episode number 37 is titled know your animal rights and the reason it's it's called that is we have a guest on from shark and shark is showing um geez I'm going to let Steve Hindi go through that
and he's our guest and we're also going to discuss rise of the drones that program the nova program and that ought to be pretty interesting a lot of feedback from the community is not positive but let's start with our guest shark and for those that don't know it stands for showing animals respect and kindness and shark was the group that got shut down a few months back at the pigeon shoot in hamburg pa
and so what I'd like to do as we usually you know do is we have our guests come on and introduce themselves to the audience with a little bio what you do how you got involved with unmanned aircraft could you could you help us out with that steve yes good morning pat and good morning gene uh thank you for having me on shark as you said stands for showing animals respect and kindness and we are a not-for-profit animal um uh
you know an animal organization we try to promote the protection and the proper treatment of animals and one of the ways you know we've got a we have a long history of um not not protesting very much but rather using uh cameras and video cameras oftentimes with long-range lenses and you know and night capabilities and all that kind of thing to document and expose the things that we believe are cruel because then we give it to the media uh
now of course so much on the internet we give it to the courts if it applies and the legislators if we're trying to get laws changed and um so rather than going out and you know telling people what we think we would rather be able to give them documentation and let them make up their own mind and that's been very successful for us and a few years back you know well when we're going after some of these issues uh the first thing that the people who were mistreating animals do is try to hide
and you know i felt gee if uh but i'm a private pilot for one thing uh inactive at this point but but i've flown and um and we've we felt that if if uh certain things were viewable from the air that that would uh that would be very good and because of my my enjoyment of flying i you know i started taking up flying uh small uh copters we started out i started out with little blade helicopters little tiny ones
and then little bigger ones and and um then moved into the first generation optic well actually went to a 500 class tally uh from there and that was when i first tried to put a camera on and do some video taping and you know it worked but then along came the the octocopters the uh the the microcopters and and that worked a lot better and at this point i'm flying a sinistar eight uh frame and gimbal with the microcopter electronics
and boy you know it's really developed into a quite a nice little system and you know it's a so i basically i've used my hobby uh and donated what we have shot what i've shot in into the organization for its use um and i don't pay that never have been paid i've always been a volunteer uh but but some of the images some of the images have been very very effective right well you know that that seems to be the uh the thing again that saying that the picture is worth a thousand words
so and it sounds like you know this is this is another common thread that we get almost weekly you know here you are uh you know an rc hobbyist guy and you're flying for fun and whatever and you've you know you got like the the peanut butter cup deal where you add the camera to it and you're like hey this is kind of cool and it kind of evolves into something where you say hey this is a useful tool
now um you know to being a hobbyist and then see you brought this to this uh this organization you volunteer to um and you go out there and i guess you know i checked out the website and and the premise of what you're saying and so i mean you know uh you go out here and you're like okay well we're going to try and figure out or discern what's going on in this situation um and the one that brought
you the most coverage or news coverage just recently was the uh was the pigeon shoot shoot down um yeah and you know i have to say i i get that one a lot and and another one that we're going to mention later on but i you know i gave a talk at silicon valley three weeks ago something like that and that was probably the last time i heard that and people are like yeah well what do you think of that yeah shooting down drones i'm like hey when
you start breaking out the guns in close proximity to people i'm concerned personally people start shooting stuff down i think that's a little wacko that's me but uh maybe we can talk about that incident a little bit well in order to in order to shoot down the drone they were shooting over the road because you know the drone was they were in one place we were in another the drone was you know kind of in between
and so they were they were shooting over roads over homes that stuff's coming down at some point and uh yeah it was not only was it obviously dangerous it was expressly illegal but unfortunately out out in pennsylvania the places that hold these pigeon shoots have local authorities and sometimes even state authorities who are perhaps more subservient through these shooters than the law and i i know that sounds harsh
but i've been dealing with these people for a couple of decades and i'll guarantee it's absolutely true well and that's nothing new here i mean uh we got the same situation out here in california they got these these clubs and i mean i'm not maligning people that have are part of uh hunting clubs but i guess it's kind of like the country club of old where you went and did business and i guess people do that
