 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. It is Thursday, folks. Ted Rawlson here, our downtown Honolulu studios of Think Tech Hawaii, overlooking a kind of a construction in the background here, I guess, rebuilding the studio. You see some of the structure members back there behind us. Anyway, our show, Where the Drone Leads, where we bring you current and relevant information about the emerging world of dronism, people who play in it, the agencies who manage it and such. And today, we have, as our guest, from far across the sea in San Diego, Punahou Boy, David Place. Dave, welcome aboard again. Thanks, Ted. Good to see you again. Hey, it's looking good to see you there. The sun hasn't set yet in San Diego, apparently. Like it used to set when we had this show late in the day. Yeah, no? OK, you're checking to see if the sun's there. I like that, Dave. That's a good policy. Anyway, David Place, X Punahou, X Navy, X Naval Postgraduate School, and a longtime UAS operator, planner, or fiction auto program manager, welcome on board again. We see you in the looks like the studio loft of your house in San Diego. That's where I am. OK, good enough. I thought about going out in the backyard, but it looks too much like Hawaii, so I don't want to do that. OK, anyway, we're at the kind of an interesting kickoff point here, David. We had a good discussion with Jay Fidel last week on this show, anticipating, looking forward to this incredible FAA, Department of Transportation, White House initiative that got launched a week ago today. And then we had more information on Friday, and more information even was latest today, on this Department of Transportation FAA pilot program, where UAS unmanned air system drone operations, as conceived by state, local, and tribal governments and agencies, to best affect the usage of these systems in their own domains, is what this pilot program is all about. And that is really an incredible turn of events. And in my mind, we could either see massive success, we could see massive failure too, because I don't think we in the local state area are really used to taking over and providing insight to federal activities that have long stood the test of time in terms of, in this case, airspace ownership. So to discuss back and forth where this all might go, look for a model where it might be useful to wrap our relevant thinking around, but discuss how we should all go forward from the knowledge we've got in the background on making something out of this pilot program opportunity. What are your thoughts, Dave, on where this is all going? Well, first of all, I did see your show last week with Jay. And he asked some awfully insightful questions for a man off the street, I must admit. But anyway, to answer your question, I think that what we will likely see is the usual suspects that do have a significant amount of experience in this arena participating. They will probably be the lead agents. It's encouraging that there's a presidential memorandum and that he's involving the secretary of transportation. So you have folks like New Mexico, North Dakota, Nevada, Virginia, Texas, Alaska. All those usual suspects for the test sites are clearly they have the knowledge and the subject matter expertise to make some potent and relevant contributions. My concern is now out in Hawaii, you don't have a test site per se, although you have your pan-Pacific initiative. You are out there with a lot of other folks at the research lab there with the University of Hawaii that do have some knowledge and can make valuable contributions provided you have the opportunity to do that. But there's other areas like some of the smaller, less populated states that don't have the same expertise that you do, not picking on Idaho or Iowa or some of those other states that have just been out on the periphery. My concern is that those folks don't have the resident expertise nor the wherewithal bandwidth, if you will, to make similar contributions. But I would think if we can get all the test site states, Hawaii, Oregon, those folks, in addition to the test site states that do have a lot of experience, I think you can make some valuable contributions. And while, yes, the federal government, and particularly FAA, is charged with providing safety in the national airspace, I don't think they have a monopoly on some good ideas. So folks like you, and I know I think maybe you're going to speak with the Civil Air Patrol folks out there here next month. But clearly, you have a lot of insight as to what constitutes safe and effective operation. I think it's also valuable that the initiative is reaching out to the commercial side, and not just DOD, homeland, security, et cetera. In fact, that's really interesting. And going back to your observation about Jay Fidel and his men in the street status and the great questions he asked, we do have a teleprompter here in the studio, and there might have been something up on it, which would have helped Jay a lot. If he can follow the track, that's often a problem. So we may have actually had him read the teleprompter from the last show. You never know. Anyway, it's great to have these opportunities to interact with Jay, interact with you, and get your ideas. And your ideas, of course, are those formed from your network of folks. And my ideas are from my network. We jam them together here on the show. We could make this the official show of the FAA Department of Transportation UAS pilot program. And we could be glad to give this show to the FAA. Let them have it. This is state and local speaking right to the heart of the Fed. So that's cool. But I think that's a great point, Ted, because one thing I've seen is that while we have some good ideas collectively, we don't have a good mechanism to show the present company excluded where we can reach out to the public that will actually be able to see some of this. I mean, nothing against the press, but some of the stuff that you see on the news kind of has the press excitement. If it's not exciting, then the press really doesn't want to address it. So shows like yours, I think, provide excellent opportunities. And the FAA would be wise to consider this as an option. OK, this is one of the rules we have on the show. We are only allowed to skewer three different organizations per half hour show. So you've already skewered the press. I think you might