CptsLogs Podcast- Episode #005, The Evolution and Everything About Drones.

In CptsLogs Podcast Episode #005, we sit down with special guest Ira Hughes for an in-depth conversation about the evolution of drones and everything shaping the industry today.

From early unmanned aircraft and military applications to commercial operations, aerial photography, racing, FPV technology, and the future of flight, we explore how drones have transformed—and where the technology is headed next.
In this episode:

The history and evolution of drones
Military, commercial, and recreational applications
FPV and drone-racing technology
How drones are changing different industries
Current challenges and opportunities
What the future may hold for unmanned aviation
🎙️ Podcast: CptsLogs Podcast
📺 Episode: #005
👤 Special Guest: Ira Hughes
🚁 Topic: The Evolution and Everything About Drones

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_04 3:34

Okay, let's turn that off. All right, can you hear us now? Chat, if you can hear us, say hi. We're good now. I can see us on the uh anyways, we'll start it over because we're pros. There we go. Yeah, welcome to the Captain Us All Podcast. Take two. The show that's everything in the Asian War, we're pros. We'd want a little Jamaican bacon. Let's go, let's go to Mark. Mark attack. How are you doing, bud? Better now. That made me laugh. That's well, that's better than what we used to when we did an entire podcast before we're dude.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Like in like an hour and twenty minutes and nothing. That's awesome. And it was actually really good stuff, too.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Yeah. Alright. Anyways, as we get through this uh little um nonsense here, we'll get pretty serious. Today we have a very uh special guest on the Capitol Zall Podcast. We're gonna be talking about obviously everything aviation and more, which includes drones and planes and foods and food and and drone today. With me, I got into drones just seated on the cup you know the computer when I was going through college. Okay. DGI Phantom 3. Okay. I know that's nothing fancy, but that's what that's how I started. You know? And uh you remember that stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Mark was fancy then.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

It was a little bit fancy, it was pretty cool. Fair enough. I've had a lot of DJI products along the years for sure. It's uh it's fun to watch it evolve.

SPEAKER_04 4:56

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, the DJI that's that's the first that's the first time I saw like commercial like a commercial grade drone. And it's probably I was getting my degree in Ember Real, but anyways, very capable technology.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Definitely.

SPEAKER_04 5:10

But I built Mark and I actually we never made it really any of the money. I mean, I made I don't know. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Could have well it it's hard to say because there was still so much investing going on and getting things running and so Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:25

And back then nobody wanted to do anything with drones those regions. But yeah to to kind of uh give you a quick overview of what we're talking about here, like Mark and I we had a company called Yovum. Okay, and we pretty much owned like the Scoscular region for taking you know videos and photos, commercial properties for realtors. And it was doing relatively doing too pretty well until the FAA changed through the rules. You remember when the FAA changed the rules?

SPEAKER_02 5:51

When the when they allowed the Part 107 versus the pilots to fly? Yeah, yeah. That was uh 2014-2015.

SPEAKER_04 5:58

Yeah, sometime around there. Yeah, but anyway, so let's talk about that. We'll we'll segue to that and then we'll start talking about the technology and drones and just to educate people a little bit. Okay, and this is where hopefully you come in. So let's talk about because I'm planning uh an event for MLDR, and uh one of the schools sent me uh a venue, and she's like, Oh, you have a nice venue, you know, check it out. And I guess where it's at? ASU Poly Polytech. Polytech? You know where that's at?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

That's gateway.

SPEAKER_04 6:29

So she sent me the map. I'm like, oh, it's a great location. I whooped it up and it's gateway airwork, like right in the gateway. I'm like, well, we can't we can't do that. I don't think. You can file. You can file it. So that's where this let's talk about that. So I don't think, right? Because I'm not as much versed as I probably should when it comes to specific. So let's talk about it, Iraq. Let's talk about all of us. How does that even what's the rules on when it comes to recreational for people who need to know it, and commercial operation when it comes to drone use, and then we'll segue to other things. So how if I want to be able to do something, say I'm just a regular guy close to the airport, how do I go about it?

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Yeah, that's a great question. So I believe Gateway is a class D airspace, if I remember right. And so with a class D airspace, specifically that one, it's got an upside-down birthday cake. So depending on how far you are from the main runway, you have limitations on how high you can fly. Obviously, at ASU Polytech, it's gonna be zero because it's right next to the airport. But that doesn't mean that you can't file for a request to be able to fly up to 50 feet high. And a lot of times they'll approve those with enough advanced notice because they know you're just gonna be at 50 feet or below since you're B racing.

SPEAKER_04 7:35

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

So that's it's not something I don't think it's a complete lock. You could at least ask, all they can say is no. But a lot of people do that, and you could even have, you know, you guys are pilots, so you guys would have even probably more capabilities to have the comms and the different systems to the the tower or the controllers, let them know what's going on, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04 7:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

I would have to say it really depends on at least if you had to get permission and where where it is. If you're like on the final approach segment, yeah, right. You can kind of forget about it.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

But it's it's over to the side, right? It's not even actually in approaching.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Not at all. I don't see whether there'd be an issue. I mean, I see we see UAS nodems all the time, everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 8:16

Oh really?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Because they know you're gonna stay under 400 feet if you're following the rules.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Well, and and to be honest, I think it's like I think where I live is like 100 feet without without permission, but right there at the airport would probably be zero. Yeah, yeah. But but when you're gonna do it, if you if you give permission to 50 feet, it would be plenty for a race.

SPEAKER_04 8:32

Yeah, no, 100%. Yeah, plenty. Okay. Let's let's get into the the drone rules because I'm as I'm starting to engage more with the schools, and that's what these are the questions I'm getting asked. So, what are some of the things you think generally everybody should know when it comes to operating drones? At least the things you do in preparation.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

Uh yeah, I mean uh I think every time every time we race or we go to to go race, either we're in a FRIA, which is an area that we've already got pre-approved that we don't need remote ID to fly our drones. Because any drone that flies, whether it's commercial or you know, whether it's private or for work, has to have remote ID at minimum.

SPEAKER_04 9:10

You know what remote ID is, Mark?

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Uh no.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

I'm just gonna say no.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

The typical flights, the typical planes have about 80 SB, A B.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, they should be broadcasting, depending on where you're at.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Exactly. So it's it's a version of that for drones. And it's called remote ID.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

That would have been my guess, but I was like, I have two dudes who can tell me, so I'll just say no.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Yeah, fair enough. It's based off uh Bluetooth technology though, so it doesn't really kick that far. And they have some I don't know, they have some issues in my opinion with remote ID because it actually gives your personal information that's registered back to the remote ID. Oh, really? And so if I'm flying for work, and let's say I'm flying over somebody's house, which is perfectly legal in a lot of cases, and they find out what my remote ID is, they can actually find out where I'm at. Interesting that it it opens up some risk for the for the commercial pilot or who it's registered to in regards to that, because you know, people get upset and they don't know the rules, right? And so it's legal, you don't control the airspace over your house. So it's legal for anyone to fly a drone over your house. You can't stop them. And if you try to interfere with that drone, it's the same law as taking down a full-size aircraft. Yeah, you can be actually punished with as much as you want to shoot them out of the sky sometimes.

SPEAKER_04 10:20

Well, I don't because I'm pro-drone, but you do you want to shoot them out of the sky? I don't mean us.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

I've been shot out in general. Yeah, yeah, I've had my drone shot out. Absolutely. I was doing uh I was doing a property survey uh out in Way East Valley in some rural areas, and I was into property survey for them to sell their property like you've got to do it. I can see the rural areas just start shooting the drone for it. I just heard boom, boom, boom, and I just full sticked it back to me.

SPEAKER_04 10:41

Yeah, I believe it. How would they how would they be able to see the remote ID information? Do they need a certain specific You can just look it up?

SPEAKER_02 10:48

It's all available online.

SPEAKER_04 10:49

Like date and time, you know what, just like we would do a regular uh traffic.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

So then so then let me ask you this, because it kind of works the same way with airplanes, right? You can see on EDSB, you can go to flightaware.com or flight rater 24, get a tail number, you can look that up in the registry and find out who that aircraft registered. Absolutely. But but most people register under like LLCs or other names where you're only gonna go back to that corporate entity. Exactly. So keep that with the drones as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Which is what I would do as well, if you know, but but even but you can think about even a private person has to register the remote ID. Right. Yeah, yeah. So if they if they buy a civilian drone and they just bought a you know, DJI Mavic.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Well then that that's should be what it's for, though, because if you get some gig some kid or some guy out there doing stupid crap that they shouldn't be doing, it's the whole point is to be able to find that person.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Double edged sword. Definitely double-edged sword. Or should it only be accessible to the people that need to go find that person? That is the other question. It's true. Does it really need a Freedom of Information Act? Yeah. Available to the public. So that's the hard part. I mean, with a plane, I mean, how many people are gonna really like go check that, find that log, go find that person? Because it's unless they're you know buzzing the tower. Yeah, you know, outside of that, nobody's gonna be looking that up.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

No, you you you'd be surprised actually that because there's a lot of problem troublemakers out there that have nothing better to do. And they'll they'll say people they'll see people out there training or doing like low altitude stuff, which is all legal, and then get a call. Fair enough. Fair enough. But probably not as much as drones. Drones just irritate some people for some reason.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Yeah, yeah. The the other the other thing people don't realize is the the no-fly zones, right? And so like the World Cup, I think they said uh for FIFA that they had 600 incursions on the no-fly zones, uh, but drones that they were able to intercept or log as drones that shouldn't be in that uh process, do they bring them down?

SPEAKER_04 12:47

Yeah, were they able to scram the signal and so that's the thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:50

There's the only people that can do that is federal. If you if you jam, that's against FCC. Wow. And if you interfere with the flight, that's against FAA. Wow. And so the only people that can actually in the US, they're changing the laws, the only people that can actually intercept, attack a drone, scramble a drone, any of those things is the federal government. So the local police don't have the power. They can go find the operator, but they don't have the power to actually take the drone out of the sky as of now.

