 It is the 10 o'clock hour on Thursday folks, Ted Rolson here, our studio's Think Tech Away overlooking downtown Honolulu, our show where the drone leaves normally would be at noon on this day. Today it's at actually 10.19. And joining me in the studio, Josh Levy, we've been on a show a few times, Knows the Ropes. Josh is the coordinator at UH of unmanned air systems programs and we have by electronic transmission in several forms. Here we have Tyler Dobbs on the line with us in Muncie, Indiana, just recently returned from D.C. Tyler, there you are, okay? And Tyler is the government policy coordinator for the Academy of Model Aeronautics. That's another use of the three-letter acronym AMA. This is the one that's important, Academy of Model Aeronautics. And anyway, we have Tyler on the line. Tyler, are you there? I am. I am. Thanks for the introduction, Ted. And I'm happy to be here. Okay, great. And we often, in this game of drones and unmanned air systems and such, we don't think much of all the advocacy going on behind the scenes to make this all work. But I want to give you a big, gigantic shout out from my perspective of being model airplane guy and a pilot for 50, 60, 70 years now, maybe 60. The value that you guys bring to the table, AMA, in terms of making sure that the entry level of aeronautics, which is model aircraft, now called UAS, drones, remotely pilot aircraft, has a place at the table and is recognized by the government and by the country as a value to it. And I'll say that young man sitting to my left here, Josh Levy, is benefiting directly from that. If it weren't for AMA and the modelers and the folks who put their volunteer effort in and create the technology that makes model aircraft work, we wouldn't have the drones we have today. So, Tyler, to you, thanks very much for their organization you represent. And we're looking forward to knowing what you're thinking about and what you're up to right now. Sure, sure. Well, you're welcome. But I can't take the credit. Obviously, our 200,000 members, they are the ones that make this all possible. They're the ones that are the force to be reckoned with when, you know, the FAA or Congress tried to do things that kind of would create additional burdens on the hobby or, you know, unneeded or unnecessary burdens. So really, I owe that to our members. But you're right, AMA does, we're in D.C. regularly. I work about 50 percent of the time there on federal regulations working with industry stakeholders, regular meetings with the FAA and just trying to continue to preserve the hobby that we've enjoyed for so long. AMA, our organization has an 82-year history. Through those 82 years, we have the safest that continue to do that. So currently, I don't know who's kept up on the legislative side of things, but we're currently operating under the special rule for model aircraft or Section 336, which came about in the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act. Congress has been working on revising that for the last couple years now. They can't seem to agree on it, and there's been a continuing resolution. Every six months, every nine months, they've kind of kicked that can down the road. But this year, it looks like we're at least set up for a real possibility to get that written into a longer-term law. The House recently passed their version of the FAA reauthorization. In that version, there were two amendments that dealt with the special rule for model aircraft. One was the Sanford-Davis amendment, which had a lot of things that really helped AMA and would preserve the special rule for model aircraft. Now, there's a couple things in the amendment we didn't care for, but overall, it was a really great amendment, preserved the hobbyists, preserved model aircraft, the traditional model aircraft, preserved educational use for model aircraft. There was an additional amendment that made it through, which is not common for two amendments for the same issue to go through a House bill, but it did this year. That was called the Defazio amendment. That Defazio amendment essentially overturned the special rule for model aircraft. It was still there, but it allowed the FAA to promulgate or create rules, as long as those rules were created for safety of the airspace. By all means, AMA wants there to be continued safety in the airspace, and we're going to strive for that, but that's a pretty broad brushstroke to just say you can create a rule as long as, say, it has to do with safety in the airspace. We don't care for that amendment, but essentially, like I said, there was two, so they kind of cancel each other out. What we're looking at is trying to get another version through the Senate, which is currently being worked on. A lot of resources dedicated to that. It's going to be very similar to the Sanford-Davis amendment. It's going to preserve the special rule for traditional aircraft. It is going to have that educational safety net in there so that rules and universities can continue to fly under the special rule as they have for the last few years, because again, that's, education is one of AMA's biggest focuses, and I know that a lot of schools and universities around the country depend on that special rule for model aircraft to be able to do their STEM and additional training. Let's talk about that particular subject for a moment here, and once again, I cannot tell you how much we in the business respect what you're doing. If it weren't for AMA making these things happen, we'd be scratching, climbing a much taller mountain. Josh is involved in trying to generate some different forms of outreach education, you might say, as opposed to R&D research at the university