=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 317 ===
Title: LDO 317 - Xjet
Recorded: 2021-09-23
Hosts: Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Andrew "Frank" Hyams
Guest(s): Bruce (xjet)
Total audience: 2,551
Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w15wJhw512c); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/1130504395-letsdroneout-ldo-317-xjet.mp3)
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[0.0] Jack: Hello and you're listening to Let's Drone Out and special thank you to our lovely patrons that helped donate so that we could pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things we say. Massive thank you too.
[14.0] Jack: Carlos Campos.
[16.0] Jack: Art Faulkner.
[18.0] Jack: Sam Dahmer.
[20.0] Frank: Mikey Dread.
[22.0] Frank: On with the show.
[24.0] Jack: Let's Drone Out now.
[54.8] Jack: Hello and you are listening to Let's Drone Out.
[56.8] Jack: This may be the last ever Let's Drone Out.
[60.8] Jack: If you're my boss, I'm sorry.
[62.8] Jack: For legal reasons, Curry, read the disclaimer.
[66.8] Curry: I think this is the full disclaimer. It's the only one I could find.
[70.8] Curry: Any views expressed by any guests, especially that one down there, on this show are personal and may not reflect the views of others.
[76.8] Jack: If you are of a nervous disposition, easily get offended or don't want to end up on some sort of government list,
[84.8] Jack: please do not watch this show.
[86.8] Jack: Tonight you are joined by everyone's favorite Curry Kitten.
[90.8] Jack: Hello.
[92.8] Jack: Everyone's favorite cruise missile supplier, Exjet.
[96.8] Jack: Hello.
[98.8] Jack: You need to say hello.
[100.8] Jack: And I'm Brighton Tiefly.
[102.8] Jack: Hello and welcome.
[104.8] Jack: Exjet, clearly the dementia has fully set in, therefore you've agreed to come on this show.
[110.8] Jack: How come you've never come sooner?
[112.8] Jack: Because we've seen you in the chat, but you never once got back to any of our emails.
[118.8] Bruce (xjet): You sounded just like my wife when you said that.
[122.8] Bruce (xjet): What do you mean you've come already?
[124.8] Bruce (xjet): Exactly.
[126.8] Bruce (xjet): If you watched my last video, you'll have seen a hint as to how many unread emails are in my inbox.
[134.8] Bruce (xjet): 9,000? I've got a bit of backlog for catching up to do.
[138.8] Bruce (xjet): It's just a random thing if I read an email because there's so many there.
[142.8] Bruce (xjet): I just take a lottery every day and I'll read that one today from 1872.
[148.8] Jack: You've been in the chat and we've advised you on.
[152.8] Jack: Yeah.
[154.8] Jack: But never thought you should.
[156.8] Jack: That's silly.
[158.8] Bruce (xjet): One of the problems with chats is quite often the time frames don't sync up that well
[162.8] Bruce (xjet): because I live on the other side of the world.
[164.8] Bruce (xjet): We are at the moment 13 hours different to you, but fortunately as my Parkinson's then kicks in,
[171.8] Bruce (xjet): I get up really early in the morning.
[173.8] Bruce (xjet): I've been up already for about four hours.
[180.8] Bruce (xjet): Is that just so you can suffer more?
[182.8] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, I think so. It's important to suffer.
[185.8] Bruce (xjet): You see the lashing marks on my back and things.
[188.8] Bruce (xjet): No, it's just you can't sleep.
[189.8] Bruce (xjet): Parkinson's deprives you of the ability to get sustained periods of sleep, so you just live with it.
[196.14] Curry: I'm sorry.
[197.14] Curry: At least using the extra time usefully to do stuff though.
[200.14] Bruce (xjet): Yes.
[201.14] Curry: Like coming on this fine show.
[202.14] Bruce (xjet): Absolutely.
[203.14] Bruce (xjet): This has been the pinnacle of my career at the moment.
[206.14] Bruce (xjet): I'm going to mark this up.
[208.14] Bruce (xjet): Another bucket list ticked off.
[210.14] Bruce (xjet): It's peaked.
[211.14] Bruce (xjet): Yep.
[212.14] Jack: Can only be downhill from here.
[214.14] Jack: You've run a successful RC channel.
[219.14] Jack: You've made a pulse jet, ride a long one.
[226.14] Jack: You've made a cruise missile.
[228.14] Jack: You're also the most reported person to caster or whatever you say your CAA equivalent.
[236.14] Bruce (xjet): We have lots of them.
[238.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, we have CAA.
[240.14] Bruce (xjet): We have a CAA here.
[241.14] Bruce (xjet): It's not like the English one.
[242.14] Bruce (xjet): We don't have tea and muffins.
[244.14] Bruce (xjet): We have coffee and biscuits.
[246.14] Jack: Okay.
[247.14] Jack: Yeah, so you've got yourself reported loads.
[252.14] Jack: You've kind of tried to defend the hobby and go to loads of meetings and try and fight for the right of the hobby.
[264.14] Jack: And you've also, back in the day, was teaching us,
[269.14] Jack: I still, to this day, buy five motors and five ESCs to build a quad because of you.
[278.14] Curry: Well, I get to blame Bruce for all my fixed wing flying.
[281.14] Curry: The reason you can only see one plane here.
[283.14] Curry: The reason I've got planes is because when I was getting into the hobby,
[287.14] Curry: I built a tricopter and that was all David Wintersdale's fault.
[290.14] Curry: And I've pointed it out to my wife and saying, that's him.
[292.14] Curry: He's responsible for the money.
[293.14] Curry: And I would say, that's Bruce.
[294.14] Curry: He's responsible for the planes.
[295.14] Curry: Because you did your AXN, had to build an AXN video.
[299.14] Curry: And I still remember, you must do your, flex your things and put it together.
[305.14] Curry: Control surfaces.
[306.14] Curry: Yes, your control surfaces.
[307.14] Curry: And I followed that and, well, I say flew.
[310.14] Curry: Flew my first plane.
[311.14] Curry: Mostly threw it into the ground because I happened to have the ailerons reversed.
[315.14] Curry: But that got me into it, which was a very, very useful set of videos about like this,
[320.14] Curry: is how you put a plane together.
[321.14] Curry: Brilliant. I can follow that now.
[323.14] Curry: Often right.
[324.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah. Well, those were the days, those were the early days.
[326.14] Bruce (xjet): It was good.
[327.14] Bruce (xjet): It's interesting that we went to the park and Flew, you probably saw the video,
[332.14] Bruce (xjet): Flew our float planes and things at the local park.
[335.14] Bruce (xjet): And it was amazing, the public response.
[337.14] Bruce (xjet): If you go out there and you fly a drone on your own,
[339.14] Bruce (xjet): all the Karens come out and try and push you into the water.
[342.14] Bruce (xjet): But if you're flying model planes with friends,
[345.14] Bruce (xjet): it's like the public's response is totally different.
[347.14] Bruce (xjet): There were people lining up to see what was going on.
[349.14] Bruce (xjet): Kids were going, oh, look at the plane.
[351.14] Bruce (xjet): It was like such a positive, such a friendly kind of environment because model planes fixed wing,
[358.14] Bruce (xjet): they seem to be totally different to drones by the public.
[361.14] Bruce (xjet): And that's really annoying because as someone who's engaged in both camps,
[365.14] Bruce (xjet): I know that when we fly freestyle or proximity, whatever with the drones,
[369.14] Bruce (xjet): we're really just another form of model aircraft.
[372.14] Bruce (xjet): We're not out there to spy on people or film them in their bathrooms.
[375.14] Bruce (xjet): The public don't make that distinction and the regulators don't make any distinction.
[379.14] Bruce (xjet): And that's what really annoys me is that when you look at any of the rules around the world,
[382.14] Bruce (xjet): if it flies and it's remotely controlled, it's a drone.
[385.14] Bruce (xjet): It can be a quarter scale P-51 Mustang with a petrol motor in it,
[389.14] Bruce (xjet): or it can be a Mavic Mini as far as the regulator is concerned.
[392.14] Bruce (xjet): It's all the same. They don't have a clue.
[394.14] Bruce (xjet): And the public doesn't appreciate that because I was talking to some of them saying,
[399.14] Bruce (xjet): well, someone came along with a Mavic Mini and they put on the table.
[402.14] Bruce (xjet): And I said, who can tell me which one of these is a drone?
[404.14] Bruce (xjet): They all pointed to the Mavic.
[406.14] Bruce (xjet): And they didn't know, the public didn't know that our Super EZs and our Tundras
[411.14] Bruce (xjet): are also drones, according to the regulator.
[414.14] Bruce (xjet): And they've regulated like drones. I don't think that's fair.
[418.14] Curry: I don't think it's fair.
[419.14] Curry: And I have enjoyed your general attitude,
[422.14] Curry: and I have to go wholeheartedly behind this,
[424.14] Curry: although I can't encourage members of the public to do so necessarily,
[427.14] Curry: to say, you know what?
[429.14] Curry: If I'm out on my own flying on my own and I'm in a big field
[434.14] Curry: and there's no one there, that is safer.
[437.14] Curry: But according to the law, it's more dangerous than if you could take it to a place
[441.14] Curry: where you're 50 metres away from people.
[443.14] Curry: It's just nonsensical.
[445.14] Curry: I'm always much more happy to follow the common sense
[449.14] Curry: than something somebody's made up in a government institution
[452.14] Curry: where they probably haven't ever looked at a drone or flown a drone or...
[456.14] Bruce (xjet): That's exactly it. We have to be qualified to do what we do,
[459.14] Bruce (xjet): but they're not qualified to make the rules to tell us what to do.
[462.14] Bruce (xjet): It's like getting the tea lady in the hospital
[464.14] Bruce (xjet): to write the manual for brain surgery.
[466.14] Bruce (xjet): They've never done it, but they've seen it.
[468.14] Bruce (xjet): I've heard from other people how it works,
[470.14] Bruce (xjet): but they're not qualified to do that.
[472.14] Bruce (xjet): It really annoys the snot out of me, and nobody listens.
[476.14] Bruce (xjet): And the thing that worries me most these days is it's not about safety.
[479.14] Bruce (xjet): They say it's about safety, but it's all about control and security.
[482.14] Bruce (xjet): It's all about protecting us from the evil bad people,
[485.14] Bruce (xjet): the bad actors like my spotter, Arnie.
[488.14] Bruce (xjet): And it's disingenuous.
[490.14] Bruce (xjet): We represent as totally disingenuous,
[492.14] Bruce (xjet): because we are already the safest form of aviation that's ever been.
[496.14] Bruce (xjet): As I keep saying, whenever anyone rolls up and says,
[498.14] Bruce (xjet): you can't do that, the rules, show me the bodies.
[500.14] Bruce (xjet): Show me one body. There are no bodies.
[503.14] Bruce (xjet): But you look at what happens every day with aviation.
[506.14] Bruce (xjet): I think in the UK, someone died in a paraglider incident recently.
[510.14] Bruce (xjet): Someone was filming someone else with a paraglider and they collided.
[513.14] Bruce (xjet): Now, if they'd be filming them with a drone,
[515.14] Curry: I don't think anyone would have died.
[517.14] Curry: That's true.
[518.14] Curry: There's loads of...
[520.14] Curry: We only generally hear about the big plane crashes,
[522.14] Curry: but there's hundreds and thousands of light airplanes
[525.14] Curry: going down all over the world on a daily basis.
[528.14] Curry: But pilot error, mechanical error, all that sort of stuff.
[532.14] Curry: And of course, with drones, generally speaking,
[534.14] Curry: if you're flying in a field and a drone drops out the sky,
[538.14] Curry: you know, you'll break a prop.
[541.14] Curry: It's not manned.
[542.14] Curry: As long as you're not being silly and over people
[545.14] Curry: or over houses and cars, you've got nothing to worry about.
[547.14] Curry: But, yeah, any sort of manned aviation's
[549.14] Curry: obviously got an inherent risk to it,
[551.14] Curry: much and much above model flying.
[554.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, it's also interesting because they say,
[556.14] Bruce (xjet): oh, drone flies are more reckless and are more dangerous.
[558.14] Bruce (xjet): I did the... I crunched the numbers here in New Zealand.
[561.14] Bruce (xjet): And on a per capita basis, if you take the number of people who fly drones
[565.14] Bruce (xjet): versus the number of people who fly manned aircraft,
[567.14] Bruce (xjet): the manned aviation community generates more incidents,
[570.14] Bruce (xjet): more safety incidents every year per capita than the drone population does.