now they you know member of a club and they do business and it's a social and business thing so i know what you're talking about but uh i see you know that's kind of interesting that you say that shooting over roads i mean i said that's kind of the thing i'm thinking you know that's a little little wacko breaking out the guns is just kind of a weird thing to me but so you're out there you're uh you're taking pictures of these things
and it's not always uh pigeon shoots i noticed on the website uh that you guys do some other stuff and maybe you could give the website could you could you give folks the website so they could go and see the world sure our main website is shark online.org that's all one word just shark online.org uh the one that really has the most to do with the PA situation is pachame.com uh and and and and if you go to youtube
you know you can you can do a search on pennsylvania pigeon shoot and some of the videos that will come up will be uh you know related on on my flights that i've uh shot and donated to the organization not only have we have we documented uh you know some pretty nasty animal abuse but at one point we documented that the landowner of this particular shoot was was also burning burning the pigeons and uh
and other garbage and was throwing tires in there as an accelerant which of course is absolutely illegal and highly unwise on an environmental basis so it's um it's it's the equipment is doing some incredible work that really i think is helpful to just about everybody who cares about the environment animals the law and uh unfortunately the the FAA is is a little bit down on it uh they're trying to say that this is a commercial thing
but it really isn't i mean i'm doing it as a hobby and uh and you know just i'm just allowing it to go to the animal organization so you basically take the photos and you're donating them to the animals and the animals don't have any root rice coupons to share with you at this point is that what you're saying right the animals aren't paying i'm not getting paid it's just you know um in fact you know there was a story about a hobbyist uh some months back who was just flying around his hobby aircraft
and he and he shot that uh slaughterhouse in texas i believe it was that was dumping blood into the local river yeah we ran we ran that story at suas news and that definitely that went worldwide a lot of a lot of companies picked that up news companies the other thing the good news with that one i don't know if you saw the follow-up story they're actually i think using some of those photos to prosecute the uh the owners of the the principles of that meat packing plant
i don't did you catch that follow-up story yeah yeah i mean it was really it was you know from beginning to end it was put to good use and and i think that that that is a good thing that's a good thing for all of us we didn't want we as a as a society did not want that plant polluting that river dumping blood in and all that you know people are living there and and so yeah it's it's a you know we
and you know all all of us should be flying safely we know this and you know we don't fly over people and and you know we fly within the the altitude limitations and it's but this is this is not unlike you know it's just pretty much like a news helicopter you know they could they could fly in and they see something you know that they that they need to shoot want to shoot and people down there you know uh
so let's say it's a chase scene or something the police are chasing the bad guys or whatever well the bad guys don't want to be filmed either but um you know so long as it's being done safely um you know what's the matter with us yeah and we i would agree with that jean do you do you have anything you want to add i know you know jean does a lot of volunteer work too jean yeah and and as a 501 c3 steve
i know exactly what you're talking about because the fa is kind of looking at us pretty closely and the reason i got my 501 c3 is that the irs defines an ir 501 c3 a non-profit as a non-commercial entity so i've got another government entity telling me that i'm not commercial so that's why i went for that that avenue now we have in the past been contacted by the fa and rather than being a commercial operation
now they're saying it's by intent you know is your intent other than a recreational process which to me it's you know there you're in the whack-a-mole situation no matter what happens no matter what you do they're going to whack you on the head so that's the kind of the thing that i've run into and i'm sure you run into the same thing is that is that a correct statement yeah pretty much it what the what the deal really is in pennsylvania is like
i said the people that we're dealing with they are very wealthy and they are very politically connected and and in fact when i was contacted by the fa they told me they had been contacted by the state police and what's funny in a kind of a dark way is that the state police i literally when we're out there i mean you know i was uh there was somebody did a hit and run on me where we i had a little camera on my head
and we filmed you know they saw that the whole incident was filmed people have pulled guns on us they've shot in our direction they have us open us with weapons in this and and the state police usually won't even show up because like if we're off the road or whatever they just they just won't even show up and then when they do like the guy who did the hit and run which was it was it was so well documented by this little camera