SPEAKER_04 13:18

Are these new like are you seeing these being integrated as new rules as or were these was this always the case when it comes to because I know back when we started, you know, like nobody wanted anything to do with us. Like when we started I started doing MLDR, we tried to come in and do some pitch, and they're like get that thing out of here. And I've had people like throw and I've had people throw rocks at it and all that stuff. Obviously, with the new capability of the technology, and companies are investing more, and eventually you have Amazon and whatnot. I'm assuming that's where all these new rules are coming in. Uh, was it always this way, do you think?

SPEAKER_02 13:51

I mean, I I think it's it's slowly evolving. Yeah, and it's a new space that they don't really know how to govern. And so there was a lot of initial starts to the part 107 specifically to start allowing us non-pilots. So we don't have to have a part three three three exemption, I think it was, right? Back in the days, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So we had a so once the 107 came out, which I was tracking because I did not have a pilot's license, I was excited to be able to fly commercially and start drewing some property stuff. I bought my Phantom 4. Oh, Phantom 4. Yeah, doing a bunch of shots with the Phantom 4, which I was pretty excited about. Yeah, but it really it wasn't anything that I could see yet. It was too early. Yeah. So 2014, 2015, when you guys were doing it. You know, I shot a couple properties, but I think it was it was still too early in the in the evolution of stuff. I was starting to watch how people were doing the construction surveys and those types of things, and it was just starting to become a thing. And now, like you don't build anything without doing surveys, right?

SPEAKER_04 14:50

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, when we started, there was a company called it was a new st startup tech called Hangar. You remember the hangar? They were out of Austin, Texas.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah, that was cool.

SPEAKER_04 15:01

And they had they were developing this was back when they first started doing autonomous stuff. I think the DJI Phantom 4, you can do like you program it back then to do all these, you know, um fancy. I would say that little thing, I mean, with so much capabilities, it's crazy. But they would send me, like we had a partnership with the company I was running called Yovum, and I had a few pilots within the regions, and they would send me the uh the program. Well they'll ask, hey, I need a pilot to do this route, whatever, and I'll tell them a pilot, and they will send the like preset waypoints, yeah, to like the drone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

And kind of like drone deploy.

SPEAKER_04 15:39

Yeah, it's it's a hundred percent. Yeah. But it would they were able to do like you know, like uh laps, like mapping of the you just you don't do anything. You put the drone down, turn it on, boom.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's amazing. And then we basically put like a bid, like here's a job, and then the pilots could say, Yeah, I'll do that.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

And then they get paid, we send them the flight plan, they bring back, push the data back to us.

SPEAKER_04 16:02

Yeah. Yeah, they would upload the data to us, would deliver it. As long as I had a Phantom 4, I think like Phantom 4, they were good to go. But now that's standard. Yeah, that's a standard you know, capabilities.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

But you see drone deploy just got bought. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, they just they just sold for a ton of money. And uh the reason the reason why the purchasing companies said they were so important to them was for the data. The data. All those years and years of data that they've consumed from all those different flights that they've done, they have all this mapping data, right? And so that was huge for them. And I think the company at the bottom is a satellite imaging company. And so for them to be able to access that that content, right? Everything's about content anymore, right? Right? So all the AIs are built on the content. The open AI is paying Reddit a ton of cash to be able to scrape Reddit so that they can get their better answers. Better answers. Well, then at the same time, right? Reddit's not getting Reddit's not getting hit anymore, so it's a double-edged sword. So because they gave them all their content, now when you ask Google something, then it gives you the answer. Rather than you going into Reddit to read the article, it just gave you all the Reddit data right up there. So now they're getting less clicks.

SPEAKER_04 17:05

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

And so they're kind of like working themselves out of a job by providing that content that they would otherwise go to Reddit for. Right. Yeah. Everything's content.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

No, no, I get it. 100% uh making content right now, right? This is why I'm doing it. Well, if I mean with the way things are going with AI, you get I mean, that's what you're gonna have to do. You can the only thing you can be able to be able to own, I think, in the in the future, is your your likeliness, yourself. Yeah, right. Your your brand. Your brand, your own personal brand. Absolutely. Because eventually everything else is gonna be run by by robots.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

And I kind of feel like there's a pushback on that right now, right? You're hearing this AI slop phrase said a lot right now. And everyone's tired of seeing AI presentations, everyone's tired of reading AI articles, and you can start to see it. And then I read an article today too that uh ChatGPT is gonna start tagging in some way everything it makes. So even in the even in the text content content that it puts out that you have it make for you, it'll do it in a way that is still identifiable by ChatGPT if they want to watermark it.

SPEAKER_04 18:06

It is well, it is technically now. Like yesterday I showed an engineer that worked in this this building, and I showed him the AI generated uh platform I did to get the lead and all that stuff. And he there's a way you can identify that it's was written by I'm not sure it's ChatG, but at least AI. You know it's AI. There's uh Oh the dashes. The da that yeah, that you cannot create that. It's not a part of the platform on it's not a part of the keyboard or something like that, but AI creates it, so that's you can tell it's AI.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

I always take the dash out for sure. So that's the first thing I do.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

I was gonna say it, college kids, listen up.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Well, I didn't know that until yesterday. Yeah, first thing you do is take the dashes out. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

I had no idea.

SPEAKER_04 18:46

Now I know.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Yeah, well, but they're they're actually gonna make the words come out in a certain way that has an algorithm to it. It you're not gonna be able to read it, but the algorithm is in the way the words and the characters come out because the way AI works anyways, right? It's it's weighting all of these systems. It doesn't know how to spell, it doesn't know how to do these things. It's actually just doing a reasoning engine to the next logical letter that makes sense, and then that's how it writes a sentence.

SPEAKER_04 19:10

So what was the purpose? Is it so they can own the content?

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Well, just so that they can just copyright just so every there's there's some new European laws as the Europeans are always so progressive, right? Yeah. To to make sure that it's if it's put out in AI that everybody has a way of knowing. Nice. I mean, I I I agree with that. Europe's funny, they're they're ahead of a lot of ways, right? Like they've been around for a little while, so they have a lot of interesting stuff, but they have like they have like a lot of rules on privacy, which we could learn from, right? Like you can't get Mountain Dew over there because like the color green die is illegal, those types of things. Like they've they've they have a lot of restrictions, but they've also thought through a lot of these things. They seem to live longer, and they work less. They do live longer? They work less too, man. They like the happiest place is like the Netherlands or something, which is like Europe, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but it's Finland, Sweden, right? But it's all kind of got that similar vibe to it, which is interesting, but at the same time, all the governments are collapsing and economies are not great.

SPEAKER_04 20:07

So they live longer because your food is not filled with freaking preservative and all the BS that they put in our food that we eat.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

Right. It's crazy how much better you feel eating over there in prison.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

Yeah. You'd you travel a lot, huh?

SPEAKER_02 20:17

I do travel a lot. Yeah, I got uh six new countries last year for work, and uh we went to Costa Rica for Christmas.

SPEAKER_04 20:22

Costa Rica? How many continents have you been so far?

SPEAKER_02 20:24

I'm missing Africa and Antarctica at this point, so five.

SPEAKER_04 20:28

Okay, gotcha. So yeah, Antarctica is the one I haven't been yet. Yeah. Mark? How about you?

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Oh no, not even. Okay, gotcha. Two hands, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

We just added Asia. We went to uh Thailand for the first time in March. Nice, nice. Yeah. So we went to Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and then just family trip, two weeks. Nice.

SPEAKER_04 20:51

Oh, nice. Okay. That was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

With the family? Yeah, yep. We uh we wanted to go see the my wife wanted to go see elephants, and so that was the whole point of.

SPEAKER_04 21:03

We've been working 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

I gotta take you to the zoo tomorrow, bro.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Oh, this is different, but uh you get to go cuddle with them. We uh there's the zoo too, but you're gonna be spending the night somewhere else. That's true, that's true. We uh I found this rescue up in just outside of about an hour and a half outside of Chiang Mai. And uh we stayed the night in their little cabins, which we did a full day with the elephants, fed them, loved on them, bathed them, walked with them, and then had dinner, spent the night there, and then next morning we got up and spent another day just hanging out with the elephants. Oh wow, uh really got to know this older one. She's saved from logging, she's like 60 years old now, she's been logging most of her life, like 50 years and pushing over trees and pulling trees. She's pushing trees and pulling trees, yeah. That's her job that's her job. That was her job. And the owner of the rescue, his his goal in life is to buy as many licenses as he can. And so in Thailand, every life every domesticated elephant, everyone that's not wild, has. An actual chip in it and it's a license to it.

SPEAKER_04 22:02

And so I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

You can either have it in the circus, you can have it do logging, you can have it in a sanctuary, which you're probably just renting one that's not logging for the day, or you can have it in a rescue. And so he's one of the only rescues that actually buys the licenses just to have them chill and just let let them lead the rest of their life. So he's up to 10 now, which is pretty amazing. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 22:21

Bro, this is like like I had no idea. Well, what are so they're chipped, you said? Or the licensed?

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Yeah, no, every every every elephant's got a microchip on it.

SPEAKER_04 22:29

Yep. It's kind of like you know what they're saying, like uh like pandas, like there's a theory that pandas were like created by the Chinese and not real.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

You hear that theory? Birds aren't real either, right? They land on wires to charge. That's why they sit on the phone wire or the power wires. What is it?

SPEAKER_01 22:46

Go ahead. I think I I can't I despise pandas. There's a reason why like we don't need to keep them alive. They're so cute. Absolutely worthless. They're so cute.