[574.14] Bruce (xjet): So the drone flies are better behaved than the manned aviators.
[577.14] Bruce (xjet): But we still have this push for more regulation,
[579.14] Bruce (xjet): more control, more restriction when we're not the problem.
[582.14] Jack: Yeah, but you don't need to regulate them
[584.14] Jack: because they've got their life on the line.
[588.14] Bruce (xjet): Skin in the game, that's one of these fallacies that regulators
[591.14] Bruce (xjet): always write that, oh, yes, but manned aviators have skin in the game.
[594.14] Bruce (xjet): And which means they must never make bad decisions.
[598.14] Bruce (xjet): They must never do things that recklessly endanger themselves.
[602.14] Bruce (xjet): Look at the number of people that die every year
[604.14] Bruce (xjet): because they make stupid decisions while flying a manned aircraft.
[606.14] Bruce (xjet): You know, in New Zealand, the vast majority of fatalities
[609.14] Bruce (xjet): involve illegal low flying in New Zealand.
[612.14] Bruce (xjet): These are people with skin in the game,
[614.14] Bruce (xjet): but they still choose to break the rules and go blow 500 feet
[616.14] Bruce (xjet): and bang into things like wires and hills and whatever.
[619.14] Bruce (xjet): It's like, that's a fallacy.
[621.14] Bruce (xjet): Skin in the game means nothing.
[623.14] Curry: Yeah, that would be like saying everybody on the roads
[625.14] Curry: must be a good driver.
[627.14] Curry: Otherwise, you know, they'd be risking their lives.
[629.14] Curry: But everybody does every day, every time they get on the road.
[632.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah.
[633.14] Bruce (xjet): And it's also, it's about managing risks, not about eliminating risks.
[636.14] Bruce (xjet): You know, the regulators like to say, we want to, you know,
[639.14] Bruce (xjet): a culture of safety, we want to, you know, get rid of the risk.
[642.14] Bruce (xjet): You can't, you can only manage risk.
[644.14] Bruce (xjet): And you're more likely to die driving to the flying field
[647.14] Bruce (xjet): than flying at the flying field.
[649.14] Bruce (xjet): We don't say, well, we're going to eliminate all the risks
[652.14] Bruce (xjet): associated with motor vehicles by banning cars.
[655.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, we could do that.
[656.14] Bruce (xjet): But it's a trade-off between the benefits we get versus the risks we take.
[660.14] Bruce (xjet): So with flying drones, it's like any recreational activity,
[663.14] Bruce (xjet): there is a benefit to your mental wellbeing, your health, your outlook on life.
[667.14] Bruce (xjet): And that has to be weighed against the risks.
[669.14] Bruce (xjet): And I think already we're over-regulated.
[671.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah.
[672.14] Curry: I mean, I, last week we had on one of the BFMA people,
[676.14] Curry: one of our big model clubs in the UK here.
[679.14] Curry: But what I'm after, I'm not after, you know, saying like,
[684.14] Curry: this is great insurance and our clubs are amazing.
[687.14] Curry: I'm after just being able to go out and finding a nice place,
[691.14] Curry: a green place away from stuff and just being able to fly and not have to really
[694.14] Curry: think about it and not have no drone notices put up everywhere
[698.14] Curry: and people not coming up and saying, you can't fly here.
[701.14] Curry: This is dodgy.
[702.14] Curry: That's the dream.
[704.14] Bruce (xjet): It is.
[705.14] Bruce (xjet): It was the dream.
[706.14] Bruce (xjet): I mean, when I was a kid and I was a little lad building free flight
[709.14] Bruce (xjet): and control line models, we'd get into the local school yard with a park
[712.14] Bruce (xjet): and I'd launch a free flight model in the middle of town
[714.14] Bruce (xjet): and it would circle around and land in someone's backyard.
[716.14] Bruce (xjet): That was fine.
[717.14] Bruce (xjet): You'd just knock on the door.
[718.14] Bruce (xjet): Can I get my plane back, please?
[719.14] Bruce (xjet): Yes, go get the plane back.
[720.14] Bruce (xjet): I mean, if I control line in a park with people standing like, you know,
[723.14] Bruce (xjet): 10 feet from the edge of the control line circle while the plane was drowned,
[726.14] Bruce (xjet): people had a greater sense of being responsible for their own actions back
[729.14] Bruce (xjet): than not relying on someone else to take responsibility for them
[732.14] Bruce (xjet): and to hide behind a set of rules.
[734.14] Bruce (xjet): You just, you know, acted responsibly.
[736.14] Bruce (xjet): And like at the park, it was so good to see so many of the public interested
[740.14] Bruce (xjet): in what we're doing now.
[741.14] Bruce (xjet): There seems to be a move and this is happening around the world in the USA.
[745.14] Bruce (xjet): The FAA wants to push people into free as little grassy fields in the middle
[748.14] Bruce (xjet): of nowhere so the hobby can't be seen and therefore it will just dwindle
[751.14] Bruce (xjet): and peter out and die.
[752.14] Bruce (xjet): In Australia, if you want to fly FPV, you've got to do it at an approved
[757.14] Bruce (xjet): flying field run by the MAAA or whatever they are over there,
[760.14] Bruce (xjet): the equivalent of the BMFA.
[761.14] Bruce (xjet): You've got to be on a club flying field to fly FPV.
[764.14] Bruce (xjet): You can't do it outside of that.
[766.14] Bruce (xjet): It's like they're trying to corral us and separate us from the rest
[769.14] Bruce (xjet): of the community so that they can effectively just shut us down by attrition.
[774.14] Bruce (xjet): And unless we are out there in front of the public, in the public eye,
[777.14] Bruce (xjet): so that kids can see these things and get excited and enthused about it,
[780.14] Bruce (xjet): we are going to face a pretty sorry future as a hobby.
[784.14] Jack: It's all about giving kids iPads and pacifying them.
[788.14] Jack: I mean, like here's the screen.
[790.14] Jack: You'll need this for later on when you get your job at your office desk.
[796.14] Jack: I mean, there's a lot to be said for like accountability now is, you know,
[801.14] Jack: like I remember one time I got hit by a bus and I had to tell the bus driver
[808.14] Jack: not to call the incident team.
[812.14] Jack: And I was just like, I would look dude, I was stood in the middle of the road
[817.14] Jack: arcing with a taxi driver.
[819.14] Jack: I was in the middle of it.
[820.14] Jack: It's my fault.
[821.14] Jack: I'm the best.
[822.14] Jack: I put my hands up, you know, like when I'm a bell end, I can be like,
[826.14] Jack: yep, that was that was my fault.
[831.14] Jack: Definitely.
[832.14] Jack: Don't worry about it because all it's going to do is like delay a load of people
[836.14] Jack: from getting where they're going bus full of people.
[839.14] Jack: And I was in the way, you know, delays everyone's day.
[843.14] Jack: He's probably going to get in trouble.
[845.14] Jack: You know, like all the insurance companies going to hear about it or whatever.
[850.14] Jack: And I probably got mild concussion as the bus pressed against my face.
[856.14] Jack: Yeah, man.
[858.14] Jack: Totally.
[859.14] Jack: It was fine fine.
[860.14] Jack: But like, you know, I shouldn't have been there arguing with being a bell end
[865.14] Jack: arguing with a taxi driver and, you know, isn't that a start of a joke?
[871.14] Jack: I know, you know, but now it's all like, you know, sue everyone.
[875.14] Jack: And, you know, like the bus has got to make noises like a trumpet.
[880.14] Jack: It's like reversing lorries.
[882.14] Jack: They used to make a beeping noise.
[884.14] Jack: And now everyone's got used to the beeping noise and it's just background noise.
[888.14] Jack: Now you've got to have the static noise of the of the of the lorry reversing.
[898.14] Curry: You know, and it's essentially everyone's become a snowflake.
[903.14] Curry: You can't play Conquers at school anymore.
[905.14] Curry: And one of the videos I watched, Bruce, was you were talking about like the fight
[910.14] Curry: against regulation and how like not many people were going behind it.
[915.14] Curry: And it's just I'm just wondering if for a lot of people because FPV got very
[921.14] Curry: popular and drones got very popular because it was going to be like, oh, it's
[924.14] Curry: the next big sport.
[925.14] Curry: And people throw money at these drone races and people getting into it big time.
[929.14] Curry: But as soon as a sort of hurdle comes up where it's going to be like, oh, are
[933.14] Curry: you going to have to get registration or these aren't very popular, aren't they?
[937.14] Curry: Everybody seems to hate them rather than fighting.
[939.14] Curry: A lot of people are sort of saying, this is just too much hassle for me.
[942.14] Curry: Forget it. I'm going to go do something else.
[944.14] Curry: I'm not I'm not that interested.
[945.14] Curry: Why should I bother?
[946.14] Curry: And I think the sort of the core flyers that are really into it is even smaller.
[951.14] Curry: So then the percentage of those people who are willing to fight for it is smaller
[954.14] Curry: again, and it just reduces, reduces.
[956.14] Curry: Eventually, it just be one guy waving a flag saying, let me fly and everybody
[960.14] Curry: just ignoring him.
[961.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, that's the attrition.
[963.14] Bruce (xjet): We're just going to be, you know, they can't regulate us out straight away.
[967.14] Bruce (xjet): So they're just doing it step by step, quarantine us to small fields.
[970.14] Bruce (xjet): And we disappear from the public eye and then nobody joins the hobby.
[974.14] Bruce (xjet): And eventually the problem that is the hobby goes away and all the commercial
[978.14] Bruce (xjet): operators have got the sky to themselves or whatever the agenda may be.
[981.14] Bruce (xjet): But it is incredibly a shame.
[983.14] Bruce (xjet): I've never seen a community that on the one hand is so supportive of each other
[989.14] Bruce (xjet): and, you know, like especially the FPV community, everybody knows everybody.
[993.14] Bruce (xjet): And if someone needs a hand, someone steps in and we're all sharing information,
[996.14] Bruce (xjet): it's fantastic.
[997.14] Bruce (xjet): But when it comes to standing up for the rights, I mean, look at the FPV Freedom
[1000.14] Bruce (xjet): Coalition in the USA.
[1001.14] Bruce (xjet): I was on their Discord meeting yesterday.
[1003.14] Bruce (xjet): There were nine people.
[1004.14] Bruce (xjet): This is a body that represents all the FPV flies in the USA.
[1007.14] Bruce (xjet): Nine people took the time to actually go on Discord and participate in the
[1012.14] Bruce (xjet): discussion. That's the level of, you know, collective concern about some of the
[1019.14] Bruce (xjet): things. And regulators are very, very clever.
[1022.14] Bruce (xjet): I've been working with bureaucrats and politicians for years.
[1025.14] Bruce (xjet): I know all the little tricks and things.
[1026.14] Bruce (xjet): They are so damn clever because it's happening around the world, too, especially
[1029.14] Bruce (xjet): in the USA.
[1030.14] Bruce (xjet): The FAA brought out the CBO concept, Community Based Organization, and they are
[1035.14] Bruce (xjet): effectively bribing some of the larger entities in the hobby to get their way.
[1039.14] Bruce (xjet): They've said to these potential CBO's like the AMA and others, well, if you do
[1044.14] Bruce (xjet): this, and they issued a guideline, an advisory with the things they wanted from
[1049.14] Bruce (xjet): an organization that was going to become a CBO, if you do this, then we'll give you
[1052.14] Bruce (xjet): special privilege.
[1053.14] Bruce (xjet): You can have a freer where your members can go and fly without remote ID and all
[1056.14] Bruce (xjet): this sort of stuff.
[1057.14] Bruce (xjet): You know, we'll give you this if you give us that.
[1059.14] Bruce (xjet): This is sort of a, someone called it a trade off.
[1061.14] Bruce (xjet): I call it a bribe.
[1062.14] Bruce (xjet): So that organizations like the AMA are saying, yes, yes, that's fine.
[1066.14] Bruce (xjet): Oh, we've done wonderful things.
[1067.14] Bruce (xjet): Look, we've got this remote ID thing.
[1069.14] Bruce (xjet): Our members don't have to have remote ID because they can fly in our freers.
[1073.14] Bruce (xjet): And it's just bribing the hobby organizations to cast aside the rights, the freedoms of
[1079.14] Bruce (xjet): their members, the ones I've enjoyed for decades without any problems.