right on my ear i mean he was moving fast he purposely did it and and they gave him like a few like standing traffic tickets like parking tickets guy never even had to show up in court and uh and i mean really whacked me so uh then for the state police rather than deal with people shooting over the road shooting rifles and in fact on this property not even supposed to shoot rifles um instead of dealing with that they go crying to the fa
and the fa comes off it's just it's kind of crazy it seems like in some cases our priorities are not quite in order yeah um we've seen uh we've seen that before yeah i think we got something going on in the background but we've seen that before things don't make sense i know you said that uh the club has since installed a helipad uh non-charted helipad which is which is kind of funny that they would go through that expense to try
and bar you from flying and i know also that you were you guys were looking for aviation attorney in in in pennsylvania is that correct steve yes we'd love to find an aviation attorney if there's anybody out there who thinks they can help us out they could give us a you know they could email us at info at shark online.org um because we we could use an attorney there and and you're right they they built this helipad
and the the owner of the property also owns a pool company and so they used pool tiles to build the helipad it's it's something to see it's uh and to the best of our knowledge that thing has been around now for a number of months uh in fact you're probably looking over a year and it has never ever had a single bit of traffic uh right so the only reason the guy put it up apparently was to then try
and use it to say oh well then you guys can't fly around here right well you know again i mean if it were me i'm a hobbyist i'm flying under ac 9157 have a nice day you know uh but it does well that's pretty much what we said yeah i mean i'm not an attorney but you know until the animals uh start coughing up some cash sounds like you're a hobbyist to me the other thing with that is it sounds to me like um
you know uh people are using political influence to uh you know let's say kind of hide what they're doing to me you know if you're doing activity this is me personally if you're doing activities uh and you're kind of ashamed of other people seeing them or hearing about them you know you might want to do something else that's me cookie that way if you go to pa shame you'll see a lot of that we literally as we're filming
you know at the entrances of these clubs when our people are filming there people are coming in with masks on uh it's really strange the way it works they are assumed they'll have their license plates oftentimes covered up which of course is illegal to be on a public road with a covered plate and the authorities have never ever issued a single citation for that so yeah things get pretty wacky out there in pennsylvania
and and and we're used to like the problems with the state law enforcement uh but when it when it gets to the faa that's you know i i was really really disappointed that federal would come in and try and cover for these guys and i hope that it doesn't continue well you know i didn't have a lot of experience with dealing with the federal government but i will tell you steve that there's plenty of room for disappointment uh with that supposedly represent
you and it's really too bad you know as a that plucky you know kid with the gleam in his eye the civics class and representative government and yada yada and the letters that i've seen the uh now administrator of the faa right back to uh congresspeople and whatever i mean if i was an elected uh congressperson and i got a condescending letter like that man i'd be hopping mad you know i got you know half a million people voted for me to represent them in a district
and you're treating me like this i mean the problem is my friend is accountability there's none so anyway that's that's just you know part of the thing of uh of being here and and uh dealing with this and you know it sounds like you're doing good work i mean i'm not a uh i gotta be honest i mean i i'm not i'm a vegetarian but i'm not like you know hard over on the animal rights thing but i mean you know we don't want to uh there's we should extend humanity to the animals personally that's how
i feel but um you know someone did suggest too at the last talk i gave is maybe we should develop a small unmanned aircraft that flies like a bird and they could shoot those make sense for the future you know yeah you know if they'd stop shooting those birds maybe we'd bring in a bunch of little drones and we just let them shoot at them that you know that would actually be a sport in fact i guess it's a growing sport there are people that are doing that they've got these drones streaking across the shoot area
and they take shots at them it's and i've seen some video of it looks kind of fun uh and i'm not i'm not anti-gun i own guns but in this case you've got people blasting away at hundreds of animals and many of them are shot and left to die out in the countryside over hours or days none of them are huge they're all just dumps like garbage and and i do i wouldn't have to be a quote animal activist to find that offensive in fact i'm a former hunter who was it is what got me to leave
