 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. It is Thursday noon folks, Ted Rawson here in our Think Tech studio is overlooking downtown Honolulu. Of course we just moved the studio to Kapa'a, I think this is the particular time for the show, where the drone leads. One of our favorite shows here on Think Tech, and we normally have someone on, we talk about heavy political, heavy technical, heavy operational subjects related to drones and such. We have drones here on the table. Last week we had a drone that spanned the entire table, and in fact we needed a new table because the drones are getting bigger than the table is. Anyway, today we have one of the more enjoyable aspects of our conversation, and that's how we interview a man on the street here in Hawaii about drones, and what popular perceptions exist, what direction Hawaii is going, all of these sorts of things. So today's man on the street we selected randomly. Is none other than your name, sir? Fidel. Is that your first name? No, Jay. Jay's your first name? Fidel was the guy in Cuba. Right, right, you still, he's not here anymore, right? No, he's gone. Okay, so you are Fidel Jay or Jay Fidel? Jay Fidel, that's the one. Jay Fidel, is your like a middle-initial or like extra something? I'm the man on the street. You're the man on the street, so Jay, man on the street, Fidel. Yeah. Welcome aboard, sir. Thanks for coming on the show today. Thank you very much. You're Rawson, wasn't it? That would be, I'm not sure, I can check. Something about food, about dog food or something like that. I have a driver's license that probably has it on, and if I was younger I'd remember it, but at this point in time I'd just read something and then go with that. In fact, if the rules on the show, no monologues, okay, state your name and your organization, your association, and such, and if you run out of things to say, you can just turn to the teleprompter and there's something on there you can probably say. Okay, so think tech away streams live on the internet from 11 o'clock to 5 o'clock, that would be an example of that. Okay, you want something? I do, yeah. Okay, we're in our thanks for think tank program. Oh, let's talk about the thanks for think tank. Maybe you've probably got some mail about that. I probably did, right? Have you responded? It's very important that you do that. Okay. We have to stay alive. We need the funding. Right. Our business model is the generosity of our hosts, our guests, our underwriters and our directors, and to some extent the public. So the idea is that you as a host would go to the website, you'd make a website, you'd talk to your friends, family, colleagues, and you'd try to get them to make contributions to think tank so we can keep on going to pay our operational expenses. And thanks for think tank. Sort of sounds like a Thanksgiving theme that people could take, right? It's true. It's the month of November. Think tank, right? We hope to raise $40,000. We've raised almost four so far, and we need your help, Ted. Are you helping, Ted? I absolutely help. People will absolutely help. But we'll take our man on the streets advice here and generate now. By having you say, I am the generator website, you must be thinking I'm like 16 or younger or something like that. But we have people who will help you do that. People my age don't do websites. And they will help you write letters to your friends and family and colleagues. And you're the key. You're the key to our survival. Okay. I will respond to your suggestive pressure. And we'll go forward here. I'll find somebody under 16. My wife acted pretty good at this stuff, so I'll ask her. No, it's easy to do it. Yeah. Margie, you got the whole new job, right? Okay. So the whole issue is here. Think Tank. Think Tech is a Think Tank. Thank you. Think Tech brings a lot of value to the people. I know it brings value in this particular subject. We popularize information about drones. And you're here for that reason. But I think I once again will say we'll absolutely take it on the role to generate oxygen and revenue and funds that keep the place going. Yeah. We've got to pay the expenses. Otherwise, there's no platform for anybody. And you know, and here's what I can do. I can volunteer to cut my salary 50%. Would that help? Yeah. And I could get a raise by 10,000 times. I'd still make about the same. The same as you're making now. Okay. You're right. Okay. So we'll keep pushing ahead to get support and keep popularizing the concept of Think Tech away and the particular expostulation of information about drones that we do here on a weekly basis. Very important. Okay. And keeping people current. Okay. Keeping them current. Now, speaking of currency and keeping people current, you have a piece of paper here with nothing written on it. Nothing. Okay. Your script. You're not going to follow a script. No. I'm doing mental today. Mental stuff. Actually, not good at following scripts, as I recall from past programs, right? So the script wouldn't do any good anyway. Moving right along. The subject. Drones are going to be taking on a really interesting twist here. Probably more than a twist in the next week or two. You know, we had a conversation with Alan Oshima yesterday. You know who that is? I know who very much. He's the CEO of Hawaiian Electric. Yep. And he was talking about drones. I thought of you. I always think of you when somebody talks about drones. He was talking about how they have an increased number. And in fact, the utility industry around the country has an increased number of them. Why? Because they can observe the power lines. They can observe, you know, failings in the power lines. Whether the power line fails or, you know, is involved in bad weather or whatever. Is this part of a man on the street interview? Yeah. True. And so I was really impressed that, you