here, in terms of very short courses for high school kids, or awareness courses that are longer, or even professional certification for public responders and environmental folks and such. Why don't you outline, Josh, what our needs are from the university perspective and the community college perspective, and let's see how what Tyler's got fits in with that. So just to start off with, we get approached by a lot of people, as Ted was saying, from the high school age, up to the university we work with very closely, and then through public safety, as Ted was mentioning as well, to try and understand a little bit more about rules and regulations, or flying UAS, whether it's for Part 107 commercially, or the hobbyist rules and educations. They want to just make sure they're doing it by the book, because they've started to hear, there are some dangers to it, to flying up in the airspace, and the fact that the FEA is kind of the general authority to make sure you're abiding by. And so there are a couple of different programs that we're trying to build up through here, and I've actually been kind of scouring the AMA website to find all of the educational information that they have, and so it's been a really big help so far. So we're trying to kind of correlate it all and just kind of condense it into a couple of relatively short, digestible pieces, so that we can present these as kind of relatively rapid and informational packets to these guys that want to get up there and fly. And one of the ones that I'm focusing on most recently is for the universities, where you have researchers that, you know, they're not interested in getting the 107, they don't want to become expropilates, they want to go out there and collect data for a specific topic, you know, maybe once, twice, a couple of times, and kind of move on with their lives, right? They don't need to become experts in flying, they just want to be able to go up there and collect this information and then move on. And so, you know, having a, you know, two, three week course to become 107 certified and all that kind of stuff is not attractive to them, they don't waste their time doing those kinds of things. So under educational auspices, it's important for us to have kind of this fine line situation where you want to be able to educate them enough so they don't make any, you know, bad decisions but not take up enough time that they're not going to be bothered to actually do the training in the first place, right? So it's kind of a fine line. I'm curious to hear your take on that. And we have a, we have a great education department here headed up by Education Director Bill Preget. He's got a couple of great people working for him and Jesse Sim, Julia Blayton. So specific questions, I would urge everyone, everyone listening to reach out to somebody in our education department. But we have a number of tools in that department that really start at the, even the, you know, elementary, high school and go up to the collegiate level. First off, I'll say we have a math program, which is the Model Aviation Student Club, and that allows students to join a club. It's completely free. The youth are free. The teacher, when they sign up, the students, the teacher gets a free membership and it allows you to, you know, you can charter the club. I think maybe it's, I think the math is actually free. I think when you get into the U-Math, which is the University Model Aviation Student Club, there's a little bit of cost associated to that because most of the students are going to be over the 19 and under free AMA membership. But both of those programs are great to be able to, you know, get students together so they can go out and fly, as you mentioned, without their Part 107, without seeking waivers and airspace authorizations and things like that. And then when they get a club together, and they don't have to join a club, but if they do, you know, we have other educational outreaches through, like, AMA Flight School, for instance, so that's an educational training program we have. I would encourage you to take a look at that on our website. We also have LearnSUAS, that's another great tool that we use for UAS training courses, and it's offered, you know, through a couple of AMA partnerships that we have here. I know that we also have a UAS for STEM talent, and that is, start to finish, the kids go out, they design the aircraft, they build the aircraft, they even, you know, program the software for search and rescue and other things. We just started a UAS for STEM challenge at the collegiate level last year. The college that won ended up coming to Muncie. We have 1,100 acres, a mapping of some of our facilities with the UAS, and so that was the winner there. And we even go up to public safety training and how to get your Part 107. So we kind of have, we have something for every level that you're looking for. If you want something, you know, a little, not so heavy, you know, you're not interested in your Part 107, we have a tool that will be great for that. But if you want to learn every single thing and go through all the steps, go through the AMA twice school, go through the Learn S2AS, and then eventually go take your Part 107, we can help you there too. We can help you at every level of things. And that's all at our website at modelaircraft.org. Click the edge link on the front page of the website there, and it'll take you to all of the top. Let's just see if Ray can bring that up there. It's modelaircraft.org, which is the website that has access portals to all this information. Yeah, so I've seen a whole bunch of PowerPoints and various other different kind of educational materials on there that, yeah, I've