=== Let's Drone Out — Episode 494 === Title: LDO 494 - with Will O'Donnell Recorded: 2025-02-13 Hosts: Stephen "Belrik" Howell, Andrew "Frank" Hyams, Jack "Brightontillifly" Nash, Wayne "CurryKitten" Andrews Guest(s): David Powell, Will O'Donnell Total audience: 968 Platforms: YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHzV2T9J0Qw); SoundCloud (http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/2034638720-letsdroneout-ldo-494-with-will-odonnell.mp3) ===================================== Check out Will's website here willodonnell.com [0.0] Jack: Hello, and you're listening to Let's Drone Out, a special thank you to our lovely patrons [6.28] Jack: that help donate so that we can pay the editor to remove the swear words and silly things [11.36] Jack: we say. [13.0] Jack: Massive thank you to… [14.4] Jack: Carlos Campos! [16.0] Jack: Art Faulkner. [17.84] Frank: Sam Dahmer. [19.68] Frank: On with the show. [20.68] Jack: Hello and welcome, you're listening to Let's Drone Out, today's a Thursday, we're live, [58.06] Jack: we've got most of the crew, and we've got some stragglers with us. [63.46] Jack: You are joined by everyone's favourite, Curry Kitten. [67.02] Jack: Hello. [68.3] Jack: The man with the moustache, Stephen. [70.58] Jack: Eveniel. [71.58] Jack: Our Lord, Master and Lion Tamer, Andrew slash Frank, with a sexy new voice. [77.9] Jack: Hello. [78.9] Jack: He's available, ladies, he's available. [82.5] Jack: On Grindr and Tinder, maybe, who knows. [88.42] Jack: The reason why our fantastic, wonderful guest is here, a true friend of the show, Mr David [95.62] Jack: Powell. [96.62] Jack: Hello. [97.62] Jack: And our wonderful guest tonight is Will O'Donnell. [104.02] UNKNOWN: Hello. [105.02] Jack: Hello. [106.02] Jack: So, you're director, DP… [109.02] Jack: Will, why don't you… [110.02] Jack: He's extraordinary. [111.02] Jack: Let's know who you are. [112.02] Jack: Yeah. [114.3] Will O'Donnell: Yeah, I guess a little bit of everything. [123.5] Will O'Donnell: I was the first person in the US to win a Primetime Emmy Award for my drone piloting [132.74] Will O'Donnell: for the television, which is awesome, that happened back in 2019. [137.06] Will O'Donnell: I am also a director, an actor, a former NASA test pilot for a drone program a couple [144.74] Will O'Donnell: of years back. [145.74] Will O'Donnell: Kind of a little bit of everything, a military veteran of two wars, specific to drone stuff. [152.94] Will O'Donnell: But yeah, I mean, I guess a little bit of everything. [155.62] Will O'Donnell: And a food aficionado. [158.22] Jack: A lot of careers, yeah. [161.1] Jack: What a lesson. [163.1] Jack: After he said all that, part of me is wondering, looking at the rest of us, being like, is [167.5] Jack: one of us dying? [168.5] Jack: Is one of us made to make a wish? [171.5] Jack: How do you go from that to talking to us? [175.1] Will O'Donnell: Yeah, yeah, I mean, happenstance, we're ending to David. [183.26] Will O'Donnell: Life takes you in many directions, so pleasure to be here though, guys. [188.1] Will O'Donnell: You know, seriously. [189.1] Will O'Donnell: Thanks for your time. [191.1] Will O'Donnell: Ultimately, you know, I've been in the drone industry for over a decade now, in general. [199.34] Will O'Donnell: Military time, well over a decade, but you guys, what you're doing is really continuing [206.18] Will O'Donnell: to push that industry. [207.18] Will O'Donnell: And that's exactly what needs to happen. [209.18] Will O'Donnell: I mean, the industry is still in its early days. [212.38] Will O'Donnell: I mean, people still don't even realize the true potentials of what drones in general [218.7] Will O'Donnell: can do once regulations start really, truly opening up and technology continues to improve. [224.1] Stephen: In many ways, the kind of cost and sensitivity of military budgets doesn't always encourage [228.86] Stephen: a ton of innovation, because there's that big old margin in there to just get it done [233.42] Stephen: with whatever happens to be kicking around, even if it's not something that your average [237.82] Stephen: hobbyist could afford, right? [239.42] Will O'Donnell: Yeah, you know, I think that's the big thing too, is, you know, as sad as it is, you know, [246.34] Will O'Donnell: I don't encourage wars, you know, in fact, you know, post military days, I try to be [252.14] Will O'Donnell: very docile and kind of shy away from stuff like that. [256.9] Will O'Donnell: But what does come out of war in general is innovation. [260.38] Will O'Donnell: And you know, every war over the past kind of hundred years, you've seen a technology [264.9] Will O'Donnell: shift, you've seen a medical shift. [267.42] Will O'Donnell: And what did come out of what we classify as the war on terror is, is the technology [272.42] Will O'Donnell: of unmanned systems. [273.74] Will O'Donnell: And, you know, and as that trickles into the commercial world, we are starting to see some [278.42] Will O'Donnell: of those benefits a little bit more as as terrible as that is, you know, we're seeing [282.82] Will O'Donnell: more cost effective solutions to other problems. [287.26] Stephen: Yeah, we've seen stuff walk from the consumer world and kind of hop over the fence as well, [291.5] Stephen: haven't we? When we are looking at the immense cost of things like guided missiles, all [297.14] Stephen: of a sudden, people realizing that a couple of hundred dollars will put together a drone [302.86] Stephen: with a camera on and you can do whatever you want with it, whether it's going and taking [306.62] Stephen: some beautiful nature documentaries or acrobatic maneuvers or something else. [312.06] Will O'Donnell: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and as technology continues to get smaller and that, you know, [316.7] Will O'Donnell: I think that's the big thing with the commercial sector of drones that we saw is things just [321.82] Will O'Donnell: got smaller and as things got smaller, it allowed us I mean, the original we were running [327.5] Will O'Donnell: LiDAR sensors and I don't want to get off on a tangent, but we were running that once [331.26] Will O'Donnell: they got smaller, small enough, we were able to put them on drones. [334.74] Will O'Donnell: But before they used to have to be carried on, you know, see one thirds, you know, so, [339.14] Will O'Donnell: you know, stuff like that is, you know, things got smaller and smaller. [344.34] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. Yeah. [346.62] Frank: So we're drawing sort of in your mind going into the military. [351.06] Frank: Was it like, oh, there's there's some good toys there. [353.58] Frank: I want to get my hands on them or did you just kind of get rushed into that into that [359.58] Will O'Donnell: world? Yeah, sort of, yeah, completely by having since I was a, I was kind of, it was not a hard [368.38] Will O'Donnell: sell to coerce me into being an intelligence analyst. You know, I've always been big on just [374.7] Will O'Donnell: information and, you know, it's really helped me in all my other aspects. But yeah, I mean, it's [379.38] Will O'Donnell: just getting thrust into the intelligence world. And then all of a sudden, next thing you know, [384.3] Will O'Donnell: I'm working with, you know, the predator, the reaper, the global hawk, like all these different [388.82] Will O'Donnell: man systems and going just, wow, we have that capability. Oh, wow. You know, and this is the [393.34] Will O'Donnell: early days of it, you know, when, you know, not a lot of people even really knew much about it and [397.3] Will O'Donnell: going, oh my God, this thing can fly for 20 plus hours. And it's just in the air. I mean, you know, [403.18] Will O'Donnell: it really kind of just gave a different, you know, perspective on, you know, how we, we fight wars, [409.26] Will