 Broad afternoon, folks. The Ides of July, July 15th. Ted Ralson here in Honolulu at our Think Tech studio hosting the show where the drone leads, where we try to bring to our our public information about the emerging domain of droneism. There's so many different changes happening every week and recent rules released by the FAA interpretations prior to that and such that we need to continually use this opportunity to bring to you information about what is happening in that world so you can be part of it and you can observe the the safe and correct growth of that particular segment of our future business here in Hawaii. That's a long-winded introduction. I'd like to welcome on our show today Leonard Lagan who's been on the show before. Leonard is actually in New Mexico right now. Leonard is a I don't know what we can use to describe you. Leonard you've been doing UAV and drone work for a long time and also manned aircraft work. So you're a manager, an operator, a consultant. Every aspect of droneism is present in Leonard's past experience. It's the the old man in the mountain is what you're describing. The old man of the UAV mountain. Well, you're all old men here unfortunately on the show. Actually we had some really young kids on the show. I got white hair. They all have black hair a couple of weeks ago. So there is an interest in the younger generation Leonard to come in and in fact part of our job I think collectively is to lay a path forward that they can follow into and then make better from what we've been working in the past. Anyway, Leonard I think you're on our show back in maybe a year or so ago when you were up at the University of Alaska associated with the Alaska State Test Site. So we're overdoing getting you back on Leonard and thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you very much Ted. Okay you're right now in New Mexico no longer Alaska. Well I'm sitting in New Mexico but presently I work for NASA. Okay so you're a part of the NASA Armstrong I believe. That no NASA Ames out of the Silicon Valley Bay Area. And that is a really interesting perspective that you would then bring because we've had so many recent issues of rules, interpretation of rules and now very close to getting some rules finalized and it would be really interesting for me and I think our folks here in the Hawaii Test Site to understand and and see how you at the NASA level observe and then deal with these multiple changes in interpretation of rules coming forth. In fact let's talk. Well I'm going to tread carefully there because I can't speak for NASA. Remember I'm a contract that works for NASA and they have their own approach to how they're going to observe these new rules that come out. I can only speak to my own experience when I address these matters with you. That's great I think we wouldn't ask you to do any more than that but I but the point is that these there are a lot of changes a lot of new information coming out and it's very difficult for us in the game to pay attention to it and to be common in terms of our understanding and interpretation. Just think of the public out there think of the people in the educational system think in the the law enforcement people who are obligated to keep these operating safely the humanitarian people environmental people who use these systems just think how hard it must be for them to keep track of all these recent changes. Anyway that's my ad lib to introduce you to add some thoughts of that matter. Well honestly I'd say that they've got a pretty simple and straightforward pathway right now provided they want to keep things a simple load of the ground line of sight they just want to do you know as you mentioned earlier I'm part of the the original old generation kind of helped some of the foundation for what exists they now so when you talk about how hard it is or how hard it was certainly it was hard in the beginning I've been you know my first thought that I wrote was in 1993 and when there was one guy at the FDA and then we evolved from there and I've probably written 250 300 colors since then but the reason I'm telling you that is that there is a can you hear me right we got a lot of clear sound offers this feedback we should tell the audience that two old guys you're trying to make Skype work earlier this afternoon and it finally worked with the help of young Zuri in the office here carry on Leonard you were good we get the feedback oh we're okay okay I wanted to hear me now yep okay yeah what I was saying you know lay in the foundation didn't take a lot of work like you said it's that's old guys that were there slinging the mud walking through the tall grass when there was no trail we were cutting gladly that's what I've dedicated my life to and it's guys like me and guys like us in the industry that have knocked down and fell to a lot of trees that now make up these regulations rules that the FAA has been able to hand out and so I've really been glad happy to do it's been the love of my life I used to think when I was in the Army 24 years in the army I used to think that was love my life all I got involved in aircraft that was back in 1993 and I found that I had a whole new love of life once I got into the field so this is what I do a passion that's fantastic Leonard and the what you're observing is that the the arc that you generated and that you made possible has been converted now into practice is what what we're seeing in the regulations of the FAR FAR 107 that has come out recently so you can see a lot of your efforts that are buried in the way the rules are interpreted in the way the rules are written absolute I see a great deal of the data that we collected early on is now part of everyday language the regulations so I'm really not only fast the fact that I've actually helped write some of the pages history of this but just that I'm able to look at a legacy and when I see a kid flying a UAV do I walk up and say hey I helped you with that thing airborne I would never do but I look at my wife and we smirk at each other and smile and we say you know you know we helped lay the foundation for this road and that's great and it's also in some weeks to