[1082.14] Bruce (xjet): Show me the bodies.
[1083.14] Bruce (xjet): And they're selling their souls to the devil to get a little bit of concession.
[1086.14] Bruce (xjet): It's happening in Australia as well.
[1088.14] Bruce (xjet): And in Canada, the hobby organizations and probably in the UK too, hobby organizations
[1093.14] Bruce (xjet): will get special privilege.
[1094.14] Bruce (xjet): If you're a member of the national flying body, you will have areas where you can
[1098.14] Bruce (xjet): fly without necessarily all the rules applying to you.
[1100.14] Bruce (xjet): But if you want to go down to the park or the beach or the local school grounds, well,
[1104.14] Bruce (xjet): then you've got a ton of regulation to deal with.
[1106.14] Bruce (xjet): And that's designed to get people out of those spaces.
[1110.14] Bruce (xjet): I just hate the way that these organizations that are supposed to represent the hobby are
[1116.14] Bruce (xjet): not doing an effective job.
[1117.14] Bruce (xjet): They're looking out for their members.
[1119.14] Bruce (xjet): And they forget that not everyone in the hobby is a member of these organizations.
[1123.14] Bruce (xjet): And the AMA especially, the AMA looks out for the AMA.
[1127.14] Bruce (xjet): It is that's their primary goal is to make sure the AMA survives and prospers.
[1131.14] Bruce (xjet): Whereas in back in the day, probably a great many of the people who flew model aircraft
[1136.14] Bruce (xjet): were members of one of these bodies.
[1138.14] Bruce (xjet): But today, the vast majority of people are not because the whole hobby is changed.
[1142.14] Bruce (xjet): You can go and buy a FOMI from Banggood for 100 quid, go down and you've got a radio
[1147.14] Bruce (xjet): controlled model transmitter receiver.
[1148.14] Bruce (xjet): You can fly at the local park, a little P-51 Mustang or something, you know, those
[1151.14] Bruce (xjet): fantastic little things.
[1152.14] Bruce (xjet): You don't have to belong to the BMFA or any other group to do that.
[1156.14] Bruce (xjet): But under the way regulations going, you will have to or you won't be able to fly
[1161.14] Bruce (xjet): where you want to fly.
[1162.14] Bruce (xjet): It is I just as someone I'm fortunate that I grew up in an era when all this didn't
[1167.14] Bruce (xjet): happen.
[1168.14] Bruce (xjet): We didn't have the culture of victim.
[1169.14] Bruce (xjet): Oh, my goodness.
[1170.14] Bruce (xjet): Who can I blame for my problems today?
[1172.14] Bruce (xjet): It's a case of today.
[1174.14] Bruce (xjet): There's always someone else responsible.
[1176.14] Bruce (xjet): And I just I don't know.
[1179.14] Bruce (xjet): So that's why I sort of started this Harry Day concept and said, look, I'm just going
[1183.14] Bruce (xjet): to carpe diem and I'm just going to make sure I don't endanger people on their property.
[1186.14] Bruce (xjet): And if other people don't like that, then that is actually their problem, not mine.
[1190.14] Bruce (xjet): I like it.
[1191.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, we should all do it.
[1194.14] Curry: I mean, some of the squeezing out.
[1196.14] Curry: Sorry, Jack.
[1197.14] Curry: Some of the squeezing out I found it in terms of how people are giving up.
[1202.14] Curry: As you said, it's not so much the regulation.
[1205.14] Curry: It's at least in the UK trying to find somewhere to fly now.
[1209.14] Curry: The UK has always been dodgy because if you've got something big in the garden, then it's
[1212.14] Curry: the houses or flats will go up.
[1215.14] Curry: And if you've got a big green space and the weather's nice, then people decide to have
[1219.14] Curry: picnic set and things.
[1220.14] Curry: So there's always a little bit dodgy.
[1222.14] Curry: But even we found like MJ had this problem.
[1224.14] Curry: He was on he was flying on like thousands of acres of this sort of park and they had
[1230.14] Curry: one complaint from a dog walker about a drone.
[1233.14] Curry: And suddenly the entire place and like it's such a huge place is saying, no, no drones
[1239.14] Curry: anywhere ever without fail, because we've had a complaint.
[1243.14] Curry: And it's that it's both the blame culture as like a victim.
[1248.14] Curry: I'm a victim of harassment by drone, therefore don't fly any drones.
[1252.14] Curry: And the people are just not prepared to stand up for anything.
[1256.14] Curry: As soon as there's a complaint, it's like, well, we must ban that.
[1259.14] Curry: It's like, I don't like gluten.
[1261.14] Curry: Get rid of all the gluten.
[1262.14] Curry: It's the world's problem, apparently now.
[1264.14] Curry: So we must we must do something about it.
[1266.14] Curry: It's just craziness.
[1268.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, it's like the problems I had here in Tokyo with the local council, they were
[1272.14] Bruce (xjet): strongly against no drones in the parks, no drones in the parks.
[1275.14] Bruce (xjet): There were regular dog attacks in the parks.
[1277.14] Bruce (xjet): You walk your dog and it can maul somebody.
[1279.14] Bruce (xjet): That's OK, because well, dog, you know, but a drone.
[1281.14] Bruce (xjet): Oh, no, you can't have a drone in the park.
[1283.14] Bruce (xjet): It took me five years roughly to finally get them to concede that drones could be
[1288.14] Bruce (xjet): flown in the parks and in the what is it?
[1291.14] Bruce (xjet): I think three years since they changed the rules, not one drone related incident in
[1295.14] Bruce (xjet): our parks, because the reality was so different from the doom because one of the
[1300.14] Bruce (xjet): guys said, oh, if we have drones in the parks, there'll be all sorts of problems.
[1302.14] Bruce (xjet): The people who complain they're being photographed and there'll be people hurt
[1305.14] Bruce (xjet): didn't come to pass.
[1307.14] Bruce (xjet): But the problem is there is a public perception that is so out of touch with
[1310.14] Bruce (xjet): reality. I blame the Daily Mail.
[1312.14] Bruce (xjet): But we have had this this thing where the media has tried to vilify drones.
[1316.14] Bruce (xjet): And I have a personal campaign.
[1318.14] Bruce (xjet): Every time I see an anti-drone story, I write to the the media, the editor or the
[1322.14] Bruce (xjet): reporter preferably and say, look, you've got it wrong and here's the truth.
[1325.14] Bruce (xjet): And if we all did that, I think we'd find that every time they published an anti-drone
[1329.14] Bruce (xjet): story, they got hundreds of angry emails.
[1332.14] Bruce (xjet): I think they may suddenly take a slightly different take because the media is just so
[1336.14] Bruce (xjet): out of touch. Look at Gatwick.
[1337.14] Bruce (xjet): I mean, unbelievable. I still see Gatwick being referenced as an example of how
[1342.14] Bruce (xjet): drones are going to bring down airliners and things.
[1344.14] Bruce (xjet): And I'm thinking, if this is your threshold for proof, I saw a drone, no photograph
[1349.14] Bruce (xjet): again, it's nothing, then then, you know, how are we going to do anything sensible
[1354.14] Bruce (xjet): if you have such a low threshold for proving all you need to shut down an airport
[1358.14] Bruce (xjet): as a telephone?
[1360.14] Curry: Yeah, the scariest thing about Gatwick, it was the story that was great.
[1364.14] Curry: I was on holiday time. I was so outraged.
[1366.14] Curry: I made a video from a cruise ship, but I saw it unfolding.
[1370.14] Curry: And it was like about a subject I knew.
[1372.14] Curry: And I was like, well, this none of this is true.
[1374.14] Curry: What are they talking about?
[1375.14] Curry: And yet it kept spiraling and spiraling.
[1377.14] Curry: It's like, when's it going to stop?
[1378.14] Curry: And it didn't. It just carried on and on and on.
[1380.14] Curry: And it's it got more outlandish as it went.
[1383.14] Curry: And still, even though, like, we've been we've been able to sort of almost
[1389.14] Curry: conclusively prove that, you know, there wasn't a drone apart from that one police drone.
[1393.14] Curry: Drones can't fly for two hours and buzzed.
[1397.14] Curry: Rainy. Dark.
[1398.14] Curry: And things like that.
[1399.14] Curry: Windy.
[1400.14] Curry: Raining. It was dark. It was windy.
[1402.14] Curry: None of this stuff happens.
[1404.14] Curry: This thing that somebody swore was was definitely a drone.
[1408.14] Curry: We could see was a helicopter when we looked at the sort of the traffic control monitoring stuff.
[1414.14] Curry: And yet the great British public will always say, oh, yeah, well, Gatwick, that was bad, wasn't it?
[1420.14] Curry: With your drones.
[1421.14] Curry: I mean, I have a friend that's a like an air traffic controller and they actually said it wasn't you.
[1426.14] Curry: Was it like, hey, I would admit if it was.
[1430.14] Curry: But like, no, there was no drone.
[1432.14] Curry: I'm honest.
[1433.14] Bruce (xjet): Here in New Zealand, they're reviewing the drone regulations.
[1435.14] Bruce (xjet): They want to bring in registration, remote ID, all that crap.
[1437.14] Bruce (xjet): Not on my watch.
[1438.14] Bruce (xjet): But they cited Gatwick as the reason why we need to have registration.
[1443.14] Bruce (xjet): And I tore a strip off them in my submission and said, if this is this is the level of accuracy
[1449.14] Bruce (xjet): in the research you've done to justify new regulations, then you can throw them all out the window
[1453.14] Bruce (xjet): because you've done no research.
[1455.14] Bruce (xjet): You're working on hearsay because Gatwick is simply hearsay.
[1458.14] Bruce (xjet): No evidence was ever produced.
[1460.14] Bruce (xjet): And you've seen Ian doing all the Freedom of Information requests,
[1465.14] Bruce (xjet): slowly teasing the information out of the Department for Transport and CAA and Gatwick.
[1470.14] Bruce (xjet): And they don't even have a description of the drone.
[1473.14] Bruce (xjet): There was not even a description of the drone.
[1475.14] Bruce (xjet): Someone basically said, I saw a drone.
[1476.14] Bruce (xjet): What did it look like?
[1477.14] Bruce (xjet): I don't know.
[1478.14] Bruce (xjet): Really.
[1479.14] Bruce (xjet): But look at the way it affected the hobby, that poor guy with his wife and the helicopter.
[1482.14] Bruce (xjet): Immediately, the hobby was vilified.
[1484.14] Bruce (xjet): Oh, he had a helicopter.
[1485.14] Bruce (xjet): It must be him.
[1486.14] Bruce (xjet): Let's get him.
[1487.14] Bruce (xjet): We, as a hobby, are being dragged along with the very, very small number of incidents
[1492.14] Bruce (xjet): where someone with a camera drone has done something stupid.
[1494.14] Bruce (xjet): And it is a very small number of incidents.
[1496.14] Bruce (xjet): Look, in the USA, there are over, I think, a million registered recreational drone operators.
[1501.14] Bruce (xjet): How many incidents involving drones in airports do you see every year?
[1505.14] Bruce (xjet): Very, very few.
[1506.14] Bruce (xjet): For a million participants in that particular hobby, to see maybe four or five incidents a year,
[1512.14] Bruce (xjet): that's next to nothing.
[1513.14] Bruce (xjet): How many incidents, how many times do manned aircraft crash into neighborhoods,
[1517.14] Bruce (xjet): suburban neighborhoods in the same period of time?
[1519.14] Bruce (xjet): It's about the same.
[1520.14] Bruce (xjet): And people die when you crash a Cessna into a house.
[1523.14] Bruce (xjet): So I just, the safety, again, I have to say that this whole thing about being safety,
[1528.14] Bruce (xjet): it's not, safety has nothing to do with it.
[1531.14] Bruce (xjet): It's all, there's other motives.
[1532.14] Bruce (xjet): And I wouldn't mind if they just came out and said, oh, look, we're doing this
[1535.14] Bruce (xjet): because we want to make space for commercial drones or something.
[1538.14] Bruce (xjet): But they're lying to us.
[1539.14] Bruce (xjet): They're being disingenuous.
[1540.14] Bruce (xjet): And if you can't believe the regulator and the government, who can you believe?
[1545.14] Bruce (xjet): I think governments are fine, upstanding institutions.
[1547.14] Bruce (xjet): They would never lie to us.
[1549.14] Jack: All right.
[1550.14] Jack: We're almost to 25 minutes of ranting and whinging.