have skewered the FAA a little earlier. So down to one last organization, you can skewer, Dave. And I just wanted to let you know that. I wasn't intending to skewer the FAA. OK, none of us are, right? We love them. Anyway, what is intriguing, again, is that what we heard just today on the conference call of the Department of Transportation participated in, that's the DOT who owns the FAA at the behest of the National Governors Association, where this all started, was the absolute enthusiasm registered by the member of the DOT and FAA who was on the show on that conference call, promoting actively and asking for rapid response and whole response to this challenge. And what's incredible is that the federal government is, and I have to repeat it many times because it doesn't sit in my brain yet, but the federal government is turning to the state, local and tribal organizations and say, you best know how to use UAS in your airspace. Please stand up and tell us how best to use it in terms of location, in terms of manner of usage, and maybe time constraints or time limits on usage. If you can just stick with those, we'd be very happy to hear what your thoughts are and how to manage, how to enforce, and how to regulate and control. And they're not asking for any rules to be written. They're asking for ideas. And then this thing has a three-year life on it. And after three years, whatever's out there either sticks permanently through some formal program or goes away because it didn't work. But here we have the federal government turning to the states and local areas and saying 200 feet, at least airspace, and maybe 400 feet, consider it yours to describe how best to use that to suit the economy, the local lifestyle, the local topography, the local whatever it might be. Because you may know that better than we know that. And that isn't what we normally see in a strong federal-centric government that wants to build on itself. This is getting rid of it and pushing it out into the far corners, provided we can still maintain air safety in the commercial and military air traffic. So again, I think it's caught us all by sort of an enjoyable surprise. And I was just telling one of my colleagues this morning something that you might even remember, eighth grade at school down the street here called Punahoe. And we had to write a theme in eighth grade English. We had to write a theme every week. Every Friday we had to turn it into a theme with a subject that was given to us on Monday. And we all, you know how Punahoe it is. You all whine and cry when you don't like what you're being told. So we, as students, say, this allows the idea. We don't wanna write on that subject, teacher. You gave us a bad idea. We can't write on that. Come on, give us something we can write on. Let us choose what we want to write. No, no, no, write on this subject. Okay, we whine, cry, and then submit on Friday. At the end of the semester, the teacher, Ms. Bill Milton, said, okay, guess what? For this week, you guys can write on anything you want. And we all said, oh, we can't do that. We need structure. We need to be told what to write on. So you can't win either way. Anyway, that's what's going on here. We whine and we complain to the FAA that this doesn't work. That doesn't work. And why are you guys doing this to us? You don't know what the local operation's all about. They said, hey, you guys figure it out then. And you have 270 days to do it. 270 days from yesterday. So there's 269 days to do it. The clock started clicking yesterday when the Federal Register announcement came out. So they want whatever comes out of this that gets designed and gets conceived and gets authorized to be rolling in nine months, 270 days. So from your take, did they seem confident that that message was getting that this message that you're just articulating is getting out? That question didn't come up. But I think that's one of the points we have to make back. And in fact, what we'll do, David, we'll ask FAA if they want to come on this show next week and tell their story this way. And then you can circulate on the new service you've got, and we'll get the word out to everybody. And really do our service properly here. But again, it just sets you back so much when you suddenly realize you can't complain anymore. Now you have to perform. We're moving from a complaining organization to a performing organization, which means we have to have concepts and fairness and balance. In fact, I was really struck by the fact that some of the terms in here are all about community involvement, making sure that there is nobody in the community who says, no, that's not a good idea. Or if they do say, no, that's not a good idea, then we provide a time or something like that where they're OK with that. So describing the location, the manner, and the timing, or the time intervals in which UAS can be used to the community's satisfaction, that is just such an incredibly new and novel idea that, again, I think as a group, we're not really prepared to have those thoughts in mind. We are so oriented towards a structure imposed upon us and our response to that. But this also says, and here I am, we have another rule on our show. In addition to only skewering three people or three organizations, we don't allow monologues, except from the guy who's the host. So all monologue guys, one more step here. We do have to respect, I think, other programs that are going on, like Unmanned Traffic Management Program. And that's where I was really interested in your thoughts on how the Unmanned Traffic Management Program is moving forward and where there are pieces in there that can be pulled forward, maybe in conjunction with other pieces or isolated by themselves, such as some of the detect and avoid technology and such, that might fit into this picture of what a locally mandated system might look like. I know there's a meeting on the 30th down in your area, San Diego, where the next phase of Unmanned Traffic Management is going to be looked at. But where do we turn to, do you think, to get a really good idea of what's worked, what hasn't worked, what's been developed, what is still waiting to be developed within the UTM framework so that a robust picture can be brought up and we can pick from it the things that are useful? That's a great question, Ted. Well, first of all, going back to your point, I think it's