 Okay, Thursday, folks, noon hour here, Ted Ralston in our ThinkTech studios downtown Honolulu, overlooking, it's like Kailua Bay at this point in time, or perhaps part of Waimanalo. Anyway, our show, where the drone leads, where we bring to our public the stories, information, latest developments in the evolving world of drones, what it means to Hawaii, what it means to our people and our education system and our business. And this has been a really interesting week. We've had a lot of activity down at the Capitol and have that in association, including a meeting yesterday of the, what's called the Aviation Caucus, which is a group of people involved in aviation, which now includes drones. We have with us today one of the spearheads behind that meeting. This is Ross Gerlick-Bell, Ross from the Aerospace States Association. And thanks for joining us on the show. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. I want to have you back. We're committed to making an annual track here. So you were part of the Aviation Caucus meeting yesterday in the Capitol dealing with the legislators that are tangentially or directly involved in aviation. And drones now fit into that picture. So Aerospace States Association is an interesting term that a lot of us aren't familiar with. And it would be really interesting to hear you talk about how Aerospace, or what Aerospace States Association does. Any question is how it relates to drones, and what that all means to us here in Hawaii. And I'd be glad to help you ask questions as we go through here. But talk about Aerospace States Association first, Ross, and see where that goes. Well, the Aerospace States Association is basically a political association for the elected officials. So you have, like, national conference of state legislatures. You have the American Legislative Exchange Council. Those are general legislative groups made up of the state governments or the state legislators. Aerospace States Association is specifically on aerospace issues for those elected officials. So our membership is the actual state governments, usually led by a lieutenant governor in each state. And then we work with state legislators, obviously, with the lieutenant governor and states where there's no lieutenant governor. The state legislators take the lead or the governor gets involved. And then we have our associate members, which are all the non-profits, corporations, those that are interested in aerospace in general. So it's a government-centric collection of people dealing with the emergence of any issues in the aerospace domain, including drones. Exactly. And especially now that you have so many areas that are being delegated to the states from this federal level, where the states have a bigger role, that's where the chapter systems have become involved over the past several years, where the state governments are trying to figure out issues like drone policy to look at other states, what they're doing on drone policy in regards to also how the FAA is working on it. The same goes for commercial space, where that's becoming more of a state-centric area with policies, but you have the FAA with the overarching airspace control. And of course, anything that goes through to get to space has to fly. And so the goal is the chapters will do with anything that comes off the ground, as I say, except for basketball players. So. Or pundit footballs, I think it should be. This is interesting. So you are providing an effective service to the state governments that provides information exchange from other jurisdictions and from the evolving issues in the federal government that might affect how any particular policy aspect of aerospace is emerging. Correct. So, for example, you may want to find out how is California dealing with drones? What way can Hawaii match up? We can call you up. You can call us up and then what we do with the chapters is facilitate who might be the best contact in Hawaii to talk to. That goes for the state legislators in a great way, especially in states where we have turnover due to term limits and other things that there's not, they have a quick point person to go to, whether it's the University of Hawaii here or it's a drone manufacturer or it's the Association for Unmanned Systems, we're able to help get that and coordinate that right away. So it's a one-stop shop for the public officials that need to be able to make decisions on policy to find out if this is good or bad or if they should move forward. And then it's good for the industry to be able to have that conduit to the officials to be able to say, we have something that's going on, this is going to stifle creativity or this is actually something that's needed because we have problem systems that need to be corrected. There's conflicts going on in the airspace that we need to make sure is corrected. So that's what the facilitation of the information is for. Well, we can certainly use that here. We had, I think, in the last three years, probably 40 bills that has something to do with drones, either regulating registration or operations or whatever it might have been. I think none of them have actually survived the tests of the legislative process because they had some federal preemption issues or they had landowner issues or they had a registration requirement, which is already present in the FAA. They had something that made them not useful. So you provide a avenue of information that can straighten a lot of that out. So we write bills that are executable. In