 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. It's a noon hour on Thursday again folks, Ted Rossen here in our Waimanalo Beach Studio of Think Tech Hawaii with our weekly show, Where the Drone Leads, where we bring our viewership great information about the emerging technology, regulations, policies and procedures and people associated with this expanding world of drones. And today we're having a kind of a book ending affair here. We've got Kat Swain at the AOPA, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association standing by in sunny but cold Maryland right now. Kat, welcome to our show. Well, thank you. I wish I could say sunny and warm like they're in Hawaii, but not quite. It's a little cold here in Maryland, but thanks for having me. Even if it's sunny where you are, it's still going to be cold. And that won't change until about April or so. Pretty much. You know, we're in what I call the Arctic stage now. That's for sure. And we're enjoying the tropics and so next time you'll have to actually come out here. But anyway, so we have Kat from AOPA in a really unusual development in my mind within AOPA, the AOPA, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a legacy organization dealing with basically people and pilots and the utility of aircraft is now reaching down into UAVs, unmanned air systems, drones. But to have that happen is a really significant measure, I think, and mark for the rest of us because that says that somebody outside this business is really recognizing the potential value of it and the potential reach and breadth that the technology and the business might have and therefore AOPA needs to get involved. So Kat, tell us how AOPA made that determination, made that decision to get involved and to start having a segment of your business associated with drones. Well, certainly. Again, thanks for having me. Now, as the commercial UAV, when we had Section 333 kind of propagate back in 2013 and then with the launch or adoption or implementation of 107 in August of 2016, AOPA has always, I wouldn't say always, but we've been at the forefront of a lot of the formation talks of 107 kind of, I guess, behind the scenes. We didn't launch our drone membership until February of this year. So that's kind of when we had our, I guess, public outcoming, so to speak, into the drone space. But we had been doing a lot of work in DC with the FAA, a lot of the arcs and everything trying to formulate some of the drone regulations and making for safe integration. So it's not like we had really been new to the space. I guess it was we were new to the public in the space. And when I came aboard AOPA, I've been a member ever since I was 16 years old. I'm a manned pilot and CFI, flight instructor and drone pilot and 107 remote pilot. But when I came aboard as an employee in March of 2016, the organization brought me on board and said, Kat, you know, we want to welcome drone pilots to the community. Our name is Aircraft Owner and Pilots Association. 107 gave remote pilots a pilot certification. So they're pilots just like manned pilots were just unmanned. So it's a new class and certification in drones or aircraft, according to the FAA. So realistically, it was it was really the perfect community for them to join us as we work through this growth of safe integration into the national airspace. So I thought it was the perfect fit. That's a really cool thing. And I must say that I think I first joined AOPA in 1963 when I got my commercial. And I was just reviewing some of that today. And back in those days, we had we were just excited about the new miniature vacuum tube radios we had in the airplanes. And we had the the leers and the and the narcos and the aero ears and such. And I've just found out today that those are now considered antiques. Those are miniature vacuum tubes. I won't date myself to the the days of Lorraine and everything else. But but yes, we have come a long way in with new technology. It's it's just like when when we saw the adoption of helicopters into general aviation back in the day and more and more people in general aviation started that it was just another piece in aircraft and pilot in the community. Same thing with the remote pilot. The only difference is where they control the aircraft from their aircraft is still flying in general aviation airspace. That's exactly right. General aviation airspace and that brings in a couple of other interesting perspectives, at least from what I can see, there's probably more RPA or drone pilots registered today than there are fixed wing pilots. I would or man pilots I would assume or if not, it won't be long. And if all the people out there who actually are operating drones actually got their certificate, we'd see probably twice what we have today on the books. So the body count is going to go way up in terms of membership and need for representation and need for education and need for standards. The point of view they're all coming from is quite different from what we have in the legacy aviation business, where you come from a situation where the training is not just the book learning or passing the test, but it's also practical tests that goes along with and so that the two go together. Whereas in the world of RPA is there is no practical test required. It's strictly a airspace regulatory orientation in the test and the practical experience is acquired by some other means. So anyway, we have a different channel of entry and we have a different frame of mind of the people coming in that channel. So education and getting people to understand policies, procedure standards, the way aviators think and this sort of thing and the way the airspace is operated is going to be quite an interesting challenge and it's really cool that you guys are there because if there's probably nobody better equipped to think that through with an AOPA. Well, I appreciate that and I think that there's you know, there's other organizations out there that support corporate 107. There's organizations out there and we won't name them all of course, but organizations, longstanding organizations that support RC hobbyists, which I'm a member of, I've flown RC since I was little. So I think all of us have a place all of our organizations have a place to help this movement of safe integration, to help the growth of drone industry without stifling the innovation of course, because like you stated, it's it's different entry points. I kind of view it as kind of a three entry point system, you know, you have the 107 commercial operators, then you have the what I