UAS News Podcast — 2012-09-19
Audio not available on SoundCloud — full transcript below.
Transcript
Hello everyone this is your, your host for the SUAS's podcast series, Patrick Egan. It's where we discuss issues of news that are relevant to the unmanned technologies community. And as you asked, as always, interviews with the newsmakers, if it's not just me and Gene, carrying on waxing nostalgically about the airspace integration process, the global effort. It looks like today our consummate co-host, Gene Robinson, is flying for NIST, and he may not be on.
He's probably flying as we speak. Today's guest is Ted Wierszbanowski, who, among other things, is the chairman of the ASTM F38 committee. And Ted just called me. He's driving around in Southern California, and there's traffic.
And believe it or not, Ted's caught traffic, so we're waiting for him to call in. So we'll have to hold on and wait for him to call in on that one. We have a full slate of questions for Ted about F38 and then some other stuff. I'm hoping he talks maybe a little bit about his time as a test pilot on the X-29 project, which was pretty interesting.
We got to hear about that. And when I was on the ARC with Ted, he was also the co-chair of the SUAS ARC. Pretty interesting talking about the X-29 project. For people that aren't aware of that project, that was the jet with the forward swept wings.
I guess they've kind of inverted or whatever. It's pretty interesting. The work they did with composites and whatnot. Hopefully we'll talk a little bit about that.
That was at Edwards. That was one of the fly-ins for the ARC. That was pretty interesting. I don't know if anybody's ever been down to Edwards.
They have an air show or an open house. Well worth the drive out there to see that. They've got all the X-planes there on pads. They have an SR-71.
They have the $6 million man plane. I forget which one that is. It's what the model was or project number that was where it's unibody that's on a stick, which is pretty interesting. Old hangars with aircrafts pushed in there and they're tarped off, which is pretty, you know, there's a little mystery there what's going on.
They have another junkyard or boneyard of aircraft. You can tell by the parts and the pieces that this stuff is one-off or something a little bit different. Really interesting stuff if you're an aviation buff. I would definitely say you got to make it to that.
Check that out. Also, I don't know if it's there anymore, but they had the gantry system and the 747s that would ferry the space shuttle to and fro. That was kind of interesting to see. And while it was there too, they had the B-2 stealth bomber out on the lakebed park there.
First time I've seen half a million dollars on the hoof, as it were. Pretty interesting to see the different stuff. And then when we did get to fly out, that was pretty cool too. A lot of stuff going on.
A lot of aircraft flying around there. Actually, I think our air boss, our deconfliction guy was Mike Marston, so we should be a guest down there. That was pretty nice. He gave us the VIP treatment, deconflicted our airspace.
We got to fly. Mainly as far as the flying day. That day we flew, let's see who was there. ScanEagle.
So Boeing Institute was there. AeroVironment was there. Alturas was there. MLB Company was there.
I think we got Ted on here. Let's see. I'm gone now after going through a six-car accident that I wasn't expecting to have to go through on the freeway. So I'm on.
All right. So that was good. You're here. You're safe.
You're sound. Everything's cool. Yep. Everything's cool.
Okay. Well, I was just going on and I was actually talking about, well, let me introduce you first off. I did mention that we were going to have you on. Our guest today was you.
I think I've known you so long, Ted, that I even had to spell your last name and pronounce it. Where is Bonowski?
Yeah. It takes at least a minimum of about five years to get that one locked down. You got it. I got that one going.
Hey, I was talking about, and I mean, I do want to talk about ASTMF 38, but while I was waiting for you to come on, I was talking a little bit about the small UAS Ark flying at Dryden down there. And I was telling people about your experience with the X-29 project, and maybe you think you can hit some of the highlights about that project real quick?
Oh, yeah, sure. Wasn't expecting to do that. But yeah, back in the early 80s, for those of you who don't know me, I was a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in the early 80s. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency wanted to explore a lot of different technologies that were being considered for the next generation fighter.
And so they funded a program called the X-29. It was a forward-swept wing aircraft that also had a very sophisticated digital flight control system. It had very huge canards. It had all kinds of crazy pitch control surfaces and a lot of other advanced technologies that various contractors were looking at flying or putting on some of the new fighters.