i was a hunter when i saw it and i was just outraged and i finally decided i'd rather protect animals and kill them anymore right well i think you know we threw out a business plan there for somebody in this field as you know you make make targets you know there's a business for you you can make a few million bucks doing that maybe and uh you know so that's really interesting and and before we get into segment two
i i wanted to ask you about this because you know we're going to talk about in segment two we're going to talk about uh rise of the drones the nova program which i just watched the other night and i saw you know you were um that you were interviewed on that i don't really you know i don't want to give away the next segment but let me say i didn't really feel like they were focused on the good work
you were doing it's more it seemed to me focused on the sensationalism of you being the first guy to be shot down it came away with a little bit of that thought and it yeah i i would have done the show a little bit differently but of course that's me and uh i appreciate that i appreciate what they did i i would have done it a little bit differently right well i mean you know you did get some uh exposure um
you know i mean i don't know how much film they rolled on that one and you had a pretty short piece um but again i didn't i didn't really feel like they were saying hey you know here's a let's say a a positive use for this technology it was more like you you were the first guy to get shot down we're going to have more of this in the future yada yada i did hear you say hey i got a lot more so it sounds like uh
you know you're prepared to collect the data that you need to collect and um you know move forward anything else you want to add all right well we were you know i'm going to continue to develop this and somewhere down the road you know i think this this can be used for so many different things uh search and rescue um uh you know environmental and just you know it just it really it goes on and on it's going to be every day down the road a piece this is going to be everyday usage it's just going to be one of the tools that somebody doing any number of different tasks
i think is going to have with them and uh because you know we're rather limited with our two legs on the ground but all of a sudden you can fly like a bird with camera on there's a lot of things that are going to be able to happen you know and disaster relief and stuff like that just finding people in places where you can't even take a boat sometimes if you've got flooding just the nature of the environment
so it's it's almost limitless what can be done so the work that uh that i and my friends are doing in order to put this together i think is uh leading is helping to develop into something that a lot of other people are going to be able to use uh and i concur with that and that's one reason we had you on is we like to highlight and showcase uses for this technology besides military uses because we're preaching at a choir over here
i mean jean's been doing search and rescue for like almost nine years right jean you got that right and i agree completely with the alternate positive uses yeah i mean you know there's just so many i always say this too i mean i've heard of so many different ideas for applications for this technology it's uh and and a lot of times there's a few times i will have them like wow i never thought of that man that's a great idea
but i think until we get this common sense regulation we're not going to really uh let's say be able to realize the maximum that this can do for people besides you know feeding a hungry world and you know like the thing with the pig blood and the river hey i'm a downstream neighbor i don't want to drink that man you know uh there's a lot of things i don't i don't want to you know have to be subject to
and i think that this technology can help with that so what that's going to do is that it offers a segue into segment two here and steve you're welcome to stay on board here and comment as we go through this but uh you know i've been talking to people in the community um talked to another gentleman last night and we were talking about something else a couple other subjects but man he brought this one up not happy about rise of the drones jean did
you see the episode all right as a matter of fact saw it when it first ran and was just i had to shake my head through the entire thing of course i mentioned most of the the war fighter uses of it and they really got down into the into the dirty of targeting and putting the crosshairs on the individual and uh you know we've we've been lionized so much in the past as an industry and uh as usual the the top names are in there the predators
and those sorts of guys that carry munitions and they were showcased and they were showcased in probably the worst possible life they could for an unmanned aircraft even though they weren't protecting the war fighter it's it's still and it is reality you know you've got to give them that much but it was portrayed in such a negative fashion that uh it's gonna we're we're gonna all be painted with that brush yeah
well you know um i mean i i have a lot of notes on that i will say that i was very disappointed with the content and the slam uh you know they could have talked about some of the stuff that we had already talked about in the show they did not but you know being where we are now and i mean i've been uh you know let's say i'm a veteran of some major publications and news outlets in in the country and world
and i will say that uh you know journalism has changed the idea you know if r.