call traditional RC hobbyists that have come up through maybe the ranks of AMA, the Academy of Model Aeronautics and then you have kind of the new what I call the new generation hobbyists, the one that goes and buys it from let's say an amazon.com or a big box store. That's the person really that I think all of us are trying to reach out to to help educate because those are the people that really have no aviation connection at all. So those are the drone operators, the hobbyists or that getting ready to be the new entry points into 107 that have no aviation background or connection. So when you say, you know, are you aware what airspace you're flying in and they go, what's airspace? So those are the people I think that is not just AOPA, but all of this in the drone space, all the associations and organizations have a responsibility to help educate. That's exactly right. And so determining what that educational material is and the orientation of it, the entry point, what the objective at the end of the day is for education, is it compartmentalized into certain categories or is there like a standard endpoint? That's a lot of things that are that are being discussed. And we have a lot of interest in understanding how you're thinking about that here in Hawaii, because we have a situation where we have some commercial providers of 107 training, for example, we have a lot of backyard conversations, things that help people get ready on a on a private basis. We have a budding system within the university and the community colleges we have to generate in order to provide training for professional operators in the construction industry or the maritime industry and such. And we haven't done any of that. We can see that we need it, but we haven't actually got to that point yet. So having knowledge of whatever you guys are doing and thinking about your roadmap, you sharing your roadmap, if you can with us would be fantastic. We can start populating and testing. We do have a workforce situation out here in Hawaii. If we have to, if one more company wanted to hire a bunch of drone operators, they probably don't exist with a with a creditable accreditation that would allow them to go forward and operate. They can get a 107 for sure. But in terms of the real knowledge you need beyond just the airspace issues, how do you actually operate? What happens in faults occur? What about when there's a potential conflict or something like that or something goes wrong? These things are what you learned in the practical domain. And we really need to figure out how to train them and have them ready for that when the hiring comes around. So that's going through our minds right now. But you mentioned airspace and low altitude airspace. Of course, the FAA, UAS integrated pilot or integration pilot program, which we all just submitted our applications for last Thursday is is coming around in between March and May when the awards will start coming out. I'd like to know what your thoughts are on how that program is viewed in terms of kind of forcing out this issue of low altitude integration and who owns the airspace? Is it the FAA on the airspace? Is it the local jurisdictions, which is the porting function here? How do you guys see that and how do you see this IPP program assisting and pulling all that together? You know, AOPA is part of the drone advisory committee. So we're deeply entrenched in helping a lot of that regulation and a lot of that roadmap move forward. But that's it's not an easy process. You know, you brought up a lot of good points that there's, you know, we're so used to federal preemption. So we're used to the FAA controlling airspace from the blade of the ground all the way up to the top of the sky. And that's never been an issue in manned aviation before. But when you have the UAS community, that that is an issue because we can we can take off and land pretty much anywhere, you know, given given permission. And so it's it's not as easy to say, OK, well, federal preemption is the law of the land. And that's the way it's going to be state and local tribal. Sorry, you don't have any any role in this in this space. There has to be some type of compromise. And I think that's where you saw the birth of the pilot program come out of. We we all realize that there has to be some kind of compromise. There has to be a role for state and local and tribal governments to play in the UAS space. We can't just simply say that the way that we've done things before is the way that we're going to do things now, because it doesn't always work with new technology like UAS. So with the pilot program getting ready to launch and I was excited to hear from the FAA at CES this week that they are moving forward. I think that they have over 200 applications completed and getting ready to select. I believe they said 10 people or 10 organizations for the initial rollout. So I'm excited to see what that's going to mean. I still think that when I say I AOPA that federal control of the airspace is a must to some degree. However, there has to be some type of compromise for state and local. You have some type of enforcement or let's say launch and land areas areas of let's say overflights of a public gathering, something of that sort. There has to be some type of protection and control mechanism for that. I do believe and I'm hoping that through the pilot program, you'll see some of that develop. We'll talk about a little bit more after our one minute break here. Kat, you're right back. It is still the Thursday noon hour, folks. Ted Rawlson here in Waimanalo Beach with our show where the drone leads and our guest in Maryland is Kat Swain from Aircraft Owners and Pilot Association, AOPA, first time flyer on this show, but we'll get you back again sometime, I'm sure. And by the way, Russ Bakers in town and we're all heading down for a town hall meeting at six o'clock down at the airport tonight. So that's the bookend. We have AOPA on the show today at noon. We have the boss here and flesh and blood on in the evening. In fact, when you mentioned that AOPA had just started about a year ago, publicly talking about its involvement in UAS, but had been working behind the scenes privately for some time, that's interesting to hear that because my first contact with AOPA having anything to do with UAS was when we had a town hall meeting out here in Hawaii that Melissa McCarthy McCaffrey came out for and we had it down at the Capitol was called the Aviation Caucus and I was struck by the fact that in this Aviation Caucus half the discussion was about unmanned air