[1553.14] Jack: How about a question?
[1555.14] Jack: All right.
[1556.14] Jack: Richard Warwick asks, I'd love to see Bruce fly planes with his mates.
[1559.14] Jack: Could he hand over the camera to someone else and show Ron Canron how it's done?
[1564.14] Bruce (xjet): Have you seen Ron's glasses?
[1566.14] Bruce (xjet): He can't see past the end of his nose.
[1568.14] Bruce (xjet): That explains a lot.
[1569.14] Bruce (xjet): Actually, I did give the camera to Neil on the weekend.
[1571.14] Bruce (xjet): It's actually a lot harder to track models and get footage than people think.
[1575.14] Bruce (xjet): I've been doing it for over a decade, so I've had plenty of practice.
[1578.14] Bruce (xjet): And even with my shaky hands, I can still do a reasonable job.
[1582.14] Bruce (xjet): It's actually really hard to track models with a camera, to get good camera footage.
[1585.14] Bruce (xjet): So I often give the camera to people, but often the results are not particularly usable.
[1589.14] Bruce (xjet): They might do like half an hour's filming and I get like 10 seconds.
[1592.14] Bruce (xjet): So, yeah, I'd love to feature more on the videos,
[1595.14] Bruce (xjet): but there's just no one there to do the camera work, unfortunately.
[1598.14] Curry: I had a question because I teased you in my email about all the AMA, about the part twos
[1605.14] Curry: and the fact that you've left us hanging on many, many of them.
[1609.14] Curry: One thing I remember today is at some point you had this sort of prototype hobby king turbine
[1616.14] Curry: and I remember you started testing it and then nothing.
[1619.14] Curry: Did it just not work?
[1621.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, it didn't work.
[1623.14] Bruce (xjet): I went back to hobby king.
[1624.14] Bruce (xjet): The ECU was faulty.
[1626.14] Bruce (xjet): And I said, look, the ECU on this thing isn't working.
[1628.14] Bruce (xjet): Can you, shall I send it back or can you send me a replacement?
[1631.14] Bruce (xjet): Nothing.
[1632.14] Bruce (xjet): No response.
[1633.14] Bruce (xjet): No, that was it.
[1634.14] Bruce (xjet): You know, like, oh, OK.
[1636.14] Bruce (xjet): I waited and no.
[1637.14] Bruce (xjet): And they didn't say send the turbine back or, you know, here's a new ECU.
[1641.14] Bruce (xjet): So I think they probably realized that this is a product that could get us into a lot of trouble
[1646.14] Bruce (xjet): because if you mistreat a electric motor or a lipo, they get smoke comes out,
[1650.14] Bruce (xjet): but the turbine has the potential to kill people.
[1652.14] Bruce (xjet): And they might have decided, well, this is a convenient way for us
[1655.14] Bruce (xjet): perhaps not to get into that because also the support hurdles would have been significant.
[1659.14] Bruce (xjet): Going back that far, turbines still required a lot of maintenance and weren't always totally reliable.
[1665.14] Bruce (xjet): So I think they decided that they didn't want to pursue the product.
[1670.14] Curry: That's a shame.
[1671.14] Curry: I mean, they're not exactly cheap and easy to fly with now.
[1674.14] Curry: I'm told.
[1675.14] Curry: They're certainly expensive.
[1676.14] Curry: Yeah, a lot more expensive.
[1677.14] Curry: Because they didn't do particularly well in their sort of pulse jet, did they?
[1680.14] Curry: I remember that needed sort of grinding down and all sorts of that.
[1683.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, they just copied a Dynajet, but they got it made very cheap.
[1686.14] Bruce (xjet): And the material was so thin that it perforated and the welding was really crap.
[1690.14] Bruce (xjet): But I think they did a better version later on.
[1693.14] Bruce (xjet): I mean, the actual head was really well machined and everything.
[1696.14] Bruce (xjet): And I've got about 200 read valves I bought from them because they really were nicely made read valves.
[1700.14] Bruce (xjet): But the body itself was just a crap, total crap.
[1703.14] Bruce (xjet): I've got two of them.
[1704.14] Bruce (xjet): One of them is still operative.
[1706.14] Bruce (xjet): The other one just basically blew a hole in itself.
[1708.14] Bruce (xjet): So I'm going to make up another body for that some stage and use the head
[1711.14] Bruce (xjet): because I've got another pulse jet long easy planned for this summer.
[1715.14] Frank: Nice.
[1742.14] Jack: Caroline Taylor asks,
[1744.14] Jack: Hey, Bruce, how are your pulse jets lately?
[1747.14] Bruce (xjet): They're fine. They're just coming along.
[1749.14] Bruce (xjet): I bet you I've got to do some more pulse jet stuff.
[1751.14] Bruce (xjet): The back of my workshop is pretty inaccessible because it's just full of junk.
[1756.14] Bruce (xjet): I've got to have a tidy up every time.
[1758.14] Bruce (xjet): I think I'll have a tidy up.
[1759.14] Bruce (xjet): I never get it done.
[1760.14] Bruce (xjet): So I will tidy it up hopefully this summer.
[1762.14] Bruce (xjet): It's no good in the winter.
[1763.14] Bruce (xjet): It's too cold out there.
[1764.14] Bruce (xjet): It gets down to 10 degrees Celsius.
[1766.14] Bruce (xjet): No one can live in those sort of conditions.
[1769.14] Curry: I think the public response at the lake would have been interesting if you had
[1774.14] Curry: a pulse jet there instead of the nice, the nice floaty planes.
[1777.14] Curry: Let's just bring out the machine and see how that goes down.
[1781.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah.
[1782.14] Bruce (xjet): One of the bigger posts I built on the dragster when we started that up,
[1786.14] Bruce (xjet): the council has a noise control officer who's there to parties and things like that.
[1790.14] Bruce (xjet): You can't make too much noise.
[1791.14] Bruce (xjet): You know what they're like.
[1792.14] Bruce (xjet): Little clipboard and hives jacket.
[1793.14] Bruce (xjet): And he, we started our post it up because we had a film crew from Discovery.
[1798.14] Bruce (xjet): We're doing a program on it.
[1800.14] Bruce (xjet): And we started the post it up.
[1802.14] Bruce (xjet): We did a couple of runs up and down the runway with this big dragster.
[1805.14] Bruce (xjet): We're just putting it away.
[1806.14] Bruce (xjet): And this council vehicle pulls up and says, oh, oh, I heard a noise.
[1811.14] Bruce (xjet): What's going on?
[1812.14] Bruce (xjet): And we explained to him, apparently he'd been four kilometers away behind a hill
[1816.14] Bruce (xjet): when he heard this rumbling noise and he decided to come and find out what it was all about.
[1820.14] Bruce (xjet): But no one complained because, oh, yes, we did have one complaint.
[1824.14] Bruce (xjet): They're running drag racing on the runway one day
[1827.14] Bruce (xjet): with all these really noisy drags.
[1829.14] Bruce (xjet): And we started the post it up and the people from the drag racers come over and said,
[1832.14] Bruce (xjet): could you not run that please?
[1833.14] Bruce (xjet): It's too loud.
[1836.14] Curry: That's just a lot about exactly how loud those things are.
[1839.14] Jack: Yeah.
[1840.14] Jack: Swanee Bean goes, how did these fools get X-Jet on?
[1845.14] Bruce (xjet): I've been paid large amounts of money.
[1847.14] Bruce (xjet): I'm about to retire with the large amounts of money that paid me to do this.
[1851.14] Curry: We use that.
[1852.14] Curry: We use that with YouTube money, as anyone on YouTube knows your millionaires.
[1856.14] Curry: So we just gave him a bit of that and that was good.
[1859.14] Bruce (xjet): We all have a little club here and we just we exchanged like this week.
[1863.14] Bruce (xjet): I think Kerry's got the Bentley and I've got his Lambo this week.
[1867.14] Bruce (xjet): So we just change things around.
[1869.14] Bruce (xjet): We're all very well off, very rich.
[1871.14] Bruce (xjet): Very, very rich.
[1873.14] Curry: Failsace FPV says, what has been your worst crash slash mistake in the hobby?
[1878.14] Bruce (xjet): Crash, crash.
[1880.14] Bruce (xjet): I'm not familiar with this term.
[1884.14] Bruce (xjet): Everything is a mistake.
[1886.14] Bruce (xjet): I don't know.
[1887.14] Bruce (xjet): Unplanned landing.
[1888.14] Bruce (xjet): Unplanned landing.
[1889.14] Bruce (xjet): Unschedule.
[1890.14] Bruce (xjet): That's it.
[1891.14] Bruce (xjet): No, I don't know.
[1892.14] Bruce (xjet): So many to choose from.
[1893.14] Bruce (xjet): I'm sport for choice, I'm afraid.
[1895.14] Jack: Clive asks, will you be doing a tour of New Zealand this year if the COVID crap allows?
[1901.14] Bruce (xjet): That's always been my plan to do a bit of a scenic tour.
[1903.14] Bruce (xjet): I've got to get another drone actually for doing cinematic stuff.
[1907.14] Bruce (xjet): I've got one.
[1908.14] Bruce (xjet): I've lost.
[1909.14] Bruce (xjet): It's around somewhere.
[1910.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, I need to get something with a slightly better camera.
[1912.14] Bruce (xjet): I'm running a Runcam 4K hybrid and the frame I've got has the props and views.
[1916.14] Bruce (xjet): I have to crop them out so it doesn't look that good.
[1918.14] Bruce (xjet): But I'll build myself a new drone and do a bit of a tour also with some fixed wing stuff
[1922.14] Bruce (xjet): because I want to go right to the limits of visual line of sight.
[1925.14] Bruce (xjet): I would never exceed that, of course, and get some shots of some of the more scenic parts of the country.
[1930.14] Jack: I've got a personal request.
[1933.14] Jack: Could you, if you ever see iForce 2D again,
[1937.14] Jack: will you give him a poke and let him know that I quite liked his videos?
[1941.14] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, sure. Chris is a great guy.
[1943.14] Bruce (xjet): He drops in from time to time.
[1945.14] Bruce (xjet): He's moved a bit further away in his new place, but he still drops in occasionally.
[1949.14] Bruce (xjet): So if he does, I grab the camera and I shall tell him about you and that you enjoy his work.
[1955.14] Jack: Yeah, I've emailed him.
[1957.14] Jack: I think he's a wizard because he got a Storm32 gimbal to work and I've tried everything.
[1967.14] Jack: I'm going to read this in what I translate this as.
[1972.14] Jack: Swanee Bean says, I never watch these dickheads, but I do love Extra.
[1978.14] Curry: And then he had a follow-up one which all in caps, very shouty.
[1983.14] Curry: Extra, ask them their views on registration and regulations.
[1988.14] Curry: Yeah, what's your views on regulation and registration?
[1992.14] Curry: I don't like either of them.
[1994.14] Curry: I'm very much on the opinion that people should be responsible enough not fly like idiots.
[2001.14] Curry: I don't think you need a spotter.
[2003.14] Curry: I think you can do beyond visual on the site quite safely depending on where you are and how you fly.
[2010.14] Bruce (xjet): So are you on the offenders list?
[2012.14] Curry: Is your name on that CIA's little Raspberry Pi they keep by the bedside that costs four million quid?
[2017.14] Curry: Who can tell? They haven't worked.
[2019.14] Curry: Did I register?
[2020.14] Curry: If that's the question, yes, I had to, else my wife threatened to do things.
[2025.14] Curry: So my testicles that I didn't like involving taking them off and putting them in a jar somewhere.
[2029.14] Curry: So yeah, for the sake of keeping it all sweet indoors, yes.
[2034.14] Curry: But obviously that's pointless.
[2038.14] Curry: I mean, you don't have to be rocket science to say if you're intent on doing bad things, you wouldn't register.
[2046.14] Curry: And therefore, if your drone is caught doing something bad, then they can't track you back.
[2051.14] Curry: But they can potentially say, oh, here's a drone here who's on the registration list locally.
[2056.14] Curry: Let's go round their houses and raid them all.
[2058.14] Curry: So it's many, many bad things, but I couldn't get away from doing it, unfortunately.
[2062.14] Bruce (xjet): Are you telling me that a bank robber would not use his own registered vehicle to perform the job?
[2068.14] Curry: I hear sometimes they borrow other people's and don't give them back.
[2072.14] Bruce (xjet): What if the police are aware of it?
