Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the drone d recovery podcast.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: I'mike and I'm Kevin. On this week's episode, we talk about everything from the DJi band and whether it'll happen. We talk about ag drones, we talk about american made drones. We talk about the big show that you were just at. Huge industry show. Yep. We talk about Starlink if you need it. We talk about the part 107. A bunch of ground chatter this week. Don't want to miss it.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: You this.
Welcome back to the Drone Deer recovery podcast. If it sounds like I'm tired, it's because I am tired. We're just going to get started off with that right away. Got home this morning at like 02:20 a.m. From Las Vegas. Was out there for the shot show.
Wow. Yes. I'm a little drained for some reason.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that's all right. So we went to two trade shows recently. We went to AtA and shot.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Different or the same?
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Yeah, way different. Shot show is absolutely mind blowing. How big it is, how many people are there, how many products are in the world? And I just have no clue. Like I walk in there and I'm like, this gun and that product and this down here, it's just like, there's so much.
I don't know. I just freaked out. I was a newbie. I was like.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: When we went to Ata, in 2 hours or 3 hours, we walked through.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Oh, you could never do that floor. There's no way. I did not walk through every aisle because I couldn't. It would take me probably four days now. You could just run down back and it is huge. Like the buildings there. It just freaks me out that the buildings are that big. What do they need these buildings for to be this big? Is it for a one time a year expo? Because it's like, dude, you should have seen this.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Aren't there like 100 different industries that have their annual expo or something there in the same building? Probably.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: I mean, they have to, to try to pay for it because I don't know what else you'd do in there. I mean, you could probably fly little airplanes in there. It's that big.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Amazing.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Crazy.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah. So anything good? Anything that stood out to you from that show, anything you saw, anything new, anything you think it's going to?
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Oh yeah, there's a bunch of new products. I mean, there's just a bunch.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Any that are straight up crazy.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Well, I'm not that big into guns, so I don't know about it that much. But like Brayden Price, he was with us and he's way more into that. Yeah, there's some pretty cool things coming.
One is a low light scope that stuck out to me. Right. There's different interests, but for me, that's one interest. But there's new guns and new bulletproof vests and all kinds of different things. But for me, there's the scope that's being released. I don't know how it works, but it takes the last bit of light without a light or anything, but the scope.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: It's not night vision?
[00:03:15] Speaker A: No, it's not night vision, but you can basically see in the night.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: So you see through the scope in color as if it were day.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty crazy. So that stuck out to me just.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Because of anything drone related, anything cool new in the pipeline you saw?
[00:03:28] Speaker A: I only seen two drones there. One was coupled with tear gas.
It's for crowd control or, like, in prisons where they can drop tear gas. And the other was a tethered drone. And what that tethered drone would do is you'd have radio communications hooked to it. So it's basically like a tower. It becomes a moving tower, and it can fly day and night. It flew. They had a video there where it showed the drone flying for.
I want to say it was like 30 days straight. It just sat there.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Tethered. Means there's a power source running up.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Yeah. It's hooked to a big box, and then the drone takes off, and the wire comes down. But they had, like, a video. I forget, I maybe shouldn't say, but it was a long time that the drone was sitting up there day and night, just sitting there as a cell tower. Yeah.
Pretty cool.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: That is kind of cool.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: It is cool, but I think it's more for, like, military and the police departments, that type of thing, because for the general public, I don't see how that's going to help them.
But I did hear in the past that they want to have that type of stuff out west where the cell phone service might be not good, and for temporary, they would send drones out there and have them hover. I don't know. I don't know how it's going to work, but military, for sure.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Radio, amazing. And that's just the stuff that's public military. Yeah. Dude, I sent you a video this last week of this little, like.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that thing's going viral, like that little baby.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Little baby, baby drone.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: And it has enough explosives in it that it can fracture your skull.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: Yeah, we talked. Yeah, we talked about some of that type of stuff, but yeah. A lot of well known people at the shot show in the industry.
It was something to see for wish. I don't know. We weren't know if we should all go, but we should all went and.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: We should not have gone to the ATA.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Well, no, I still think we made good connections at the ATA.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Yeah, there was rumor that it's like getting smaller every year.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Yeah. But then I spoke to another guy, but he's Amish here, right? He has an archery business here. And he's like, no, Mike, we need the four new products. And I think they do more than just that show. Like, ATA is an organization that really promotes archery and that type of, you know, as far as the show itself, the size of it, we were maybe disappointed, but I think they do a lot more than that. And he was just saying that, no, we still need it, is what he was saying, but very cool. I don't know. Yeah, just like being in the industry. Because these shows that we're talking about ATA and shot show, you can't get into those shows unless you're in the industry. Either a retailer or media or you're a manufacturer or something like.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Like DJI. Not even in the show. Are they too big? They don't care? Or are they just not in the industry?