O'Donnell: you know, it's, you know, it was, you know, not to get too much into classified stuff because I [414.34] Will O'Donnell: can't, but, you know, it gave us a better understanding of kind of what we were dealing [418.86] Will O'Donnell: with. We had a more intimate approach into classifying of targets and being able to see them [426.22] Will O'Donnell: and understand them. I mean, it did, what it did do is it really did cut down on a lot of collateral [431.18] Will O'Donnell: damage. I mean, which was great and more, you don't want to go after, you don't want to hurt [436.3] Will O'Donnell: civilians, you know, so it did, I was kind of pushed into it in that, in that sense. But you [441.62] Will O'Donnell: know, what it did do is it opened our eyes to kind of the technology when me and a bunch of, [446.5] Will O'Donnell: you know, veterans got out. We're like, well, what can we do with this skillset? You know, [451.3] Will O'Donnell: and, you know, it's a, it's a hard one. You know, I think a lot of military members, [455.98] Will O'Donnell: when they do get out of the military, they go, what can we do? You know, and it was like, [459.9] Will O'Donnell: oh, I could be a cable man, I guess. Not that there's anything wrong. It was just like, you know, [466.9] Will O'Donnell: I know electronics, I know technology and we're like, well, you know, we were really on the [472.54] Will O'Donnell: cutting edge of the whole world of drones. You know, we're, I'm talking about 2014 was right [481.58] Will O'Donnell: when in America where we were seeing that big shift, it was, you know, in the early days, [488.1] Will O'Donnell: you know, it was the triple three exemption. I don't know how much you have for American, [492.42] Will O'Donnell: of American audience, but we had the triple three exemption. It was part of the FAA reauthorization [498.26] Will O'Donnell: act, you know, kind of trying to commercialize drones. Cause the first thing that the federal [502.9] Will O'Donnell: aviation authority did was ban them. They don't, if they don't understand it, let's just ban it [508.5] Will O'Donnell: entirely. You know, and it was interesting. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's understandable. I mean, [517.86] Will O'Donnell: you know, it was, you know, if a bunch of people are just starting to get into the national [522.5] Will O'Donnell: airspace, I mean, the FAA's responsibility is just to keep people safe. Right. And so, you know, [527.94] Will O'Donnell: the first thing you got to do is pump the brakes on it and say, whoa, you know, relax. They did an [532.9] Will O'Donnell: interesting way. I mean, they allowed hobbyist drones to fly, but not commercial drones, which [536.66] Will O'Donnell: was an odd, you know, start to it because there were more hobbyist drones than there were commercial [541.94] Will O'Donnell: drone, you know, pilots back then. So, you know, we, they did set up six original test sites [549.22] Will O'Donnell: in the United States on, I was the program manager of the Nevada test site. [554.42] Will O'Donnell: So my, my role and responsibility at the time before I started my drone company, my role and [560.18] Will O'Donnell: responsibility at the time as a program manager was really to invite companies to come into Nevada. [565.7] Will O'Donnell: We had a vast amount of federal space, federal airspace that we could utilize to try to get test [572.1] Will O'Donnell: done. You know, and originally, I mean, I guess it was, it was kind of poorly executed because [578.1] Will O'Donnell: realistically there was not much money given to those six test sites to start off this, [583.22] Will O'Donnell: these programs. And they kind of said, Hey, here's a little bit, but you guys have to make your own [587.54] Will O'Donnell: money. And so it was a weird government program. So like, you know, so like we had to, you know, [593.14] Will O'Donnell: we had to invite companies to come in and say, Hey, you can come in and we'll allocate testing [598.82] Will O'Donnell: and we'll run all these tests for you. And you know, we'll oversee everything. We'll report it [603.22] Will O'Donnell: back to the FAA, but you have to pay us for it. And so like a lot of companies, you know, [608.9] Will O'Donnell: and I don't give one example, I believe it was, it was Amazon back then because they were looking at, [613.86] Will O'Donnell: you know, doing drone deliveries and we gave them prices. They shopped it around to six, [618.34] Will O'Donnell: the all six sites because different sites had different budgets based on the size of the state. [624.34] Will O'Donnell: And they just said, you know what, let's go to Canada and do it. And, you know, [629.14] Will O'Donnell: and the Canadian government was, was really just like, Oh yeah, sure. You know, we've got a ton of [633.22] Will O'Donnell: space. All you have to do is let us know when you're, where you're going to fly and you're, [638.42] Will O'Donnell: you're authorized full scope to do it on your own. And so, you know, we did see a lot of that happen. [645.22] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, there's, there's tons of forest, there's tons of open space, [649.22] Will O'Donnell: a lot of, you know, smaller population, and they just packed up and moved, moved there [654.02] Will O'Donnell: instead of having to pay for this testing. So, you know, we did that for, for years, [659.54] Will O'Donnell: mean a bunch of, you know, our whole group. And it was, it was great. [664.98] David Powell: How many times were you reported for UFO sightings? [672.34] Will O'Donnell: I think that the test range is a little bit further north. They get, they get the bulk of their, [678.1] Will O'Donnell: you know, their, you know, UFO sightings. So [683.86] Jack: it's kind of legal there. So they're probably like, yeah, that's a big Eagle. [693.54] Curry: Retrievers of America. [695.14] Curry: Just come back to what you're saying about flying the military Jones. If it's not classified, [699.62] Curry: the nerd in me wants to know if you're piloting things from thousands of miles away, presumably [704.9] Curry: the military have their own satellites. They can just beam you back from, [708.1] Curry: what is your control latency like when you're flying something that far away? [712.66] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. So the control latency is a, it's a couple seconds. So most of the time for takeoffs and [718.66] Will O'Donnell: landings, they'll actually have a local pilot in country to where they're, wherever they're [723.54] Will O'Donnell: taking off from. So for instance, let's just use Afghanistan as the, as the, we would actually [730.42] Will O'Donnell: deploy members out. That would be their whole responsibility was takeoffs and landings. That's [736.42] Will O'Donnell: all they did. So they would, you know, they would come in and they usually you'd have a block of a [741.46] Will O'Donnell: bunch of different preds taking off within minutes of each other. Cause you always had to balance [745.86] Will O'Donnell: that with the actual temperature of the country you're in as well, based upon obviously runway [750.26] Will O'Donnell: length and, you know, just kind of heat index and, you know, uh, altitude density or density altitude. [756.98] Will O'Donnell: So you, you know, plan, plan it for morning takeoffs. The pilot would come in and he would [762.58] Will O'Donnell: just launch. And as soon as they, they launched and they had good satellite uplink, they would [767.54] Will O'Donnell: hand it over to somebody overseas, usually in, you know, Nevada, um, at preach air force spaces [773.22] Will O'Donnell: where one of the big locations are. It also had like cannon air force base. Um, and they, they [777.78] Will O'Donnell: would do all the remote operations from small kind