[2073.14] Curry: It's quite clever, really, because it can really throw police off the scent.
[2076.14] Curry: I don't know.
[2077.14] Curry: The genius is clearly.
[2080.14] Jack: I've heard in fictional material that they spend a lot of time dremeling off the serial numbers of weapons and stuff.
[2090.14] Jack: You know, just, you know, apparently they sit there and try and re-etch it back.
[2097.14] Jack: I think they should ban dremels or grinding tools.
[2103.14] Bruce (xjet): That's like when people say, you know, but they could put explosives on a drone and fly it and blow someone up.
[2108.14] Bruce (xjet): And it's not a drone problem.
[2109.14] Bruce (xjet): That's an explosives problem.
[2110.14] Bruce (xjet): Where do they get the explosives from?
[2112.14] Bruce (xjet): Don't keep out the drone.
[2113.14] Bruce (xjet): I mean, they could put explosives on a bicycle or use a trebuchet or a catapult.
[2116.14] Bruce (xjet): The drone is not the important part of that equation.
[2118.14] Bruce (xjet): It's the explosives.
[2119.14] Bruce (xjet): Why have people got access to explosives?
[2121.14] Bruce (xjet): Because their phone.
[2125.46] Jack: I did not say that.
[2128.46] Bruce (xjet): When I get around to publishing my book, it's a horror story of what I've done with explosives over the years.
[2136.46] Jack: No, it's funny.
[2138.46] Jack: I know.
[2139.46] Jack: It was a comedy thing.
[2142.46] Jack: I know you said I never watch these dudes, but I do love X-chan.
[2147.46] Jack: I know.
[2148.46] Jack: I know.
[2149.46] Jack: It was.
[2150.46] Jack: I was trying to be funny.
[2151.46] Jack: I'm sorry.
[2152.46] Jack: I'm English.
[2153.46] Jack: I'm not actually that funny.
[2155.46] Jack: I know.
[2156.46] Jack: I'm sorry.
[2157.46] Jack: We know.
[2160.46] Curry: So not to be deliberately controversial, but you mentioned writing the book, Bruce,
[2166.46] Curry: because you did write about building a cruise missile, how one could do this at home.
[2173.46] Curry: And this caused some outrage from, again, the press saying, this is crazy.
[2178.46] Curry: We're letting this crazy man build cruise missiles.
[2180.46] Curry: That can't be good.
[2181.46] Curry: What is the cruise missile story behind that?
[2184.46] Curry: Because I remember the cover for it.
[2186.46] Curry: And I can't remember.
[2187.46] Curry: It was a fun title, Missile Man or something, wasn't it, called?
[2190.46] Curry: Something like that?
[2191.46] Bruce (xjet): Yeah.
[2192.46] Bruce (xjet): Well, it was an interesting time in my life.
[2193.46] Bruce (xjet): And it's the cornerstone of my book.
[2195.46] Bruce (xjet): But it was just after 9-11.
[2198.46] Bruce (xjet): And I wasn't actually flying model aircraft at the time.
[2200.46] Bruce (xjet): But I looked at it.
[2202.46] Bruce (xjet): And I thought, look, why would you hijack an airline?
[2205.46] Bruce (xjet): I mean, you can actually build.
[2206.46] Bruce (xjet): Look at the German V1.
[2207.46] Bruce (xjet): Look how rudimentary and fundamental it was.
[2209.46] Bruce (xjet): And look at the impact it had, not from the in terms of the actual damage it caused.
[2213.46] Bruce (xjet): But remember that terrorism is all about terror, creating a climate of terror.
[2217.46] Bruce (xjet): And it was extremely effective.
[2219.46] Bruce (xjet): The V1 and V2s were fantastically effective at that.
[2221.46] Bruce (xjet): And I thought, how hard would it be to build a real V1 these days?
[2226.46] Bruce (xjet): And of course, I was making pulse jets as a hobby and also as a small sideline business.
[2230.46] Bruce (xjet): So I thought, well, I'll just go through the motions.
[2232.46] Bruce (xjet): And I ordered some stuff from eBay and got some stainless steel from the local middle
[2235.46] Bruce (xjet): merchant and some polystyrene foam from the local hardware shop and some fiberglass
[2239.46] Bruce (xjet): from the boat shop.
[2241.46] Bruce (xjet): And I built a cruise missile with a pulse jet on it, top speed of probably about 600 kilometers
[2245.46] Bruce (xjet): an hour, a range of probably around about 100 miles, 160 kilometers.
[2249.46] Jack: We do know this behavior.
[2252.46] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, do not try this at home.
[2254.46] Bruce (xjet): It was a proof of concept.
[2255.46] Bruce (xjet): And I thought, well, it is really, really easy.
[2257.46] Bruce (xjet): I wonder, does the world realize just how easy this is?
[2260.46] Bruce (xjet): I'm sure that the bad actors would have already scoped this out.
[2262.46] Bruce (xjet): And they'd know they could do this if they wanted to.
[2264.46] Bruce (xjet): But even myself at that stage didn't quite understand that martyrdom is a big thing.
[2269.46] Bruce (xjet): If you want to make a point, well, it's much easier to get some ideologically crazed young person
[2274.46] Bruce (xjet): and strip a backpack on them full of bad stuff and send them into a crowd.
[2277.46] Bruce (xjet): That's what creates terror, not some high tech piece of gear that someone's built in their garage.
[2283.46] Bruce (xjet): So I thought I should alert the world to the potential risk that this poses in the wake of 9-11.
[2289.46] Jack: Are you just like a catfish?
[2292.46] Jack: Do you do this just to, you know, liven up the bunch?
[2296.46] Jack: Or are you just like a cop shit at heart?
[2299.46] Bruce (xjet): Well, I was actually concerned that this could be a viable way of doing bad things.
[2305.46] Bruce (xjet): And so I thought, well, I'll highlight the concern.
[2308.46] Bruce (xjet): And the interesting thing, once I did this,
[2310.46] Bruce (xjet): I got emails from quite high up in the U.S. military saying, thank you.
[2314.46] Bruce (xjet): Thank you so much.
[2315.46] Bruce (xjet): We've been trying to get this message across to our superiors for a long time,
[2318.46] Bruce (xjet): and they're not listening.
[2319.46] Bruce (xjet): And you seem to have done it.
[2321.46] Bruce (xjet): Because they've been warning of exactly the same thing.
[2323.46] Bruce (xjet): And so it was such a fantastic time because I got emails from countries
[2330.46] Bruce (xjet): that you wouldn't want to get involved in offering me large amounts of money
[2334.46] Bruce (xjet): to buy the plans for my cruise missile.
[2336.46] Bruce (xjet): Honestly, I actually passed those emails on to our local security agency,
[2340.46] Bruce (xjet): the SIS Security Intelligence Service,
[2344.46] Bruce (xjet): and said, look, you know, you might want to follow this up
[2346.46] Bruce (xjet): because these people sound like they've got bad things in mind
[2349.46] Bruce (xjet): and they're trying to get information from me.
[2351.46] Bruce (xjet): And that was really interesting because they said,
[2354.46] Bruce (xjet): yes, we're aware of those emails.
[2356.46] Bruce (xjet): How do you know?
[2357.46] Bruce (xjet): They'll just tell you.
[2359.46] Bruce (xjet): And then they said, we'd like to come and see you.
[2361.46] Bruce (xjet): And I said, OK.
[2362.46] Bruce (xjet): And I was living quite a way out of the city in a little gravel road miles from anywhere.
[2366.46] Bruce (xjet): I said, you'll probably need me to send you a map of how to get here.
[2370.46] Bruce (xjet): They said, oh, we know where you live.
[2372.46] Bruce (xjet): So it shows you what happens behind the scenes.
[2374.46] Bruce (xjet): Definitely on the list now.
[2376.46] Bruce (xjet): Oh, man, I want to be on the list.
[2378.46] Bruce (xjet): I met my first spy, my first secret agent,
[2382.46] Bruce (xjet): or whatever you might call the investigator for the government.
[2384.46] Bruce (xjet): It was so funny.
[2386.46] Bruce (xjet): This guy rocks up and I thought, oh, you know, he's going to be like James Bond type.
[2389.46] Bruce (xjet): Rocks up in his Ford Fiesta or whatever it was.
[2393.46] Bruce (xjet): And he gets out and he's got nylon pants on
[2396.46] Bruce (xjet): and one of those Sia sucker shirts from the 70s.
[2400.46] Bruce (xjet): And he had a clipboard.
[2402.46] Bruce (xjet): He had a clipboard.
[2403.46] Bruce (xjet): And he comes in and he's, you know, he was a really nice guy.
[2405.46] Bruce (xjet): He had a bit of a chat and it was really, really interesting.
[2407.46] Jack: Probably knew 10 ways to kill you with that clipboard alone.
[2411.46] Jack: Probably. Yeah.
[2412.46] Bruce (xjet): You probably had them written down on the clipboard in case he forgot.
[2415.46] Bruce (xjet): But the funniest thing of all was I was sitting there making some post-it stuff
[2419.46] Bruce (xjet): and another little nondescript car rolls up
[2422.46] Bruce (xjet): and the guy gets out with another clipboard and says, Mr. Simpson, yes.
[2426.46] Bruce (xjet): I believe you've got rocket fuel here.
[2428.46] Bruce (xjet): He was from the local council because apparently
[2430.46] Bruce (xjet): you're not allowed to keep rocket fuel in your garage.
[2433.46] Bruce (xjet): Oh, OK.
[2434.46] Jack: Where are you meant to keep it in your ass?
[2436.46] Jack: Yeah, exactly.
[2437.46] Bruce (xjet): I didn't know.
[2438.46] Bruce (xjet): But no, I had to explain to him,
[2439.46] Bruce (xjet): know that these post-its are powered by LPG and regular old petrol.
[2443.46] Bruce (xjet): Oh, how much of that do you have here?
[2445.46] Bruce (xjet): And I showed him and he was happy and wandered off.
[2447.46] Bruce (xjet): But it was really strange times.
[2449.46] Bruce (xjet): Really was.
[2450.46] Jack: You got married in here recently.
[2454.46] Jack: Yeah, I did, actually.
[2455.46] Bruce (xjet): I married, I'm now what?
[2458.46] Bruce (xjet): It's been over two years I've been married.
[2460.46] Jack: Yeah, man.
[2461.46] Bruce (xjet): I've been living with a woman for 37, 38 years.
[2464.46] Bruce (xjet): We decided the approval period was up.
[2467.46] Bruce (xjet): It was time to formalize the arrangement.
[2470.46] Bruce (xjet): Well, you don't want to rush these things, do you?
[2472.46] Bruce (xjet): No, no.
[2473.46] Bruce (xjet): And I'm still not sure it'll last.
[2474.46] Bruce (xjet): But she's great because she accepts all my little crazy indulgences and things
[2479.46] Bruce (xjet): and she's as mad as I am, which always helps.
[2482.46] Bruce (xjet): Very handy.
[2483.46] Curry: Another question is coming from NJ here saying, Bruce, can you fly helis?
[2487.46] Curry: I don't think I've seen you fly anything 500 or bigger before.
[2491.46] Bruce (xjet): I used to fly helis in the 1990s.
[2493.46] Bruce (xjet): I had a Colt Cyclone and a Colt Cyclone II and a Robbie Mosquito.
[2498.46] Bruce (xjet): But then that's just too expensive compared to multirotors.
[2502.46] Bruce (xjet): You crash a helicopter and you've got quite a big build crash a multirotor
[2506.46] Bruce (xjet): and the worst you've got to do is replace a prop.
[2509.46] Curry: Indeed.
[2510.46] Curry: Although NJ has been flying ones recently, apparently these new ones
[2513.46] Curry: have survived several crashes without any incident.
[2516.46] Curry: Although they're quite small aren't they?
[2518.46] Curry: Not trying hard enough.
[2519.46] Curry: Not trying hard enough.
[2521.46] Curry: It's to fly harder.
[2525.46] Jack: How did you get started back in RC?
[2529.46] Jack: Was it to hunt dinosaurs or something?
[2532.46] Bruce (xjet): Oh, yeah.
[2533.46] Bruce (xjet): Our radio gear was made out of rock.
[2537.46] Bruce (xjet): I think it was probably I would have been 10 or 11
[2541.46] Bruce (xjet): and I'd been flying free flight and control line.
[2543.46] Bruce (xjet): I wanted to get radio control.