[00:06:50] Speaker A: I wonder that, too. Well, what about even other drone companies? I wonder, why are not other drone companies there showing their capabilities? Yeah.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: I mean, you think if they weren't in the industry before, you think now they're waking up to the fact that there's this whole industry around thermal drones in the hunting industry?
[00:07:10] Speaker A: It is just crazy to me. I was walking through the show and I was telling Brayden this all the time. How can it be that there's so many companies with the same or similar product and they're all still surviving?
Have you ever thought of that?
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Especially like in bows or guns?
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Like these guns. Let's just take a gun like a pump, twelve gauge, a shotgun. It's a shotgun. They're all kind of the same way.
It's a shotgun. How can there be that many different companies building a shotgun and doing great at it? And when you're walking around that show and you see that, I'm just like, there is that much demand. And the same way with drones, I think we're selling drones and there's other people copying us now. Like having a recovery kit or a wildlife kit or whatever they want to call it. Right? They're doing what drone deer recovery did. And it's like.
It's because the market is actually that big.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Same thing? Yeah, it's big.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And I spoke to a guy there from South Africa. They use thermal drones for a whole different reason, like, for poachers and stuff. And it's like, we think know it's just here in America, but there's so many more opportunities out there with thermal technology and drones in general that it's like, okay, there is room for more people, but when you're starting it and you're the first, we were in this space. Right? Like, making an impact, and then you see a bunch of different people copying you, it makes you feel like, oh, man, I don't know. Competition. But I think it's all right that there's competition. But when you start really undercutting and you start driving the market down, just like in the service side of things, because what's happening is these other companies that are putting these packages together, they have to price it lower to get people to buy from them, just like you do in the service site. So drone deer recovery is $450 plus $100. If we come out and we find the deer dead or alive, everybody knows that there were millions and millions of people that watched our videos and knew what we charge. And then, I don't know, Stan in a van starts a deer recovery business, or Nick and a crown vic, and it's like they have to price it lower to try to get work, and then it just starts this downhill on where the bottom is. And it's like the same way with selling these drone deer recovery kits. If a company has been selling drones, right, and they've been selling drones for longer than I have, but they didn't have this niche market. And it's like, now they start creating a kit, and in order for people to buy the kit from them, they go to drone deer recovery. And then people want to shop. And I have nothing wrong. I don't find that wrong. Right? Like, shop around. I probably do the same thing. But we built this kit, and now other people started building it as well, and they price it lower to try to get the sale. And then the next guy prices it lower, and it's like, guys, if we're going to do that, we're all going to keep selling things for less and less, and profit margins are going to go down and down and down until you can't survive. And so what I would say is, if you want to do it, do it. But you know where we're at, so let's just stay right there. If you get the sale, great. If you don't. At least you're not driving the market down. Wow. Two cent on the market. I don't know. I could be wrong, but I've had people call me and be like, how's a guy charge $150 to do a deer recovery with a matrice 30 t? And I'm like, I don't know. But I know that I wouldn't want to get up at 11:30 p.m. To drive an hour and a half to go do $150 recovery.
I don't know.
How do you feel about it?
[00:11:40] Speaker B: I mean, I think this is like, on the service side, especially then you have probably a combination of people who just want to get their feet wet. And we were talking to somebody recently that was explaining, in a new industry, then typically there's this thing where the strong players are going to survive. In three years, there's going to be a lot of people that come in and they underprice themselves or they get tired of it because that guy isn't going to do $150 a night or a pop. He's not going to do that on weekends. Long term, it doesn't work. You can't even pay off your equipment at that rate.
And maybe his goals are different, but the people, as the industry kind of figures out, okay, what is a fair price? How do I compensate for working all hours of the night, working weekends, the market. I mean, the beauty of capitalism is it just kind of figures out what the right thing is. And then on the selling drone side, you have msrps and stuff like that. That should guide what the price is.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're starting to get into the agricultural side of selling drones and building trailers. And it's like, we're not the first to do that. There's other people that have done that, but it's all about getting in front of the eyeballs, right? If those people have people coming to their site already, then they're going to go there. And now if they know of John Henry selling drones, they're going to go to John Henry and see about getting a price from them. And now they hear that drone deer does it as well. And then they go to drone deer to get a price for their agricultural stuff. And it's like, it's just, the market is just how it works. But when you're in it first and you see other people, it's just something. I think it's just human nature. It's like, oh, man, here's another one.