fact, they're kind of in parallel to what other people have done or other jurisdictions that have solved similar problems. Right. And that's where we've seen Virginia California, well not California, California had a lot of bills like Hawaii, a lot of different ones on privatization or privacy issues and other stuff and of course they had paparazzi issues in Hawaii and California that are quite different from other states. But Arizona went with a pre-state preemption over localities. Virginia did something similar on that in order to make sure that not only do you have the states having their rights, and the feds preempted, but that the states don't let, also you have multiple jurisdictions, this municipality is doing this, this one, this, and then you have the crossover and how do you deal with it. And so there we're providing the information to say, well, this is a model that seems to be working. It doesn't get you in trouble with the FAA and then it makes sure that you're not having cities doing their own thing and creating a patchwork that would stifle an industry that may be able to evolve within the state. There's also changes evolving in the FAA on almost a daily basis these days it seems. We have the one hour call up on certificate of authorization for public safety people now. We've got 107 and some variations that are coming forward. There's an educational interpretation that we operate under at the university that there's quite a range of things that are available today and more coming. So it's got to be really difficult for people who don't spend their 24 hours a day thinking about this to really understand what's going on. So do you have publications or a website or something that people can turn to to get information or submit questions to you or what's the process by which our legislature here interacts with you to get information? Usually it's through the chapter and then if we get a call from a legislator or an email we refer them to the proper association that has that detail study. So we have a memory of understanding say with the AUVSI, the Association of Unmanned Systems International, Vehicles International and so if there's something with drones with that we'll usually refer them to AUVSI because they'll have a study, they'll have a paper, they do the economic impact so they can show the growth potential in a state which industries are possibly the most targeted for that growth with drone usage so the legislators can have that information. We'll contact other groups depending on if it's a technical issue to contact a technical group or if it's an industry where they want to know what would it take to be able to start something up. That's where we may be able to refer them to a company that has an interest in starting up something in the state. That's pretty cool. So this is about the third time you mentioned chapter. So that sounds like we need a chapter of ASA. Do we have one? We are hopefully forming one after yesterday's caucus because the aerospace and aviation caucus is considered emerging. Hawaii seems a great possibility for having the chapter structure because you have so many different entities. Well the whole state relies a lot on anything that flies. So it'd be good to have a chapter that is dealing with all those different issues so that you're looking at drones for example is a great crossover between aerospace and aviation. There's always the conflict of where exactly do drones fit in that. And so having the chapter would allow all those different entities to be there at the table and then providing to that caucus the information they need as they look to legislation probably next year. This year's moving along already. So to get a chapter going what do we have to do? Well we have the chapter charter. We've already provided that to several of the members to start considering. We did have it before the previous lieutenant governor and we're waiting to see who obviously becomes the permanent lieutenant governor for a four-year term in November. And so we'll be asking that person also to get involved because we are made up of lieutenant governors as well. But I know that the caucus is considering starting that up as soon as possible so that we can get things moving, build up events, be able to highlight what's going on within the state of Hawaii as far as you know air shows, drone trainings, those kinds of things have a master calendar for the legislators to see all the stuff that's going on. And during the interim to be able to participate if they want to go out and see what's going on they can go to one spot find out where that is and not have to try to track it down through web searches or using the right term of unmanned system versus drone versus you know other names for different activities. This is super, I mean Hawaii absolutely needs this national level connection. We've had Admiral Phil Kennell, I don't know if you know Phil from NOAA out here recently talking to some of our legislators. We bring people in when we have them available, we take them out of the Capitol and have a meeting. But it's a small meeting, it's one-on-one and it doesn't have the power of a caucus behind it. So this is a really important part of our future structure here. So anything we can do at the University obviously we're one of the test ranges that the FA has nominated and we need to be aware of what is being developed and is transmitted through the the chapter. So is there a way that we can become part of that chapter as well? Definitely all the