[2545.46] Bruce (xjet): And I spent an entire summer working odd jobs,
[2549.46] Bruce (xjet): getting enough money to pay for half of it.
[2552.46] Bruce (xjet): My parents coughed up the other half.
[2555.46] Bruce (xjet): And it was actually a year later when they coughed up.
[2559.46] Bruce (xjet): It was just at the end of the school holidays
[2561.46] Bruce (xjet): because it's the summer here is Christmas time.
[2563.46] Bruce (xjet): We have the seasons reversed from you guys in the other part of the world,
[2566.46] Bruce (xjet): which is why it's spring now.
[2568.46] Bruce (xjet): But my parents agreed to pay the other half.
[2570.46] Bruce (xjet): So we sent off to good old England.
[2572.46] Bruce (xjet): We sent off 25 pounds, I think it was, to England
[2575.46] Bruce (xjet): to buy a set of single channel radio control gear.
[2577.46] Bruce (xjet): And of course, we have six weeks of summer holidays.
[2579.46] Bruce (xjet): So we sent that off at the beginning of the holidays
[2583.46] Bruce (xjet): and the radio control set arrived on the last day of the holidays,
[2587.46] Bruce (xjet): which really annoyed me because I had to go back to school.
[2589.46] Bruce (xjet): But that was, yeah, that was a long time ago.
[2591.46] Bruce (xjet): That would have been sometime in the 1960s.
[2594.46] Bruce (xjet): Good old single channel button on a box.
[2596.46] Bruce (xjet): Fantastic.
[2597.46] Jack: No way.
[2598.46] Jack: How did that work?
[2601.46] Bruce (xjet): Intermittently.
[2604.46] Bruce (xjet): You had a button.
[2605.46] Bruce (xjet): You had servos or escapements in the model.
[2607.46] Bruce (xjet): So if you pressed and held the button,
[2609.46] Bruce (xjet): the rudder would go over to the right-hand side.
[2611.46] Bruce (xjet): As long as you held the button, it would stay on the right-hand side.
[2613.46] Bruce (xjet): When you released the button, it would then go back to neutral,
[2616.46] Bruce (xjet): but it would go over to the left-hand side first.
[2618.46] Bruce (xjet): So it would sort of flick back to the left and then back to neutral.
[2620.46] Bruce (xjet): So if you pressed the button twice, it would go right
[2623.46] Bruce (xjet): and then it would hold in the left-hand position.
[2625.46] Bruce (xjet): So it was one push for right, two pushes for left.
[2628.46] Bruce (xjet): But you had no proportional control.
[2630.46] Bruce (xjet): It was either everything or nothing.
[2631.46] Bruce (xjet): So to do a gentle turn, you had to keep pushing the button,
[2633.46] Bruce (xjet): pulsing it gently around the turn.
[2635.46] Bruce (xjet): No elevator control.
[2636.46] Bruce (xjet): We did have throttle.
[2637.46] Bruce (xjet): I had a quick-blip throttle.
[2640.46] Bruce (xjet): So if you just quickly blip the button,
[2642.46] Bruce (xjet): the throttle would cycle through idle, medium, high, medium, idle,
[2646.46] Bruce (xjet): so you could control your throttle.
[2648.46] Curry: You were out of the hobby then for a long time, weren't you?
[2650.46] Curry: And then you came back to it.
[2651.46] Curry: And what made you come back so many years later?
[2655.46] Bruce (xjet): It was because I moved.
[2656.46] Bruce (xjet): I was living up north of Auckland in my little cruise missile factory
[2660.46] Bruce (xjet): and then decided that I would, because when I moved there,
[2663.46] Bruce (xjet): it was countryside.
[2664.46] Bruce (xjet): There was no other houses for miles.
[2666.46] Bruce (xjet): But as it happens, you get urban spread.
[2668.46] Bruce (xjet): And suddenly we're in the middle of a suburb and I didn't like that.
[2670.46] Bruce (xjet): So I thought, ah, damn it.
[2671.46] Bruce (xjet): So I moved down to where I am now because my daughter was a teacher down here
[2674.46] Bruce (xjet): and we thought, well, just a change of scene and it's a little tiny country town.
[2677.46] Bruce (xjet): And when I got down here, I was looking for a workshop
[2682.46] Bruce (xjet): for all my stuff that I used to make pulse jets.
[2684.46] Bruce (xjet): And I was offered some space in a hangar at the airfield.
[2686.46] Bruce (xjet): So when I got to the airfield, I thought,
[2688.46] Bruce (xjet): it would be silly not to build some models and fly, wouldn't it?
[2690.46] Bruce (xjet): So I did.
[2691.46] Bruce (xjet): And the irony is that while most people are told don't fly near airfields,
[2695.46] Bruce (xjet): the only place you can actually fly a model, many models here is at an airfield.
[2700.46] Curry: Yeah.
[2701.46] Curry: Listening to when you couldn't fly because they took your wings away
[2705.46] Curry: and you were looking for other places.
[2706.46] Curry: It sounded really weird because we kind of think as New Zealand is a bit like
[2710.46] Curry: Wales in terms of lots of rolling hills, many, many sheep.
[2714.46] Curry: But like every single location you were looking for was within 5K or whatever
[2719.46] Curry: of another small airfield.
[2720.46] Curry: So it's almost impossible.
[2721.46] Curry: Even though you seem to be out in the middle of nowhere,
[2723.46] Curry: everywhere had little airfields around it, which seemed absolutely crazy.
[2727.46] Bruce (xjet): And there's other issues too, because we've got the same problems in the UK.
[2730.46] Bruce (xjet): The health and safety has gone mad.
[2732.46] Bruce (xjet): So it used to be you could rock up to a farmer and say,
[2734.46] Bruce (xjet): look, if I give you a crate of beer at Christmas time,
[2737.46] Bruce (xjet): can I use your field to fly my planes?
[2739.46] Bruce (xjet): They go, yeah, go for it.
[2740.46] Bruce (xjet): You know, just close the gate when you're gone.
[2741.46] Bruce (xjet): These days, of course.
[2742.46] Bruce (xjet): Oh, no, no, because if you have an accident, I could be liable.
[2745.46] Bruce (xjet): And so there's all these liabilities and things, you know,
[2747.46] Bruce (xjet): if you're tripping and, you know, cut your knee, you know,
[2751.46] Bruce (xjet): they can be in trouble.
[2753.46] Bruce (xjet): So they don't want to take the risk.
[2754.46] Bruce (xjet): I offered to lease some land off some farmers and they said, no, no,
[2757.46] Bruce (xjet): we can't afford the risk.
[2758.46] Bruce (xjet): Can't afford the risk.
[2759.46] Bruce (xjet): So it's a case of you're very restricted.
[2761.46] Bruce (xjet): And in New Zealand, of course, you can't fly over property without the
[2764.46] Bruce (xjet): expressed permission of the property owner.
[2766.46] Bruce (xjet): So I can't just go out and fly anywhere I want.
[2768.46] Bruce (xjet): I've got to get the permission of the landowner over I'm flying over.
[2771.46] Bruce (xjet): So by default, the entire country is an off-flight area.
[2774.46] Bruce (xjet): And this you've negotiated the right to fly there.
[2776.46] Bruce (xjet): And, you know, there's none of this problem of trespass or anything.
[2779.46] Bruce (xjet): You just can't fly over your neighbor's house because it's illegal
[2782.46] Bruce (xjet): unless they say you can fly over my house.
[2784.46] Bruce (xjet): And New Zealand is probably one of the few countries in the world
[2786.46] Bruce (xjet): that has this.
[2787.46] Bruce (xjet): And it's lunacy because what it means is I can take a Robinson R-22
[2790.46] Bruce (xjet): helicopter and hover over my neighbor's house at 500 feet.
[2793.46] Bruce (xjet): There's not a thing they can do about it.
[2795.46] Bruce (xjet): But I can't fly my Mobula 6 over their house at 100 feet because that's a
[2799.46] Bruce (xjet): breach of their property rights.
[2801.46] Bruce (xjet): I don't know.
[2802.46] Bruce (xjet): So, yeah, it is difficult.
[2803.46] Bruce (xjet): So finding a place to fly is no longer easy.
[2806.46] Bruce (xjet): If you want to fly in a national park, you've got to pay a lot of money
[2809.46] Bruce (xjet): just to apply for permission with no guarantee you're going to get it.
[2812.46] Bruce (xjet): And if you don't get the permission, you don't get your money back.
[2814.46] Bruce (xjet): So I'm just going to say when I do my tour in New Zealand,
[2817.46] Bruce (xjet): it's going to be a case of it wasn't me.
[2819.46] Bruce (xjet): I found this SD card on the side of the road and look what was on it.
[2822.46] Bruce (xjet): It'd be amazing just finding those every day, wouldn't it?
[2824.46] Jack: Yeah.
[2826.46] Jack: They still wanted that found SD card off you.
[2829.46] Jack: That was the best bet.
[2830.46] Bruce (xjet): Dealing with investigators is so much fun.
[2833.46] Bruce (xjet): I mean, you know, they're so straight faced and serious
[2836.46] Bruce (xjet): and you know you're taking the piss out of them and they probably know it too,
[2839.46] Bruce (xjet): but they've got to be dead upright because the guy was saying,
[2841.46] Bruce (xjet): you know, do you still have that card?
[2843.46] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, I do.
[2844.46] Bruce (xjet): Can we have it?
[2845.46] Bruce (xjet): No, I've reused it.
[2846.46] Bruce (xjet): I couldn't tell you which one it was.
[2847.46] Bruce (xjet): Is there's no way you could determine that?
[2849.46] Bruce (xjet): No.
[2851.46] Bruce (xjet): He believed that I found this SD card in the grass, which of course I did.
[2855.46] Curry: The current arrangement I have with a farmer that allows me to fly his land is
[2859.46] Curry: I can fly there as long as I don't crash,
[2861.46] Curry: which is quite a tricky one to uphold.
[2863.46] Curry: I've done it so far,
[2864.46] Curry: mostly because he doesn't want me trampling over his crops
[2867.46] Curry: to go find anything that goes down there.
[2869.46] Curry: But hopefully there's no one walking around as well.
[2872.46] Bruce (xjet): The other problem we have in New Zealand is unlike the UK,
[2874.46] Bruce (xjet): we have those dry stone walls and little hedgerows.
[2876.46] Bruce (xjet): We have electric fences,
[2877.46] Bruce (xjet): which are not only ugly because they're horrible things,
[2880.46] Bruce (xjet): but if a farmer's left the electric fence on,
[2882.46] Bruce (xjet): negotiating that can be quite difficult because they don't always have
[2885.46] Bruce (xjet): the little plastic hooks you can undo in the gates and things.
[2888.46] Bruce (xjet): So you've got to try and either get under it or over it.
[2890.46] Bruce (xjet): And when you're my age, getting over it's a bit of an issue.
[2893.46] Bruce (xjet): And when you're as fat as me getting under, it's an issue.
[2894.46] Bruce (xjet): So you don't really want to land in a paddock,
[2896.46] Bruce (xjet): which may have a bull in it or which is surrounded by an electric fence
[2899.46] Bruce (xjet): because accessing your gear is a bit hard.
[2902.46] Bruce (xjet): That's true.
[2903.46] Curry: Plus cows eat your planes, as I found out.
[2907.46] Curry: Really?
[2908.46] Curry: I didn't know that.
[2909.46] Curry: No.
[2910.46] Curry: Yeah.
[2911.46] Curry: Well, I was flying one of...
[2912.46] Curry: You can't see it from here.
[2913.46] Curry: One of these tiny little wings, this big, just around.
[2917.46] Curry: And then the next field were a bunch of cows and I was sort of coming in.
[2920.46] Curry: It only takes a little gust of wind because I was coming in low.
[2923.46] Curry: I was going to come around for a landing and there's this hedgerow in the way.
[2925.46] Curry: And it sort of spiraled down, hit the floor, and I looked over
[2929.46] Curry: and it was just kind of like, you know, if you've ever been in a playground
[2933.46] Curry: and there's a fight, you just see this massive circle of children
[2936.46] Curry: going around and fight, fight, fight.
[2937.46] Curry: It was like that.
[2938.46] Curry: Cows just arranged themselves all round in a circle.
[2941.46] Curry: I'm like, my plane's in the middle.
[2942.46] Curry: I could tell it was in the middle because I could look through my goggles
[2945.46] Curry: and just see this tongue over my camera and stuff.