But I do think that it's all right because there's that much out there. It's just how hard are you willing to work to go get it and to provide the best service, provide the best product? Customer service is huge. Once you start in service and selling.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: Stuff, and not to mention ag, which is going to be another level, that's when you really need service.
I think when we did a pivot a while back and we went from having our own licensed operators in various states to saying, hey, we just want to promote. Anybody who has a part 107 wants to advertise on the map that tens of thousands of people visit every day during the season or during the heat of the season at least.
We were like, wow, we're really just opening this up so other people can go run successful businesses. And we kind of had to think through that.
But the place where we came out was the market is big enough, the pie is big enough. We can't be thinking that. It's just like a small pie. And it's more like let's grow the pie.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: One of the bigger factors in that was herd analysis, right? Like we had people, hundreds of people reaching out to us that had a few hundred acres in, let's say it's Tennessee.
I wanted to do that service, right? I wanted to come to Tennessee and count your deer on 200 acres. But it didn't make sense, price wise for them to hire me to drive all the way down there to do 200 acres and then drive all the way back. So I'm like, we just need more pilots. We need more people that can service the industry and those big jobs, right? If you start going over 2000, 4000 acres, you're going to need a bunch of pilots. And that's where drone deer is still where the people are coming is for that big acreage because we can handle it with the pilots. But I think when we were talking about the pivot is being able to, when people come to drone deer recovery, they are looking for a pilot. We didn't have enough pilots and it was like, man, they weren't getting what we were hoping they would get. And that's when we opened it up to, hey, let's build this map. Let's let people list on it already. We've learned from launching the map and getting feedback from our pro subscribers on there. It's like we're going to change some things.
Are people aware of it?
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Already aware of it? So on February 1, anybody that hasn't provided proof of having a part 107, they're getting removed from the site because.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Technically you can't advertise a drone service and charge people if you don't have a part 107, there's a couple of.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: People on there that they've emailed. They said, hey, well, I don't want to charge money. I do it donation only, or I just do it to help find pets. And it's like, yeah, without saying that's not valid. It's more like, well, what we want to have is where anybody that goes there, they know that they have a commercial pilot's license, they know the rules.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Plus, I think it's good. I think even if you want to do it for free, do it for free. But get your part 107 because you are going to learn so much about just airspace in general. That is very helpful for a pilot that wants to fly a drone. So if you're going to list and you're going to look professional, if you're going to be listing on our website as a pro, I get it. If you want to say you're doing it for free, that's one thing, but you're paying money to do something for free. You must have a bunch of money.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: And the thing is, Mike, is it's not that hard to get a 107. It looks big to people, but when you actually go through the material, through a video course or it's like spend a couple of evenings, depending how fast you learn and absorb, but spend six to eight to 12 hours, it's valuable.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Information that for the rest of your.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Life it'll make you a better pilot. Very few people will regret doing that.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: I would like to motivate you guys to just do it. It is not that difficult. Get a study course. We have it on our website where you can sign up and you go through this course and watch videos, you're going to learn and by the end of it, you're going to be able to pass.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And going back to the whole thing about service and stuff like that, I think this week, on Saturday, there's a meeting in Pennsylvania you went to, like, speaking to know, trying to create awareness and education for people who are making the laws in various. I just this morning I replied to a guy from, you know, there's just so many states right now saying, hey, this is going on. And like, would you guys come help us fight it in this state? And that's what we're about. That's what we want to do. But then we also have limited time. And you flew to Indiana and I.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Plan on flying to Harrisburg on.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: I mean, it's just there to help push things forward. And it's because if we can help grow the industry, then everybody wins.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And that costs us money. That costs the company money for me to go do these things, but we're willing to do it because as the industry moves forward, then hopefully we can benefit it from. Yeah, at some point, but it costs money to go do these things. A lot of merch. We're going to have a lot of new merch at the booth, new designs. It's going to be wild hoodies and t shirts. By that time, the drawing will be over. But as of right now, if you're listening to this, we are allowing anybody that makes a purchase of it's going to be wild t shirt or hoodie will be entered to win a complete drone deer recovery kit. There's more details on our website, how you can enter as well. So, yeah, it's been going pretty well, trying to figure out how to get everything out.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: It's been great, actually.