It was a very unstable airplane. For those of you that know anything about aeronautics, it had at certain points 35% negative stability at certain Q levels, which means that if the flight control system went, the airplane was basically gone. So I was the Air Force test pilot on that. There were two NASA test pilots and a Grumman test pilot.
And we took that airplane through the high-speed envelope expansion over a period of years. And then a second airplane was funded for a high angle of attack flight test. And then a lot of the technologies, not necessarily the forward-swept wing, but a lot of the technologies we worked on and actually proved out in the airplane were incorporated into F-22, F-35, some of the other aircraft around the world. That's a good one.
The picture for today's episode is actually from the ARC when you were out there and explaining that to people. I remember you were talking about the composites and all the rest of that. And one quick question. So what's the deal with that when you're talking about that negative 35?
Is there a point where as a test pilot you're like, you're f-ing crazy and I'm not getting in that thing, or do they tell you it's safe and you go for it? How does that work?
Well, we spent a lot of time working hard-wering-a-loop simulations, probably had thousands of hours working, making sure that we understood the airplane. We used the simulator as a help in flying the airplane. We would go and practice all the missions before we flew them. We would actually downlink the control inputs to the ground and the simulator on the ground would predict what the airplane was supposed to do.
We would then also downlink what the airplane was doing and the engineers in the control room would compare the actual response of the airplane to the predicted response. If it started to get a little bit out of line, we would knock it off and come back and try to figure out what was going on. So it was a pretty controlled environment. But yeah, that negative stability, if we lost our engine where
we were relying only on our backup power, our rule was to slow down to very low speed because if the airplane went diverged above about 250 knots, it could either go a plus 3 or a minus 3 Gs, which minus 3 G is not very good for your body.
But it was fun. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Well, and then all the really interesting stuff. But since we're on that, maybe you could also give the listeners just a little bio.
I mean, you had a long career, I know with the Air Force and everything else and then who you currently work for now and then where you're at now, if you could, real quick. Yeah, sure. Real quick, I went to the Air Force Academy, graduated from there in the late 60s, got into flying early on, flew lots of different airplanes, also did some civil engineering work on launch facilities, actually worked with the FAA, designing airspace down in southwest Texas, eventually got into fighters, flew F-4s at Iceland, went to Edwards Air Force Base at test pilot school there, flew the X-29 like
you talked about, then worked on hypersonics for seven years in the X-30, or this is back in the late 80s, early 90s, National Aerospace Plane Program, and did a lot of different things with that particular program.
It was canceled, although hypersonics seems to be coming back, was canceled, I retired as a colonel from the Air Force, didn't want much to do with government work after doing all of that, so I went to work for air environment, primarily to work in environmental area, and I led or eventually ran our energy group that did electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, we did the EV-1, which was the first electric car, modern electric car in the United States that was sold in Southern California. Continued to run that group until 9-11,
and after 9-11, since I was one of the few guys in the company that had any military experience, moved over to the unmanned aircraft side of the house, worked on our high-altitude long endurance aircraft, and also because pretty much had worked with the FAA, had worked in aerospace industry with airplanes for years, got involved with airspace and UASs, or unmanned aircraft, integrating them into the national airspace system as
well as a couple of the other issues, the spectrum issues, and I've been working on those issues now at the national level, really, for the past 10 years, and that's my primary full-time job right now, even though I only work part-time, four-times, four days a week, is working all the issues involved with integrating UASs into the NAS, both large and small here, both in the US and over in Europe.
That's pretty impressive. I do tell people that. I say, well, you know, Ted, you're probably one of the more involved people that I know. I can't really go anywhere without seeing Ted, and it's good.
We talk, you know, a lot of us have kind of become friends over the years through all this craziness, and then that's kind of where today's show kind of lined up as I saw you at the AEVSI Unmanned Systems in Las Vegas, and we've talked about having you come on and talk about what's going on with F-38. Before we dive into that, maybe do you have any interpretations that you'd like to impart upon the audience about the AEVSI show in Vegas?