[2948.46] Curry: But yeah, they loved them.
[2950.46] Curry: I got that plane back, but they ate the lens of the camera
[2954.46] Curry: and they stood on it and they licked it a lot.
[2957.46] Bruce (xjet): So it was like this slobbery plane with a hoof print in it.
[2960.46] Bruce (xjet): I managed to get back.
[2961.46] Bruce (xjet): I've got a question for you guys.
[2962.46] Bruce (xjet): Do you not have ground outside?
[2964.46] Bruce (xjet): Is everything in the UK paved?
[2966.46] Bruce (xjet): You've got floor.
[2967.46] Bruce (xjet): It's not a floor, it's the ground.
[2968.46] Bruce (xjet): The floor is where you have like wood or lino or vinyl or carpet or something.
[2972.46] Bruce (xjet): That's a floor.
[2973.46] Bruce (xjet): What's with this floor outside thing?
[2976.46] Bruce (xjet): I don't think we say floor outside.
[2978.46] Bruce (xjet): We say ground.
[2979.46] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, you said it hit the floor.
[2982.46] Bruce (xjet): Did I?
[2983.46] Bruce (xjet): Oh, wow.
[2984.46] Bruce (xjet): I mean, like I've heard it in other people.
[2985.46] Bruce (xjet): The UK, like someone outside, they get down to get on the floor.
[2989.46] Bruce (xjet): It just seems very odd from a Kiwi perspective where we only have floors and doors.
[2994.46] Jack: Well, no, I mean, like floor is like what you stand on.
[2998.46] Jack: You know, you've got ground floor, first floor.
[3001.46] Jack: I mean, the Americans don't agree with us.
[3003.46] Jack: They're not.
[3004.46] Jack: But, you know, it's interesting.
[3006.46] Jack: I've never noticed.
[3007.46] Curry: I've said it actually.
[3008.46] Curry: I've always because there is a distinction.
[3010.46] Curry: Yeah. Floor is.
[3011.46] Curry: I mean, some people say you hit the jack as well.
[3014.46] Curry: You know, that's even weird, isn't it?
[3016.46] Jack: For ship, really.
[3018.46] Bruce (xjet): That's interesting thing about this whole YouTube thing, isn't it?
[3020.46] Bruce (xjet): Like someone complained yesterday that I put I spelt terrorize with a Z
[3025.46] Bruce (xjet): or in America, a Z instead of an S because they use the US spelling rather than the English spelling.
[3031.46] Bruce (xjet): Yeah.
[3032.46] Bruce (xjet): And it's all sorts of with like color and labor and endeavor and things like that,
[3035.46] Bruce (xjet): which is spelled quite differently.
[3037.46] Bruce (xjet): And these days you've got to think before you write something because, you know,
[3041.46] Bruce (xjet): someone's going to complain because you've spelled it wrong because they're in a different country.
[3045.46] Bruce (xjet): And I chose to use the Z because I was just playing with the YouTube algorithm a little bit,
[3049.46] Bruce (xjet): see whether it prefers American or your non-American spelling.
[3053.46] Bruce (xjet): But someone did actually complain about using a Z instead of an S.
[3057.46] Bruce (xjet): And you've got to be so careful because terminology words mean different things.
[3060.46] Bruce (xjet): You know, like bum means something different in the US that doesn't in the UK.
[3065.46] Bruce (xjet): And then there's fanny in the US means bottom.
[3068.46] Bruce (xjet): And it's like it's so different.
[3070.46] Bruce (xjet): You've got to be so careful and choose your words carefully when you're dealing with an international audience,
[3074.46] Bruce (xjet): as I'm sure we are on this program.
[3076.46] Bruce (xjet): Very international.
[3077.46] Jack: Oh, it's our buddy Botgrinder.
[3080.46] Jack: Botgrinder has won.
[3083.46] Bruce (xjet): Botgrinder, you've won the Internet for the day, mate.
[3086.46] Curry: So, Bruce, I haven't seen you playing with much new stuff lately.
[3091.46] Curry: Have you been playing with stuff like Edge TX kind of instead of OpenTX or the...
[3098.46] Curry: I forgot.
[3099.46] Curry: No, I'm having a dementia moment now because now I can't remember the radios I'm talking about.
[3103.46] Curry: Oh, Express LRS, that sort of stuff.
[3106.46] Curry: It's interesting.
[3107.46] Bruce (xjet): One of the problems we've got in New Zealand is our supply chain is completely screwed.
[3110.46] Bruce (xjet): I mean, I've ordered stuff and it's like months, not the normal few days to a week
[3115.46] Bruce (xjet): because we have such limited amount of shipping coming in and air traffic is virtually zero because our borders are closed.
[3121.46] Bruce (xjet): So there's very little in the way of stuff coming in and out, which means as far as reviewing stuff goes,
[3125.46] Bruce (xjet): I've had to sort of put that to one side for a while because by the time I get a product,
[3129.46] Bruce (xjet): everyone else has reviewed it and it's out of production, which is kind of pointless.
[3132.46] Bruce (xjet): So one video I've got coming up shortly is the one of which is the best FPV system in terms of analog,
[3139.46] Bruce (xjet): fat shark and DJI because everyone, of course, is asking, you know, and we've got the little factions,
[3144.46] Bruce (xjet): this is better, that's better.
[3145.46] Bruce (xjet): So what I've done is I've taken a step back and I've looked at the technology, I've looked at the applications,
[3150.46] Bruce (xjet): I've looked at the real world results, looked at the costs and instead of telling people what's best,
[3155.46] Bruce (xjet): I'm trying to produce some videos that explain to how they can choose which is best for them
[3160.46] Bruce (xjet): because everyone has done a piece of the puzzle but no one's put it together and there's no go to it
[3164.46] Bruce (xjet): and I'm going to go into FPV, what should I buy?
[3166.46] Bruce (xjet): And I'm hoping that that video and we'll see going to a more technical level explaining why the DJI system produces these results
[3174.46] Bruce (xjet): and the shark bite system produces those results, which are quite different.
[3177.46] Bruce (xjet): And so for the time being, I've got a lot of videos in the can for RC model reviews,
[3181.46] Bruce (xjet): which are more of the tutorial, the explanation, the taking complicated things and trying to make them simple
[3186.46] Bruce (xjet): so that you understand the products you're using and you're better equipped to make a purchasing decision
[3191.46] Bruce (xjet): because there's plenty of people doing reviews.
[3193.46] Bruce (xjet): When I started, I was pretty much the only guy doing reviews and so it was easy.
[3196.46] Bruce (xjet): But now you've got every man and his dog and I mean, Carrie does some really good reviews.
[3201.46] Bruce (xjet): A lot of people doing really good reviews.
[3202.46] Bruce (xjet): There's no point in me reinventing the wheel six months after because of the supply chain issue.
[3207.46] Bruce (xjet): So I'm pivoting a little bit towards being more of an information resource
[3211.46] Bruce (xjet): because the other thing, as you probably know, is when you do a review and you get some views, that's fine.
[3215.46] Bruce (xjet): And then that video is basically dead in the water.
[3218.46] Bruce (xjet): It's not going to produce any residuals because no one wants to see a review of the Mobius HD recording camera,
[3225.46] Bruce (xjet): you know, five, six, seven years later.
[3227.46] Bruce (xjet): But I want to produce more of a residual income from my retirement.
[3230.46] Bruce (xjet): So I'm going to do videos like some of the things like Ohm's Law.
[3233.46] Bruce (xjet): That video is how to think a million views or something.
[3235.46] Bruce (xjet): And it's just Ohm's Law.
[3236.46] Bruce (xjet): It doesn't change from year to year, but it's a people have found it a useful video.
[3239.46] Bruce (xjet): I've had university lecturers saying, can we include this in our lectures, you know, stuff like that,
[3244.46] Bruce (xjet): which is good. It has a long lifetime from an earnings point of view.
[3247.46] Bruce (xjet): So I'm going to pivot more around to the stuff that's going to be knowledge and information that will be there forever.
[3252.46] Bruce (xjet): And hopefully people will keep watching it so that when I'm old and frail, I might still be making a dollar or two from my YouTube channel.
[3259.46] Bruce (xjet): That's if YouTube still even has monetization then.
[3262.46] Jack: Yeah, it was it was like when I was trained to become mechanic, Ohm's Law video came up and Eric the car guy came up as well,
[3272.46] Jack: which is kind of really weird.
[3274.46] Jack: So I just thought don't point that out to you.
[3277.46] Bruce (xjet): And it's funny how many people watch the same videos.
[3281.46] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, it's maybe how many people watch the same videos.
[3283.46] Bruce (xjet): So I look at other people's, you know, when they've got something on screen, you can see, oh, they watch that too.
[3287.46] Bruce (xjet): And I'm on channels where I would think no one would be interested in people go, oh, hi, good to see you here.
[3292.46] Bruce (xjet): You know, I'm like, what?
[3293.46] Bruce (xjet): I think when you believe it.
[3294.46] Jack: You know who I am?
[3295.46] Jack: Yeah.
[3296.46] Jack: What the hell?
[3298.46] Jack: Wow.
[3299.46] Jack: Curry kitten.
[3300.46] Jack: You got anything?
[3303.46] Jack: I've got anything.
[3305.46] Bruce (xjet): There are more whiteboard videos coming.
[3307.46] Bruce (xjet): I've got an electronic whiteboard.
[3308.46] Bruce (xjet): Well, I've got a tablet, but you know, like a digital zero.
[3311.46] Bruce (xjet): And that's much simpler than standing in the cold, you know, sometimes only 18 degrees in the workshop standing out there and with a white my whiteboard mic.
[3320.46] Bruce (xjet): And my whiteboard failed epically for some reason.
[3322.46] Bruce (xjet): It just stopped working.
[3324.46] Curry: That's the same.
[3327.31] Curry: Now, I'm just looking forward to, you know,
[3329.31] Curry: I always enjoy the content.
[3330.31] Curry: I like the mix of stuff.
[3331.31] Curry: You know, I like watching your RC model reviews stuff from a technical standpoint and looking at stuff that I may not have thought of.
[3339.31] Curry: But I always enjoy when you're out with your friends, mostly watching them fly.
[3345.31] Curry: As you've explained, if you get them to hold the camera, it just doesn't work.
[3348.31] Curry: But yeah, I like that because one thing I mean, me, Jack and the others haven't met up in ages,
[3356.31] Curry: mostly because I had to go to hospital last time we had to meet up.
[3359.31] Curry: But yeah, just getting together with friends and flying is something I just, it's so alien to me at the moment.
[3364.31] Curry: It's just something I haven't done in several years because of Covid and various things about being away and not having the stuff.
[3370.31] Curry: So yeah, I like to live vicariously.
[3373.31] Curry: Yeah, that's the thing.
[3374.31] Bruce (xjet): A lot of people, a lot of people do enjoy the fact that they feel like they're part of that group, which is really important.
[3379.31] Bruce (xjet): And that's one of the things that got me into trouble with the model flying body here in New Zealand years ago, because we started up.
[3385.31] Bruce (xjet): We said, oh, you can you can join our club, you know, just say you want to be a member, you can join it.
[3388.31] Bruce (xjet): And of course, the national model flying body at times is you can't have all these foreign members in your club, you know, no.
[3393.31] Bruce (xjet): And so they passed a special rule that said no club shall have more than 20 percent of its members outside of New Zealand.
[3398.31] Bruce (xjet): A special rule just for me.
[3401.31] Bruce (xjet): It's great because we had 600 members overseas.
[3405.31] Bruce (xjet): You know, it was great.
[3406.31] Jack: You've got to remember as well that you, your videos, people like you who are on the other side of the world, help see us through the winter.
[3415.31] Jack: Yeah.
[3416.31] Jack: And I've got a few quick questions for you.
[3419.31] Jack: What are your views on that slag, Andy R.C.?
[3424.31] Bruce (xjet): Andy R.C. I like his stuff.
[3426.31] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, I mean, there's not much I don't like in the hobby.
[3429.31] Bruce (xjet): Most people have got something to contribute.
[3431.31] Bruce (xjet): And I don't watch his stuff regularly.
[3433.31] Bruce (xjet): Yeah, I don't watch it regularly.
[3435.31] Bruce (xjet): But when I do, why should I really enjoy it?
[3437.31] Bruce (xjet): And again, it's a different perspective.
[3438.31] Bruce (xjet): Everyone's got something to add, a slightly different view.