Well, the quality of these t shirts and stuff, it's.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I told Kevin I wasn't completely satisfied with our other merch. I mean, it was all right, but I wanted something that's soft, comfortable, it feels good.
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Something you want to wear.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's definitely a step up from what we had. So I'm excited about getting people their merch, and I've already gotten people that DM'd me with the new merch, and they're like, this is a sweet t shirt. And it's like, yeah, we tried putting.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: So we promised to ship it out February, I think, second or second to fifth, but we've already been ordering. We've already been starting to ship out. So chances are if you're one of the first, we may be able to get your orders out this week.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Actually, I'm excited to give people an opportunity to win a drone deer recovery kid. I started thinking about this.
If somebody gets drawn that doesn't have the money to invest $13,200 into, if you have a drone and you put in, great. But for people that don't have a drone, if they can win and they can come here and we can teach them how to fly a drone and then send them off, and then they go home and then they call me and be like, Mike, I did my first pet recovery, or I did this or that, that would be cool. Just getting people set up with the kit is going to be exciting.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: And we are planning on doing that drawing on January 31. According to Kevin, he made that date, and we got to keep the date and I'm going to be in Arkansas. And so we'll figure out how we're going to do it for sure. I want to do it live. I want to do it live on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Yeah, we can get into ground chatter. That is usually where people either ask us questions, know, give us feedback on how we're, um. So we will pull that up and try to respond to some of those here.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: All right, so for this week's ground chatter, first one, Jason, braggening of DJI drones in one of your podcasts, please. Since it just passed that DJI drones can no longer be used in government work in the US now, and Florida has banned the use of DJI drones entirely, statewide for all purposes. How far do you think that will go? Thanks, Jason.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Florida has banned entirely.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: I feel like they have banned state employees utilizing like.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: That's not just federal, that's like police departments. Anybody that has something to do with the state of Florida either funded federal or private individual.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: So it's a little bit misleading here. The question, or I guess maybe misunderstanding. So if you live in Florida, you can fly your DJI drone. Nobody's going to come out and stop you and harass you and confiscate your drone as long as you're flying it legally.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: This is not legal advice, but yeah. So I think the nature of the question is, what do we think about the government banning of DJI as a company and their drones or products?
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So the biggest thing I can say about this and talk about it is basically the reason we hear about this right now is because DJI owns 75, between 70 and 75% of the world drone market. They're that big. They're that known. They have the market. There's no other drone in America right now that I can promote to you guys to do deer recovery, because they're not good. They are not good drones.
What happens is these other drone manufacturers, they can't capture the market. So instead of spending millions of dollars on development and making a better drone, that is really good.
So I would promote it to you guys. They take those millions and put it in lobbyists instead. And what those lobbyists do, this is my opinion. This is just me talking.
What those lobbyists do is they go to DC, they go to these government agencies, and they start lobbying against DJI. They say they're spying on us, they're sending all this information to China so they can come and kill us. And all that baloney that they talk about these lobbyists to try to get them banned to try to capture some of the market. That is what they're doing. These lobbyist groups are pushing to get DJI banned in America so those companies that build drones that are no good, that are garbage, then can have some of the market in America. That is what they're doing. That is my opinion. That is why we talk about DJI getting banned. It's because these drone companies hire lobbyists, and those lobbyists try to get DJI banned in America because they are pissed off that they don't have a good product and they can't sell their drones because they're no good in America and they're trying to capture back some of the market. That's my two cent on why we talk about DJI being banned. It's been talked about for years before we gotten in the market and we got concerned about it. Like, we started selling DJI spray drones. And I talked to Kevin, I was like, Kevin, have you heard about this banning thing? They're going to ban them. How's this going to work?
The whole business structure is going to fall apart and this thing is going to burn to the ground and we can't sell any drones. And it's like, we started checking into it. We started talking to people, companies that have sold drones for years, like DJI drones, the best drones right now on the market. And they're like, Mike, it's been talked about for years, like, now that we're in the space and they brought it to mainstream news and that type of thing, they're getting more eyeballs on it. But it's like, guys, settle down. Mike and Kevin, settle down. They've talked about doing this for a long time already. It's just something that gets talked about. It's like, know, TikTok is a China owned company.