SPEAKER_04 22:55

Well, apparently, like China owns all of them.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Like it's only the large ones, at least, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:00

They send them here to spy on us. That's what they do.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

I think they took it back. Did they give us some back? There were some there were some like some moments where they took their pandas back. Yeah, if we got them back up.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Oh, they're gonna upset. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They got some red pandas, I think, just recently.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

No, like the black and white ones, though.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Yeah, they straight up took them back.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like, give us their pandas back.

SPEAKER_04 23:20

That's funny. But apparently, like it's like it's like a a struggle, like it's a it's broke to keep them alive. Like they literally want to talk around.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

They're worthless. Like they're so cute, man.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

They're not that cute. That's funny.

SPEAKER_04 23:31

They need to go. What's some of the trouble? What's some of the foods you've you've had that you experience you think is just legit?

SPEAKER_02 23:39

Georgian food. And from the country of Georgia, specifically not the state of Georgia. Yeah. Um Southern food? Yeah, no, right? I mean, I'm not opposed to that either, man. I do love soul food, like absolutely love salt food. Get down in like Alabama or Mississippi and get some good soul food. There's really nothing like it in the US to me. I love Italian food, but it turned out I don't love Italy food. Love American Italian food. Poach is too healthy.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Olive garden, baby.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Yeah, I don't know about that. But uh I do I do love really good American Italian food, it turns out. Went to Italy, didn't like the food as much as I like Italy. Why is that interesting? I it didn't have as much seasoning in it. It's fresh. It was it was really bland. It was like tomato sauce and really good noodles, but it didn't have like the same level of seasoning. So people tell me you need to go to Sicily. I didn't realize Italy was just a bunch of countries until like the 1900s, which it wasn't that long ago that they actually became one big country. Until the what what uh century? Well it was like 100 years ago or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 24:34

I mean they they I mean they own the world for a while, well, a big portion of the world for a while. Rummed, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:39

Which is pretty much that's an interesting one if you go to the Vatican, like walking through the Vatican and like seeing all of the maps of the Catholic dynasty, I guess, if you will. Yeah, right? Isn't that his own little country as well? It's currently still its own country, but it's shrunk down into just the Vatican. But it it was like the entire, you know, the Crusades, how much they had taken. Like there was a very large territory of Europe at one point that was the Vatican, technically. Like you kind of ruled by the Pope, and if it wasn't ruled by the Pope, the kings were ruled by the Pope.

SPEAKER_04 25:10

Well, they said that another theory that's out there, that like Rome never really fell, it just became right. The the Vatican, you know, it just became you know the church. I don't know. I don't know. I'm allowed to say that. I gotta be careful what I say here in life.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

But yeah, it's it was it's definitely interesting to see those cultures, right? We in the same trip we went to Rome. It was our first trip to Rome, and then we went to Greece, and so listening to all of the religious things in the Vatican before we went to Greece and heard all of the mythology around you know the Greek gods. Fascinating, huh? And you know, kind of how similar how people see religion and how people like I don't know. Uh I have some views on that, but how people have described why things happen, right? So, really, if you look at Greek mythology, like Zeus made lightning, right? You know, the they all they had a different god for every single thing, and that's what controlled those things. It wasn't science or whether we always have to have as humans, we always have to have a reason, uh causuality to chaos.

SPEAKER_04 26:13

There's a book called Ethos. Have you ever heard of it? Yeah, great book. It outlines it's like you said, it's uh it's amazing how they came up with ways to describe everything that happened and why it happened. Like there's like Africa in that book based on the mythology, you know, like that big region that's just planned, but just was wiped out by like a sun god. Oh, right, whatever it is, yeah. You know, but everything that had every chaos or whatever was happening specifically by this specific reason, and it had a reason to why it happened, it's very fascinating. I mean, man.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

The eclipse happened today, right? Like the the they had a full eclipse in Europe. Oh, I didn't know. And you know, there's there's it went across went across Spain and you know, a bunch of more modern areas, but you know, if we went across an area that wasn't as modern, you know, there still could be people out there thinking the world's gonna end up.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

I know where the sun god lives now. She's here, she's here about like June, into June, end of September. That's why it's so hot out because it's she retired here in Arizona.

SPEAKER_04 27:15

100%. Yeah, fascinating stuff, yeah. I love traveling, man.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Uh I think my favorite restaurant though is in Kyiv, Ukraine. And it's a Georgian restaurant. And a lot, yeah, it's amazing, man. It is by far my favorite food I've ever eaten. They have these, I don't know how to say right. Well, I don't really like Porsche. I've tried Borsch, but it's not my favorite.

SPEAKER_04 27:35

No. What is it? What is it? Uh Borscht. It's like a lot of vegetables. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

It's like a if you think about stew, think about like old Eastern Europe, and they had in the wintertime, they had like all these root vegetables. Right. Right? Cabbage, potatoes, beets, leeks, beets, lots of beets, gross beets, all these things. And then they eat it with, I think it's called mallow, which is like an uncooked bacon. Uncooked bacon. Because it's cured, but it's not cooked. So you're eating that like greasy, fatty bacon before you cook it. And it's not the best thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

I actually didn't know about that part. I've never had it. It's true. I got some traditional. My wife is Ukrainian. It's a traditional. She makes it all the time. He enjoys it.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

But maybe she's there's lots of voice that make it, is what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Right, right, right. Well, yeah. I've heard like even just in Ukraine itself is exactly it depends on how like what recipe, like the you have the original recipe dating back, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

And I think that has to be all root-based for the most part, right? It's like all their cellars, and they would make soup out of the stuff in the cellars, and that's kind of where Porsche comes from. It's not my favorite, but people live it over there, which everyone has their you know, hometown favorites, regardless of whether or not it's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 28:46

I feel like like a lot of the the food were created based on because there's been a lot of hard times in Europe, you know. Exactly what that was. Yeah, like you know, schnitzel, you know. Uh I want to say, but there's a lot of potatoes in Germany, and the reason why that was is because that's all they had like in World War, you know, World War II, even maybe World One, but that's that's why that's all these crazy meals, that's how they it was created.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

That was the problem with the whole potato famine in like Ireland. Like that's all they had to eat, and then they didn't have them anymore.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. The world has been kept alive with potatoes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:20

I love yeah, I love me some potatoes.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

Yeah, there's a restaurant called Chichiko though in Kyiv that's uh the Georgians even say is better than Georgian food in Georgia, but it's uh it's just absolutely amazing. Lamb chops, all of it's so great. And it's so yeah, lamb. Ukraine's so inexpensive. So like you can have an entire meal, lamb chops, appetizer, these are the most amazing appetizer, like dumplings, but it's like minced lamb inside of them, really well seasoned. And then the lamb chops and the potatoes and everything, a couple of beers, it's like thirty dollars.

SPEAKER_04 29:48

Uh yeah, I believe it's Bulgaria. You've been to Bulgaria?

SPEAKER_02 29:51

I haven't, but it's very similar. Anywhere you see your Latvia. I've been to Latvia, I've been to Lithuania, similar there as well.

SPEAKER_04 29:57

Lithuania, that's is that more than that.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

North, yeah, northeast of Poland, north of Ukraine. And then Latvia is even more north than that.

SPEAKER_04 30:05

Gotcha. Gotcha. But yeah, yeah. Bulgaria, yeah, very cheap. There's a country, I'm trying to remember the name, and it's known to be the cheapest country in the world for for food that we went to. And we had like the entire team had like prime rib steak. I'm talking like you know, really good with wine and whatever it is. And it was like 10 of us or whatever it is. It was like hundred dollars, US dollars. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Ukraine used to be that way before the full-scale invasion. They were very, very cheap. Actually, it's it's I think it's up by 300% or something like that. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, because yeah, there's a lot of Westerners there. A money influx, but then also with the inflation with everything going on, it's changed the price of stuff, and it's still crazy cheap. So I could only imagine what it was. You know, you can get a flame for like $14 of a Ukrainian stick, and it's great.

SPEAKER_04 30:54

So you you spent time in Ukraine probably recently?

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Yeah, yeah. In the last year, I've gotten a couple trips in there, a few trips in there, I would say, and just working with teams. Uh, I was working for a company called Doodle Labs at the time, and we're selling radios for drones and robotics. And so I was yeah, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:11

Can you explain that? Uh, doodles, like doodle labs on this.

SPEAKER_02 31:14

Doodle labs, yep. Yep. Doodle labs is uh it's a very well-known company in the space. I got to spend a little over two years with the team, and I was uh I was a senior director of sales there, which meant at the time I was an individual contributor. So I took all care of all the key customers in the United States and then Ukraine, because I asked for Ukraine because it's such an emerging market. And so we were really working on understanding how the radios worked. We knew how they worked, but how they worked on the front lines, like getting access to teams there, being able to get a feedback loop. The in Ukraine, the development cycle is three weeks, so every three weeks they're pretty much re-engineering coming up with something. Or new really three weeks.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

And so war, usually what happens in war.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Exactly. So the Ukrainians do a really good job of staying on top of it and continuing to iterate. The Russians unfortunately do the same. They have a group called Rubicon. A Rubicon is a three-way organization between the government's military teams, the the actual uh schools, and the commercial. And so the three of them continue to iterate and make better things. And so they're doing similar stuff over in Ukraine where they're getting those feedback loops, getting their products in the hands of the teams that are using on the field, trying to create that asymmetric advantage, and then as that's working, they're constantly trying to tweak that in ways that can be used uh to continue to push forward in those advantages.

SPEAKER_04 32:35

Yeah. So obviously drones are you know what has been used in modern warfare now say that. So what is the the thing that they're mainly looking are looking for? Distance, speed, stealth? What are the things you see in Orban Request the most?