of just trailers, uh, set up. And then when it was [784.02] Will O'Donnell: time for, for landings, again, they would just do a positive handoff to a local pilot on the ground [789.22] Will O'Donnell: and they'd be able to have that immediate takeover, um, you know, and be able to, to land it because [794.5] Will O'Donnell: you did have a couple of seconds. So obviously the crucial times, takeoffs and landings, [798.74] David Powell: everything else was done remotely. Did anyone do any tricks, but any loops, arrows? [807.38] Stephen: You're telling me no one did a barrel roll down the runway just for, just for a laugh. [812.02] Will O'Donnell: Now, you know, the thing is with the predators, for instance, they don't have [816.58] Will O'Donnell: much like, you know, great maneuverability, right? I mean, it's, it's a propeller. You know, [822.66] Will O'Donnell: it's propeller driven. And same thing with the Reaper. It's turbo propped. Um, but yeah, I mean, [828.42] Will O'Donnell: it's, uh, you know, sometimes, I mean, it didn't happen often, but yeah, I mean, you would have [833.46] Will O'Donnell: occasional situations and it was, um, where you'd be on a target and you needed to stay on that [839.38] Will O'Donnell: target. And sometimes there was no backfill. And I've seen these predators just fly until [845.46] Stephen: they run out of gas. Um, then you hit the big boom button before someone grabs it off the ground. [853.14] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, usually, yeah, it would get destroyed, but you know, that's the, [857.3] Will O'Donnell: well, I mean, it would get destroyed all the time, but, uh, when it, when it crashed, [861.14] Will O'Donnell: not usually, but yeah, I mean, that was one of those, like, if you're, if your target was such [865.3] Will O'Donnell: a high value individual that you were following or trying to stay with, it would get out. I mean, [870.42] Will O'Donnell: you know, it was, uh, it was a costly, uh, sacrifice. I mean, you're talking about in [875.14] Will O'Donnell: the millions, obviously, uh, somebody very high up the chain, how to make those calls and, uh, [880.82] Stephen: go, Hey, we're on this target. Do you ever see anything, uh, running, uh, [887.14] Stephen: solar out there as well, rather than trying to rely on, uh, you know, [891.94] Will O'Donnell: on board fuel supplies? No, I think it just, it ends up coming down to, [896.82] Will O'Donnell: you know, diminishing returns for, you know, I, I know some of the, the more, [901.14] Will O'Donnell: the newer solar panels mixed with like the, the ultra wide wings. They do have, uh, I've seen [906.74] Will O'Donnell: those, but not when I was in, um, kind of that's, that's come along years after, but yeah. So, [912.18] Will O'Donnell: I mean, I did, you know, obviously any other questions on the military side? Not for me. [918.76] Stephen: Sounds fascinating. So what came after them? What was the transition like? [923.24] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. So I mean, that's, that's when I was the program manager of that test range. [927.08] Will O'Donnell: And you know, we did that for, for a couple of years and you know, it's just, uh, ultimately [931.64] Will O'Donnell: what we saw is the industry almost moved faster outside of those six test sites than it did at [939.88] Will O'Donnell: the federal level. Um, you know, regulations started to change when, because before, [945.4] Will O'Donnell: so section three, three, three under 14 CFR, which is the code of federal regulation, um, [951.0] Will O'Donnell: section three through three was the thing that banned drone commercial drone use. Right. [955.24] Will O'Donnell: So in order to fly commercially, you had to get what was called a triple three exemption. So [960.76] Will O'Donnell: it basically said you were exempt from this specific law in the United States. Right. [967.32] Will O'Donnell: And there was, you know, specialized rulings. You had to be a, at least a, uh, a private pilot. [973.8] Will O'Donnell: You had to have all these, you know, specialties. This is before, you know, part one zero seven. [980.28] Will O'Donnell: That went for a while. But the problem is, is to get a triple three exemption with the [983.64] Will O'Donnell: FAA, it was at least an eight to 12 month wait process. They say, Hey, we'll, we'll handle your [989.88] Will O'Donnell: requests within 90 days. Not once did I ever see that go through in 90 days. Um, but, you know, [996.92] Will O'Donnell: when we made that transition and me and a bunch of, you know, the guys from this, [1001.4] Will O'Donnell: this test range, we left and we said, Hey, we're just going to start our own company because we [1005.48] Will O'Donnell: saw the writing on the wall of what we can do in the commercial drone world and where it's going. [1011.08] Will O'Donnell: And you know, some of the ideas that, you know, what you can do in, in the, you know, [1015.56] Will O'Donnell: in, in film and TV and what you can do in all different sectors. So we, we started our own [1020.6] Will O'Donnell: company and we had to start off with that triple three exemption. And it was, it was a slow process. [1026.44] Will O'Donnell: I mean, from the time that we started our company to the time that we actually got our exemption [1031.16] Will O'Donnell: was an eight month wait. So a lot of times we had to go and hire pilots that already had exemptions [1036.68] Will O'Donnell: partner with companies that had these exemptions. Eventually we made that the FAA kind of made that [1042.28] Will O'Donnell: switch to part one zero seven. If you guys are familiar with that on the American side. Yeah. [1046.76] Will O'Donnell: And that really opened things up. Uh, and, and really from that point that the industry just [1052.68] Will O'Donnell: exploded, um, because originally in the, in Hollywood and in film TV world, um, there were [1058.84] Will O'Donnell: only about eight to 10 companies that were kind of vetted by Hollywood to do film and TV work, [1065.56] Will O'Donnell: um, under the triple three exemption. And that was just because of, you know, insurance and they [1069.56] Will O'Donnell: kind of, you know, all, you know, all those reasons. Um, but when one, when part one of seven came out, [1075.0] Will O'Donnell: it really exploded. Um, the technology was catching up the, you know, the, the regulations [1080.52] Will O'Donnell: were starting to kind of move level with it. Um, and so we, we really, we, we made a big push. [1085.96] Will O'Donnell: We did, we did some stuff for, uh, for Disney back then, which was great. Um, going out there [1091.24] Will O'Donnell: and really introducing them to, you know, some of the drone work. Now in the early days of film work, [1097.08] Will O'Donnell: it was interesting because, you know, obviously everybody knows DJI, but at the time we first [1103.08] Will O'Donnell: got into it, it was the, you know, it was the Phantom two, maybe the Phantom three, and then [1109.24] Will O'Donnell: the inspire, right? The inspire one. So that was around that time, that timeframe, right? So even [1115.16] Will O'Donnell: though we had a DJI inspire, Hollywood didn't want that. They are so used to flying with their [1122.68] Will O'Donnell: larger cinema cameras like Aria Lexus and, you know, big rigs. Um, and, and so a lot of times, [1130.36] Will O'Donnell: especially as a cinematographer, they want to stick with the same camera. They, at the time, [1135.72] Will O'Donnell: they didn't want to, you know, do all their ground shots with an Aria Alexa. And then all of a sudden [1140.92] Will O'Donnell: have to deal with a DJI inspire. That's subpar at the time, you know, compared to what else [1146.92] Will O'Donnell: they're filming. So we were actually, our company was one of the first companies to actually fly [1152.36] Will O'Donnell: an Aria Lexa mini on a drone. Um, so at the time, you know, a lot of that kind of, uh, [1158.28] Stephen: wait, are we talking there for people who aren't up on the cameras? [1161.8] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. So, I mean, in, in total, um, this was on a, on a hexacopter. We, we weighed it. I can't tell [1168.76] Will O'Donnell: you the weight of the Aria Lexus. The biggest weight itself was the, was the actual camera [1173.88] Will O'Donnell: lenses. So we're the, the glass. Oh, so it depends. It's the answer. So give or take total weight [1181.48] Will O'Donnell: was about 53 to 54 pounds. Right? Because we had to stay under 55 by regulations. [1189.16] Will O'Donnell: So once that day, yeah. So, I mean, we're, yeah, it was a, it was a, it was a hexacopter that we [1197.08] Will O'Donnell: were using. It was, uh, an Alta at the time. Um, I think they're still around. So we were using an [1203.96] Stephen: Alta hexacopter and just under 30 kilos, like right up on that line. That's a big. Yeah. Yeah. [1213.64] Will O'Donnell: I mean, so with that, we were using, uh, uh, the, the gimbal, it was, uh, it was a movie gimbal at [1220.68] Will O'Donnell: the time. Cause the DJI Ronin's hadn't come out yet. So we're using a movie gimbal. Um, [1226.28] Will O'Donnell: the Oreo Lexa mini, uh, with, with the focus, focus pulling and all the, all the gear mechanisms [1232.44] Will O'Donnell: and everything you'd need for cinematography. Um, and I mean, at the time, I mean, we were, [1239.24] Will O'Donnell: it was a Frankenstein. I mean, it was the early, early days. How many operators do you have there? [1243.8] Stephen: Cause you got one person flying, got one person doing focus. You have another entire person just [1248.36] Stephen: doing the other camera functions. So that like a three person team, a four person team. Once that [1252.6] Will O'Donnell: things, yeah, yeah, usually about five or six, because we also have visual observers and it was [1257.96] Will O'Donnell: required to have visual observers at the time as well. Um, you know, under, under our exemptions. [1264.2] Will O'Donnell: So it was about a five or six man team, you know, and so you can see right there every time, [1269.24] Will O'Donnell: you know, when we're going out, I mean, that's what commanded a lot of those higher day rates [1274.04] Will O'Donnell: is because it's not just, you know, somebody out there with a DJI inspire and a two person crew, [1279.8] Will O'Donnell: you know, you're a five to six person crew with, you know, a massive system. Uh, we obviously, [1285.8] Will O'Donnell: we rented the Ari Alexa, um, you know, as most, most in Hollywood do is you, you know, you rent [1291.24] Will O'Donnell: your equipment in that sense, but we did own the, the Alta, we owned all of the transmission stuff. [1296.92] Will O'Donnell: We were using, uh, Teradex for transmission, um, you know, and so like, cause this was before [1304.04] Will O'Donnell: DJI had the transmitters for video transmission and stuff like that. Um, [1308.36] Will O'Donnell: we were, you know, depending on, you know, sometimes we were in the 900 megahertz for [1313.08] Will O'Donnell: command and control. Sometimes we were in 2.4 gigahertz for command and control. So, [1317.24] Will O'Donnell: I mean, we were all over the place and really kind of Frankenstein and stuff together. We were, [1321.72] Will O'Donnell: we were learning on the fly as well because nobody's ever done it. So we, you know, we didn't, [1327.32] Will O'Donnell: you know, we, we were willing to fly the Ari Alexa as well. [1332.92] Stephen: Do you go back and look at movies from that period? Because I've, I've seen [1338.2] Stephen: a bunch of movies. I've been checking out some kind of reprints of old movies recently. And it's [1342.92] Stephen: almost shocking to go back to the late nineties, early two thousands and see those big tracking [1348.68] Stephen: shots that are done on helicopters. And you're like, why is this? This isn't steady. What is this? [1353.72] Stephen: It's like, that's just a constant hum to the shot and they can't get rid of it at all. And then you [1359.88] Stephen: go after that period and all of a sudden it's just like dead on. It's just locked. And you have a [1368.12] Stephen: look at the cinema and you see that transition that you kind of brought to those big tracking [1373.0] Stephen: shots. You know, when someone's going past some skyscrapers or something and all of a sudden it's [1376.6] Stephen: just dead smooth and went from being wobble, wobble, wobble to just crystal smooth. [1383.4] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. I mean, unbelievable like shift in that kind of capability for, you know, [1388.04] Will O'Donnell: what we were bringing, you know, the, the grainy helicopter shots. And even when they got crisper, [1393.88] Will O'Donnell: still had that warble. And at a massive cost, I mean, you were talking, I mean, [1400.52] Will O'Donnell: like sometimes 15 grand an hour on a helicopter from the time the engine starts back at a, [1408.04] Will O'Donnell: you know, the helipad, not leaving like on site. Like you, you started paying that clearance. [1413.64] Stephen: They couldn't get as near to stuff. So you're, you're zooming in as well, which exacerbates [1417.64] Will O'Donnell: everything. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the safety aspect of that, um, on the helicopters is, [1423.72] Will O'Donnell: you know, we, we saw that firsthand with, uh, I believe it was a twilight zone, um, back, [1428.36] Will O'Donnell: you know, when they were filming that movie. Um, I mean, unfortunately, I mean, I think [1432.36] Will O'Donnell: both child actors passed because a helicopter crashed, um, because they just kept trying to [1436.76] Will O'Donnell: get lower and lower and the helicopter crashed. And what that did do is it really changed, [1441.0] Will O'Donnell: you know, aviation safety regulations when it came to filmmaking, um, because of some of the [1447.0] Will O'Donnell: stuff that they used to do in the eighties, um, it got safer, it got better. The helicopter had [1451.8] Will O'Donnell: a bigger standoff, but once we got smaller rigs, we could get a little bit closer and, [1457.24] Will O'Donnell: you know, obviously under regulations, we couldn't fly directly overhead, um, of people and stuff [1462.2] Will O'Donnell: like that. Uh, you know, but we, we were really kind of trailblazing the entertainment industry [1468.28] Will O'Donnell: for a long time. Um, then as technology improved, um, which was great, phenomenal, but it allowed [1476.12] Will O'Donnell: everybody to kind of flood into the market once kind of Hollywood made that shift and said, you [1480.84] Will O'Donnell: know what, you know, a DJI inspire to, um, you know, when they started, you know, bringing that [1486.52] Will O'Donnell: in and having interchangeable lenses, um, you know, it really did change the landscape again. [1492.44] Will O'Donnell: And, but what it, what it didn't do for us on a business standpoint is it drove the market down. [1497.24] Will O'Donnell: And so things that, you know, higher day rates that we were commanding that we built kind of [1501.48] Will O'Donnell: a structure on, uh, for our company, we had to completely re rethink everything. [1507.48] Frank: Instead of competing against a helicopter, you were competing against [1511.48] Frank: Bob down the road with his inspire to you, right? Yeah. And it was, and it was tough. It was, [1516.2] Will O'Donnell: it was a weird situation because, you know, we obviously, in order for us to build our company, [1521.72] Will O'Donnell: we, we did take investment money with a kind of rollout plan based upon what we knew at the time, [1527.24] Will O'Donnell: but what we knew at the time was