They talked about banning it in America. It's like, settle down. It's going to be all right. They're going to figure it out because they are a really good product. They will never go away.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: That's Mike's two cent right there. You tell me what your two cent mean. I think there are drone companies like us made drone companies that are spending millions of dollars on research, but I think millions of dollars doesn't compete with, I think, probably hundreds of millions that DJI is spending. So I think there's still know for a small company, there's like innovative american made solutions, like fixed wing and. Yeah, maybe some applications. But for what we're doing, yeah. It's not even a competition.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
For instance, the company Altel, they have made a drone that is supposed to be similar to the Matrice 30 t. But it's not.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: And I guess going back to capitalism and all of that stuff that we were talking about earlier, the latest price drop of the matrice 30 t coincided with the introduction of, I think, autel's new thermal drone. So it is good for the consumer to see how the market works. And I'm thankful for DJI's competition. It keeps them honest.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: But now we're going back to what you and I were talking about earlier, about the market coming down, right? DJI had set this market up here because there was nobody else that was competing with their retrieve 30 t. There just wasn't. And then Altel builds this drone and says, we're going to sell it at $9,000. And then DJI has these drones. And then people start seeing this altel drone, they're like, oh, I can buy that one instead.
It is what it is. But Altel had to do that to try to capture some of the market where if they would have stayed up higher, then maybe they could have made more money. But it is what it is. It brought it down. It made it more affordable for certain people. So I say it's good because we can sell more drones. But then if you're DJI and you're sitting back here like me and Kevin are right now, and we see other people coming into the market and pushing the price down, that's probably how DJI feels. It's like, guys, we've set the market up here, and now you're saying it's down here.
So again, it's just the whole market figuring itself out.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Figuring itself out. And it is figuring itself out. I think it'll be a good thing. But I can relate to the essence of this question, Mike, because when you and I were starting, I remember when we had to with Ag.
So we're going to go sink, I don't know, 30, $40,000 into a platform, a drone platform. Do we do xag? Do we do DJI? And I think it was around that time that we were, like, thinking about, if DJI is getting banned, are we putting our money on a sink and ship? You want to choose a platform that you can use long term? So this question, I think, comes out of people probably wondering if I'm going to get into my first drone, am I shooting myself in the foot to jump on a DJI? And we would give a resounding, no, you're not. And even if right. Let's say the unthinkable happens. And federally, the sale of every DJI drone is banned for whatever privacy reason.
The DJI drone that you have probably is more valuable than it was before, because now it's still the best product. And I don't know that it's just lobbyists, I guess, in my opinion. I think that there also is a question on privacy and on DJI having access. Know, you got to activate a serial number.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Yeah, but. Okay, you can bring that up. DJI does not just build drones. DJI builds cameras, gimbals.
They need software access for that, too. If you go buy yourself a little Osmo, it's this little camera that has a gimbal on top. You have to set up an account to use that. I mean, that's a camera moving around. Are they going to ban that next?
[00:30:44] Speaker B: The concern is, what if DJI. Because DJI is pretty connected to the.
They're. I mean, they're one of the biggest corporations in.
So, you know, maybe, you know, China's colluding with DJI and they're going to get all sensitive info. And it's the same thing people are worried about with TikTok. It's like, what if the chinese government is using this tool to train the minds of young american youth?
I mean, who knows? Valid concern. Not valid concern politically, the chances of it actually getting banned very low. And honestly, for anybody looking to get into a drone system, we only recommend DJI. And it doesn't matter if you buy it from us or someone else, we think you're going to regret buying an autel. Buying a sky duo. Yeah.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: What is that?
I think that there may be in the future, maybe an american made drone company that will produce a good product. But right now, if you're listening to this and you do have a good product, if you do have a good product, send it to us and I'll try it. But it's like, I feel that american made drones are, like five to ten years behind the technology of DJI. And the reason I say that is because DJI has been in the market from the get go. That was the first drone that everybody talked about was this big old square.
Phantom four, or Phantom whatever it's called, booger. Flew for like 10 minutes without a camera. And it was just this clunky thing.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: But that didn't even have a gimbal, the first ones, I thought it was the coolest thing. Yeah.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: But they just gained all this knowledge. Right? And then they seen companies, seen these drones come into the market and seen how the industry is going to change and have drones, and then they start to manufacture them, just like everybody's doing with agricultural. In the agricultural, like, drone trailer setup, everybody sees that there's a market, people start manufacture, people start designing their own things, and it's the same thing.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: It makes me think in the Ag space, the DJI generator, not your cheapest generator, and we've tried other generators and garbage. You're using a DJI generator.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: DJI has built.