SPEAKER_02 32:50

I think it's all of them, to be honest. It depends on the situation, right? So if they're trying to take out a jet power shahid right now, it's speed. You know, those they can do 250 kilometers per hour to 350 kilometers per hour in just cruise mode. Then when they go to strike mode, they're doing like five or six hundred kilometers per hour. So they need a really fast interceptor to be able to intercept those, whereas like the standard prop Shahids are run at about 150 kilometers per hour. So the the drone is quite a bit of a drone for that. That's just for interceptions, right? And we've got to figure out how we can take care of ballistics still, yeah. But then when it comes out into the field, it's there's short range strike drones, short range reconnaissance, medium range, long range, yeah, deep strike systems, and so all of those are serving a different purpose, right? Like your short to medium range is gonna be between infantry and say tanks and or logistics vehicles, and then as you're getting out to that long range.

SPEAKER_04 33:44

Yeah, you see that stuff on you can see that stuff. It's crazy. You can see that stuff on YouTube.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Yeah, it's it's pretty nuts, man. It's the battlefield's completely changed.

SPEAKER_04 33:50

Yeah, it's uh you see it's it's pretty pretty it's pretty crazy. Like I've I've been to like I know what it's like to you know be at war and have to worry about that stuff. And not this war. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Looking at it now, I can't imagine. So the things I had to deal with were mortars, right? So mortars are just they shoot in hope. Yeah, right. You know, hopefully, you know, it gets somewhere, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

Now it chases you.

SPEAKER_04 34:16

Yeah, this thing's chasing you around, bro.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

It's the same mortar round that's just on a device that I can actually change.

SPEAKER_04 34:20

I can't imagine, I can't imagine that.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Yeah, the uh this I think it was a 60 millimeter mortar, they were saying I was talking to one of the companies that makes them over in Ukraine, and they were saying that it's almost ineffective at this point because as soon as the mortar round goes off, it gets hit by an FPV. And so most of the mortar rounds they're selling now are attached to a drone. And then, you know, the the kill zone has increased. I think the the the gray area between the zero line is about 20 to 30 kilometers each side. And so anywhere inside of that you're in the kill zone for FPV. And so you constantly have to be worried about that.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

Yeah, so there's a you're saying there's a a zone that if you enter that zone within 30 miles between each line. 30 kilometers between zero. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're screwed kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

Well, you have to be aware, right? That's where things really start to change. And you know, if you think about it, the the zero is only like 10 kilometers from chromators. So anyone in chromators is now FPVs in the in the gray zone.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

And so what's what's up with the so I'll I'll go back to this one. So I've do Doodle app. So they radios and controllers, is that what you're doing?

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Yeah, so just radios. Um radio stuff for the communication.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

Okay, so what so oh why is that so important?

SPEAKER_02 35:30

Yeah, absolutely. So every almost every drone needs some type of communication to be able to stay connected, right? So even if even if the drone is autonomous, you still want to get that feedback so that you can see what it's doing. Or you want to be able to maybe cancel that you know human in the loop decision that that was an actual kill, and you're like, whoops, don't want to actually do that.

SPEAKER_04 35:52

So having connection all the way to the interface so you'll be able to see what's going on, that's what it is. Or or some of them are controlled.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Some of them are flying them FPV like we fly FPV in racing. So it just depends on the type of drone and the type of mission they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

So uh I know it seems obvious, but just for people who may be listening and don't know what FPV is.

SPEAKER_02 36:11

Great question. It's first person view flying. No, that's what it was, yeah. So in in FPV flying, we're flying through a video screen, whether the video screen is on our goggles, on our eyes, on our face, or the video screen is on a on a monitor, which is generally what you see a lot of people flying right now in Ukraine as well. And then there's also like everything in between, right? Because the way we race, the amount of the speed of input that we need, the glass-to-glass latency, or that time from when the image hits the glass in the front to the image hits the glass, I can see it. Right. Needs to be as low as possible for a drone flying at very high performance acro mode. But as the drones start to get the ability to have more autonomy in the edge on the drone itself, then A, it makes the learning curve a lot less for them to be able to fly, like you guys used to fly the DJI stuff. Like you flying a DJI drone is completely different than me flying a race drone, right? The levels of skills required to take off and stay in the air. So, how do you get from FPV capabilities to the ease of control of a DJI drone, but able to have the same types of functions? Gotcha. That's like putting more of that autonomy in there, right? And so when you add the autonomy, then that glass to glass time doesn't make isn't as big of a deal. Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Because it can make some of those decisions for you. You're literally just using it to see what's going on. You're not so much to control it.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Exactly. Right? Or see what's going on to tag the target that you want and letting the drone do the rest.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Gotcha.

unknown 37:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

That's where the terminal guidance is really starting to come in.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Until the machine comes alive and they all just come after us, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

So let's that's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 37:47

Yeah, it's pretty pretty.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

It's really nuts, man. Like, I was talking to a friend, I was in the Eurosatory in Paris in June, and it's one of the largest trade shows in the world for defense, and there's 2100 different vendors at this show.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

So I want to ask a question that could derail us if that's all right. A little bit.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

At least take us somewhere else for at least a minute. So, like, obviously, we know United States, Russia, China, I'm sure Ukraine's using technologies, obviously. You were there. What what are like some of the countries we'd be surprised that they have that they're working on this kind of technology?

SPEAKER_02 38:22

I think at this point we're surprised that they're not. Really? Right? It's a lot of the stuff, at least even in like the the easy form, right, is like off the shelf. So if you think about just race drones with a mortar strap to it.

SPEAKER_03 38:35

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

Right? And so that is unfortunately, fortunately, very easy. But that's not high tech. And so to that question, I I I think that we also have to distinguish what is like an exquisite drone to be able to be a part of the US arsenal versus what a drone you would want to use in a country like Ukraine or even less economic capable country for the same task. Because if we were to take and I constantly have this argument, if we were to take an FPV drone like IFLI for racing and put it into the US military, which they're trying to do right now? It's over. Well, the the problem is the learning curve, right?

SPEAKER_04 39:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 39:13

You can learn pretty quick, but the problem is the learning curve is still there.

SPEAKER_04 39:16

So you're saying if you if you integrate it into the the military, like starting training, which they're already doing. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

Absolutely already doing. But what happens if a drone fail safe with a mortar on it? What happens to the people under the drone when it fail safe with a mortar on it? And so you have to add a certain level of automation and safety into these systems that we would require. But Ukraine's fighting for their lives. Russia came in to be a terrorist state to attack them, and they're just trying to stay alive. If we were just trying to stay alive here in America, we would be, you know, fighting with pitchforks or drones with mortar, whatever we had to do. And so I think it's there's a big difference between those types of weapons and then where we're gonna be at, and what if US ever goes to war with China, if that were ever to happen, hopefully never, that war would look tremendously different, right? That war would start in space and then it would come to us.

SPEAKER_04 40:06

Yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

Yeah, the defense tech is crazy, man. It's it's in its infancy, you know, been around a little bit in the tech industry for 30 years.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

There was something I wanted to ask you, uh specifically, because you're talking about the the controllers, and and obviously you go on YouTube, apparently there is like this huge feel in Ukraine, or even a portion of in Russia where there's like wire or fibers optics, yep. Everywhere. Like it's like, what's up with that? Can you explain that why?

SPEAKER_02 40:36

Yeah, I mean it's just a web of fiber optics. So one of the things that it's argued who did it first. So I won't say which side did it first, but it's also playing. Like, oh how dare you uh you're gonna have to splurge for the premium, Richard.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

Well, that's why I took the mouse, because I usually stay on top of that. Uh-and and he took it and Oh, did I take it from you? And I scrolled the other TV about TV.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

We have some news going on out here. So we we got distracted. The Who are we talking about?

SPEAKER_04 41:06

The the fiber thing. Oh, the fiber, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

Uh so they they came up with an ingenious way the the way you keep a drone from being able to attack you is you put in a lot of noise into the air, and so you basically jam it is what they call it, right? But you're creating a lot of noise so that the radio can't be heard. That's all you're doing. You're creating a white noise so that you can't get the intelligent data through anymore. So that's how you jam a drone.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:31

But if the drone is on fiber, there's no noise that you can create, and you can't detect the RF coming at you either, right? So they have they have drone detectors over there that are listening to 2.4, 5.gig, 5.8 gig, and now many other frequencies as they've changed that tell you, hey, there's a drone inbound. But you can't do that if it's fiber. And so for still today, like there's a mix of fiber optic drones and radio drones that are being deployed. It was all fiber drones for a while, and then an interesting economic change happened in January. It was three to four dollars per kilometer of fiber that you could buy, this single strand fiber that you use for drones. Well, then the data centers started buying up all the fiber. So the world's supply of fiber of that type of fiber has been bought until 2030, and another plant doesn't come online until 2030 to actually fix that. So the price of fiber went to 30 to 40 dollars per kilometer. So over a hundred percent increase or a thousand percent increase.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

To be clear, so you're saying they're flying these drones hooked up to fiber optics? Absolutely, it's got one little tiny thread of fibroid. And it's the fishing line, just yeah, they spool it. I had no idea.

SPEAKER_02 42:40

There's like a specific way they wind the spool. It's like this this each of them have their own way they wind their spool in a certain way so that it doesn't tangle. So it's got the right amount of tension, the right amount of oil that goes in the right cylinder so that it doesn't like fall together when it's sitting waiting to be deployed. Like there's a whole science to spinning your own fiber for drones, too. That I've never even heard of that.

SPEAKER_04 43:00

You go to you go to YouTube, there's a video already, you can probably look it up, where it is a field.

SPEAKER_02 43:05

It looks like a it's not just a field, man. It's like the whole East right now. It's like a web where just all this fiber, like these the well, people are worried about the ecological issues that are coming from the fibers. A hundred thousand drones with LIFO batteries blow off a month. What about the lifos? Yeah, what about that? Yeah, what about that? Like that's that's an interesting problem they have to figure out. But they just say they just want to win the war, so they don't share it.