taken a good look at, and it's all really, really good stuff. So again, yeah, just trying to, and it's a mountain of really good information, so it's just taking a while to get through and see what's going on. But I think capitalizing on what's already been done. If you want that specific questions, reach out to our education department. They're here eight to five Eastern Standard Time every day. They're happy to help. They'll work through any issues you have and get you the information you need. So I'd encourage you to take advantage of that resource. I think we should do everything we can to capitalize on what's already been done, and especially if it's becoming standard through the various school programs as such. And standards bring up another interesting point. Josh just came back from the AUVSI annual exposition, and just back from an exercise in Paso Robles, California, called GIFIX, where a lot of unmanaged systems were applied. And we've had a discussion earlier about standards. We mentioned standards in education. There's also standards in design coming. I'd like after our break here, let's just talk a little bit about how AMA involves itself in the standards organizations. That's NIST and ASME and such that are pushing forth on standards for the Consensus Based Standards Certification Methodology here. But we'll take a one minute break and get right back to you, Tyler. Language show on Think Tech, Hawaii. Broadcasting live every other Monday at 2 PM. Please join us where we discuss important and useful information for the Japanese language community in Hawaii. The show will be all in Japanese. Hope you can join us every other Monday at 2 PM. Aloha. Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Gabrieli, the host for Young Talent's Making Way here on Think Tech, Hawaii. We talk every Tuesday at 11 AM about things that matters to tech, matter to science, to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests, the students of our schools who are participating in science fair. So Young Talent's Making Way every Tuesday at 11 AM only on Think Tech, Hawaii. Mahalo. It is still the 10 o'clock hour on Thursday, folks. Ted Ralston here. Josh Levy in our downtown Think Tech studios, where the drone leads with our guest, Tyler Dobbs in Muncie, Indiana, and occasionally in Washington, DC, or vice versa, joining us from the Academy of Model Aeronautics, AMA, a very essential ingredient in this entire buildup of drone and UAS capability for the future. Welcome back again, Tyler. Thank you, thank you. And again, I got to tell you, man, I just my hats off to the professionalism and the structure that you guys are going through at AMA to make this all possible for us. AMA represents the very entry level into this whole game of tech and STEM applied to the air side of the situation. And I made model airplanes when I was a kid many years ago, about the time AMA started, I think, and was always paying attention to that. And it's just heartwarming to know that people care about it enough to make this happen. If it weren't for AMA and the advocacy they generate, we'd have a tough time starting these kind of complicated technical problems because there'd be no place to enter. And so I really want to pay more attention, especially as we develop our education program. But we were talking about the standardization you've generated through your educational work and how we need to capitalize and hitchhike as much as we can on that, maybe customize it locally here as appropriate. We do have a completely unique FAA situation here, I will tell you. And it's this island circumstance is different than you find in other places. So we have some customization to do. But the standards in terms of design development and under the hood aspects of UAS, the software, the trusted nature of the software, the communications and such, these are starting to show up as topics within the ASTM and the RTCA, other organizations that are coming up with the communications protocols or the design and development protocols. Is AMA involved in that as well? We are. We have, you know, I'm not heavily involved in it personally, but we are. We do have people here at headquarters involved in that standardization and pretty much every aspect. We need to be involved in every aspect, you know, trying to keep our finger on the pulse of things. The issue that we run into if we're not is sometimes people get so creative in trying to make sure everything fits in this nice little neat box that, you know, it kills creativity and kills whatever's going to be that next new revolution, you know, without people, without AMA members tinkering in their garage 50 years ago. You know, we wouldn't be flying the aircraft and using the radios and things like that that we are today. So it's important that we continue to allow for those types of freedoms and innovation. Well, that's exactly right. In fact, that leads to the idea of recreation and skill building, which led the FAA to conclude that skill building is like education. So why doesn't education fit under the recreational title? People recreate to get better at what they're doing. They don't recreate to get poorer at what they're doing. Education's the same idea. And so once again, you guys just provide this incredibly important connectivity. And as you said, if it weren't for the people tinkering in their garages 50 years ago with Fox 35 engines and de-thermalizers on sail planes and such, we wouldn't have what we have today, which is a lot of people involved. And I'm guessing that a lot of your members are retired from aerospace and they keep tinkering with what they were tinkering with at aerospace in their day