associate members are allowed to be part of any chapter they want, multiple chapters in some cases. So the big companies the Boeing's the Lockheeds and Northrop Grumman's all have operations here. They are part of all the chapters and so they bring their already in by virtue of their national. So once you join ASA you can be in as many chapters as you want. So if you're a growing company and you see that you're growing outside of Hawaii to California or another state that has a chapter Arizona or wherever then you can automatically just join and be part of that chapter so you can see what's going on. And then once a year we have our annual meeting where the chapters get together and compare best practices of what's working to get the messaging across what needs to be done for more activity. We're even looking now for the chapters participate in the National Aerospace Week up in Washington DC that is put on in September with the Aerospace Industries Association so that the chapters in that sense would be able to talk to the delegation from their state and be able to say this is what is going on in Hawaii and this is what we need to facilitate that development even more on the federal level. So whether it's working with FAA a little bit more or NOAA or NASA these are the programs that we we need the delegation to focus on because here we have all this information now to give you as far as work at help the state advance that way. That's really great because a lot of our a lot of our companies need secondary verification of information we're getting as well. For example our agricultural big agricultural businesses here we've got a lot of environmental issues we've got Pacific Command who has its needs and issues we've got our local law enforcement and police and fire and public safety in general so all of them need information and they probably need it from several different sources before they're satisfied they've got it right because it comes in such confusing packages so this is a superb service that you guys provide and we've got a resolution out there a joint resolution 143 that we hope to get past this year which actually requires the Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism and the University and an unnamed law enforcement agency to put together a workshop permanent task force that does kind of like what ASA does and acts as a channel to bring information in and actually take requirements that occur in the fringe and push them forward as well so it's a two-way street in terms of information exchange and looking forward big time to having this ASA up and running this is like a missing ingredient in our thought process here and in fact we're all struggling how do we reach into that pot and get information and you've provided that that functionality so that's what we're hoping it helps the goal isn't to have it where it competes with anything that's going on it's to assist at all the levels and we're finding it's been very successful in the other states and helping to bring attention to issues and and resolve some conflicts that may have been out there misunderstandings I should better say is worse it's probably it's just different understandings right probably not misunderstandings they probably the different approach but he thought was right exactly it's there's so many different shades and filters on this information it's it's such a it is frankly a very confusing situation the other interest we have is in developing the local business functionality not just the users like agriculture using it for agricultural optimization and theft production but but development of software development of cluster and swarm operations and communication relays in times of disaster when delivery of subjects ocean ocean safety and rescue we have so many cases of that here where the functionality so there's a development of the systems to do the work and there's the application of them and then companies that sit there and code software we don't have Boeing Everett facility here which is a very inspirational thing to see and gets kids going but we sure go to the software so that's and and drones are all about a lot of software yes especially the analyst the analysis that comes from their imagery collected so that's what we like to build up anything you can do to help us see that picture would be welcome as well well that and that's something that again we'd provide you with the groups that are doing that and say hey there's a beautiful state out here that's looking to get into that industry i know that we've helped on one thing that's good about drones is that you have the imagination factor that creates a whole bunch of different ideas that come and play especially in places where drones can have so many life-changing possibilities because of the remoteness and how they can be used and so i've worked with tribes in particular on drones where the kids are now starting to play with them and see what they can do because they can see that they can live where they want to live and fly them and especially as they get to where over the horizon it's going to be tested and stuff like that all of a sudden you're talking agriculture operations and as you pointed out all kinds of different little things that you would never dream of and the software is going to allow them to do because it's going to become more efficient you'll get the geofencing to be accurate so you can do the programming and left and right best i gotta tell you next time you're out here let me know in a