know, that's part of their new technology initiative to have drones. Utility companies need drones too. And if you think about it, you know, anybody in business would have a need for a drone. So my question to you, and you can segue to what you want to talk about. Oh, okay. My question to you, Ted, why don't we have drones everywhere? What's holding us back? Well, it's a very interesting question. Certainly, there's policy, procedure, and doctrine. That's always a factor that people are worried about. It sounds like bureaucracy to me. Erocracy is a factor in there as well. But Hawaii Electric Company, Illinois Shima and Company, and Joanne Wilkinson, who actually started the program within HECO about two or three years ago, really saw the value and took the risk, but they did everything right. HECO really stood this program up right. They started with the survey department within the company and went from there into the trouble department and expanded out, showed value, and showed that it can be properly maintained and controlled, and the risk can be managed. And that's what HECO did. And it's now, I think, on its own, and it's finding a way forward within the larger organization. But again, it was not done by just barging in. It was done by extreme care and making sure that every T was crossed and every I dotted in terms of procedures and having protective equipment on and respecting the rights of people in terms of not being inspected for. Is this your answer to my question? It was a very long answer, wasn't it? No, I like it. I like the answer. I think what you're alluding to is that not everybody can do that. I think that an organization that may not have the structural behavior that HECO has, or a large infrastructure, may not be able to follow those stipulations and guidelines and such, and would have run into some problems here and there. Small companies, however, like wedding photography and things like this, real estate photography, there's a lot of that going on. We've had Mike Mike. That's right, Mike. Yeah, I had drone service on the show many times. Yeah, many times. Mike Elliott and his partner on Lineye, George Birdie, we will take the obligation to get some B-roll for you. That would be good. And in fact, if maybe one thing we could do here is suggest a mission or a particular event that ThinkTec is on and go back to the show. I think that's a good question. Mike Elliott and his partner on Lineye, George Birdie, we will take the obligation to run and go partner up with that and get the actual live data from it. Yeah, we have several things going on. Not for the next couple of days. Just so everybody knows, the president's coming to town so there's a temporary flight restriction, nothing flies on a flight. We have expectations from him, too. And they are what? Oh, there's not enough time here today. Sorry. Well, what I was getting at to get back to the script on the telepond right there. Feel free. The Department of Transportation is following suit behind a presidential announcement of last week and there will be pilot programs competed and someone's going to win the competition for putting systems like this in operation on a daily basis near airports in a city near U. We certainly hope that one of those cities near U is a city on the one case for testing and Honolulu in the case for operations. So we're going to kind of beginning to gather the troops about with ideas and capabilities that can support a Hawaii response to this solicitation. So is this a competition of some? Well, we don't know because tomorrow we'll hear from the Department of Transportation what they have in their mind and to show how fast this is moving from the Department of Transportation FAA just announced this morning just an hour or two ago that they're going to have this big webinar three times tomorrow and Monday to provide information. So they're moving as fast as from Washington. So Washington's actually moving fast and there's something behind this we don't quite understand at this point in time but we're going to need congressional delegation support and understanding because nothing happens without a good strong connection there. We may need connection with a few other states. We have this Pan-Pacific Commander Systems Test Range notion as you know. And that may be an authorization and an authority so to speak that's useful to us. We'll find that out. A lot to be discovered in the next couple of days. We'll have a guest on next week David Place, we'll be telling us about what he's come up with on where this is all going. We have a lot of NASA investment research the last five years in a program called UTM Unmanned Traffic Management which contributes to this. Our job, your job too as the man on the street is going to be to collect all these threads, pull them together into vectors and summarize all those into a compelling proposal that cannot be turned down. Well the guy who was going to show up today is going to be rather hear the webinar first. You should have him back to report on the webinar. He's coming on next Thursday. He can record it too. We do that a lot. These programs take on a life of their own afterwards on YouTube. Maybe bring it back for the show and we can hear a small part of it anyway to see what the essence is. My big question to you about this and you must know some part of the answer already is what happens if you win? What happens if they select you and bestow you? What are they bestowing on you? It looks like they'll be bestowing for the first time ever in this domain of FAA solicitations as funding to cover a project. Federal government money? That would be what I would call it. Is this a research project? Again we'll know tomorrow after we hear more. You're making me more curious every minute. Every day we're getting more curious and getting more information. We'll really