Yeah, well, I think the big thing is sort of like all these unmanned aircraft conferences, there's a lot of them around right there. Everybody and their brother is turning off of unmanned aircraft conferences, but there's two that I go to. One is this one, the AUVSI one, as well as the TAC one down in New Mexico. And I think over the years, what we've really seen is the significant growth in this particular industry, both on the larger systems as well as the smaller systems.
The potential of these things being used for lots of non-military applications for public safety and commercial stuff. And I think the thing you come away with is this is all real now, and it's happening, and it's happening faster, I think, than a lot of people thought it would. The technology is there to do almost everything that people have thought about could be done with these things, and now what we have to do is solve the regulatory issues and the spectrum issues and some of the other enabling things that need to be put in place in order to really see this industry take off.
Well, I would agree with most of that. I definitely think we've turned the corner. I remember even a few years ago, people were like, oh, yes, this might just be a big fad, which I never agreed with, but I definitely think people realize now this technology is here to stay. People are out there doing stuff with it.
It's useful. I've got to be honest, I think it's even, you touched on the green or alternative energy. I think it's more transformative than even that. Maybe not broadcast as wide a group of people or whatever, but I definitely think the technology is there that this stuff can be put into being applied to help with it.
I mean, all the different industries that it can do things with, it's just mind boggling. And I say too, until we get that regulation, we won't even know fully what all those applications are. But I agree. Well, so we wanted to talk about this regulatory process and want to talk about, you're now the chairman of the ASTM F38 committee.
And you took over, and we'll get into that a little bit, but I guess to start this off, Ted, what's your vision and mission for the F38? Well, let me give a little background. I think most people know this, but maybe not. Back in, I think it was 2007, the F38, the FAA decided that they issued their clarification of existing policy about whether or not small UASs could be flown under AC 9157.
So they issued that clarification, and that caused a lot of issues to everyone that's involved with these kinds of vehicles. So the FAA heard that, and then they chartered, as you mentioned, this aviation rulemaking committee to query all the stakeholders in the national airspace system and get their recommendations as to what a potential regulation should look like for small UASs. Patrick, you were on that, other people were on that. And we spent about a year coming up with that, a year coming up with recommendations.
And one of the recommendations that came out of that aviation rulemaking committee was that rather than rely on, put all the technical requirements into the regulation, which, as we all know, is really hard to get coordinated and get published, the notice proposal rulemaking is still out there, not out there on the small UAS, but because it's so hard to change the rule, the regulation, and we know or knew that the technology was going to be rapidly changing
and new things were going to happen, and the FAA and the ARC didn't want to saddle the industry with a very cumbersome process to change, we and the ARC recommended that we use consensus standards for most of the detail that wouldn't sometimes normally be in a regulation.
And that was, the precedent was set there with the Light Sport aircraft, they did that. So we gave our, if you remember, we gave our recommendations in April of 2009, and then the FAA went out to several recognized standard development organizations, organizations that actually have the audited processes to develop consensus standards, and went out to those organizations, and ASTM stepped up to the plate
and provided a proposal as to how they would handle these particular standards for small UASs and in April of 10, the FAA and ASTM, they signed a memorandum of agreement that the FAA would support ASTM and the development of the standards that needed to be developed in order to actually implement this new regulation.
So that's how ASTM got involved in the standards. So then, you know, I joined ASTM up until that time, and it was not part of ASTM because they weren't recognized by the FAA, but once they got recognized by the FAA, started to work to help put together these standards, and have been doing that ever since, eventually got elected to be the chairman after Goldy, Jeff Goldfinger, and now I'm leading that activity. These, the standards that we have to write, not necessarily the standards, not necessarily the standards, the topics that we need to cover in these standards that are being developed are the design
and construction and test of a small UAS, the production, the quality assurance, maintenance and continued operational safety, pilot, crewman operating handbook, and additional requirements for operations over people.
Even though we haven't seen the proposed regulation, the FAA has told us that those are the topics that are gonna need to be covered in the series of standards that are being developed. So that's sort of the history of how this all happened and what ASTM is, the topics that ASTM is currently working on. I'm gonna shut up for a second and see if you need to ask any questions or whatever, and then we can probably get into a little bit more detail about how ASTM works and how the committee is working.