Their whole thing is they want you to use all of their things to make it flow easy.
There are other generators that charge your batteries fast, but not as fast. So if you're a farmer in Iowa, where you got these wide open flat fields where your drone isn't returning with super low batteries, you might be able to get away with a generator that takes two to 3 minutes longer to charge your battery. But if you want it to charge exactly the same rate as it discharges, then you're going to have to use their system, which, why wouldn't you?
[00:33:56] Speaker B: And that's where if you're trying to just save a buck and you are a custom applicator, you're going to shoot yourself in the foot.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
I don't know. I didn't have many issues with the DJI generator. I had one generator from DJI that out of the box didn't work. Like, it didn't work right. But the others, dude, we ran them hard, like 10 hours a day, probably even more.
They charged the batteries every time how they were supposed to. And I just think that if a guy is going to do it as a custom applicator trying to run other generators for me, I just don't think it's worth it.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: And it's all in that ecosystem, because with XAG, there's a review video of you comparing the p 100 to the t 40. And the XAG P 100 has a way better hardware.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: The software doesn't work.
The drone doesn't work.
Software is hard to get. Right. And expensive. Yeah, for sure.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: Anyhow. Yeah. On if they're going to get banned, Mike's two cent is I don't think they're going to get banned for the general public.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: Do you see more, like, on a state level, do you see more states following what Florida did?
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Probably.
I don't know.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: And that probably doesn't even affect the person asking this question, unless you're a state employee acting in your official duty. Doesn't matter.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: And again, I do think that there are other drone companies that these states are already getting a hold of and they are just settling. Right. They have to settle. They have to have drones. So they are using these drones that are provided to them.
But in my opinion, I can only recommend.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: All right. At this time, hopefully, Jason, that provided some clarity.
Next question. Next comment is would you please updated on the case in Michigan. I think the state of Michigan has named some witnesses.
Jones G recovery has named some expert witnesses. And it was funny, we recently spoke to somebody who had been asked, somebody who has some influence and authority in the space was approached by the state of Michigan saying, would you be a witness for us to testify against the harmful use of drones in thermal carcass recovery?
[00:36:35] Speaker A: And they were for it and they.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: Were like, no, I'm not going to testify that it's bad because it's good.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it is good.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: So I thought that was funny. But yeah, no, really big update.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: No, not any big update.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: I feel like there is a date in February where the next thing has to happen and I'm not even sure what that is.
But yeah, at this point, still in discovery, naming witnesses.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: That's about it. Michigan, it's going to take a while if this court case keeps going through. I do think if you are in Michigan, still do reach out to your state representatives, try to talk to senators, try to get them to put in a bill that will change how the law reads. That is something you can do is email those people, get on them about putting a bill in to get it is, I forget what his name is. There is one senator in the state of Michigan that is trying to propose a bill to allow it.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: So I think probably one of the questions people have in Michigan is what are the chances that by this upcoming hunting season things are going to be different? Things will be allowed.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: They'll be wouldn't, I wouldn't bank on it. I would not be know I'm going to buy a drone in October because by November it's going to be legal in Michigan. I don't think I would do that.
I'm not telling you to not buy a drone because you can still buy a drone for surveillance and security and that type of stuff, recovery around your property.
So there's still valid tools, there's still valid scenarios that you might want a thermal drone and to buy one because you could do pet recovery.
[00:38:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I had a guy in Illinois, one of the early pilots that we connected with is out there doing a ton of pet recoveries and deer recovery is not legal as the state in Illinois is interpreting the law, but pet recoveries, I mean, it's like, oh, there's this whole other market that.
[00:38:35] Speaker A: There's definitely people doing drone deer recovery in Illinois, though.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And it probably depends, too, on what game warden you talk to. And it know.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: It's the whole confusing mess. I had somebody reach out this week and say, hey, what can you speak to with how you went about starting in?
Well, as I remember.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And we talked about, like, I went to the DNR, Ken Fitz and I told him about the technology. I took the wardens out and showed them the technology and they were cool with it. But now guys are trying that. Guys are trying to go to the head of the game commission or the head of DNR and showing them the technology, and they're just not hearing it. They're just not giving a rip about what it is that they want to show them. And that's bad.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: You think it's gotten, like, political or what's.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: I don't. I don't have two cent on that, but it's bad.