nail this thing good and hard next Thursday on this show but we'll hear the first dribs of information about tomorrow. Presumptively there's going to be funding coming at this and the funding will generate like a crawl-walk-run approach where you crawl a little bit first and then you walk maybe remote parts of Oahu and then you run. So some kind of a staged evolution of... So make me the FAA. Make you the FAA? So we're having a webinar or we're otherwise in touch and I say to you Ted there's a lot of states want this there's a lot of organizations around the country want this and they're capable and they have lots of engineers and experience and drones for that matter. They have capital, they've developed it and all why should I come to Hawaii? What is it about Hawaii that makes it interesting for me in the FAA? I think there's a really good answer to that Mr. FAA. And that is that Hawaii has a very complex airspace environment. We've got the very low level traffic which is unmanned air systems. We've got the helicopter traffic with tours which is above that. We've got the VFR traffic above that and we've got the airlines and we've got the military. We've got this bunch of pancakes of air usage here. Plus we've got a fairly strenuous wind and turbulence environment especially corner wind is one thing trade wind is the other there's a lot of ground drafts on the leeward side Good for testing. Good for testing the drones. Perfect for that. And we have rainstorm, bands of rain that periodically come through. So if you can solve the problem in Hawaii and make it work in Hawaii you can probably make it work anywhere. Wouldn't you be concerned there's a lot of aircraft up there anyway? If I'm in Arizona in the desert there's not much competing aircraft here but guess what we have? We have a certified UAS test range area and the same situation you described in Arizona applies online. There isn't much traffic. So we can test these things and test them to exhaust technically in that environment and then where there's no competing traffic and bring them over here to Oahu and examine them in the presence of real traffic. What a great combination. The other thing they require and this is the same thing with Amazon and a few years ago with Google they wanted to come to Hawaii and they wanted Amazon they want to bestow some kind of Amazon fulfillment center in the case of Google they wanted to make us a Google special place they're going to give us broadband and wireless and all that. We didn't succeed on Google I doubt we're going to succeed on Amazon but you know the question is will. It's will of the existing industry of guys like you your friends the industry as it exists do we have what it takes do we have the you know the fights do we have the vitality to do it and in asking that question we go back say two years you and I spoke about this we were designated I guess by the FAA as part of a special deal with Alaska some kind of special region to test on drones what have we done have we met their expectations are we a leader because of that what have we done to fill that space so to speak and does that show that we have necessary vitality to meet the expectations of the FAA for this program now are you running for office just observing on the street for a guy as an office street man on the street interview that was a serious challenge and a question let's pick up the answer to that after I have a chance to think about it during our break this is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness guys don't forget to check me out right here at the Prince of Investing I'm your host Prince Dykes each and every Tuesdays at 11am Hawaii time I'm gonna be right here stop by here from some of the best investment minds across the globe and real estate, finances, stocks, hedge funds managers all that great stuff thank you welcome back to the second half of our show where the drone leads folks Ted Rawlsson here hosting our show from the downtown Honolulu Studios of Think Tech and as you heard from our men on the street randomly chosen randomly chosen we have a campaign going on to generate the revenue income anyway you want to do it don't forget thanks for Think Tech Ted here is going to be talking to you and trying to get you to make a contribution to Think Tech so we can keep going it's very important that we raise some money okay got that I got that and I even volunteered I gotta do it now it's November we're well into November already today's November 2nd already we're well into November for a man on the street you come with some really sharp knives I know what day of the week it is Ted I'm really something man it was an experience practice education contemplation and thinking you've been thinking during our one minute break about the question I put to you before right and I'm not going to stress our audience with a two minute no it's you I want to stress not the audience but the question that our man on the street interviewee selected was twofold actually in fact it might have been a leading question it might not be visible in court but it had to do with what has Hawaii done with the designation of an unmanned test range and what makes Hawaii unique and if Hawaii won this thing we're going to do about it really well that's a good follow-up question that was where you started I'll ask you that question I just sent your questions in reverse and just struck them that way because each year I wanted to handle I can think while I'm answering the first one about how am I answering the second one now I know you're a secret okay I just read the teleprompter that's how my secret is so anyway what has Hawaii done that's a most interesting question just the setting stage here it didn't contribute any money or Congress didn't put any money on it it was simply a designation Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, now