SPEAKER_04 43:31

It's kind of like like you know, like back in like Vietnam, Vietnam and World War II when we you know left those regions, it was it was all was it was still a lot of live ordinances. Yeah, or yeah, you know, even like in uh was it like uh what's that country that they had to go back and within that region, and there's like freaking bombs just everywhere. Oh, they still find them in Europe, you know. They still find them a lot of them. You know, so basically it's the same thing here, just a different way of you know we just never learn, man, as humans. Beans. We do the same thing over and over. We do.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

The difference is like some of the mines that they're starting to drop are really interesting because they're like they're smart mines. And so they're not pressure sensors anymore, only pressure sensors. They have microphones on them, they have vibration sensors on them, they have a lot of other things on them to decide when to trigger. Um, but because they're a digital type of ignitiator, they can set a timer on it so they can de-mine themselves. So they're like, hey, we want these mines to last 30 days, and 30 days they just all blow up.

SPEAKER_04 44:27

Ah, oh okay. That's well, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

Unless you're happening to be there in 30 days.

SPEAKER_04 44:32

Yeah, unless you're just roaming around. Oh, what is this?

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Some of the Eastern European countries like Kosovo and things like that when they're having a conflict. Right. And they they just left a ton of mines out in the forest.

SPEAKER_04 44:44

Absolutely. And ocean, just floating there.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

People just yeah, just go back to the book.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

Cambodia just walking through somewhere and boom.

SPEAKER_04 44:50

I think that Cambodia was like one of them where it's like all that crap would just you walk around, all of a sudden your leg's gone. You know? Yeah. Crazy, crazy. Give me a second here. Go ahead and monologue real quick. Actually, Mark, I need give me your plug real quick, do you mind, Mark? Oh, power's dying.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

Oh, he's got too many things plugged in. He's gotta figure out what gets cut off as he decides how to power his laptop. Unbelievable. All right, you can't. He needs a wireless charger.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

He wants you to talk to him. Well, the question I was going to ask, I I gotta wait for him now. So what was the question? Oh no. Maybe we'll just make a minimal answers. We'll we'll wait. But I'll kind of ask the same question, but in a different light. So when did you get into how did you get into that business? Like obviously this is an interest of mine, but here's how I'm gonna go about getting into it.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

Yeah, so I I've been doing RCs since I was eight. My grandpa actually used to make model airplanes, he was a model maker for Ford's War Division out in California. So the engineers would come up with a design, and then grandpa would actually make it come to life, which was pretty cool. And he was a pilot like you. And uh, when he couldn't fly anymore, he started making RC planes. And so he gave me my first RC plane when I was eight. Nice. And uh I was flying on old CGI wireframe simulators with old crazy old RC box stuff, and then so I've been doing RC forever. I raced RC cars when I was a kid, line of sight stuff, and then I got back into flying RC probably when Cole, my boy, was like two or three, he's 18 now. So, like, I don't know, 15, 16 years ago, I started flying fixed wing like delta wings, line of sight delta wings, and then I started flying helicopters, 3D helicopters, line of sight. And then this FPV thing came out. And I think I bought a my first quadcopter before FPV came out, and then FPV came out. We started putting cameras on stuff.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

That had to have been pretty easy to transition to from the RC plane to oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

I mean, you already know the sticks, right? So as soon as you put a camera on it, it makes it so much easier to fly. Flying line of sight is much harder than flying FPV. Because you have to have the orientation, and then you add 3D helicopters. My gosh, like if you ever want to see somebody fly a helicopter like nobody else, look up Min Chen. He's from South Korea. He's he's been flying RC. His I remember way back watching him do helicopter stuff when he first got started. Now he's a beast in FPV too. But he first started doing helicopter stuff. I think I saw videos of him on a projector, and his dad was like telling him which fixed wing moves to do, like fly knife edge this way, fly this this way. And he was like three. And I think he was winning world championships at like eight or ten when it came to helicopter stuff.

SPEAKER_01 47:36

I mean, some of my favorite videos are seeing these people unpack these big expensive helicopters. Touch one property, and they just like they barely make it off the ground and they're in the wall.

SPEAKER_02 47:46

That was the hardest part. So when FPV came along, you could crash all you wanted, all you do is change props. You didn't have to rebuild a swatch plate and all these, you know, $50, $60 every time you touch a prop. And so I really just loved FPV. I flew a ton of just freestyle, flying around the property, flying out, and wouldn't we go camping, flying out in the woods, that kind of stuff. And then I finally got an opportunity to race about nine years ago now. And my first race was a night race, which is really hard to do. Outside or yeah, yeah, that was my first race.

SPEAKER_04 48:13

Like a five inch, like a five-inch race outside at night, dark, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:16

And the people that were at the race though were was so cool looking back on it. Like Van Over was at that race, yeah. Evan Turner was at that race, heads up FPV, Josh, Anthony, Dan, all all the crew that I that I hang with here now. That's the first time he's doing great, man. He's just got married. You got married now? Getting married, which is super exciting. But I uh I I got to know that crew before I knew that crew, and uh ended up just eventually meeting them later, but they were just so welcoming. And what's funny is I look back at the pictures, and all the dudes I hang out with now in FPV were at that race, and some of the most famous pilots in in the racing or small world. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It is a small world really.

SPEAKER_04 48:57

Do you see these same people still racing, or it kind of faded out? You don't see as much.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

Yeah, I mean you see you see heads up get in there and and still own in the owning the format of the the spec racing. He's like a spec racing guy. Like he's a three-time multi-GP world champion. Yeah. So he's just just amazing. Uh he's you know, now in the industry too, doing some cool stuff with the with with five through three and the the things around that. And uh, I think what I'm really enjoying right now is we've all been racing, we've all been grinding at this drone thing for so long. And I think we know a lot about the systems, how they work, what we like, what we don't like. And now I'm seeing all my friends that have been in FPV and racing get into these large defense tech companies, you know, friends working at Nero's, Vector, friends working at Redcats, all the big names, PDW in the drone tech space in the US, and they're all working them as pilots or engineers, and so all this hard work is finally turning into careers.

SPEAKER_04 49:51

Yeah, you guys really built this industry. I feel I feel like the what you're seeing in in Ukraine and the FPV platform, which is what they're gonna be using now, you guys really came up with the concept of it and what it is, I in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 50:04

I think I think racing because we're at so I mean I think racing in in any industry, right, helps make that industry better. If you think about what did uh F1 racing or Daytona racing or NASCAR do for the vehicle industry, right? Nobody drives them like they drive an F1 car, but a lot of that technology then pushes down. Right. And I think that the the level we stress things to in drone racing has really raised the bar on what's possible and just the the technology that's just come from that, ELRS is a perfect example of that. Everyone was flying FR Sky, which was really good at the time, super cheap, and then ELRS came on, and flying ELRS, which is extended long-range system, it has a very high response to your stick inputs, like it's super fast. And so going from ELRS, going from FR Sky or any of those other technologies to ELRS was like literally driving a Toyota camera and driving an F1 car. Like it just changed everything in the feel and the response of the drones. A lot of that was driven by drone racing. You know, the the ability to run 5s, 6s, 8s, the the fire, the the higher voltages to be able to spin the motors quicker, those types of things, and then the digital link, right? HD zero, the ability to have a low latency 90 frames per second. Game changer again. All you have to you don't have to like you're going to drop seconds by running HD zero over running an analog system just because the frame rate's better and the picture's better. You've just become an instantly better pilot. Yeah. And all of that is because of the expression of that.

SPEAKER_04 51:45

You want to explain what so HD0 is the first time? Yeah, so that's what you go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

It's digital versus analog. Sure. Right? So once you said analog, I kind of got you. Yeah, yeah. So so analog analog's I I tried to fly analog at one of the recent races because most all my HD0 stuff had broken because I smashed them really hard. And trying to fly one laugh with analog after being on f HD0 all day was like you know, taking off your glasses if you wear glasses and trying to drive.

SPEAKER_04 52:11

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 52:12

It's still doable. Yeah, and that's why you had nowhere near as similar. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:16

Is HTZ have they come up came up with anything newer? Last recent. I'm talking visually.

SPEAKER_02 52:21

Yeah, I mean they came out with the new goggles. The new goggles are step up. There's a number of extra features they added to them. I just got a set of those. They're they're really amazing. They have built-in analog receiver now, which I like a lot, instead of having to have the extra module. They're you know, they're just continuing to push. I believe they even came out with an NDAA capable one so that they can sell it to the US military.

SPEAKER_04 52:41

How does that how does that work? How can they excuse their how how would that work? I've always been you know what that is? ND was it NDAA? Yeah, NDAA. So basically the in order to for government contract in or military contract in, you have to there's certain requirements the tech company or whatever it is, the technology has to be able to there's only really one component of that is that it can't be from China.

SPEAKER_01 53:05

Well that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 53:06

It's and and so there's like the original NDAA rule was like six manufacturers in China, which were state-owned companies, that couldn't be put into any device that the US government was buying. Yeah, now they're really starting to pull that in. Like NDAA 2027, I think there's a lot of a lot of more US sourcing rules to be able to be considered compliant with the new law. And so going into 2027, there's gonna be a lot of near shore and onshore manufacturing that hadn't been done. That's good. Yeah, yeah, they're trying to bring it back, right? Because if we go to war or Taiwan war breaks out, yeah, you know, you're gonna lose a lot of the capabilities of getting stuff out of endo PACOM like area. And the you know, look at look at Iran right now, right? Us trying to get oil out. Yeah imagine us trying to get chips out, right? If we weren't able to get high-tech chips out of Taiwan right now so that we can make all the high-tech things, like that would kill us more than the oil.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 54:00

Yeah, it's so ridiculous that we would all make our chips and stuff here in the US.