It is a vital tool that should be allowed to be used by a hunter that has wounded a deer or any legally taken game, elk, bear, whatever it might be, turkey. If it's legally taken and the hunter wants to try to recover it, he should be allowed or given the option to use a thermal drone if he so chooses to.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Ls Townley says would like to hear you guys talk more about the requirement of being a part 107 pilot.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: There's really not a lot that's required to be a part 107 pilot. You basically have to go to an FAA approved testing center. Most of those are at an airport. Not every airport has a testing center, but a lot of them do. And yeah, you take the test, you don't have to take a physical. It's not like you have to have a certain fatigue. You don't have to be. But basically, if you have diabetes, it's not like, oh, can't get your remote pilot's license.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: That's purely theoretical. It's only theory. It's nothing practical. I think a lot of people have questions about that.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:52] Speaker B: You don't go out there and actually take your drone to fly it in front of a supervisor or something.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: I see.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: You just answer 70 questions of multiple choice, and it's testing your knowledge on.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Weather, traffic patterns, clouds, sectionals, like maps.
A lot of it is directed toward airplanes. And if you understand airplane things, then it's going to make you a safer drone pilot. You're going to think about launching this drone next to this airport, if you understand what's going on, it's going to make you think before you send your drone up to 5000ft to show your buddy how cool. Look, I can see like 80 miles. It's like, no guy, like, you're at 5000 and I'm coming through there with my airplane at 200 miles an hour and that thing rips through my windshield, you're going to kill a guy. So it's like you're going to learn valuable things with safety. Safety. That's what the FAA is, Federal Aviation Administration is about safety. And they just want you to know, when you're flying your drone, think about safety. Think about other people in the sky.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: So the other part of this question might be, when am I required to have a part 107 and if I'm going to go fly my matrice only on my land, for my own personal use, do I need a part 107? Do I not? What do I need?
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you are solely doing it for your own purpose, you're not charging anybody a service, even if it's as much as I call Kevin to come fly his drone at my property and in exchange I'll give you a cup of coffee. That to the FAA is a form of compensation. I gave him a cup of coffee for him to fly your drone on my property. So you can't do that. When you start doing that, any form of compensation, then you are acting as a commercial remote pilot and that's when you need the part 107.
If you just want to fly it, you buy it, right? You buy the matrix 30 t and you want to couch your own deer and you want to find your own lost deer or your pets or something like that, you don't need it. But I'm trying to encourage you guys, even if it's for personal, if you get your port 107, you're going to learn a lot and I think it's valuable information. So technically speaking, you do not need your remote pilot's license if you are flying a drone for personal use only.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: Next one is how heavy is that drone? Looks like they're talking about your t.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: 40 on the t 40, yes.
Without any liquid in it, it's 80 pounds. So to fly those drones, that's a whole different ballgame. You got to get 44, eight seven, exemption from the FAA. And yeah, once you go over 55 pounds in a drone, then things are.
[00:43:57] Speaker B: A little different, a little more complicated.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: And somebody asked upstate New York, Nate says, what's the purpose of Starlink on the truck?
[00:44:07] Speaker A: The reason I have Starlink on my truck is when I go in southern Ohio, there's a very limited cell phone service, and all my calls run through a Internet service for drone deer recovery. And when I'm out on calls doing deer recovery, I want to be able to take those phone calls all the time and then just be connected to the Internet. And we also talked about doing live streaming recoveries, and we were testing that to see if we could make that happen.
It's not required to fly my Matrix 30 t. I've been asked that question a lot on Instagram, dms and stuff about do I need a Starlink to fly my Matrix 30 t? You do not need a Starlink.
It's only there for my personal use to be connected to the Internet at all times. It makes it a little more convenient for me to have it, because if I load my maps on my controller, if I'm connected to Starlink, it doesn't matter where I'm at, it's going to be able to load those maps if I'm using my phone hotspot to try to load those maps, because you can connect to a wifi with your smart controller, and I'd connect to the Starlink router if it's available. If it's not available, I would connect to my mobile hotspot on your phone. Almost all smartphones have it. And then I could get the map where I'm at. It would upload it. But still, if you don't need the map, you can still fly your drone. You don't need to have that. It just makes it easier. It makes it easier. But 99% of people will just use their mobile hotspot and it'll be able to load that map.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: I had a couple of questions of people asking, Mike, do I need to have something like Starlink for remote id?
Is it important for my drone to be connected to Wi Fi to broadcast remote id?