some extent helping the whole progression into STEM and the science technology engineering and math aspects that are defining the future of in our in our cyber oriented and IT oriented world in the sense that these UAS systems are much more IT or cyber dependent than our aircraft that we're familiar with in the past and that we have the ground station you got the communications loop and you got the unmanned air vehicle itself all part of the system and how that all relates to the larger air traffic system is really a sort of a cyber issue and the fact that we've been able to get legislation and laws on the table that that allow that kind of a complex a complex interactive system dynamic system to operate is is really a testimony to the work that's been done by you and others in the past yet sounds almost as if you're speaking about the unmanned traffic management program that NASA's heading which really resides inside the air traffic management system or ultimately will reside within and as part of the unmanned or the air traffic management system and let's talk about that a little bit can you are you are you free to say anything about the status and progress being made in the unmanned traffic management system only that NASA has been some fantastic work got a lot of good partners of where I help them to see a lot of the technologies along and we expect to keep doing great work as well good and the air traffic management system of the UTM system program that NASA has generated is is basically dealing with safety by segregation wouldn't you say that is is defining a an operating channel in the airspace that the UAV is allowed to use based on prior agreements and based on well I'm not going to say that that is what it's all the goal is going to be and and honestly I don't think anybody really knows what UTM is going to like in the end and now you got me treading in some dangerous waters here because you're asking me to speak on what NASA's policy precedents are but the bottom line is air traffic management is what controls the airspace UTM is a model that will be infused into ATM once it is finished okay and then how does how do you think that UTM when it is finished in whatever configuration that ends up how will the effort the far federal elevation regulation 107 rule set play in with the unmanned traffic management system well 107 I hope is a living document as as time goes on this technology gets better as people get smarter and more responsible and we figure out the ins and outs of not only what 107 brings us today but what it has the technical to bring us later on will evolve regulations and with that the technology supports the airspace going to involve as well so I guess that interpreting that one of the aspects of 107 is it in the various levels of regulated airspace you require an air traffic management clearance in order to operate the UAV in that airspace and perhaps the unmanned traffic management program will fit with 107 in that way in that the aspects of 107 that allow operational channel to exist would be the means by which air traffic control provides that clearance for you to operate well perhaps it will be addressed by 107 but I don't know that for a fact you know I think you're right about 107 being a growing document I mean there's so many things that aren't defined for it yet and they I guess they'll be defined when August 29th when it when it becomes formal but there's going to be all the training associated with that people have to get unmanned air aircraft licenses through training and through testing so there's a there's a lot of evolution yet of the specifics of the ins and outs of what's going to make 107 work yeah the one thing that I will tell you is never put the calendar date on what the FAA is going to give us I've learned that I learned that 15 years ago and I'm still learning that today what I will tell you is that hopefully 107 in a living document take the lessons learned from each point in time and each whether it's a mistake or whether it's a success and put it to paper into the 107 you know and I've learned that even even in this narrow in this relatively recent time period of the last couple of years when these free free free exemptions were out that a lot of the experience that was gathered by the industry and by operators under the free free free exemptions have led to some of the policy aspects that are embedded in 107 so there is that that continual learning process and that continually taking the right answers the right approaches forward and and canceling the past that aren't productive that is part of that living document you're thinking of that would characterize the future 107 and some of it's going to have to be lessons learned that we learn out of mistakes others are going to be lessons that we pick up automatically one thing that I like is I think about configuration control when I think about software and I think about cyber systems IT systems configuration is something that says that if I buy a computer that can do X Y or Z that's really all I do but with the UAV one of the things that you've got to be aware of is guys are buying these things and then they're going out payloads on them never designed things or put weights on them were never designed they're buying different types of batteries and adding to the configuration so while the regulation stands out there and says go ahead and register this UAV as a let's call it DJI Phantom 4 is that really what it is once you've configured that thing and you've put a gun on it you've put a drop device on it or you've changed the software you have upgrades to software from the company is it still the same configuration that you register when you register that UAV for the first time we're this show is now under two segments not three like when you're on last time we'll take our first break here in a minute but I but I let's come back to that very issue the issue of the ethics of configuration control configuration management and ultimately in ethics of design that almost leads to TSOs and other kind of standards which is intriguing yeah let's talk about that letter we get back from our first break okay hi I'm