job, in their retirement. Sounds like you're talking from experience. I might be, yeah. And... You are exactly. So software development, sensor development, all these things, structural development, miniaturization. In fact, as a, this is a, I'm curious about your response to this. 0.55 pounds for some reason ended up being a magic number below which regulations don't apply. I guarantee you the world of the future 10 years now there's gonna be a whole lot of UAS at 0.549 pounds if you measure them on the scale. You're right. Yeah, that's just a weight threshold. I mean, you can, there's some, there's some very small aircraft, you know, probably mostly military use now with very high capabilities that come under that threshold. And there are some aircraft that are essentially throwaway toys that are much higher than that 0.55 threshold. You know, the rate that, you know, the 0.55 threshold and all the registrations out there, the FAA registration, I wonder how many of those registered aircraft are now in the garbage because they were, you know, off the shelf toys that you can only fly 80 or 100 feet from you. And again, essentially a toy. So, yeah, I think you're right though. I think, you know, in the future, there's gonna be aircraft under that threshold that probably can do some great things. Well, back on the education thing for a moment, just wanted to tell you about this event that occurred two weeks ago here. One of our colleagues who's not at the table here, Mike Hamotas from Collea Gold in the company in town that promotes a lot of cutting edge use of UAS cooked up a connection between a school, a middle school that's within the approach of a local class Delta Airport and the FAA. And the idea was FAA actually asked us to help in this. Can we connect better the community to the FAA specific needs expressed at the tower level? And that's some towers aren't something that the public has a chance to visit or see is you have to have a license to get up there. And so it's kind of a mysterious thing. What the tower was, tower personnel were really interested in addressing the collected group of 200 students and teachers and parents and principals at a school that was within the downwind of that airport. And found this to be a communication device that I think we can develop and build and take it everywhere within the state of Hawaii. So the community gets to hear directly from the operational element of the FAA, the pieces that really matter to it if you're operating UAS within their region. And the FAA gets to hear how the community thinks about things. And so through the educational argument for getting together, we formed this communication channel that otherwise would not exist. So I'll send you personal contact information on Michael Motus and maybe guys can have a conversation. But I think AMA would be a great place to promote this kind of community-based interaction with the operating element of the FAA. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. In fact, right now we have Camp AMA going on where you've come to our AMA headquarters in Muncie, Indiana, and it's all hands-on training, flying, building, just a week of fun for the kids and they learn a lot. We had an air show yesterday and the FAA showed up and interacted with the kids. And that's great that the FAA does that, but we wanna show the kids that you need to work with the FAA. They're not there, they're just always be the bad guy and to punish people for doing wrong. They're also there as a communications tool and making the airspace safer and they wanna work with you. So yeah, that communication's really needed and every chance we can get to make that stronger, we wanna take advantage of that. I like your week-long AMA summer camp. How do I sign up? No. I think you have to be 17 and under, maybe 18 and under, I'm not sure on the age requirement, but I'll see if I can get you an exemption. That would back up about 60 years. Josh ran something here at the university about a couple months ago called a drone boot camp, which was a half-day similar event. And to my great surprise, a lot of people who came to that had got UAS or drones, but they had no idea how to even take them out of the box. So just showing them how to take them out of the box and how to think about the fact that we're operating in a strong wind environment. What does that mean? It's probably gonna go downwind if it goes anywhere. That very simple thinking was useful to these folks. So there's so many opportunities for what you're doing. But even more interesting, going back to the age limitation, the age demographic during that boot camp, I think the average age was in the mid-50s. That's about right, yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's great. We're gonna be running out of time here. Our show's only half an hour. We probably have hours of work to talk about here. I would like to have another conversation maybe three months from now when the legislation's moving along a bit more. But we certainly take our hats off to you, Tyler, for you and the entire AMA organization. You make what we do doable. I frankly tell you, if it weren't for what you guys do, we wouldn't be existent as a UAS test functionality here at UH. So we thank you and the organization so much for that. We'd like to contribute to what you're doing. Got you a couple of hookups to go forth with here. Josh will use what he can off the website to structure our own education program out here. And we'll catch you again after you get back from DC the next time. All right, well, thank you guys for what you do and thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it. Josh, thanks for coming on. Okay.