murrow smoking a cigarette and investigative journalism is done uh most of these are people trying to write pieces 500 words capture your interest you know something kind of salacious i need to sell this piece for 300 that's how i make my living very few outlets still have you know reporters on staff and are doing the investigative journalism not that i'm trying to malign the whole industry but you know we can we can all see that out there reading the news every day
now even worse in this case the business insider gary sent me a link the business insider contends that this episode was a lockheed martin funded infomercial okay and i guess lockheed martin is an underwriter where i was an underwriter of this program or episode i don't know for sure uh the other thing that they said uh and i'm quoting and comes dangerously close to advocacy okay so it appears to me this stakeholder that the advocacy has been being pushed uh towards this being a very controlled industry with very limited access to the national airspace system your thoughts gene yeah
you know and pbs has always been one to promote advocacy in a lot of different ways and i i think that's kind of paradoxical that they would say that you know that's exactly what the show was because that's they generally tend to advocate for the the science and technology end of it they tend to advocate for the things like shark works for so i don't understand you know if you can't advocate the other way or
you know i guess it's subjective and it's in a very subjective sort of opinion put toward it yeah and i think in this instance it was a disservice but i think it was probably a show that got a lot of ratings for them uh because there are a lot of people that are scared of this technology both with the military technology and the privacy it's but on the other hand i think they they owe the industry a positive show to highlight people like uh steve here what he's doing people like
you you know feeding the hungry world maybe getting us usgs on there i mean there's so many positive uses for i was really disappointed i gotta be i i have to be honest you know it was sensationalized clap traps as far as i'm concerned the scary killer jones uh you know you have the guys in uniform indiscriminately rifling the target the run of the al-qaeda leaders mugshots the code pink protester
you know uh the thing that really gets my goat and i get this is the other one that i was talking about earlier that i get all the time is people what do you think about armed drones you know and i'm like well you know i've never been an advocate of armed drones i think it's uh i've always thought we needed to make the the um technology mature uh before we start arming it um you know let's be smart about this hasn't really happened the other thing is is
you know and i was i was interviewed for a documentary back in august and the guy said same thing what do you think about the armed drones i said well you know you got to realize a lot of people think it's the shadowy cia thing but this kill chain you got to realize that the kill chain for the people that are these assassinations mainly in other countries besides afghanistan pakistan are signed off by the end of that kill chain goes directly back to the white house
and they are signed off so you know prior to the election my thing was you don't like the the administration's policy uh killing people indiscriminately then you got to vote him at office you change you know you change the administration and you change the policies but we're beyond that now so this is this is something that's definitely an issue it's never i don't think really been um you know the connection's really been made
but i think people have to understand that i personally you know we're helping the war fighter pakistan gray area border thing uh the only problem i have is assassinating american citizens um you know that if i could if i could mention um i think remember when they were trying to harness uh or really i should say tie down they were trying to tie down uh and kind of handicapped the internet and and people just kind of stood up
and they took charge they said you're just not going to do it and and people spoke up and now a lot more people were involved in that but this is this is such a terrific technology that's being developed could it potentially be misused well of course just like anything else you know baseball bat can be used to hit a baseball it can be used to hit a windshield or a guy's head but you don't you don't ban them all
and i think with what you know the work that gene is doing and i think the work that i'm you know that my friends and i are trying to do it many other people that were if we just if we just push ahead as responsibly and safely as we possibly can we're going to be able to show the world and in large part by using the internet to get the word out what these things can do and and and if we if we get it done the
right way and then i think it's going to be a kind of an unstoppable force for good for good right and yeah and then you deal with the issues if there's people who are misusing them then yeah then then those have to be dealt with you pass responsible you know laws timely laws all that kind of thing but but we just we have to forge ahead and try and kind of lead the way on this and show what positive benefits can come to all of us
right i agree with that i just am a little disappointed we had you know a show like that come out and you know not put things in more of a positive light but i think it's another good example of how the the dod guys are not really concerned about access to the nas for everyone and i do think that some some people are you know have been pushing the dod guys first they think they're going to be the ones going into the nas