Mississippi and Kansas were bundled together and became the logical grouping well as you know the Pacific Ocean used to lapse at the shores of the Midwest back in the Pleistocene era so those are really Pacific states if you go back in your geography far enough this is going to be on the final exam yes it will be anyway we are the extreme climate states we have nasty weather in the wintertime we have nasty weather all day long we have saltwater intrusion we have all kinds of things that electronics and mechanical systems just fail under when we expose them to our environment so that's what the role at Hawaii and the other states have and for that designation we have a lot of latitude in terms of operation beyond the limits of the FAA today to expose systems to these kind of limits so we've had probably a dozen inquiries from companies who want to come out here and test in fact some of them aren't interested in having their names known because that can be considered preparatory information but our environment is useful for what we call function and reliability testing that means you just do lots of cycles and try to basically beat them up find the failure points if you find the failure points here you may Arizona a lot better than it would if we didn't find it who's doing it? the university has arrangements with certain areas including our own property where that can be done and we've got again several companies that are asking for that capability second thing that's opened up is what's called the beyond line of sight operations beyond line of sight means right now you can't fly these things right now as far as you can see them but by careful development of the software design in the flight management system and ground surveys and ADSB and other sensor systems it is possible to show that you can be safe beyond line of sight and that's a very interesting area to the FAA so technology take us there now can you in fact do that certainly you can, the question can you do it at an economic scale that is going to be useful to the, well the economic scale at a legal level you have to of course you have to meet the requirements what kind of a man on the street are you anyway you're asking all these legal questions you do a lot of walking well they must make you think a lot when you do them walking because the questions are hard to answer so anyway that's what Hawaii is on Hawaii has actually used that authorization to open discussion and dialogue with companies including one just this week and that's also given us an authority however to work beyond just business and work with our own important agencies, fire department, police department the Pacific command Coast Guard and such so we've actually done a lot of Who's we? We, the University of Hawaii Applied Research Lab I'm the director of One of them, we have Josh Levy who was on the show last week who is our coordinator we've got Joshua Bagdadi who is our recently hired what we call Spectrum Guy and we have Noah Hefner also fairly recently hired who is our big data and analyst so what's emerging here I don't know if you said it in so many words is that you have been a leader in this, I mean part of it actually has been your show here in Think Tech but you have been a leader of it and you're a magnet for other people and now you're at the Applied Research Center at the University in Manoa this makes the University a magnet and I think when you say we, you're saying the University and he's saying that I'm saying that there's a lot of people out there in organizations that do not have drones do not have expertise in drones who are going to be calling on you because you're going to be the coordinator, the expert and the leader in this area so gee whiz this is all a phenomenon that's happening right here in our doorstep and it happened, a lot of it happened right here they can call on the University Applied Research Lab for guidance for programs, for partnerships for work with the students, work with the companies work with the Department of Defense and agencies whatever it may be we'll be glad to use our program charge them, do you charge them we can't charge them but we can generate programs together and put our students on these programs and go do development work that also leads, the kids find a place where they might work when they're done with school the kids and you wage so actually how do I get into your program, I want to do this I mean I'll be a student what do I study and who do I write to how much time do I have to put in I'll give you my car, you can get a hold of me and we can bring you in and train you and we can show you how to operate these things show you how to design software the other thing you can do is contribute to our fundraising campaign here at Think Tech we got to make sure we continue to think about that we probably also want you to be a contributor financially to our overall success yeah that includes you by the way right alrighty, and I think this brings us pretty much to the end of our the end of our man on the screen we didn't even get to by answering the question the way I answered I avoided having to answer your other question which was the question you started with have you forgotten a question or have you already prosecuted no no that must have been important to you otherwise you wouldn't have asked it and that was what's Hawaii going to do if Hawaii actually wins this thing let's talk about that next time on this same show after the FAA webinar tomorrow I'm so excited about that you'll have to tell us about it I'll send you the link and you can join in we'll all be waiting, we'll all be participating we want to know everything we all do, okay thanks for coming on the show today don't forget to contribute to our campaign the same to you sir okay, very good we'll see you all next week folks thanks for thinking