SPEAKER_02 54:04

Well that's why we're spinning up TSMC here in the Valley, and that's why they're spinning a bunch of different different people. And you know, it it there's a lot of stuff that we've just let China take over. Like plywood. We don't make plywood anywhere outside of China.

SPEAKER_01 54:17

Yeah, that's nuts.

SPEAKER_04 54:19

It's yeah, this is ridiculous. But I mean, it's it's with a global economy. Somebody's making money somewhere in the US. That's all it is, you know, it comes down to it.

SPEAKER_02 54:27

Well, but you know, China, they're they're smart, right? In a lot of ways, that they they're a they're a monarchy. And so the the monarchy owns a lot of those businesses. Yeah, and so you know, you can look it up. There's a whole article about what I mentioned, plywood. Like there was the whole thing where the the Chinese government was subsidizing the loss that they were selling it for, right? So to make sure that they were selling their plywood for less than the rest of the world to capture the entire plywood market, the govern the government said, cool, sell it for a 20% loss, and we'll give you 30% back. And so you make 10% for the 20% you lose, right? Right? And so that's how they buy industries. That's you know, and then they they spread this technologies like DGIs that report back. They just found another camera. I think the UK found a camera that they were using, cheap Chinese camera that was sending data back to China. DGI? No, it's a new one. But another another company, they've done this, they just keep doing this. Like, look at Huawei. Huawei got banned from the United States because they were doing that too, and they're a major telecom player.

SPEAKER_04 55:30

You know what companies getting battle rep? Uh I want to say battle rep, but they're being they put on notice that they can't get government contracts and stuff anymore. Sirius. The aircraft manufacturer, serious.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_04 55:42

What are they based out of? Like Minnesota, but they're owned by the Chinese the Chinese. There it is. Oh, really? You didn't know that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

Doesn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_04 55:50

Oh, I probably should fact check that. Doesn't case. Well, why don't you?

SPEAKER_01 55:52

But I'm pretty sure that's the case. Checking that though. Yeah. I just want to state the obvious point that that's why it's so important. Like as much as people don't want data centers in their neighborhoods, and we don't want oh, through the water, the electricity, the space, the this, the that. We need those to do AI, and if China gets the AI first, we're done.

SPEAKER_02 56:10

Well, right. Yeah, I mean, there's you're absolutely right. There's a we have to work because they'll control it.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:15

And that'll become the and it's state controlled. It's not just people controlled.

SPEAKER_01 56:19

And that's why they came out with that AI system, whatever it was, and they're like, Yeah, sure, here's all the programming. We'll give it to you, everyone, for free. There you go. Because they want it, that's that's them controlling it. Yeah, yeah. We we have our hand in it now.

SPEAKER_02 56:32

Like they what's what's interesting is like in the defense tech space, too. Chris Christian Bros, I think it is. He's the chief strategic officer of Andrew. Andrew's up-and-coming company, uh, Palmer Lucky is started it. He was the guy that invented the VR headset, Oculus Rift. Oh wow. And then sold to Facebook and then came out of Facebook, created Andrew. And Chris Bros worked, Christian Bros worked uh for McCain, I believe, in the Pentagon. And he was looking at all the weapon systems and stuff. And he was talking about how China is so far ahead of us because they're state-owned, and so all of the technologies that they have available to them in China can nobody can say whether it is or isn't used in the military. Only the dictator says if it is or isn't. Yeah. Whereas we saw this whole thing with anthropic in the Iran War, and they pulled back the access to the US government because they were using anthropic to target locate and a bunch of other stuff. And they're like, hey, we don't want you to use our tech anymore. They can't do that in China.

SPEAKER_00 57:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:27

Right? They just said, no, we're we're using your tech. Or hey, this company just said made something really cool. DJI can use it. You know what? That's state-owned too. You have that technology.

SPEAKER_04 57:35

We know the the guy, the the Amazon F of China. What's that company called?

SPEAKER_02 57:41

Timu or Alibaba.

SPEAKER_04 57:44

The the the founder of that company, just like a multi-billionary, just disappears. Yeah, right. You know, like it's like, oh, okay. Yeah, like stuff like that. Bye bye. I shouldn't have been laughing. Not that that doesn't happen here necessarily. Yeah, you know, but not the like a not to a billionaire.

SPEAKER_02 57:59

Not as blatant, not as blatant as well.

SPEAKER_04 58:00

Oh, maybe, maybe, yeah. That's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:02

But yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:06

This is why, you know, I mean, yeah. Well, I get it. This is why I think I think maybe a few things. I gotta be careful saying this stuff, but at least I think like most we could figure out a way where most Americans should like at least get out of the country. We can find a way to do that just to see what the world really is like.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

Unless you've traveled, you'll never understand other people's perspectives. And the more I travel, the more humble I get. 100%. The more I understand culturals and different the cultural differences, and I understand things like that. You can how do I want to put it? You you you definitely get humbled, but you also have a better perspective of the world. And if you just stay here, your view of the world is so myopic. And so by being able to do that, you you just experience the cultures, experience the world, understand that it's like that overview effect, like the astronauts that are on the space station, right? They get the overview effect in the fact that like they see the world as this big ball, not of a bunch of people. And then they realize that we all live in this big ball together. And I think the more we travel, the more we experience, the more we see, the more we realize that we're just one little thing in this big world. 100%. And without doing that, which I love to travel, I travel as much as possible with the family or for work. But the more I do that, the more I see, the more I just I don't know, have a different viewpoint.

SPEAKER_01 59:25

To be fair, I mean, I don't just hate foreigners, I hate my neighbors too. So I'm just kidding, of course. So when you when you're ready, I'm gonna roll back here a few things because I have I have two two questions.

SPEAKER_04 59:41

One go ahead. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 59:42

Well, one's actually a statement, not more of a question. You actually answered both my questions. You started there and then we ended up going off in that route, which was super interesting. But how you started. Yep. So if I can try to just cap that up, it sounds like you started by racing. Absolutely. And doing the RC's playing RC as a hobby and then racing, yep. And then you got into the technical.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:04

Yeah, so then I then I got unexpectedly vacationed from a company. Vacation. Yeah. And so I took like four or five months off and said, okay, what do I really want to do? I was selling SaaS software at the time, and I just didn't want to do that anymore, but I knew that I wanted to get either in AI or in drone technologies. And so I found a company that I worked for before Doodle Labs, and I was able to get a job selling radios to drones and robotics. And so I was able to get into the space, kind of it just kind of showed up, and I was like, I'm a perfect candidate for this. I ran a wireless internet company for nine years. I race RC, like all of these things are coming together. And so that's been a great industry for me and in connection. And and so I made a decision in that time that I was hanging out to go into either one of those two, and I got into the drone industry. Gotcha. I planned to stay there. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:51

Yeah. That's how I think I think most people want things to kind of happen. Like, I want to take the things that I'm sort of passionate about and and what I'm already kind of good at professionally and merge them together somehow.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:01

Yeah, I was listening to Seth Godin today. He's an amazing marketing guy, wisdom. And uh he was saying something like, Don't do what you love, but you should love what you're doing. Yeah, which is different, right? Because like if you do what you love, sometimes if you do your hobby, you love your hobby and you would do it, it becomes a job. But if you love what you're doing for work, then that's quite a bit, it's quite a bit different. No, I agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23

You want to go fly this weekend? And it's like, how do I tell them no? Because like, no, I don't. Like, I've been teaching all week is like exactly I don't want to get in the plane that I spent so much money to learn how to fly and had so much passion for it. Yeah, well, no, I agree.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:38

Like doing what you love can can you know get to a point where you're not really making any money. You just, you know, you have to be understandable, really, really, really weight where you want to be. But you're right, if you love what you're doing, like, you know, every day, you never really I think uh the definition of happiness is no getting paid. Getting paid.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:00

Well, it's like the whole if you love what you do, it feels like you're never working kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:04

Yeah, you know, it really is a definition of getting up and like, oh, you know, I'm you know, I'm I'm doomed. I love it. So it's a friend, no matter what you're doing. 100%.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

So that's that's really I wanted to focus on that and was able to get into it. And I I really hope that I stay in this industry for the rest of my career. Which I'm old, so hopefully it's not long. You're old. How old are you? 49. Damn, not joking. I know, dude. I know. I I I look in the mirror and sometimes I see how old I mean. Sometimes I'm like, how am I almost?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:32

You look better than you. You don't look 49. No, no. Thank you, man. No, honestly. That was a joke, by the way. I was like Kevin Hart drunk, I was doing it. No, no, no, I get you. You got it?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:39

I I feel that way too, though, a lot of days.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:41

So then my follow-up to that, which will lead me into my my question that I have for you guys. And I'm assuming like then just kind of parallel, you started just kept racing, and that's how you ended up drone racing. Yep. Alright, cool. So I think we tied that up. So going back to your saying the the HD versus the analog vision. So when it comes to like MLDR, like standardized that's the same. Yeah, we're flying, all drones are flying.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:11

Yep. All flying the with MLDR, it's all the same quad. Right. That's it's the exact same build, same motors, same flight controllers, same VTX, which is the HD0 video transmitter. And so everything is as even as can be. So it's more about pilot skill than the drone itself. Because when we race, even spec racing, man, I feel like someone's always got a little edge, whether their arms are a little skinnier, their arms are a little fatter, like they're flying these settings in their ESC that to make it just slightly better so it can edge out. Right. I do all those things and still I lose. But you know, the the guys that are on the front end, like they can just nudge out the other guys.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:47