week in advance we can set up a meeting with some folks in the university and other in these scholastic domains everybody'd be really interested in hearing you say that because that is such an inspirational frame of reference to put out there for the kids and then we also want to talk about the aviation side of this and AOPA and the relationship you guys have with AOPA and i think we have somebody in the studio here from AOPA which we'll come back to after a one minute break great watch my show on tuesday comfort zone i sing this song to you because i think you either are cool or have the potential to be seriously cool and i want you to come watch my show where i bring in experts who talk all about easy strategies to be healthier happier build better relationships and make your life a success so come sit with the cool kids at out of the comfort zone on tuesdays at one see you there how come he gets to go in he's a service dog well i could get a vest too you're not even a service dog he's trained to assist his owner well i can do whatever he can do wow did he just open the door yep oh i can't do that i can't do that either he's trained for over two years to become a service dog man i wish i could be a service dog i'm jay fidel think tech think tech loves energy i'm the host of minna marco and me which is minna marita former chair of the puc former legislator and uh energy dynamics a consulting organization in energy marco mangosdorf is the ceo of provision solar in hilo every two weeks we talk about energy everything about energy come around and watch us we're on at noon on monday's every two weeks on think tech aloha it is still the noon hour on thursday folks ted rosson here with ross garling bell from asa and we've been joined at the break by melissa mccaffrey of aop a america the aircraft owners and pilots association you are the pacific and western regional director thanks for coming on the show melissa thank you for having me and uh you're here for the aviation caucus meeting also which i thought was a really great meeting and i really appreciate the leadership you and aop a have put in we have had cathleen swain on the program earlier so we're digging into our aop a friendships here anyway we heard a really inspirational discussion from ross at the beginning here about well beyond what you normally expect in a in a in a politically oriented business evolution framework he's talking about enthusiasm inspiration and such to the kids aop a is picking that up too aop a has picked up drones which is absolutely incredible i am an aop a member okay thank you and actually i joined first in 1963 okay and i rejoined recently here so tell us about aop a and how it fits with the asa and and and and how you see the evolving issue of drones in our life so aop a is a not-for-profit member-based organization we represent uh pilots and aircraft owners nationwide over a thousand pilots and uh aircraft owners in hawaii over a thousand in hawai you're part of aop a yes how many of them are grown pilots do you think um that's a really good question probably not many yet yeah probably not many yet or maybe they don't really realize that we have two thousand all the grown guys right yes exactly so i think maybe we need to spread the word that we have a drone membership and represent drones drone pilots so but i think as far as us fitting in with the aerospace folks and ross i think there's a lot of overlap in what we do and so we you know ross and i have worked in other states to kind of bring together aerospace and aviation and so we thought well why not do it in hawaii that makes sense there's such an amazing history a rich history of aviation and aerospace and so it just makes sense to kind of meld them together um and we're hoping to kind of revamp and bring some energy into aviation and aerospace together and drones are a great way to do that yeah spoke very eloquently on that and we all realize that drones are something really interesting to the kids in fact we're doing something on boot friday here at university we're calling it drone boot camp one of our directors uh dwight takana was putting that together and inviting everybody in and we'll have some kids will bring their own as such and we'll start going through the process of uh thinking about safety thinking about faa compliance and then let's go have some fun well so but i get once again uh when i was a kid and joined aop i would have called it kind of a stodgy old organization of old system 172 pilots and and now it's turned into something is embracing drones i just can't believe that it is so cool to see that happening it's really cool and i mean i think with aviation and aerospace um you know trying to get youth just involved and interested in aviation and aerospace that's our future you know and if we don't do that then where will we all be when we move on and uh so i think it's really critical but i think it's critical and so we have like the stem and of course we hear a stem stem and all these different different you know terms abing arts and then i've also heard a stem for aviation so that's something that we kind of have talked about a little bit but but it's all the same idea well how does aop a work and we talked about chapters for asa and we have to get one going here in hawaii essentially we do that aop a is that run by state chapters also so it's interesting because um we have several offices so we have folks working out of dc and frederick maryland um and in wichita kansas um and then also we have