Yes, I do wanna do that. But this is all good stuff. You're just exactly kind of the point of having you on today. And I did wanna ask about the leadership transition from Goldie.
Me and Jeff had a few spirited discussions which I'm sure you heard about. And the thing is that some people go, oh, this he can get a little bit of a flame thrower. I don't know if you've heard that. You probably haven't heard that, Jeff.
Every now and again, I get that feedback. But my thing has always been a small business thing and having this accessible to small business. But I wanna flash back to the art thing. You are right.
And I remember when they were talking about standards and that was probably a little after we heard I remember hearing from the FAA a couple of times as far as like this, the FARs would be or that making the rules for small and mid aircraft. I heard, just trust us a couple of times. And I remember, I think I even laughed out loud one time. I was like, I had been poking my nose in this FAR aim book.
And I don't know if I can trust you guys to work on this by yourself. And I remember so that people were like, oh, we gotta go to the standards thing. And I was like, okay, well, that sounds good. So I wanna flash back on that one.
But so yeah, the transition from taking over from Goldie was, was it, is there something that gave you pause or was it that Egan guys out so it's smooth sailing? Have a nice day. No, no, the transition from Goldie went smooth. It went smooth.
You know, we have an executive committee that's got different folks on it. Goldie is still on the executive committee. We talk every week actually to make sure that things are moving along and getting people, you know, advice is not to handle stuff. So no, the transition went actually really well.
You know, the Goldie got married and now has a little kid so he's had a bigger transition than I think I had moving over to take over the committee. So, and then we've got a lot of good people working on the committee as well. So. Yeah, well, he's, and Goldie's a good guy, you know.
And I know it's like Curt and Kat. I know you had some experience on the small US arc as the co-chair and I know, you know, I don't know if you've ever worked with your position like that before, but now you have a little experience and, you know, I'm sure it's kind of like Curt and Kat. Everybody kind of has their own focus, let's say, or input. Would you agree with that or do you think?
Oh yeah, well, you know, you have the different stakeholders in the NAS and you've got, you know, as you well know, we had the airline pilots association on the arc. We had the aircraft owners and pilots association. We had helicopter association international. We had various government entities.
We had, you know, other industry entities, you know, the whole gamut and it was interesting. Luckily, a lot of people don't know this, but when I was in the military, I spent a significant amount of time facilitating meetings on the National Aerospace Plane Program, which we had all different kinds of folks with different views as to how that particular fairly high tech program should be run, should be done,
and spent a lot of time learning how to actually work with folks because there are a lot of different opinions and I think that's the tightrope that we're walking on on these standards is to make sure they're good enough, that they aren't overly burdensome, but at the same time, ensure that we have safe operations out there in the NAS so that we don't have an incident or an accident, which could really
hurt the industry.
So yeah, it's an interesting facilitator role. I think that's the best way you could call it in both the arc as well as on this, the F38 is, is really trying to facilitate folks to come to some level of agreement as to what really makes sense for this particular industry at this time. Well, and I'm sure a lot of that is, you know, just rolling up your sleeves and, you know, moving forward. It is like herding cats
and I did want to give, you know, there was a little bit of, you know, cause I did write a story and I kind of cut ties with ASTM and I just want people to understand at that time, we were, when they were talking about, the FAA was talking about putting out the MPRM and not including the ASTM standards in the draft.
And so we kind of went back and forth and there were a lot of writing and everything else, but since that time, the ASTM has decided that they would find a way to make the drafts public so that people can see them, read them, see them, at least get the flavor if they're not done. Is that still the case?
Oh yeah, well, you know, as you mentioned during the arc, it's really hard to give comments on the proposed regulation that calls out consensus standards if you can't at least see what people are thinking about in those consensus standards. And so when I took over and started to talk to folks about this and talk to ASTM and talk to the FAA, you know, that kept that in mind and kept telling folks, you know, it's gonna be really hard for you guys, the FAA, to get valid comments on the rule, the proposed rule, unless these folks get to see, you know, what is being considered for the standards.