I'll say something, because I don't fly, obviously. I'm a I'm a fan of sport, that's why I try to stay as far away from it so I can be as close to it as possible. Because I, you know, I like to watch it. I like to be the guy up there looking at it, you know. But I spoke to Van Over, I had a meeting with him. Yeah, and he's a great pilot. 100%. He spoke to me and he said a few things to me, and I thought was ex extremely fascinating. And he says he can hear, like, when he's flying, you know, and he you know he's racing against somebody, he can hear when they go through the like he knows.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:16

Oh, yeah, we're we're all listening. We absolutely know where everybody is on the track for sure. Oh wow, dude, that's crazy. It's just that's just that's that comes with experience racing, it's just race awareness, right? And so you're you're listening to where you're at, and then you're waiting to see where they're at behind them. Really? I didn't know that. And then a lot of times, if you can hear you know where you're at, and then if you know in the turns, you can kind of see them behind you. So when you go by close, you can hear that boom boom, and you're like, okay, he's really close, or you're like, boom. Really? Maybe you can't see him until like next turn.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:44

This is a good segue. I like the way you segue that because that's where we need to be. So let's talk about let's talk about the most important thing in this podcast, MLDR.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:50

MLDR, that's right. Uh yeah, I'm the uh I'm the first world champion, I believe. Yeah, you're the first open class world champion. That's right. Yeah. And and my team is also uh undefeated at this point in any event you've ever been in.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:03

I was just gonna say I haven't been following that close, but even I you're like, well, that's what I usually lose. We were tough with the weights or whatever you adjust. I'm like, well, wait, didn't I just see him win something?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:13

Yeah, for a while. Everybody, everybody that you don't know knew who you were. Like Hatter. Uh right on, right. The name Hatter, whenever I go to like the my business partners or whatever, they'll know they know who Hatter was when you had the championship.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:25

You mean you know, the the Desert Hawks? We've won every event that we've been put up against somebody on. We beat the the Falcons, we beat the other events. So both times we won there, and then I was the first time world champion, and Josh has won every event since that who's also a Desert Hawk. And so I think right now we're dominating outside of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:42

Yeah, we need to we need to just fired. Yeah, we need to give them a little more competition. They're just destroying. Yeah. But let's get into that. I want to kind of you know ask you a few things about this recent event you've done. So the the recent event we did last probably Four. You've been at you've been at the last I think you've been in the last three. But we did two day events, yeah, right? And that was kind of new doing that kind of concept and so forth, and you know, having all those audience and so forth. Well, what do you think about it like when we were going through the process and just the vision of what MLDR could be? What were you what were you thinking when you walked out and the the crowd were cheering? What were you feeling?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:23

Yeah, absolutely. To be able to fly in front of a crowd, to uh be able to crash your drones, all of those things are amazing, right? Like we've we've invested tens and tens of thousands of dollars as well into our own crafts and crafts our own stuff. I mean, I I don't even want to know the amount of money I've spent on RC planes, quadcopters, all of the things along the way, especially in racing, and it's just getting more expensive. But to be able to fly in front of a crowd was absolutely, absolutely exciting. I know the the first day event that we did where we did the six pilots up, and then we went down to one, which I actually won. Just to hear the excitement in the crowds, uh to when they when the crashes happen, which they do when you have six up together in your flying spec, you're all you're prop on prop, so you're always gonna be rubbing, you're always gonna be hitting each other. I just survived luckily through a lot of those slams, and then just always kept the mindset don't be last. I actually didn't win a single race until the final race, and part of that was on purpose. I wanted to put myself back in the packs, and I didn't want to press because I didn't want to think I could press. And so when we got into that final race, it was me and Cheddar, and I knew Cheddar was a little faster than me, but I knew I was more consistent, and I'd been grinding on this course to make sure that I would be as capable as possible. But in the final race, we bumped, and the entire crowd was like, Oh, and then I passed them and then they started cheering again, and it was this back and forth, and then the final thing when everyone is excited like there's there's nothing like running racing in front of the crowd, man.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:53

100% when you came out you understood something anyways. Okay, we didn't want to cut you off. But when you came out when we did the event at the ASU prep, absolutely. I mean, those kids were and I we they said you're the champion, those kids were cheering that.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:06

Yeah, that was a blast, man. That's a blast. I I wasn't as prepared for that race, and we didn't have a lot of warm-up time, which again I I go back to it's not necessarily my age, but I'm a little slower, I need a more time to get going than these kids do. And uh Josh was there, he's a feast, man. That guy is a monster. He's just a machine, right? And so I was super excited to see what Josh Winnett, one of my closest friends in the FPV world, and wasn't surprised at all uh just because that guy is so good, he's so calm in it as well. And uh he I feel like he doesn't get the shake. Some of us, when we're getting really excited or like we're we're just on the bubble of whether or not we're gonna make it, you actually start shaking. Yeah, and you can see it in the video feed because you can see the camera jittering because we're kind of shaking on the sticks.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:48

You can see and I don't think he ever gets you can see you can see you can see the personality in the the drones. Yeah, I'm I'm not sure if you guys know this or not, but we can tell how you guys feel based on how the drones are. Like, for example, the event we did, the last event we did last year, or it was probably this year at the school west. Yep, Zion was flying, he was the blue drones, and you can see like he bumped, he he bumped into wild type, like they collided. Yep, and you can see that he was he got back up, you can see that he was like, Where do I go? Oh, right. You can you can see him thinking. Yeah, you can see him thinking through the drone. Like you can see what they're doing. It's interesting. You can see when they're scared or they're sure you can see when they're you know, you can see it's just an extension of our brain. It's amazing, yeah. It's fascinating, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:33

Because we're controlling all aspects of these drones, right? We actually control the the different attitudes that are changing pitch and roll, and so everything that we do when we're flying is really up to us. The flight controller is just holding the position we put it into when we're controlling the rest.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:46

Right. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:49

So it's a very static aircraft. Pretty much you do is it ain't going back, it's just gonna sit in the spot.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:55

It's not a DGI on the it's gonna sit in the spot you left it. Gotcha. Whether that's upside down, forward, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:01

And that's that's kind of like that's just to throw some avi other aviation stuff like training and teaching. Like the airplanes, we've they're super dynamic. They'll or should I say rather dynamic versus static? Like our planes will just if you bump them, they'll go back to wherever you had it set.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:17

Right. But if you take your hands off the stick, it's gonna try to level off. And those are Oh really? Right? No, we don't rear planes. Yeah, it does a fix. It's gonna try to level off.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:24

It wants to be whereas like aerobatic planes are built like like the drones. Like if you put it in a position, it will stay there until you hit the ground or something else. Or you change the what's the half gonna happen. Right.

unknown 1:10:38

100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:39

So it takes skill. Yeah, you don't want to teach in a plane like that. No, it's it well, that's the same with drones, right? Yeah, exactly. Just uh give some people a comparison.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:47

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Well, anyways, we're getting close to the end here, but just an update Major League drone racing, MLDR Grand Prix coming up. You're gonna be there?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

Yeah, I'm definitely gonna come spectate. Unfortunately, I did not get selected to race. Some faster racers got selected to race.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:01

So this will be the last, because uh, I think we figured out the process now with MLDR and how to do these events now where it's it can be consistent, a large amount of audience, and then I'm excited for that. Yeah, unfortunately, uh it took me a lot of time to figure out what is what works and what does not work, and I've lost a lot of money doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

But uh we've been doing this for over three years now.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:23

Yes. You've been here with me. Yeah, yeah. The entire time. You have. Yeah. You were there, he was there on the very first day they showed up with the he was there as well. At Salt. At the Salt, and you guys came in, got the jersey. Yep. You were there, you know? That's what it all generally all started. You've been here with me the entire time. You stuck behind me, and I really appreciate it. Of course, you know, and I won't forget that stuff ever.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:40

You let me fly drones in uh in front of people, I'll I'll do it forever. It's gonna get better and bigger.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:44

Yeah, and um you're the first MLDR open class world champion, so you still have you should have brought your belt.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:50

Oh no, I had to give the belt to Josh because there's only one belt. I still have the belt though for our team. You still have a team belt.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:58

So we're gonna ramp those back up. We're gonna ramp up technically. This will be the first. In fact, I already have the process built out coming up pretty soon. There'll be an announcement for a qualifier for all the teams and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:10

That's for Velocity drone, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:12

For Velocidrone, yeah. And it will, and then there's all all the championship will be available. So you have the open class, the MLDR Grand Prix, MLDR2. MLDR2 is what I think the Dragons have that those two championship platforms. So you can pick another guy and then compete as a team, those guys, and then obviously your championship you guys have with the the the Hawks as a full team, you can compete as that. So all those are gonna go up on the table as well pr pretty soon here. It's exciting. Yeah, so you'll have a lot more and the reason why it's designed in such a way where there's all these diverse championship platforms is to give you guys more opportunity to race. Yep. Because unfortunately, just the way it is, in the back end of business, I want to figure out what works and what does not work. Heck yeah. You can't, we're not at the point yet where you can fly out an entire two teams, right, right full teams. So you have a team of maybe you have a team of ten, and a team of you can't we're not at the point of finding out people, twenty people, which is not there yet. Soon though, soon. Soon we'll get there.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:14

That being said, with with with uh we can do three, with defense tech stuff taking off, yeah, there's a lot more people interested in this stuff now than there was even a year ago.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:22

Well, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:23

You know, I mean drone dominance. They're they're buying 60,000 FPV drones in the next gauntlet. So, you know, there's gonna be a lot of people interested in being FPV pilots, and a lot of those guys that are flying that stuff came from the racing world too. So it's an exciting time. People are gonna want to see you know some formats and people flying these same systems they're flying around the world doing other types of things.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:42

Do you think I was MLDR, we have our own spec, and we build our own spec, and uh you like you like that system plus spec, man. You like the way that we keep the thing standardized on one system and it's simple for the the the favorite thing I have about I love spec racing in general.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:59