constantly changing, constantly in flux. Um, and it was [1532.44] Will O'Donnell: really always, you know, we were always trying to have to be the best and, and always push the [1537.4] Will O'Donnell: industry. But, you know, all of a sudden you're right. Bob down the road who just bought a brand [1541.8] Will O'Donnell: new DJI inspire to, um, the 10 grand, a full kit, everything is now able to come in and go, [1548.76] Will O'Donnell: Hey, I'll do it for half the price. Uh, you know, and once Hollywood in general, [1553.56] Will O'Donnell: and I use that kind of big, big Hollywood term once they kind of said, you know what, [1557.56] Will O'Donnell: we're willing to make that, that leap into the smaller drones and, and allow that. So [1562.44] Will O'Donnell: we were in this weird transition or a period. Like we did stuff for the NFL, um, for a couple of [1567.72] Will O'Donnell: years. Uh, you know, many years back the NFL hired us and we, we had an inspire to, but we also had, [1574.36] Will O'Donnell: you know, some of our bigger rigs with, you know, kind of customized cameras. We, we created, um, [1580.28] Will O'Donnell: a fully zoomable block camera. We used a Sony block camera. Um, this was before that, you know, [1587.72] Will O'Donnell: zoomable cameras were kind of really done by other companies like DJI. We took a Sony block camera, [1595.48] Will O'Donnell: reworked some of the command links on that so that we could command it while it was in the air, [1600.12] Will O'Donnell: in the air, put it onto gimbals. And we kind of had some of the early zoomable cameras, um, you [1606.2] Stephen: know, are you putting your own assemblies on there or what was going on? You put your own server, [1612.04] Stephen: server assemblies on there or what kind of stuff? Yeah. So actually what we ended up doing is, uh, [1617.08] Will O'Donnell: so what the Sony block camera that we did, uh, it actually could be controlled by, uh, the Sony [1623.48] Will O'Donnell: length connection. It was that small Sony cable. And then we had our own miniature kind of raspberry [1631.32] Will O'Donnell: pie unit that would take the system and then it would convert it over. And then we would be able [1635.56] Will O'Donnell: to control it from the ground. So, and then all of a sudden the DJI comes out with this zoomable [1639.64] Will O'Donnell: camera. That's fully built into the system. And we're like, well, that was a lot of R and D that [1646.76] Will O'Donnell: is now wasted and gone, but you know, that's, that's the downsides to business ahead of everyone. [1654.12] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. You know, that's, that's the downside of innovation, right? You, you, you try to create [1658.44] Will O'Donnell: something and, and trailblaze an industry and then somebody will also come and do it later on. [1662.76] Will O'Donnell: So even though we were a couple of hundred grand into technology and, and, and parts and all the [1669.0] Will O'Donnell: stuff we're creating, all of a sudden, when you have a kit in a box that does the same exact stuff [1674.36] Will O'Donnell: for, you know, by DJI, a lot of people just went that route. So we had a, we were constantly trying [1680.52] Will O'Donnell: to re innovate, rethink how we were going to do things. Um, you know, we did stuff for, for the [1686.28] Will O'Donnell: NFL and when, when we did it, we had a choice. We can go in with our inspire too. Uh, and we could, [1691.96] Will O'Donnell: we could show and do that and probably have a great, or we could use our bigger rig. And we did [1695.96] Will O'Donnell: that. And it was, you know, at the time it was a, it was a tough call because we don't want to [1701.08] Will O'Donnell: always showcase to the customer how easy it is. Right. That's a business standpoint. Right. And [1706.28] Will O'Donnell: so like, you know, if, if you can do the same stuff as a restaurant can do at home, why would [1711.88] Will O'Donnell: you go out to a restaurant? You know, if you were just as good and better, right? So, you know, [1716.44] Will O'Donnell: ease of use, whatever, but like, so like a lot of times we would showcase kind of the more difficult [1721.24] Will O'Donnell: ways to do it. Um, and that was just, just to show almost not, not to deceive a customer, [1727.56] Will O'Donnell: but not to make it not look so easy when we're, you know, obviously we are the trained pilots. [1732.28] Will O'Donnell: A lot of our guys, yeah. And, and you know, sometimes we made that decision [1738.68] Will O'Donnell: wrongly. We could have probably done things a lot simpler and easier at a lower cost point. Um, [1745.48] Will O'Donnell: but at the same time, we've been on productions where somebody sees it and goes, Oh, what is that? [1750.52] Will O'Donnell: Oh, it's a DJI inspire, huh? And then next thing you know, the production is buying one for [1755.16] Will O'Donnell: themselves and, you know, it's a trade off. So, you know, we did a lot of stuff for TV. [1762.12] Will O'Donnell: We did, uh, some movies, we did the PGA, uh, masters, uh, back in, I think 2017, [1769.16] Will O'Donnell: 2018, we did the masters and we did a lot of their drone shots. Um, we did a whole bunch of [1775.24] Will O'Donnell: different entertainment. You know, obviously, as you can see behind me, I, I won that prime time [1778.84] Will O'Donnell: Emmy for, uh, the James Corden show. Um, it was the Celine Dion episode, all of the aerial [1786.12] Will O'Donnell: Bellagio fountain shots. They went into the Bellagio fountain. They sang my heart will go on [1791.08] Will O'Donnell: and I had to fly the drone throughout all the fountains and dodge the fountains and do all [1795.72] Will O'Donnell: that stuff. Um, and that's what I won the prime time Emmy for. Uh, also I, you know, I, I, I did [1802.04] Will O'Donnell: a lot of stuff at the Bellagio found. I was, because I was really good at dodging the water [1806.04] Stephen: streams. Once you've done it, once someone else wants to, Hey, Hey, well, yeah, I mean, [1811.8] Will O'Donnell: it is funny because, uh, if you guys ever saw the projected, um, when they did the game of [1817.48] Will O'Donnell: Thrones promo and they actually projected all like the dragons and stuff like that on the fountains, [1823.4] Will O'Donnell: all of the aerial shots for that, that was, that was me. I was actually one of the first pilots [1829.48] Will O'Donnell: in the U S also to get night flying capabilities on the Las Vegas strip. So why that's, you know, [1836.6] Will O'Donnell: important is, you know, it's, you know, sorry, I was reading the comment. [1844.2] David Powell: Maybe if you want oil means, I didn't fully see it. Um, what did it say? [1852.92] David Powell: Press the like button. [1860.44] Will O'Donnell: But yeah. So, uh, you know, so what was, what was really kind of, you know, [1864.68] Will O'Donnell: interesting about that back then is, you know, being able to fly on the Las Vegas strip, [1869.16] Will O'Donnell: which is class Bravo airspace. Um, it's like half a mile from McCarran airport. [1875.32] Will O'Donnell: It's at night. So like, you know, doing all that stuff and getting the authorization to do that. [1880.28] Will O'Donnell: Um, you know, me having those, those waivers at the time and the regulatory kind of hurdles [1885.88] Will O'Donnell: I went through allowed us to open up and do that game of Thrones promo. Uh, and then when [1891.4] Will O'Donnell: other companies came in and they wanted to do stuff on the strip on, on Las Vegas strip, [1896.12] Will O'Donnell: it was me that could do it. And so like, you know, a lot of stuff got funneled our way because of that, [1900.76] Will O'Donnell: um, you know, for smaller drones, but around that time, right after the Emmy, [1905.96] Will O'Donnell: we were making a big pivot into industrial