So I've been able to, we, I should say, the XCOM and the FAA and the ASTM, have been able to come to, we've had a lot of meetings on this, we've come to what we think is a legal way to be able to have the draft standards, because they're not gonna be finished, you know, these standards are not gonna be finished until the rule is actually published in a couple of years because there's gonna be changes
and stuff. But at least have the most current version of the standards available for the public to look at with a way they can offer comments, not comments in the ASTM discipline process, but comments back to ASTM as to what they think, and then, you know, we'll take those comments and if we think they're reasonable and rational, we'll try to incorporate them and so on.
So yeah, we, the way I think it's probably gonna work, and again, the legal folks are still working this out, is when the NPRM gets issued, probably in the preamble, there will be some words as to which, where to go on a website where you can read only, read only versions of these standards, and then you can, and a place where you can, you know, input on what you think about the standards. I think that's the way it's gonna work.
I think that fits within the ASTM process. We did hear, just, oh, in the past couple of months, the FAA folks went back to the light sport folks and talked to them about this and found that one of the issues folks had with the light sport area was that they didn't do that and that the people really would have liked to see the consensus standards as the light sport rule was being worked through coordination,
so I think that helped ASTM and the FAA folks, you know, agree that yeah, this makes sense and this is the thing to do.
Well, you know, it's like I'm trying to keep reminding the FAA, look, if you do this public rulemaking process in the public eye, you know, you're gonna have less problems down the road because, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of controversy around this issue with privacy and I don't wanna get into that. I think it's, the community, we should've got out on front of this, blah, blah, blah, but anyway, even the arc now that's going on, I mean, I've, you know, I don't know if you've seen any of that, but I really think that they need to have small business on there.
I even think they should've had somebody just from the public, maybe not ACLU, but, you know, I don't know, one of the other groups and say, you know, we're not, this isn't like we're making Frankenstein over here. It's a regular, I mean, this is the future of aviation as far as I'm concerned and it is here to stay and it's gonna happen and you should, I think, throw as much daylight on it as possible to keep the mystery down, that's me. Your thoughts?
Yeah, well, that's why on the F38 stuff, I'm really trying hard to make sure we get as much participation as we can in the development of the standards and as we talked about earlier, that when the NPRM gets out, that people have a chance to look at what is being, what is currently out there as proposed standards and we'll see where we go. I mean, this is gonna be a long process to get these standards in the right balance. I guess that's the best word to use is the right balance on these standards so that we do enable this new industry and let it really blossom.
Right, well, I, you know, that is one other thing and as we talk about this, you know, I've been out there and I've been telling people and a lot of people ask me and I talk to people all the time as I'm sure you do and they're like, oh, you know, where is this going and what's gonna happen and when's it gonna happen and what's it gonna look like and where are we gonna be able to do and yada, yada, yada
and I said, well, you know, the best, really the best thing to do is probably, is to get involved in the standards process because you're gonna get a real flavor for the direction that this thing is heading and it may not be the direct roadmap but as I'm sure you can attest to also, this process is extremely fluid.
I mean, I know that, you know, even since my being involved in this, the nomenclature's changed, the points have changed, what's important has changed, yada, yada, on and on ad nauseum. So I do tell people, I say, if you get involved in the standards process and even observe or whatever, you're gonna kind of get an idea where this thing's going. Would you agree with that or disagree?
Yeah, yeah, in fact, that's why, you know, every meeting I go to where I'm offered a chance to talk, I, you know, I give the ASTM spiel, I tell them where we are, I ask people, come on, you know, participate. We've got plenty of room for, you know, there's various levels of participation in this. You can, if you join ASTM, you can review the standards and provide comments. And if we have time, I'll get into the process that you use.
You can provide comments to help, you know, shape the standards. If you want to go a level higher, you can actually work on a task group because these standards are normally put together by a small group of people that, you know, put the first draft out and then, you know, adjudicate the comments. Or you can be a task group leader, which goes a little bit more, where you're actually leading the development of a standard. Or I have three, we have three separate committees that these standards fall under, subcommittees.
One's airworthiness, one's operations, and the other is the pilot training stuff. You know, you can be part of those subcommittees or lead those subcommittees. So there's a lot of room for participation. And the term I use a lot is market shaping, is to shape these things, you know, make sure that they're implementable, that they're rational.