So whether it's whether it's pro spec or it's any any of the specs we've flown along the way, like they're constantly trying to find the right spec. Pro spec lately has felt the best, but having everybody on the similar most similar platform possible, and in your case the exact same platform, really takes all of those other pieces out of it. And what I like about the MLDR space and pro spec and the speed of the drone is I can fly it at full stick, which is like full throttle, and still control it. But when you get to like multi-GBP world open class championship, like that stuff's crazy. Yeah, it's I just don't have the ability to fly that fast.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:36

I don't have the ability to play, I don't have the ability to like like you can't like out tried. I mean, those guys are going, I've seen AK. Yeah, and that's the thing. You know, I'm I'm talking they it's crazy. I don't even know how he's it's possible for your brain to.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:48

I'm slowly getting to where I can see it, but I still can't fly it. But the the thing, the thing with that is like they're third more, yeah. I'd say that they're 30% better on me lap per lap, right? Because the laps are super fast and they're super fast, but in spec, they're only like 10% faster than and so I'm only gonna stick away or a midair away because everybody's crashing. The word I could actually potentially win.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:11

Yeah, CKD is a little more strategic. Exactly. Strateger strategy, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:16

Strategery is key in racing, 100%. And so so I think that's why I love spec.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:21

100%, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:22

Especially the older crowd like me, and as some of these guys, even like Evan, aren't 16 anymore. I think you know that's again why he's loving it so much, too.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:30

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:31

No, and I think it's good for the audience as well, because even yes, you can't watch the fast stuff comparatively.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:36

100%, 100%. Plus, also you know, the just being able to you have to have a little bit of luck.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:42

It's not just I'm not saying I won the first world champion on skill.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:47

100%, right? You know, and that's what's that's what's great about it, is it's like it gives opportunity for people.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:52

If you just come up and show up and try, there's a chance that you might win. I was the third or fourth fastest pilot head to head, but I just stuck it out, grounded out long enough to be able to make it to the end and got lucky again. So, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:02

100%, yeah. But then you have people at Wildtop who just consistent and just you just you just gotta hope somebody takes them out.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:09

That's really at the end of the day. You gotta hope someone else takes them out.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:11

Yeah, that's funny. But okay, cool, man. You know, great to have you. You know, next time we come back on, we'll be a little more prepared, but it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:18

I'm gonna feel like you've told me that a few times in a couple different times.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:21

So say that how many times at the MLDR? It's only episode five. I've been saying that to him since the beginning of MLDR. Like, oh, next time MLDR will be the next time, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:33

It's just Richard time, we know, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:35

Yeah, but my Jamaican bacon time. It's definitely not out of lack of effort and what's going on. I would agree with that. I would 100% agree with that.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. Well, we're getting better. We're definitely getting better. I've you know, like I said, I've figured out a lot of things on the way here. I've put a few things in front now that is more important than the operational stuff, right? You know, that people tend to, you know, like just things you have to you have to do in business. It's the business won't exist, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:02

But anyways, we I mean at the end of the day, like the things that you're doing. Yeah, fair enough. There's there's how do I want to put it? There's the first time we do anything is always gonna be the worst, right? And we're only gonna get better from that point forward. And so the more times we get bets, the better we get. Maxwell Galdwell, I think it is. He talks about, you know, anybody can be an expert if you put 10,000 hours to something. Sure. Yeah. And so it's just about reps. It's stick time for John Racing, it's throwing events for you. Stick time for us, pilots. Yeah, slowly, slowly but surely you just get better. Yeah, and so and you know, kudos to you for trying. And uh, there's a lot of people that have probably wanted to do this that have never stepped out. You know, I we talked about me just starting my own company this week, my first week of uh Apex Unmanned, my own personal company. Is that is that the name of it? Apexed Apex Unmanned, yeah. And nice so many people have just been so supportive. And I don't know how many people have said, dude, just the courage to go out there and give it a shot on your own is huge. Like so many people want to do that, just don't want it.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:55

100%, yeah. You just gotta get up and start, and then I gave myself a year to fail. Yeah, just not even that, just I think you have to well, if I fail, yeah. You have to yeah, it's it has you have to because you're going to. Yeah, absolutely. It's going to happen. Yep. You know, and then just get back up and brush it off. I think they say the quicker, I forgot who's it, but the quicker you can get up and go, well, that's that wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:24

The quicker you're gonna recover and do it again, man, yeah, the quicker you can excel.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:27

Exactly. Build fast, learn fast. Trust me, you've seen me. We've I've been through a lot of hell with this company. You know, there I mean, and there's thousands of times when I go, I'm gonna hell with this. I'm done with this crap. Right. You know, and then but then I look at it and go, man. There's something. Well, it's not even that, it's just I think there's worse things. Oh, fair enough. Think than quitting. The bit of that sunk loss cost issues too.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:48

What is that? Sunk loss cost. Like the amount of uh cost you've already sunk into it, you only give up on it.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:53

That's one thing. Uh I think the main thing I think the thing that will haunt men the worse are just w regret. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:01

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just you know, what I yeah, the same you should listen to this uh Seth Godin thing I listened to today. It will hit it hit me perfect today starting up my own company this week. Is uh one of the things he says is I'll never regret anything I tried and failed at. I'll always regret the stuff I didn't try. 100% that's it, right? Like the the fact that you're trying what you're doing, I'm trying what we're doing. It's we're we're not gonna be sad we did it and it didn't go well. We're gonna be sad if we never did it. Because what are the what is the cost of failing? It's it's nothing compared to the cost of never wanting trying.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:33

Yeah, yeah. One of my biggest things too is say I I quit and I I'm done with this, and then somebody pops up out of the way. That's one of my biggest friendships, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I'm always like a little fumble going. I'm always like, it's DR. I'm always every day, yeah, like going, where the hell's DR? Oh my god, dude. And then they pop up and all of a sudden because they say you are one. What do they say? Success is basically what is the saying? Building oh, it's luck with it. Success is building something. Oh god, damn. I can't remember the damn saying. But yeah, success is preparation when luck and preparation comes together. Yeah, exactly. So basically, you have everything in place, it might not be working, and then all of a sudden, boom, just like the drone world is up, and all of a sudden, you know, maybe you get a huge government contract just because you had just because you had the stuff in place.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:31

Yeah. Just real quick, dude. Just you know, it's it's funny, is that's how I like ended up bowing out of aviation for a while there. Was that so like after UND and I ran out of money and everything, like my plan was to come back, but then after I went and started working in IT, that's why he's so far ahead of me. So I I yeah did years without it. I was basically like, I'm fine, I'm good with IT. I could just keep doing this and maybe I'll revisit aviation. And then one day all these guys who I started with started popping up on like Facebook and shit, wearing uniforms. Oh, and they're instructing, and I'm like, yeah, and I'll like I gotta go back, man. I gotta go back.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:15

Hell yeah, man. 100%. It's exciting you're flying again. And I'll never do that again, right? Ever. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:21

Or just we just keep going.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:23

Just keep going. Do what you love.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:25

Definitely, man. Definitely. Okay, Ira. Thank you for that's a good conversation. You're smart. You're I can tell you're a smart guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:32

Um try not to look stupid. I hide that.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:36

Nah nah, you can't hide that, trust me. You can't hide stupidity. One thing I've learned. I don't even hide it. I just trust me, it's square.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:44

I just try to make it funny. If I can make people laugh with my stupidity, you gotta own it, man. You gotta own it.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:49

I think they said the best thing is like stupidity is extremely expensive. Like, you know, trust me. You if you're you'll find out, people find out right away. And you can I don't know, I can tell. I can tell like stupid people, like you know, like I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:02

Some of the some of the not smartest people I know make millions because they're just they're just dumb enough to not not try. Well, I think I think was Bill Gates that said that's what kills me, man. But dumber people make more money. That's my biggest my biggest. Doesn't that piss you off? Pisses me off. Absolutely pisses me off.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:17

Yeah. I think Bill Gates said that he liked to hire people who are lazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:22

Or because they're because they're uh figure an efficient way to get it.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:25

Yeah, you just they want to figure it out, you know, to yeah, to find a way to figure yeah, to not work too hard, you know? Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:31

So hey Bill, I'm your man. Yeah, for the right price.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:38

Probably I'm gonna deal with this podcast because of the way I started. I'm probably just gonna edit it to put it together and then put it back up on it. Chop it off and make a sound good. Yeah, but we have some really good stuff, so lots of clips will be coming out of you. You sound very well, you're well spoken. So I'm gonna put it together pretty good, so it looks really, really well and well presented overall. The general podcast, I probably edit it versus just leaving it because it was chopped up at the beginning, which is it's fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:02

You had to get up in the metal to go get your charger.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:04

Oh my god, dude. Yeah, I'll probably edit that part out. But usually this goes pretty well. This computer can't, I've been working this computer to death, so I need to bring the production platform in. Now I just gotta build the entire thing out. I was trying to avoid that, but it is what it is. It's kind of kind of thing. But and then this camera, I'll get a third camera as well. There you go. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on, man. I really appreciate it. Definitely, man. And then I'll stay in touch. I want to see you racing racing again pretty soon. Me too. And then um you have a people asking to pay me money, it's good. You have the the vendors are doing very well at this upcoming event. Yeah, nice. Yeah. Well, my hopefully we have a really good. We should have personally coming up pretty soon for all these events.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:47

Very exciting.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:48

So yeah, I know you have a challenge for uh for wild type, so that's still in the bag.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:54

Oh, always trying to beat that guy. Don't know if I'll ever will, but uh so, anyways.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:59

Well, thanks for coming on, and I appreciate it, my friend. We'll talk, we'll talk soon. Come back, come back. We'll talk again pretty soon. All right, we're gonna out here. And Mark, you want to say anything? You're good to go, my friend. See ya. See you. All right. Adios.