inspection. Um, we saw the market kind of [1910.44] Will O'Donnell: starting to slide and we were like, you know, this is a really niche market on the industrial [1915.24] Will O'Donnell: inspection side because the barrier to entry, a lot of times was, was a lot more difficult, [1920.68] Will O'Donnell: you know, and that was kinda because we had, you know, thankfully we had a good team of investors [1926.04] Will O'Donnell: that came in. Um, we were able to get move into that sector, um, still utilize some of kind of, [1932.84] Will O'Donnell: you know, the higher end kind of capabilities. We, we shifted into a hyperspectral imagery, [1938.28] Will O'Donnell: multispectral imagery, uh, you know, into agricultural side. Uh, we were doing stuff [1943.24] Stephen: with Lidar. So, you know, because you were kind of enjoying the technology treadmill that you'd [1948.12] Stephen: been on for a few years there where you were innovating and you saw the big players come in [1952.2] Stephen: and you churn out the same thing to the mass market, innovate on something else, rinse and [1956.84] Stephen: repeat. And you, you saw that start to slow that made you want to go somewhere where there was [1963.08] Will O'Donnell: new ground to break again. Yeah. I mean, I think it just, it also came down to, [1968.84] Will O'Donnell: it was innovation, but also just trying to essentially run a business, right? You know, [1973.08] Will O'Donnell: when, when in the entertainment world, it became a race to the bottom, you know, and everybody [1978.76] Will O'Donnell: wanted to undercut each other's prices and, you know, things that, you know, we were, you know, [1984.44] Will O'Donnell: might've at one time, I mean, our day rate, um, you know, and I could talk about it now, [1989.4] Will O'Donnell: so I'm actually not part of the company anymore. I've pulled out some, I'm more of the acting [1994.36] Will O'Donnell: world. Um, but we were charging eight, eight grand a day as a day rate for filming, you know, [2000.12] Will O'Donnell: and then all of a sudden that price, you know, U S dollars, that price plummeted to about 1200 [2007.32] Will O'Donnell: U S dollars. And so, you know, when we're trying to build, you know, a plan to, you know, recap, [2013.96] Will O'Donnell: recoup some of that investment money and really kind of make sure that we're, you know, good, [2019.56] Will O'Donnell: good caretakers to this money that was given to us for an investment. We had to make a pivot. Um, [2025.48] Will O'Donnell: so we ended up, you know, making that big pivot into the industrial inspection side, [2029.48] Will O'Donnell: the oil and gas industry was, was huge. Um, in, in the United States, and I know it's a lot of places, [2036.6] Will O'Donnell: there are regulatory requirements to inspect oil and gas pipelines, um, you know, visually, [2042.68] Will O'Donnell: at least, um, in the United States, the department of transportation mandates, it's once every 21 [2047.96] Will O'Donnell: days, you have to inspect, uh, an oil pipeline just to make sure that it's not leaking. There's no [2053.16] Will O'Donnell: issues. Um, and so, you know, we were on, you know, one of our largest clients was shell oil [2060.36] Will O'Donnell: and we were out there utilizing drones to, you know, help to replace some of the assessments [2065.08] Will O'Donnell: that were flying. So they would usually have a Cessna that would just fly the pipeline couple [2068.92] Will O'Donnell: hundred miles of pipeline. And we were utilizing at, at first, um, you know, hexacopter is an [2076.04] Will O'Donnell: octocopter, um, standard drones, looking into some of the fixed wing options. Um, you know, [2081.64] Will O'Donnell: it was, it was a constant struggle because, you know, we looked at, uh, oh, awesome. I appreciate [2087.72] Will O'Donnell: you smashing that like button 10 times. Um, and you're right. They, they still do it with helicopter. [2094.28] Will O'Donnell: A lot of times with helicopters, um, Cessna's they're, they're out there doing man, man, [2098.76] Will O'Donnell: aviation week. We started looking into some fixed wing stuff, obviously fixed wing VTOLs, [2104.76] Will O'Donnell: um, you know, standard fixed wing, larger aircraft like Saxon, but we would need a runway for that, [2110.36] Will O'Donnell: like a small runway. Um, and you don't always have that out in the middle of nowhere. Um, [2115.24] Will O'Donnell: a lot of the pipelines are buried under private property. You know, they'll go in, they'll lease [2120.28] Will O'Donnell: the land, they'll bury a pipeline under somebody's private property. Um, with that requirement, [2124.76] Will O'Donnell: they still have to inspect it. So that's why they can't do it on foot, you know, because they're, [2128.92] Will O'Donnell: they'd be trouncing through hundreds of miles of people's yards. Um, so they, they, a lot of times [2134.28] Will O'Donnell: they'd use aircraft to do it. So we were helping to create a safer environment for that because [2141.4] Will O'Donnell: for instance, one of the big pipelines we did was in Western Pennsylvania, a very mountainous region [2146.52] Will O'Donnell: in Western Pennsylvania, America. And they actually had a lot of airplane crashes in the, [2152.04] Will O'Donnell: in the area because the planes would have to come in low. They'd have to do the inspection. And [2156.76] Will O'Donnell: sometimes they would actually, there were planes that would just crash into the side of the mountain. [2161.08] Will O'Donnell: Um, and you know, we were looking at safer options for that more cost effective as well. [2167.8] Will O'Donnell: Um, you know, some of the things we did in Texas with the oil and gas industry was also, uh, [2174.04] Will O'Donnell: OGI optical gas imaging. So that uses a fused kind of infrared camera, um, to be able to detect, [2182.04] Will O'Donnell: not only a leak, but also to, to, to sniff the, you know, the, the actual volume of gas. [2191.0] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, so, so really, I mean, the thing is what was really interesting [2196.04] Will O'Donnell: about it all is that, yeah, we became not only, you know, expert drone pilots, um, but we had to just [2203.32] Will O'Donnell: really expand into all of these different industries and, and become experts on everything, [2208.92] Will O'Donnell: you know, when it, because we had to walk into a meeting with oil execs that have been doing [2213.96] Will O'Donnell: this stuff for 30 years and going here is why you need to do it this way. Right. You know, [2219.24] Will O'Donnell: and let me tell you the safer ways to do it. And, you know, so, you know, a lot of the things we [2223.96] Will O'Donnell: were doing also was just, you know, we would come in and we would do it for free at first and say, [2230.12] Will O'Donnell: let us go and inspect your pipeline and show you why this is the better way to do it. Um, [2234.76] Will O'Donnell: you know, we had methane sniffers that would just, we'd be able to run along a full line. [2239.72] Will O'Donnell: And then we, when the aircraft would land, we'd be able to plug it into a computer and go [2243.96] Will O'Donnell: right here, here, here, and here is where we're looking at possible leaks. And this is your, [2248.6] Will O'Donnell: you know, parts per meter, kind of how much is actually leaking from the area because [2253.56] Will O'Donnell: that methane sniffer could detect it, sniff it and detect how much is actually leaking. [2259.08] Will O'Donnell: So like we were learning about all of these different sensors, optical gas images, infrared [2263.96] Will O'Donnell: sensors, thermals, you know, the differences between them or what you can do with, you know, [2268.92] Will O'Donnell: a methane sniffer. So like learning all of the different components of, you know, different [2274.44] Will O'Donnell: gases that it can detect versus what these pipelines are potentially, you know, exuding. [2281.72] Frank: This episode was recorded in front of a live online audience, downloaded and edited to make [2286.28] Frank: sense when it's played audio only, censored to please the iTunes people hosted on the internet, [2291.32] Frank: forwarded through to your podcast provider, downloaded, playing on your device and is now [2295.64] Frank: playing in your ears. All thanks to our Patreons. Consider joining them and you'll also get other [2301.16] Frank: online benefits. Find out more at patreon.com forward slash let's drone out. And how did this [2308.36] Stephen: affect the aircraft that you had? Because you've gone from having like a drone shot for a film crew, [2314.04] Stephen: you may be doing 20 minutes in the air and you're maybe a mile away at most. And all of a sudden, [2320.28] Stephen: you're like, yeah, I'm going to go 200 miles over the mountains and I'm going to see if we can [2324.92] Stephen: smell some methane. I mean, yeah, yeah. How did it change that? Yeah, so we we had to we were [2333.4] Will O'Donnell: constantly you know, we had we actually hired at the time to contract guys that worked for Lockheed [2340.84] Will O'Donnell: Martin by day. They worked for the skunk works program, which is like, no, no. If you guys know [2348.2] Will O'Donnell: what skunk works is, yeah, we hired two contractors that they're they would moonlight with us and [2357.72] Will O'Donnell: constantly be just looking for new technology, constantly looking to see what other people are [2362.76] Will O'Donnell: coming up with. Because, you know, we had a choice to is, you know, we talked about the idea of [2368.04] Will O'Donnell: manufacturing in house and seeing if we could, you know, we had some test runs as well. These [2374.2] Will O'Donnell: Lockheed guys were also helping, you know, kind of create a fixed wing in house as a possibility, [2381.48] Will O'Donnell: while at the same time looking at other capabilities, other drone companies. We [2386.76] Will O'Donnell: used a sky front perimeter for a little bit until and that that actually had like the world record [2393.4] Will O'Donnell: at the time for like longest rotary wing. And it was using a two stroke motor gas engine. [2400.52] Will O'Donnell: And so we had that we used one of those for a while. And then we ended up going with a Harris [2406.36] Will O'Donnell: Ariel, which is a Florida based company. Because that was also another thing is a lot of companies [2411.4] Will O'Donnell: we worked for, because of that kind of Chinese potential threat, we had to go with American made [2417.32] Will O'Donnell: drones. They had, you know, there was a lot of stuff that said can't be Chinese made any Chinese [2423.0] Will O'Donnell: components. And that wasn't a rule that we chose as a company. It was just like, you know, oil and [2427.88] Will O'Donnell: gas industry, you know, critical infrastructure, power lines, you know, power companies, we had to [2433.24] Will O'Donnell: go with, you know, non Chinese made technology. So we ended up Harris Ariel, another they make [2439.8] Will O'Donnell: hexacopters and octocopters out of out of Florida. We bought a couple of their systems. At first, [2447.64] Will O'Donnell: it was two stroke motor gas, you know, gas, gas oil mix. And then in the later kind of years, [2456.68] Will O'Donnell: we made a big pivot into a hydrogen fuel cell. And so the hydrogen fuel cell was was monumental. [2464.52] Will O'Donnell: You know, it, it ended up obviously, massively taking off a ton of weight from what we had to [2471.24] Will O'Donnell: carry. Because, you know, obviously, when you're looking at, you know, probably, I think we ran [2476.36] Will O'Donnell: like a five liter tank, but we could based upon we can't go over 55 pounds or 30 kilos. We couldn't [2485.0] Will O'Donnell: even fill it to the max. So we couldn't always have the max amount of fuel on board that was allowed [2493.08] Will O'Donnell: because we couldn't bust that maximum weight limit. Yeah. And so once you start adding in all [2501.56] Will O'Donnell: of the necessary safety features that you're that are needed for by the FAA. So when we started [2508.28] Will O'Donnell: getting into beyond visual line of sight flying, you know, we had to post to the, and that's a big [2513.96] Will O'Donnell: problem, I guess, I guess in the regulatory nature is they don't tell you what you need. They just [2519.08] Will O'Donnell: tell you, this is what you have to do. You figure it out. However you want, you know, they, they [2525.64] Will O'Donnell: don't say if you have a B then we'll tell you if it was good enough. Exactly. So a lot of times it [2531.24] Will O'Donnell: was, it was almost like throwing pasta at a wall and hoping it sticks, you know, it's just like, [2537.16] Will O'Donnell: Hey, is this good enough yet? And you know, we, we, we used to call it the shiny rock, [2542.12] Will O'Donnell: you know, cause the FAA would go, Hey, bring us a shiny rock. And we'd go, [2545.64] Will O'Donnell: is this shiny enough? And they'd go now, then we'd go, all right, is this shiny enough? No, not yet. [2551.72] Will O'Donnell: And so, you know, uh, you know, not to knock the FAA, but you know, I'm sure it's the same across [2558.36] Will O'Donnell: a lot of aviation places throughout the world is, you know, that we always joke to the FAA is not [2563.16] Will O'Donnell: happy until you're not happy. And I understand the reasoning for, I mean, air, air safety is [2571.8] Will O'Donnell: paramount, right? And you need to make sure that, you know, everyone's safe, but like there are [2577.4] Will O'Donnell: easier, better ways. I mean, you know, if we took a smaller drone and flew it beyond visual line of [2583.72] Will O'Donnell: sight, the safety aspect of that far outweighs our, you know, when we have to run a 55, 55 pound drone, [2594.52] Will O'Donnell: because we have to put all this extra safety on it, right? Now I could probably do the same job [2600.44] Will O'Donnell: with a two pounds piece of plastic and, you know, send it right. And it's gone and, you know, [2606.6] Will O'Donnell: it's got a 10 mile range and then it comes back and I go to the next location and send it again. [2611.56] Will O'Donnell: I could probably do it or even on a one way trip and have somebody on the other side to catch it, [2615.24] Will O'Donnell: you know, and just, you know, land the aircraft or fly it on an automated route. [2618.84] Will O'Donnell: And I could probably do that with a three to five pounds small piece of plastic. But once you, [2624.04] Will O'Donnell: but in order to meet those safety requirements and say, this is truly a safe drone to fly. [2630.2] Stephen: It's not just meeting the requirements. You've got to walk into a room full of businessmen, [2634.36] Stephen: oil and gas men, and you've got to look them in the eye and make them believe. [2639.56] Will O'Donnell: That's the case, right? Yeah, I mean, and they were a lot of times they were on board. It was [2645.16] Will O'Donnell: just trying to try and get it by the FAA and say, hey, like this is, you know, so like in the end, [2650.76] Will O'Donnell: I mean, one of the systems we used was trying to trying to remember drawing a blank on it. [2656.2] Will O'Donnell: Um, and it'll pop into my head in a minute, but it was a system that was, it was a 360 degree [2663.8] Will O'Donnell: look, right? So it ended up being five different cameras that we had to run all, all monochrome [2670.68] Will O'Donnell: cameras. And it would actually scan the airspace as we were flying. And if it detected an airplane [2677.88] Will O'Donnell: utilizing a predetermined kind of artificial intelligence algorithm of an airplane, it would [2685.0] Will O'Donnell: auto