[3440.31] Bruce (xjet): And it all comes up as a synergy.
[3443.31] Bruce (xjet): If you put it all together, it's greater than the sum of its parts.
[3446.31] Bruce (xjet): And so the only person I think is terrible is Bot Grinder.
[3450.31] Bruce (xjet): I'd never watch any of his stuff.
[3452.31] Jack: No, mate.
[3453.31] Jack: He's mad, isn't he?
[3455.31] Jack: He's great.
[3457.31] Jack: Yeah, because Andy disagreed with you on the Hubson Spyhawk or whatever it was.
[3462.31] Jack: That must have been a long time ago.
[3464.31] Jack: Yeah, because you hated it and he thought it was great.
[3467.31] Jack: So he won.
[3470.31] Jack: He won.
[3471.31] Jack: I'll just let you know for my buddy, Andy.
[3474.31] Bruce (xjet): Well, that's a great thing.
[3475.31] Bruce (xjet): When I do a review, I always say, look, go and watch other reviews.
[3477.31] Bruce (xjet): I'm just one point of view.
[3478.31] Bruce (xjet): And also you get the reviewer's curse thing.
[3480.31] Bruce (xjet): I don't know if you've noticed it.
[3481.31] Bruce (xjet): But if something is going to be broken or not work properly,
[3484.31] Bruce (xjet): I'm going to get that particular unit.
[3486.31] Bruce (xjet): That's going to come to me for whatever reason.
[3487.31] Bruce (xjet): It just happens.
[3488.31] Bruce (xjet): So you always make the point.
[3490.31] Bruce (xjet): I can only review what's in front of me.
[3492.31] Jack: Yeah.
[3493.31] Jack: You're like the bloke who buys a Snickers bar and there's no peanuts in it.
[3496.31] Jack: I couldn't believe it.
[3498.31] Jack: Some of the stuff, even the drone build guide,
[3504.31] Jack: you've got the old, what was it called?
[3507.31] Jack: The ZMR and whatnot.
[3509.31] Jack: And you pull open these motors and one of them's got a four mil shaft.
[3512.31] Jack: And you're just like, how the fuck do you do that?
[3518.31] Jack: Yeah, it's all part of the rich tapestry of the hobby.
[3521.31] Curry: Fantastic.
[3522.31] Curry: Yeah.
[3523.31] Curry: I got the reverse reviewers curse one time.
[3525.31] Curry: And I did a bunch of these little sort of toothpick and whoops.
[3529.31] Curry: And they were all using these crazy board, crazy BF4 boards.
[3533.31] Curry: And everybody kept saying mine blew up, mine blew up, mine blew up.
[3536.31] Curry: And I've had like 10 or 12 of them and they're all fine.
[3539.31] Curry: Absolutely perfect every time.
[3540.31] Curry: So I can only say my stuff's been fine,
[3543.31] Curry: but everything else normally I touch turns to poop.
[3546.31] Curry: Like every express LRS thing I've had to touch so far
[3550.31] Curry: is spending 99% of the video trying to fix all the weird issues
[3554.31] Curry: to make it work again and unbrick it so I can actually use it.
[3558.31] Bruce (xjet): And I'm also one of those guys like my original Taranis,
[3561.31] Bruce (xjet): which was one of the first off the product.
[3563.31] Bruce (xjet): Well, I think it was a pre-production.
[3564.31] Bruce (xjet): It's still running the original version of the software version,
[3567.31] Bruce (xjet): whatever it is.
[3568.31] Bruce (xjet): I've never updated it because it just still works every day.
[3572.31] Bruce (xjet): I just turned on it guys.
[3573.31] Bruce (xjet): Why would I want to change that?
[3574.31] Bruce (xjet): I mean, every time you update something,
[3575.31] Bruce (xjet): you always got the risk of a new bug or something coming along.
[3577.31] Bruce (xjet): And my demands of a radio system are not that great.
[3580.31] Bruce (xjet): I mean, I'm not flying, you know, massively complex models.
[3583.31] Bruce (xjet): And OpenTX has been perfectly reliable for me because people say,
[3586.31] Bruce (xjet): what are EdgeTX?
[3587.31] Bruce (xjet): Well, why would I want EdgeTX?
[3589.31] Bruce (xjet): One of the things that I hate most of all in the hobby is color
[3592.31] Bruce (xjet): touchscreens on transmitters.
[3594.31] Bruce (xjet): It was interesting when we were at the lake the other day,
[3596.31] Bruce (xjet): Bill's got the Flysky radio with a color touchscreen.
[3599.31] Bruce (xjet): He had to go and stand under a tree to change models
[3601.31] Bruce (xjet): because he couldn't see it in the sun.
[3603.31] Bruce (xjet): And I love just a good old monochrome LCD.
[3606.31] Bruce (xjet): I mean, without a touchscreen, it's so quick and simple to use.
[3609.31] Bruce (xjet): You can use it in blazing sunlight.
[3610.31] Bruce (xjet): If it's backlit, you can use it at night.
[3612.31] Bruce (xjet): But these color screens, you get out in the bright New Zealand sun,
[3615.31] Bruce (xjet): you just can't see the damn things.
[3616.31] Bruce (xjet): You've got to create shade and so forth.
[3618.31] Bruce (xjet): And it's fantastic, all these features.
[3621.31] Bruce (xjet): But I'm just a pragmatist.
[3622.31] Bruce (xjet): I just wanted to do the basic job, control my model,
[3625.31] Bruce (xjet): and let me do basic changes.
[3626.31] Bruce (xjet): I don't need all that extra complication because it's interesting.
[3630.31] Bruce (xjet): I think now we've all got a radio.
[3632.31] Bruce (xjet): And the radios we've got all work very well.
[3634.31] Bruce (xjet): But manufacturers are still trying to sell us products.
[3636.31] Bruce (xjet): They're adding features and bells and whistles
[3638.31] Bruce (xjet): and dangly bits and shiny bits you can polish.
[3640.31] Bruce (xjet): But we don't need those.
[3641.31] Bruce (xjet): In fact, my favorite radio at the moment is the little jumper tealight.
[3646.31] Bruce (xjet): It's small. It's convenient.
[3647.31] Bruce (xjet): It does everything I want.
[3648.31] Bruce (xjet): And with my shaky hands, it has really light sticks,
[3650.31] Bruce (xjet): which means my tremors are not so bad.
[3652.31] Bruce (xjet): And it's just a fantastic little radio.
[3654.31] Bruce (xjet): I've got the radio master, the bling one they did for me.
[3657.31] Bruce (xjet): Bill's using it at the moment because I don't need or want a big radio.
[3661.31] Bruce (xjet): I just want the little one.
[3662.31] Bruce (xjet): It works really well.
[3663.31] Bruce (xjet): So the manufacturers have got some really difficult times ahead.
[3666.31] Bruce (xjet): They've done such a great job to date.
[3668.31] Bruce (xjet): It's hard to improve on that.
[3670.31] Curry: Yeah, and the radio is not something you change, is it?
[3673.31] Curry: Because it's like, oh, I've got a radio and this works brilliantly.
[3676.31] Curry: Here's another new shiny one.
[3678.31] Curry: But it's only for like new people coming in that are going to buy it
[3680.31] Curry: because you're not going to like, well, I've got all my model memories here
[3683.31] Curry: and it seems to work fine.
[3684.31] Curry: And do I really need that extra switch or that extra little then?
[3688.31] Bruce (xjet): And how many of you people are coming in?
[3690.31] Bruce (xjet): We're not getting the new people that we were.
[3692.31] Jack: Yeah.
[3693.31] Jack: I bet Bot Grinder's got some medicine that will help your traumas and stuff.
[3697.31] Bruce (xjet): That's what people have suggested.
[3699.31] Bruce (xjet): But like, I don't have enough trouble with authorities at the moment.
[3702.31] Jack: It'd be amazing if he came over and it was like the X-Chat and Bot Grinder show.
[3707.31] Bruce (xjet): I'll tell you who I do miss.
[3709.31] Bruce (xjet): I'll tell you, of all the channels on YouTube, I miss the most, it's Spotra 50.
[3713.31] Bruce (xjet): I'm unfamiliar.
[3715.31] Bruce (xjet): No.
[3716.31] Bruce (xjet): You haven't seen Spotra 50?
[3717.31] Curry: No, how often was that?
[3718.31] Bruce (xjet): Those guys were great.
[3719.31] Bruce (xjet): I don't know.
[3720.31] Bruce (xjet): They were the best channeled ever, apart from Curricon and this one, to come out of the UK.
[3725.31] Curry: I feel they perhaps fall foul of the sexual harassment laws.
[3730.31] Curry: Oh, no.
[3731.31] Curry: Me too.
[3732.31] Curry: Yeah.
[3733.31] Curry: Oh, no.
[3734.31] Curry: But their flying was great fun and they never went a video without many crashes and lots
[3741.31] Curry: of laughs.
[3742.31] Curry: Again, you felt like you were part of the little squad when those guys were out and
[3746.31] Curry: being with them and just having a great laugh.
[3749.31] Curry: And when we get together, it's always like there will be crashes and that's the fun
[3754.31] Curry: part, isn't it?
[3755.31] Bruce (xjet): Yeah.
[3756.31] Bruce (xjet): And if you think Ron's clever with his models, Charlie, the chimp man, some of the stuff
[3759.31] Bruce (xjet): he built, unbelievable.
[3760.31] Bruce (xjet): And the fact that some of it actually flew was even and he could only turn left.
[3764.31] Curry: I get that.
[3766.31] Curry: I'm a terrible line of side fly.
[3767.31] Curry: Left is definitely easier than turning right.
[3769.31] Curry: It's funny.
[3770.31] Curry: Everyone prefers to turn left.
[3771.31] Curry: I don't know why that is.
[3772.31] Curry: It's because pushing your thumb inwards is easier than pulling outwards, I think.
[3779.31] Bruce (xjet): We just reverse your aileron theory.
[3781.31] Curry: I could do that.
[3782.31] Curry: Well, I didn't do so well when I used the AXN like that.
[3785.31] Bruce (xjet): I'm just like, I'm turning, but it keeps turning the wrong way.
[3788.31] Bruce (xjet): That's weird.
[3790.31] Bruce (xjet): Have you flown 3D fixed wing?
[3793.31] Bruce (xjet): No.
[3794.31] Bruce (xjet): That's a skill I recommend everybody tries because I see so many videos on YouTube where
[3799.31] Bruce (xjet): someone's got a model test flying it for the first time.
[3801.31] Bruce (xjet): The ailerons are reversed.
[3802.31] Bruce (xjet): They roll it inverted and panic and pull on full up elevator.
[3805.31] Bruce (xjet): And the results are obvious.
[3806.31] Bruce (xjet): But when you learn to fly 3D, you disassociate your controls from up and down and like your
[3812.31] Bruce (xjet): elevator is either towards the canopy or towards the wheels.
[3814.31] Bruce (xjet): So a couple of very few occasions that I have test flying a model with the ailerons reversed,
[3819.31] Bruce (xjet): I haven't crashed it because when I've rolled it inverted, I've pushed in down elevator
[3823.31] Bruce (xjet): naturally towards the wheels and it becomes an instinctive thing.
[3826.31] Bruce (xjet): You don't think about it.
[3827.31] Bruce (xjet): So you avoid that sort of sudden smashing to the ground.
[3829.31] Bruce (xjet): And it saved a couple of my models when I've had the ailerons reversed because someone
[3833.31] Bruce (xjet): hasn't pre-flied with them properly.
[3834.31] Bruce (xjet): Not me, but someone else hasn't.
[3835.31] Jack: Right, guys, that is all we've got time for.
[3838.31] Jack: You've been listening to Let's Throw Now.
[3840.31] Jack: What you may have heard may or may not be true.
[3843.31] Jack: And it's probably a work of fiction.
[3845.31] Jack: Anything said that may have harmed you or hurt your little statewide feelings was meant in jest.
[3851.31] Jack: And we can only apologize on behalf of the people on the show.
[3855.31] Jack: You've been joined by everyone's favorite Curry Kitten.
[3858.31] Jack: Goodbye.
[3859.31] Jack: Our biggest guest so far.
[3862.31] Jack: I've been brought into my fly.
[3868.39] Jack: And you've been listening to this crock of shit and it's called Let's Throw Now.
[3872.39] Jack: Thank you to all our patrons.
[3875.39] Jack: Good night.