Donna Blanchard I'm the host of center stage which is on Wednesdays at 2 o'clock here on think tech on center stage I talk with artists about not only what they do and how they do it but the meat of the conversation for me is why they do it why we go through this a lot of us are not making our livings doing this and a lot of us would do this with our last dying breath if we had that choice and that's what I love to talk to people about I hope you enjoy watching it and I hope you get inspired because there's an artist inside G2 join us on center stage at 2 o'clock on Wednesdays bye Aloha I'm Richard Emory host of condo insider a weekly Thursday show at 3 o'clock it goes all summer long talking about issues living in a condo association each week we bring experts to talk about the rights and obligations of owners and boards of directors to successfully run their condominium it's a great educational show answers a lot of questions we hope you'll visit us sometime Aloha Friday afternoon folks the eyes of July again second half of our program where the drone leads on think-tack away Ted Ralston in the studio downtown and we're joined by Leonard Lagone who is in New Mexico and Leonard is a several several times flyer on this show Leonard welcome back to our show and thanks a lot for providing your insight to us on where the drone business is all going of course okay great we'll have you get by the way back to we ought to get you out here live in fact when the whole when they say the whole UAS test site starts getting active and getting alive we probably need someone like you out here just to keep us straight and narrow for a while we'll talk about that maybe on a theater show but what we're talking about just before the break is the the sense that you've got I certainly have as well that we're running in a kind of an unregulated running a form of regulation in an unregulated domain that is the the definition of drones and what is a drone and what the what's what the drawing number that defines the drone all that is a bit in jello right now in terms of where we're going with the even federal one oh seven consider a few instead you know the FAA has got an awesome responsibility protecting the national airspace system and all of the certainly the man that are using it all passengers sitting on those man and their responsibility is phenomenally almost impossible some would say but but they do a great job now what's going on is that commercial industry that has stepped in and said that we want to play with these things too and we've got a job with these things and I get that I mean I stand mine figuring out what commercial apps are to make these things a little work for John Q. but you know that Congress said step up and basically they had to slap the FAA and say you guys aren't doing fast enough not enough for us our constituents are standing behind us telling us they want something and by golly you can't get to us now so consequently administrator where obviously he had to almost sign his name in blood to make promises that he would put something out now what God is we've great start one oh seven good comprehensive document that gets us halfway where a lot of the commercial business industry want to be not all the way certainly you know they want to be up beyond visual systems and they want to rise and they would surrogate satellites and we still got a way to get there but as I said they had an awesome responsibility and then when Congress stepped in and said thou shalt they had something in place some would call it a band-aid some would call it putting a patch on it just to be able to tell Congress there see you gave some but honestly I think it's a great step in the right direction but it's still got a long ways to go and you know we as we talked about earlier configuration uh there's a vv and i software and there's a lot of people don't even know what things like an ap1b are or what the routes are come out of an ap1b and how where i'm going to operate with respect to those routes different classes of interspace what it's clearly defined not clear to find with regard to liability a person can operate a small uab if they have physical or mental conditions but when the regulation says certify yourself to be capable in order to get the license what does that mean abilities to and that's that's exactly right that's what was going through my mind as we were talking before the break because uh the it looks like what's happened is the the obligation that is typically present in aircraft certification which is all the part 25 search or part 30 free whatever the certification may be for engines and airplanes and operators that's been rolled over and been replaced by a obligation by the operator once he's got through this training and got himself a uab operator's license uh to behave safely and to operate safely and to obey all the rules so rather than force the operator or the the configuration into a standards-based design set again it's simply been said okay you're responsible and implicitly your own liability management would define how much variations allowed in that configuration or in your operation because you are responsible so it's transferring the responsible responsibility from the standard writers and the rule writers over to the operator himself and i i suspect it will find over time an experience uh that some form of standards will have to come back in into the game but it'll only be the experience that tells us that certainly yeah i mean what you think and tell a 16-year-old i mean i don't know about the 16-year-olds in your neighborhood but in my neighborhood if you give them a drone they're going to be dropping a cracker from the thing uh one of the things chasing the neighbors cats and everything else so these are the guys that buy these things and you know they're going to declare themselves uh operable they're stable uh you know the liability is going to arrest it their shoulders let's uh think about that right and that that again turns into standards of some kind and in fact the uh the ntaa i believe and the or the rtca and astm are both working on standards for structure and and propulsion and