just not only is it amazing that the DOT and the FAA are pushing down to the state and local levels, but the fact that there's an executive branch edict out there that directs us, I think, is a tremendous step in the right direction. As far as UTM or Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management goes, I have not seen an update on that in probably nine months, at least. So I'm not quite sure where they are. So I think this review that they're going to conduct on the 30th of this month here in San Diego will be insightful. I know there's a lot of companies out there that are working on various approaches to, I think one of the biggest issues with the whole UTM is being able to conduct, sense and avoid or detect and avoid. So you have to be able to see not just other UAS, but also small Piper Cubs, the bigger aircraft like the commercial liners, they're fairly well equipped and we know where they are. But where's the little Piper Cub that's flying along at 300 feet, no one from Inbuktu to Chattanooga? You don't know, the FAA is not sure where they are. So they're flying under visual flight rules, but we need, the UAS need to be able to do that. And there's several companies out there that have demonstrated a capability, but those are primarily on bigger platform. We need to be able to have that same capability on your quadcopters, for example. Let's tell you what, let's get back to that thought, how we're going to take what's been done and develop so far and push it forward after we take our one minute break here. And by the way, the show is now, used to be 45 minutes I think last time you were on is half an hour now, so it gets very compressed. Let's take a break and come right back and talk about that situation. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Greetings, I'm Stephen Phillip Katz, the longtime host of Shrink Rap Hawaii. Think Tech is important to me because without Think Tech, I never would have had a chance to realize my dream of having a show, of talking with other therapists, finding out what they're doing and sharing it with the world at large. Now, for the first time ever, Think Tech Hawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. Give thanks to Think Tech. We'll run only during the month of November. And you can help. Please donate what you can so that Think Tech Hawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming like mine. I've already made my donation and I look forward to yours. Please send in your tax-deductible contribution by going to this website. www.thanksforthinktech.causvox.com. On behalf of the community enriched by Think Tech Hawaii's 30-plus weekly shows, thank you for your generosity. It is still the noon hour on Thursday, folks. Ted Ralston here with our show, where the drone leads, having a violent conversation with one of our favorite hosts on the show, Dave Place from Punahou and Honolulu and now San Diego. Retired out of the Navy, out of the Navy Postgraduate School, long-term, long-time UAS operator, fiction auto and thinker. We're just talking before the break about how to take the work that's been done, and we could generalize it beyond undone man-traffic management program. How do we take the work that's been done by FAA programs and NASA programs and such and stand them up so that everybody who wants to apply to do something in this pilot program has access commonly to the state of what's been going on in these other programs? Well, so this meeting on the 30th of November is a NASA, my understanding is it's a NASA initiative to bring folks up to date on where UTM stands. UTM is just a tool, but since it's specifically mentioned in the Presidential Memorandum specifically, then I think you bring up a good point that, so how do the folks that don't follow this routinely, yet they are being charged with providing some insight to DOT and the FAA, how do they know what to do? Now they may have their own thoughts regardless of UTM, but I think if they were brought up to speed on what UTM is attempting to accomplish, that would go a long way towards them providing valid inputs to the state and local level inputs to DOT. So perhaps a recommendation to DOT and or NASA would be this event that occurs on the 30th of November, they might wanna try and make that available via webinar or at least have folks be able to dial in and observe the dialogue that goes on during this conference. Amen, that's a great idea and I will be certainly happy to go to my office when we're done and type that up and send that into the FAA website that is collecting ideas on this, but that also makes me think there's probably other things that the government has invested in that are applicable technologies that were designed to go in this direction. I don't know where they may be, don't even know how to find them. But what I'm thinking is that little guy in Montana or somewhere who has a bright idea and wants to get involved here, may not know about that work that's already been done. So we are- That's absolutely true. And there's a lot of private companies that are also, I mean, so the whole thing evolves to, I mean, we can see you have flight, you have 107 certifications right now, but those are restricted to line of sight operation. As almost anybody understands, the real end state is to do beyond line of sight. So you can only see a quadcopter a quarter of a mile away, but clearly the mission area, whether it's doing agriculture or public safety, typically is a lot further away than a quarter mile. So how do you do that? Well, you need beyond line of sight. How are you going to do beyond line of sight? Well, you need to have to know where all the traffic is, all the air traffic. But there are companies out there that understand this requirement to do beyond line of sight and they are facilitating that capability by generating, and I'll just use one example, General Atomics has built a do regard radar, specifically that will support beyond line of sight operations. Now that's not, I don't believe that's a government funded initiative. I believe that's General Atomics doing that on their own because they understand the value in being able to do that beyond line of sight. But there are other companies out there that also have been looking at this beyond line of sight issue. I think that the Assure program down in Mississippi, which is a conglomeration of lots