seven regional managers that represent um the members in the state level so it's an interesting flow of information um and then what's really very works really well as we have um our airport support network and so at pretty much we try for every airport in hawaii every airport has um a volunteer and so we see them as kind of our boots on the ground they're plugged in locally and so they kind of feed the information to me in the region and then i pass it along to the folks in you know either dc or so how will you handle the emerging drone business which basically stays away from airports i mean aop a airport centric in that regard but drones are airport a centric so we we need some way to figure out how to plug the emerging droneism here in hawaii into you well i think that it is the future and you know we're trying to promote safe integration um and i think that's really key because i mean you can go to cosco and get thrown i mean you know they're everywhere so i think we have to promote people being safe and responsible users of drones and that comes through education definitely first and foremost and i think it's just really critical to make sure that people are educated about airspace and about rules at the airport and what to do and not to do and also with fa's guidance you know i think people don't even know what fa is some of the folks that are buying drones probably right so yeah we have a lot of work to do with education i think in in regard to the education uh that we can draw upon to help our legislators create good law and such we have the policy and doctrine coming through asa we can pick up education and national trends in usage and national trends in uh stem or something like that through aopa right it brings two channels in together and have a really rich picture yeah presented for our our legislature yeah that would be really smart and we're very lucky that hawaii has some extremely supportive legislators for aviation and airspace we have our caucus our aviation caucus and we've talked about merging that with aerospace and so we have some really key legislators that are very supportive of aviation so we're very thankful for that that's great and so once again my role at the university uh running the unmanned aerial systems test range and the functions we have there we need to tap into both streams and assist in getting that information over to our uh legislature as a question came up yesterday in the caucus meeting uh i think one of the two of you proposed to uh the chair of the caucus that we need to figure out who all the legislators who have some tangential or direct relationship to aviation are and it wasn't a list right in fact senator agaheli said hey won't you make that list let me see it because i'd like to know who they are too yeah so we have a long way to go in terms of getting it all hooked up and connected yes and uh let's see one of the one of the beauties on that that a lot of people forget is every single legislator has some direct tangent to aerospace or aviation directly and they just don't realize it most of the time yeah it's true just the schools that are in their district yes part of that flow the students that go to the university life of their district that are studying aviation or aerospace stuff and then the the farmer that's using satellite technology yeah they don't a lot of them don't recognize where that's coming from and how that's important to their survival of the economy in their district is there some simple artifact or expression of what you do and what you do is that can we can flow to the legislature on a periodic basis i mean some getting them to read something that's more than a half a page in their busy time is yeah we do a monthly update or something like that right now i know that we provide the state legislature every day a daily briefing to their email on aerospace aviation that goes out i don't know if you guys have the same kind of daily briefing email yeah we we have a like a newsletter that goes out in the region and then we have what we call our e-pilot which is a digital newsletter so yeah and it's it's wonderful we have excellent writers and so they do a great job of trying to get our messaging out i wonder if we could take that somehow and sort of express it look in local police right and uh it how it applies to us here yeah and make it available in a distilled form uh maybe once a week or something like that would be yeah we'll talk about that by email when we're when we're back to back to our normal jobs this is exciting the fact that we've had this level of connection we also have level of connection as i mentioned with phil kennel who's at astm and rtca jim williams who is uh we all know jim williams i'm sure xfa and so we're i think we're finally getting to the point where we have a maybe a adequate body mass here of functionality that that has fingers and everything and can help us move forward in a positive way and we really like to do that here in Hawaii and uh i gotta tell you i thank you so much for your inspiration and for the support you guys give to the operational level yeah and thanks for coming on our show it's a short one next time you're here we'll do it again but melissa mccaffrey and uh ross gerlich uh there's another piece in the girl bell bell easy part the bell right thanks so much for coming on thanks for coming out and talking to the legislature and being part of the evasion caucus and yet again inspiring us in cool new directions thanks a lot thank you see you next week