[00:46:12] Speaker A: No.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: So can you tell us how remote id works on a drone?
[00:46:16] Speaker A: I can't. I'm not that geeky and that smart.
[00:46:20] Speaker B: But it's not like it's being broadcasted via Internet. It's like, no, from the drone. For a certain amount of broadcast, it's.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: Almost like a radio frequency.
And these aren't everywhere, but there's towers around bigger airports that catch that radio frequency that your controller and your drone are sending out. And then that is attached like a license plate. If you go past a trooper and he scans your plate, he's going to know who's registered. Yeah, all that so it's the same thing. It's a radio frequency. If you're within that range, that signal is being sent out because you're communicating with your drone from your controller to your drone with radio frequency. And so that's how I understand it is the controller has a remote id and the aircraft has a remote id. If you are within a big airport area, that's where they have these towers. They might in the future try to make them bigger, to go out in more rural areas where they can catch it. But I also think that there's law enforcement has these in their trucks that they can pull it out anywhere they're at and they can scan around and see if there's anybody flying and then that'll give them the stuff. So that's why I say, because states are talking about potential for abuse.
Equip the law enforcement with those types of things, like where they can scan the airspace and if somebody's doing something illegal, they're going to know exactly where he's standing, who it is, and all that type of stuff. So that would be great because if there's a poacher out there that's using it for bed, he's going to walk right into this thing and he's going to basically put the handcuffs on himself because there's flight logs. They can get the flight logs off of that drone when it was flying. How far? Flying all the data that they need to convict you if you were doing something bad.
And I would talk to people about that, like law enforcement, if they want to know about it, and it's like, guys, if you want to talk about potential for abuse, if you capture somebody's drone, they're going to have all the data they need to figure it out because where was the deer shot? Oh, the drone was flown at this time? At this time of the day, and then you shot it at this time. It's like, yeah.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: Anyhow, I feel like that's not common knowledge for a lot of law enforcement officers. It's a whole new thing.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a whole new thing. It's a whole new thing.
[00:49:10] Speaker B: All right, next one is, when it comes to ag drones, how does the spray not damage the drone over a period of time?
[00:49:17] Speaker A: It is impressive that they have built these drones to be basically, I can't say waterproof because I don't want you to go out and take a pressure washer and try to wash your t 40 off because that don't work. Well, a guy did that and it ended up at the shop but, yeah, they are kind of in a cloud of moisture all day. If you're spraying, how doesn't it? I think if you'd be spraying very corrosive product all the time, like glyphosate, where it's a lot of salt. I haven't had my drones long enough to know if they're going to last for three years, five years, ten years. But you would think after a period of time, if you're spraying something very corrosive, that it could potentially start corroding wires and that type of thing. But we haven't had any issue with it as of right now.
[00:50:13] Speaker B: Yeah, and like you've told me, the drone is, whenever you're spraying, it's like, it's flying in rain all the time.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: Kind of.
Maybe not all the time, because when it gets to the end of a row. Okay, so when it's flying down a row, it's flying away from the spray. But then when it comes to the end of the row and the drone kind of stops and then moves forward like that, if you can't see me on YouTube, the drone stops and it still sprays, and then the spray kind of, like, rolls around because it pushes it forward, then it would be. But it is definitely wet at times. When it returns, it's built for that.
[00:50:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it's just part of the game.
All right, looks like that's the end.
[00:50:58] Speaker A: That's all the ground chatter.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: We have the ground chatter this cool.
[00:51:01] Speaker A: I think we've been going for a lot of good information.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: Hopefully it's helpful.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Yeah. All righty, so that's probably all we got for today. Expo's coming up. If you're in Indiana, we're also doing an expo there. What is that one called? Midwest sportsman's classic. That's going to be at the Michiana event center in Shipshawana, Indiana.
That is the third week in February. That's in February sometime. Just google it, and then we'll be in Harrisburg in a week or so. Google that as well. And, yeah, come out. Let's talk drones. And some people just want to see the drones, right? They want to put their hands on it and see it. So if you're in those areas, and.
[00:51:44] Speaker B: We'Ll have the matrice and the t 40 there. So whichever drone you want to see, look at whatever, see how it works.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: T 40 is going to be a little hard to get your hands on because it's on top of the booth.
Unless you're jumping up there and touching it.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: Probably not.
[00:51:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:59] Speaker B: If you do that, you're going to make Mike kind of uncomfortable.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: Yeah, rather not have you do that. But that's all we got.