of universities, lots of industry folks, I think they are also looking at, how do we faithfully and successfully achieve beyond line of sight operations? And that's going to be the key. So right now the FAA has instituted some regulations that provide us some, I use that term loosely, but particularly the commercial folks, some local, very local capability to use their UAVs. Well, you know, this is really something that is almost structural, that needs to be looked at broadly within this FAA pilot program, and I say this very seriously, the private companies that have done their own investment, their own R&D, and their own testing, hats off to them, that's great. If they can use that preparatory development in some way that differentiates them from somebody else, and they can bring that in through a state agency because only state or tribal or city agencies can be part of this, commercial partners have to be coming in as a partner rather than a principal. But to their great credit, if they've done that work, hey, let's give them credit, let them solve the problem, and let's take it on. However, if there's been government investment that has generated this technology, such as the UTM program, that really has to be available commonly to all particular participants, including work done by the Assurer Operation, as you point out, done in Mississippi. So that's, I think, an important thing for us to have the FAA take on is to find a way to get that information out to the larger audience. But I'd like to follow up that by saying that, and I'm glad you brought up Beyondline of Sight. Certainly Beyondline of Sight is one of the key, in fact, that's the first thing listed as the technical functionality that's required here beyond the governance issue and how you're gonna operate rules and regulations and manners of operation and such. It's Beyondline of Sight. That's the measurable thing that is gonna be rewarded for work here. There's also something called ELOS now, Extended Beyondline of Sight, I guess is what that means, although I haven't seen a definition of how Beyond and Extended relate to each other. But those two are the top of the pyramid in terms of what's needed, operations or flight over people. And that means having a 10 to the minus nine safety or something like that that allows you to operate over people that aren't involved in the event. And then operations at night. So these are the things that are in the waiver domain of 107 and the 333s, but these are to be out front in this particular program. So having said that, that means that operations that are allowed under 107 aren't interesting to this pilot program. What's interesting to them is things that are beyond where 107 or the 333s will take you. So I would agree with that. But I mean, just to... No, I'm not securing General Atomics at all. In fact, I believe that the FAA, GA General Atomics is keeping the FAA informed on the progress they are making. So the FAA realizes the value of beyond line of sight and they're, you know, I'm sure other folks are keeping the FAA informed as well. But we still need to get, which is behind the initiative for this to get the state and local inputs to the entire process. And to that extent, the figure of merit or the thing that's rewarded in the state and local domain is the term collaboration and an under term integration. And an interesting question is, I've actually posed this to FAA already, how do you measure collaboration among government agencies? How do you determine something is well-collaborated or something is poorly-collaborated? How do you measure integration? How do you know if the thing is fully integrated, partly integrated? If you had a device that did integration, where do you bolt it on to the UAS? So there's these, you know, grand terms that don't have necessarily measurable parameters associated with them, but yet they are the key terms in the program. So we have some reward generating thinking to think about here and to understand how that's gonna work as well. But these are just, you know, I'm just using these as like filler points. These are technical issues we have to worry about and getting towards making proposals to the solicitation. It's like ADSB, you know, that is also a useful tool. Those type of systems aren't necessarily well-known by the small guy that is gonna be providing his local input. So it's kind of garbage in, garbage out. If you don't know what's there, you go, well, wait a minute, we already can do that. Well, I didn't know that. And again, as you say that, that's a great example, ADSB out. The kind of questions that come to my mind are, was that, was the communication system associated with that, which is SATCOM, was that actually designed to operate in an urban canyon, which is where a lot of UAS operations will wanna be in an urban canyon. Do you get signal reflection? Do you get some signal loss with that? But secondly, I've actually operated one small UAS that has dual ADSBs on it. And if it sees somebody else's signal coming down, it simply says, warning aircraft nearby. Okay, I'm not sure what to do with that. I need a situation to display this. I need a collision avoidance guidance of some kind. But David, as I mentioned, this program format is down to half an hour now, and we've managed to get very little of the items of discussion underway, so I'll have to have you back again, as this may be around the 30th, when you're gonna go to the meeting, I'm sure, down there in San Diego. Well, let's keep talking about this subject and make this the official output of information to the public on this incredible FAA and the Department of Transportation pilot program for unmanned air systems operated in a local environment with local authority being invited, being requested to provide operational guidance. So, Dave, thanks for coming on again, and gotta get you back here to Hawaii. Wait till next month, after the 30th of November meeting, so we can have some good insight regarding NASA and the UTM program. We'll bring you on for that one, sir, very, very looking forward to that one, okay? And the surf still breaks here, David, so your board is still around somewhere, your 9-6 hobby, I'm sure. That's exactly what it was. Yeah, okay, time to get back here and get some wax and get her out in the water. Okay, Dave, thanks for coming on, and we'll see you all again next Thursday.