integration and this sort of thing as well as communication those those professional societies are still pushing forward here on working through what they might come up with in terms of standards for those areas and i suspect what'll happen is the experience gained under the continuous 3 3 3 work as well as the now 107 will point in the direction of whether some of those standards are needed and then faa will have available to it uh a band of uh professionals who are working through this problem and are ready with standards that can come forward but that'll start constraining and and and controlling the uh configuration and the operations limitations and such in a way that are a little bit more a lot more specific than what we have in the rules today in the new rule today yeah and so uh and and actually experience your you're gaining through nasa and the experience for gaining through the faa test sites like alaskans and hawaiians and such uh will contribute to all of that so i think there's a uh as some people might think that 107 has represents a major state change and an arrival of some new functionality in a walk in the park but that isn't true it's as you said it's just a beginning of that walk in the park now we have the the beginning of the way to get experience growing and to get feedback from operations and that'll all lead to this continual evolved cycle evolutions evolution of thinking in the faa of how you take what you've got and how you make it better and how you eliminate the the traps that were not understood when the rules were written yeah i guess we kind of look at it the same way as we were at the beginning of the aviation industry the first pilot license uh came from the barnstormer that just told the guy okay you're good enough ahead you got it and uh you know based on his uh word um i'm now qualified by um today we've as you say we've developed the standards and the education process and and uh the knowledge banks that we now i have a great system in place that takes a pretty long time to get um you know and certainly if i want a pilot license i'm going to spend four thousand dollars uh just for my uh just for my uh you know small investment partners and and what we're going to see is fact on that account just so people watching this know is that the the test you have to take uh in order to begin your uh 107 uh unmanned air system certificate is going to cost 150 bucks so we're now adding that level of of um uh you got to be dedicated you're going to go spend 150 bucks on a test and if you if you don't pass the test and you have to take it again you get to spend 150 a second time it isn't like once 150 and you keep going to you pass it it's 150 every time you take it so there's cost involved and there's implied liability involved that now is is elevating the nature of the of the business away from the rc airplanes and such which don't have any of that or don't have much of that into sort of in the in the area our risk management people start paying attention to it because they're our lab and it's attached and for the small business dad that's going to work out just fine and even for the small business entrepreneur that's just starting out that's going to just fine but for that 60 year old kid that uh goes out there and buys that thing at fries electronics or radio shack um you tell him he's going to need 150 dollars he's going to look at you and say yeah sure i'll uh i'll pull that right out and so we're going to see once again the compliance issues are going to be a challenge and the and then the enforcement issues are going to be in challenge and presently there is nothing written into the law that addresses the enforcement there well that's that's the thing we've uh we had kreg burns out here once he's faa's uh west coast anyway uh law enforcement outreach guy also also takes care of laser and uh it's pretty clear in his mind as he explains it that the uh the enforcement remains at the local law enforcement level that means the police or sheriff's department whatever it might be county sheriff and such that uh are going to have to take care of the identification of a deviation from standard behavior and practice and then enforce it they generate a report the report may or may not go back to the faa who may take some action but the faa has no action they can take unless the guy has a license so that situation you represent or that you discussed of a 16 year old kid who isn't going to spend 150 bucks on his license that then turns into one of these areas is very difficult for police because he's not going to get a license and if he doesn't have a license the faa has very little they can do to him because he got nothing he can take away from him so think about this that there are 19,400 and i believe 40 47 something like that 19,400 plus uh municipality around the country uh with a law enforcement uh uh you know entities agencies belonging to them now there are many more law enforcement entities when you count the state federal local tribal municipal all of that and somehow there has to be an education process that reaches out to these guys now the international association of chiefs of police they have a pretty good baseline i think to put out a gold standard it's a um we're offering course but it still takes those guys to come in and be willing to pay for the time and the money to send their people to these courses and many of them just too darn busy to worry about a 16 year old dude who is doing something harmless uh in their eyes um such as flying your drone uh you know around a park or something you know Leonard let me let's let's uh reserve this discussion for a follow on program that's a very important piece working with the police department in Honolulu right now on that very issue and exactly as you mentioned understanding and education and training and what the prosecutor will accept are all the rules of the game but at this point we have reached the end of our new shortened program and Leonard I thank you very much for coming on that late at night out there in new mexico and we'll see you again sometime on this show and folks we'll see you next friday on where the drone leads