And so, you know, I've got points of contact. We have a membership secretary, a fellow that works at North Carolina State University, Kyle Snyder, who would welcome input, you know, a request to join ASTM, which, you know, 75 bucks a year, but you get to participate in everything and you also get, you know, access to all the standards. And not only the F38 standards, but all the other standards that ASTM has. So, you know, maybe at the end or when you send this out, we can get the contact information to get hold of Kyle if folks wanna participate.
And then once they join, then we figure out what their interests are and we get them on the right subcommittees, working on the right stuff. And we actually did get a, you know, we were doing a lot of recruiting at AUVSI and I bet we ended up with like 10 additional people from various parts of the small UAS industry, you know, joining and now wanting to participate as we move forward on these standards. Well,
and I think that's an excellent point. And I wanted to do that because, you know, the insight that you're giving today, and I mean, we'll be able to go forward now and say, when people say, oh, you know, well, what's F38 all about?
Hey, you know what, you go listen to the podcast, you listen to, you know, we're gonna go over this. I think it kind of demystifies that process. And I definitely want, is there, can they go to ASTM.org and sign up or?
Yeah, they can do that. It's best to, you can do that. You can go to ASTM.org, there's a way to join there, or you can talk to Kyle Snyder and I'll spell it out. It's K-Y-L-E dot S-N-Y-D-E-R at N-C-S-U dot E-D-U, so North Carolina State University Education.
And his number is 919-234-7998. And he can guide you through the process and explain all of that and then, you know, get to work. Because over the next couple of months, we're gonna be putting all these standards back out for ballot either, the first ballot, I think actually a couple of them go out for first ballot and the rest of them are second or third ballot. So over the rest of this year and early part of next year, there's gonna be a lot of activity
and a lot of room for people to get involved and look at these things and get a feel for where they're heading and providing input and providing comments.
That do get resolved in a very disciplined process, which I don't know if we'll have time to talk about that, but it is a very disciplined process, because these have to be able to stand up in court for legal action and stuff like that. So we have to be really rigorous in how we handle comments. Yeah, well, you know, I just wanted, Kyle's a good guy. We had him on as a guest with North Carolina State on and him and Dr.
Silverberg and they talked about their program, I know Kyle for a while. He's a good guy. Again, you know, you could contact him, for some reason you didn't get that, you could always email me at patrick.sus.susnews.com and I'll forward that on. And we are, we have about a little more than eight minutes.
So I do wanna talk about the process and it is very robust. I hope people don't think that these standards or have gotten the impression that it's willy-nilly. There is a very set process and maybe, Ted, if you could, you could kind of elucidate, talk about this process. Okay, so let's pick a standard one that Joe Boyd actually is working on, who used to be Alpa guy and now works for MITRE.
He's leading the task force on the design of the command and control system, which is one of the more important systems on these small UASs because you really, you wanna have a robust command and control system, a robust flyaway protection system on it and whatever. So he has led a task group that is putting together a draft and by the way, the FAA does participate in all these task groups and provides input and comment and stuff. So he put together, he's putting together a draft. Once that subcommittee is okay with that draft, now it doesn't have to be fully, at that time, fully consensed.
There may be differences of opinion of folks on what should or shouldn't be in there, but you end up taking, here's a draft. We then, through the ASTM website and process, we send that draft out to all the subcommittee members that are on the particular subcommittee that that particular standard falls under. So in this case, it would be the Airworthiness Subcommittee. They're given 30 days to provide comments back.
They can provide various levels of comment. They can say, I totally disagree with this, which is called a negative. They can just provide comments to make it better, so that's usually affirmative with comment. There may be abstain with comment, but people can also put in comments, but they're at various levels.
So if somebody feels strongly about something that this is really not something that makes sense, they say, here's a negative, and I totally disagree with this. So we get all those comments, we take them, we put them into a comment tracking workbook, really, and sometimes we get hundreds of comments. And then we have to go through every one of those comments and resolve them. If we can't, and sometimes we'll get a negative that somebody just didn't understand.