systems and here AOPA was leading the discussion. So that was certainly a welcome surprise and a good one. But back to the question we were discussing before the break and at the break, coming up with a model for how a local jurisdiction or a combination of local jurisdictions and local could be all the way from a state, the entire state like here in Hawaii to a tribe or to a city or to something that's less than state in scope, how they would have the knowledge and the capability to manage the situations that occur in air operations, albeit low, then 200 feet 400 feet your choice, is still an obligation, it would put on them an obligation that they don't have today. I think they manage roadways pretty well, you know the two-dimensional stuff, they got that figured out. Adding that third dimension and the additional issues required, if you just can imagine a department of transportation and wherever it is you might think of where you get your driver's license, this quadruple the size of that to handle the airside of it, the usual laws of scaling would generate something like that. So or the way we put it here is okay if we had one drone over Honolulu we got that figured out. Two drones, well that's interesting, I wonder who owns the second one, 500, a thousand, this becomes a a complicating complex situation very very quickly. I think you bring up a good point and I'm hoping that some of the research and the data that we'll get from the pilot program will help kind of scope that out and tell us what direction we need to go when it comes to federal and then state, local and tribal. You know we ever I think everybody can agree in the drone space that we can't keep doing the same thing that we are doing with you know this this kind of patchwork of state and local laws with each state and then within the state you have cities putting up different ordinances for somebody that's for let's say a 107 operator that's you know regional or local that's not so difficult for them but if you consider a lot of these companies that are trying to do nationwide drone as a service or whatever type of nationwide drone company trying to disseminate and trying to abide by all the different and state knowledgeable of all the different drone laws that are out there is a little mind-numbing so you know it kind of reminds me of the insurance business when I was in the insurance business a ways back trying to keep up with everything in state and local you know for the for the drone space there has to be some type of compromise it's different this is where it's different than manned aviation you know in manned aviation state and local has a place to I don't want to say play but a place to be when it comes to the airport environment of where airplanes take off and land in the drone space that's obviously different because we're not restricted by that same airport authority so you know I'm hoping to see you know and I've heard from from the FAA that within once this pilot program launches within a year that will have some good data to start making some decisions based on that so well that's good and I don't want to have to pull out the crystal ball but I really think it's you know it's kind of the wait and see what kind of happens with this pilot program certainly we're all sitting when with anticipation of how the awards are going to go and how they'll how we'll execute in fact in our particular case the state of Hawaii is one of those applicants and we realize that the first six months of this is going to be a lot of dialogue just like we're having right here with our stakeholders all over the place and stakeholders come on in our in our state in four different counties and they all have different social political situations that affect how people think and how their needs are stated so we really have to get down to the community and the needs and has to be accepted by the community and actually voted on by them to a large extent and so this requires a lot of a lot of patient outreach and mental testing as well as physical testing and starting at the 107 level what's wrong with 107 what how does that have to extend and how do these agencies all interact with each other in terms of management and then you start putting in like some of those legislation we've seen in the past has put in like offset barriers like 500 feet back from a waterfall or can't approach invasive species by closer than 200 feet or something well who's got a 200 foot yardstick and where was that yardstick calibrated is the is the calibration laboratory certified minutes all those questions that as you know how they tumble in aviation and so when you put limits on and physical measurable parameters in now you have to also provide some way to do the measurement and that's not a real practical thing so I'm equally anticipating that we're going to learn a lot from this in fact that's what what the head of US integration engineering at the FAA said at a conference we had it in Santa Fe, New Mexico just a month ago he said we hope or success to us would be a giant locker full of data that's right and wrong stuff that works stuff that doesn't work it doesn't matter a locker full of data that is produced by public private partnerships pushing as hard as they can into this frontier and so that was kind of an interesting really open-minded statement as to what success would look like I think it's kind of true I mean we're in a space with a new technology still I mean you could say it's it's not new anymore it's been around but I mean as far as the 107 space being new and the regulatory world being new and 107 you know there's there's very limited data when you look at the history of the FAA and everything involved I mean even so far as to look at different different segments of UAS I mean for instance let's say UAS insurance and how an insurance company would would write the risk for UAS commercial insurance they have no actuary data to go based on so very limited actuary data so they're just taking a small scope so I remember when that first came out insurance companies were were basically ensuring UAS like manned aircraft which is a little crazy in my mind but that's the only data that they had to go on so that's how they were ensuring the risk now of course they're they're accumulating data as they as UAS has been around and they have other other stuff to look at and they're able to ensure the risk properly but it's kind of the same aspect when you're looking at the FAA they have limited data to go on so they have to do their risk assessment and safety assessment that