and i can you can obviously see that people are let's say they have apprehension with that notion but you know we just kind of do what we can and that's kind of what we do here at sus news we try to talk about some of the positive stories same thing with a podcast we're trying to enlighten people and have them understand some of the possibilities or promise that this technology has and and with that
i would i would tell everyone that they could come and join the conversation at facebook linkedin or twitter and talk about these subjects and other subjects and possible uses positive uses for for this technology or different ideas that people may have that i haven't heard yet for for this technology i know you've got to have a something to to add on on all that we covered a lot of real estate there buddy yeah that was that was one heck of a long-winded run-on statement
but you're right there's if we could get a lot of these public agencies that are using them for for positive uses i think that would help you know the steve's point we've worked hard to try to get as much good information on the internet as we could and it has come along but to get some of these local agencies the police the fire i think fire would be a great one to have them advocate the use and show what they've done with them
i think that would be a fantastic thing because fire there seems to be some place the united states is burning all the time so you know it might be that we should contact some of these fire agencies and get some of those positive uses up yeah go ahead we uh i've i've contacted our local law enforcement and said like you know you gotta use give me a call and and you'd be happy to happy to put it in there
you know they've got a particular situation i don't know what what might pop up but uh it's there it's there if they if they would you know if i'm in town and they think they have a use we're ready to put it in service for them and that's uh that's nice that you would extend that to the people in your area now i do uh did talk to a gentleman yesterday another guy that's done some work with nasa and they did some fire studies with larger unmanned aircraft a few years ago
and i i have invited him to come onto the show and i'm going to follow up on that today and see if we can get him to come on the future because it really seems that actually i have to be honest the the shows the podcasts that really proved to be the uh the most popular and we've been we've been doing this since may the ones that really seem to be popular are the application programs when we talk about policy or whatever
you know they're they're it's all right but the ones that people really are like when you're out in the field like one of gene's flying shows very very popular uh we had the nasa people on that was that was the the most popular show we've ever had and it was it was science applications for this technology and the numbers are so high that obviously people outside of this i would say community are interested in this technology
and it's kind of an uh refreshing and encouraging to me that you would have these types of numbers of people tuning in to listen to the positive uses of this technology so i do think that uh that is something that people thirst for and uh we're here to deliver and uh you know steve in the future uh if you guys are doing something um you know this evolves into something i would definitely say you know hey contact us let us know what you're doing
and and uh you know send us press releases to to print at the or publish at the sus news website or possibly come back on the podcast um you know in in the future if you're you're doing other stuff with this thanks pat i will take you up on that i very much appreciate it hey no problem i want to thank you for coming on today uh one other thing i wanted to mention was at last in the last program i may have been a little confusing
i was listening to it but uh if if anyone got by mistake when i was i did say something about all you needed was a driver's license to fly a light sport aircraft and basically i meant as a in lieu of a class two medical i wanted to clear that confusion out um gene anything that you would like to wrap up from today's program well uh i am going to try to absorb as much as i can here at this afcea show there's a lot of exciting new technology going to be looking at the payloads even though they are aimed at the military
i think that this is going to be a good place to look for sensors remote sensors long lenses that sort of thing i think it's going to be a good opportunity for me to to see what we've got on the horizon and i would do the best i can to give you a full report and our listeners a full report on our next show yeah well that sounds good and the other thing is i mean i hope people don't i mean i'm not against the military use of of this technology
i mean i work in that field and isr is one thing um i have no problem with that at all i think they're perfect platforms for for uh you know uh reconnaissance and surveillance and intelligence gathering looks great i'd like to just see them the uh technology mature a little bit more before we're at um you know so upward and onward and um you know i guess we will reconvene next week and uh we'll just continue this discussion
and until uh until such time i uh hope everyone has a good week and uh we'll go from there okay patrick y'all have a good one and uh we'll talk to you next week