So normally the task group or the task group leader would call down an individual and say, hey, I don't know if you really understood this. And sometimes we're able to get folks to understand, oh, okay, now I understand it's not a negative, it's just whatever. Or they may still feel strongly that it's a negative. So then if we have outstanding negatives, then in either a webinar or a face-to-face meeting, which we host, we then get a quorum of folks and we adjudicate that negative in its majority rule.
So the proponent of the change basically gives his rationale for why he believes that that particular thing needs to be changed. And then the rest of the folks in the room that belong on that subcommittee or that full committee then vote as to whether or not that his argument was persuasive or non-persuasive. If it's non-persuasive, that negative, you don't actually change the standard. If it's persuasive, you go and change the standard, the proposed standard, the way the person suggested it.
So that's the way, and then all the affirmative with comments, you go through those and you try to implement those comments as much as possible. So again, it's a very disciplined process. It goes through the subcommittee first, and then it goes through full committee. And then, so there's like normally three or four ballots on a particular standard before it's actually ever approved and then issued as a full-up ASTM standard.
Did that help, is that a, you know, tried to be as succinct as possible? Well, it's, you know, it is a very involved process. And I think that did help. I mean, as somebody who's written a few negatives.
Yeah. You know, you're right, there is that process. Usually you get the call, hey, what's going on here?
Why do you think this? And, you know, can we do this?
And people look at it and talk about it. I've been through that process on multiple occasions. So people do reach out. One other thing I will say is, you know, if you're going to join this effort and you want to bring perspective to this effort, I mean, you do, I guess there's different levels like you were saying, participation and expertise.
I always try to kind of look at it from, let's say, you know, the small business perspective as a group of people trying to do this business or as a business. And there were things that I disagreed with. But I think that a lot of people that are, let's say, small and mid aircraft systems or small RPA system users are not really aviation people, don't really understand the aviation business and things like that. Do you have participation from people like that or are you mainly?
Yeah, we're getting some. We'd like to get more. Some of it is just to educate folks, right?
Because, you know, this is a reach out initiative and, you know, folks that are just getting into the aviation business and don't understand airspace and don't understand, you know, you really don't want to fly on the approach end of LAX because you could cause a problem, you know, to try and get folks to understand that there is some rationale. And in a lot of cases, a lot of rationale for some of the operational restrictions that, you know, I suspect the FAA is gonna put in this particular rule.
But also just to get educated in aviation, you have a lot of technology folks, you know, that are built, I mean, the technology has just gone crazy. You can see every day on YouTube all the different stuff that's happening. But a lot of those folks don't really understand the airspace and, you know, how many airplanes we have flying around the US, you know, versus, let's say, some of the international aspects of this. And we didn't get into that, but I don't think we have time to.
But yeah, it's a learning experience for everybody. It's a learning experience for the folks that don't have an aviation background. It's also a learning experience for the folks that have an aviation background to, you know, start to understand the concerns and the issues that, you know, like you and the small business folks bring to the table. So it's a very fluid environment and it takes a lot of facilitation and a lot of listening, not talking, but listening to the other person to try to get their perspective.
That's the kind of thing we're trying to do on the committee. Right, well, you know, we've got about a minute left and it happens quick, you know. Every episode I'm like, oh geez, can we do 45 minutes?
And we always run out of time. So it was a very good conversation, Ted, and I appreciate you coming on. I think it's very enlightening. Like I said, I think we can use this podcast if anyone asks, you know, well, what's that 38 like?
Here you go, listen to that. It was very enlightening. I do, you know, I wouldn't mind having you on again maybe six months or something and we could get another update because I know you guys are working away. Would you be open to that?
Oh, sure, absolutely. Anytime, you know, we can, do you want to get an update as to what's going on and where we need help and so on, please feel free and I'll be more than happy to do that. You know, I go to these conferences and do the same thing but it looks like, you know, you have a nice broad audience here where we can reach out to more folks. So it's perfect venue.
Yeah, we reach out to a lot of folks and they can listen on their commute home. But anyway, okay, thanks Ted for coming on. We'll talk to you soon. Yeah, Patrick, you have a good one.
Talk to you later, bye bye. Bye bye.