has to be based on historical data so you know there's a there's a little bit of you know you can you can toss it up in the air and see if it flies but realistically when you're talking about safety of people and property on the ground you know you've got to have a equivalent level of safety built in that's an interesting observation that again in that case did not have a model for how to generate insurance policies and such we have come across something here in Honolulu this interesting a lot of the most of our property all of our drones in the small drone category all run on licensed public network communications 2.4 5.8 that kind of thing and they work fine out in the field out in the remote areas where there's no interference but you get in a dense urban core when there's a lot of cell phones going off and a lot of routers talking to each other and such who force full and so the ability to get any range out of them is extremely limited or said the other way RFI RF interference can shut them down in a heartbeat with a very close range in a way we hadn't anticipated so spectrum management and signal to noise ratio those technical terms that people who are operating these things don't necessarily know about are going to be important for us to pull up and I hope that the IPP program shows that as an air and issue and there's got to be other ones as well well for example performance in a crosswind if you miss a way point can you get back to it well maybe not and so there's a there's performance standards there's going to be a spectrum standards is going to have to be a radar climb and the youth but unfortunately we're going to get right back into aviation it's all about the technical parameters to make something work in a complex environment when you have to adjust for falls and that is the picture that I think we're going to find exposed through the IPP process but certainly we and the other 200 participants are going to do the best to generate that locker full of data and so we'll we'll look for your continued I'm excited to see what happens yeah no you know we have almost at the end of our time here but I wanted to ask about what how AOPA sees the future coming what besides the IPP what do you see as a big issues coming in in 18 we ought to be thinking about you know I think a lot of it like I like I said in the beginning is the education and outreach part and that's that was one of our primary goals is to get out there and educate we started first and foremost with free seminars that we basically gave and provided to the local flight school community nationwide and said OK flight schools here's 107 seminar data with guides and everything will help you market will help you do all that part to get that message out to your local community so we started that that was very successful this past year now what we're doing though is kind of switching to more of an online digital format so that we can reach a bigger audience because we saw that audience was very large but we could only reach them there in the local areas so since that was such a popular seminar and popular outreach we're making that an online presence in 2018 and also building out additional safety content and educational content for all specters of 107 that is really interesting you know on this show we always like to get something out of it that people can take home with them and such I'd like to take that one home in terms of getting access to the AOPA generated general awareness and specific issues of discussion in whatever form they're available in webinars or online resources to work within our own university system here and then the community colleges and then the schools so tell me how I do that I mean I'm a card carrying AOPA member and didn't know this definitely well we are putting everything up on our website right now so AOPA.org and under drone pilots we'll have all the online resources available to you like I said we're in the process of moving the seminar from an in-person seminar to an online and that'll be done this quarter and then we're also building up a whole library of video content for our membership and also for our non-members as well because it's important to like I said not only educate our AOPA members but also provide that outreach to the UAS community to those people that might not know about aviation that really need to know about the airspace that they're flying in so that outreach is so important to not only our membership but also have the responsibility of helping educate the entire UAS community that needs it. Now that's a good point I would offer that 99% of the drone or UAS community does not know about AOPA so we'll do our best to help them out here but I as a member can get access to that material on the website can my friends who are not members can they get access to some of that material? They can get access to some of that as well so we've also provided pilot protection services which is a legal services in-house legal services protection for our membership only. That is a benefit as an AOPA member so that if there's any type of questions would it guards to legality of 107 or goodness federal enforcement action against 107 or 61 pilot operating as a hobbyist you know our legal staff is here to help answer all those questions. That's great well I think we're going to spend some time digging into that and finding what's available because it's probably expressed in such an understandable way compared to a regulation and that's really useful for getting people's attention if they can understand it they'll do more. If they can't understand it it makes it kind of cumbersome. So Kat Swain at AOPA the senior executive in charge of UAS integration at AOPA integration at UAS Futures thanks so much for coming on our show. We really want to get you back on again. Every quarter is going to be a whole new renovation of some kind that we need to hear from from AOPA. Thanks for having me I look forward to coming on in the future. Well we'll tell Mark about the show this afternoon we see him down at the airport tonight. Sounds good tell us in Aloha. Aloha and thanks for coming on the show. Thank you have a good night. See you all next week folks. Hey that was that was really cool. You know longer than 30 minutes. Say again. I said we needed longer than 30 minutes. We used to have to talk about. Yeah I know we used to have 45 minutes but nobody no network want a 45 minute format so we got it to half an hour and you know you get through 10 percent of what you want to talk about but we hit the good stuff. And very good.