determine the altitude of the aircraft, the speed of the aircraft, its vector, and then [2691.32] Will O'Donnell: compute it with what our aircraft is doing in its flight mode. And it would make a determination as [2697.08] Will O'Donnell: to whether we had to, and it would do this all automated. So in case we lost command and control [2701.72] Will O'Donnell: link, that was the big, the big catch with the FAA is, you know, yeah, great. You might be able [2707.0] Will O'Donnell: to see an aircraft, but what if you lose C2, how would you be able to dodge that aircraft? [2711.4] Will O'Donnell: How would you be able to utilize that C and avoid and turn it into what, what we have, what's been [2717.96] Stephen: done. That wasn't enough. It had to be a visual recognition system. It had to be, yeah, it was, [2723.32] Will O'Donnell: it was, because we, we had, it would also look at ADS-B and be able to determine it. But then the [2730.12] Will O'Donnell: question by the FAA was, well, what are you going to do if it's a non-participatory aircraft? Because [2735.72] Will O'Donnell: there are, there's aircraft that is not, so there was, you know, so there was certain aircraft that [2746.2] Will O'Donnell: was non-participatory, uh, that didn't have to, that were not responsible for running ADS-B. So [2751.64] Will O'Donnell: then the FAA was like, well, how are you going to deal with non-participatory? And that was that, [2755.56] Will O'Donnell: you know, visual recognition utilizing a system. And then with that, all of a sudden we were like, [2763.0] Will O'Donnell: okay, well, this system can do it and it will auto go right into our, our autopilot. And even [2768.68] Will O'Donnell: if we lose C2, it'll still stop the aircraft, lower the aircraft a hundred feet. And you know, [2775.72] Will O'Donnell: even though we were flying at 400 feet, so no aircraft realistically should have been at our [2780.44] Will O'Donnell: altitude, but we still had to justify in case by some happenstance, there was an aircraft that was [2787.8] Will O'Donnell: non-participatory. So like, it was just like, that's the problem with weird false positives, [2792.84] Will O'Donnell: like really fat geese or something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you definitely did. I mean, [2797.88] Will O'Donnell: it was because the system was always learning. Uh, and you know, sometimes the way sun hits [2803.56] Will O'Donnell: certain things, we would get false positives. And so those are factors all of a sudden, [2808.68] Will O'Donnell: you know, you have to factor in is like, well, what if we are 45 miles out from our launch location [2816.28] Will O'Donnell: and we just continue to get false positives and that aircraft refuses to move. [2822.52] Will O'Donnell: Right. So eventually that aircraft will just run out of fuel. So, so plan for that. [2830.92] Stephen: Like have an off road vehicle and just shoot out there. [2834.92] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. So, I mean, those were, those are situations and we ended up making a move to a cellular and [2840.28] Will O'Donnell: that was, you know, we, we had cellular C2, uh, links. Um, and, you know, obviously we had, [2846.2] Will O'Donnell: there's other pieces that we would have alternate landing locations for route plans. So what we [2851.4] Will O'Donnell: ended up with was, uh, in the end, uh, was a 96 mile beyond visual line of sight waiver that we [2856.76] Will O'Donnell: could fly a full 96 miles away from, uh, you know, away from the launch location, uh, beyond visual [2864.68] Frank: fully beyond visual line of sight. Audio get cause asking, uh, have you used drones for, for [2872.44] Frank: with filming, not only for filming, but for special effects. So lighting or, or anything else [2877.64] Frank: that's not a camera, but with the on onset, I guess is the question there. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. [2885.56] Will O'Donnell: We've, uh, we've put different types of, of lighting onto the aircraft, um, to be able to [2892.28] Will O'Donnell: kind of top light things. Um, we've also created, you know, the look of, you know, a UFO. So, you [2900.44] Will O'Donnell: know, in the sky, so, you know, giant, you know, led lights around it. And then we were able to, [2906.2] Will O'Donnell: you know, kind of create that. So yeah, I mean, that, that was absolutely. We also did, uh, [2912.28] Will O'Donnell: for, we did arena football, which was, was really interesting. That was indoor, uh, American [2917.8] Will O'Donnell: football. Uh, so instead of like a hundred yard field for American football is a 50 yard indoor [2923.88] Will O'Donnell: arena football. And we kind of, we did come in, that was a little kind of hectic. Cause obviously, [2929.48] Will O'Donnell: as you guys know, inside no GPS, all manual flying, uh, and lots of like draft wind drafts [2937.32] Will O'Donnell: from the air conditioning units and stuff like that, that drone. So it was, it was very, you had [2940.92] Will O'Donnell: to be on the sticks. And we also brought the drone in and did a football drop from the drone. [2946.68] Will O'Donnell: So we had it connected on a string to a servo. The drone came in and we activated the servo and [2952.92] Will O'Donnell: it dropped the football at the 50 yard line and somebody caught it. So you know, we did, we did [2958.2] Will O'Donnell: a lot of, I mean, during the, during our many years of kind of different things and touching [2964.28] Will O'Donnell: on different markets, it was constantly like, Hey, can we do this? Yeah, of course we can. We'll [2968.52] Will O'Donnell: figure it out. Yeah. Can we do this? Yeah, of course we can. We'll figure it out. And, uh, [2972.28] David Powell: you know, we got into so many different drones to have sort of roughly overall for all your [2976.76] David Powell: different situations, like your indoor drones or outdoor drones, a bad weather drone. Yeah. [2982.92] Will O'Donnell: We had, uh, I mean, easily, I mean, probably 50 different kinds, um, that we were just, and a lot [2991.16] Will O'Donnell: of times too, it was just, it was just for, you know, new drone came out and this does it better [2996.52] Will O'Donnell: than the last one. And we have to just, we have to stay ahead. And that's the downside when you're [3002.84] Will O'Donnell: when you're trailblazing an industry, um, and a fast moving tech industry, you have to just [3009.24] Will O'Donnell: constantly, uh, any trouble with FAA and dropping things from drones. So thankfully [3015.64] Will O'Donnell: with the arena football, it was indoors. So the FAA has no say, so they can't, you know, [3025.72] Will O'Donnell: they can't do anything. So, uh, are they standing outside just waiting for you to fly out? It's [3030.76] Will O'Donnell: going to come on. I'm sure they were. Yeah. You know, it was interesting. Like if we did a, [3034.76] Will O'Donnell: we did a, an NFL football stadium, uh, if it was one of the dome stadiums, dome closed in doors, [3039.88] Will O'Donnell: dome open, we're back outdoors again. Um, yeah. Yeah. Once the dome opens, you're, you're in back [3048.04] Will O'Donnell: in airspace. Um, yeah. So what we, I mean, we, we did a hurricane response for hurricane Harvey down [3055.64] Will O'Donnell: in, uh, Houston. We were doing some of the search and rescue for the hurricane. Um, we were doing [3061.96] Will O'Donnell: power line inspections for them to make sure they can get power back on. Um, I mean, I could just, [3066.84] Frank: I mean, I know the time's flying by and I definitely like to hear about, uh, more about [3074.84] Frank: the hydrogen fuel cells. I mean, that's sort of a sort of a concept that's been mentioned in different [3080.76] Frank: places, but I've, I've never heard of anyone like actually properly using it for an actual job. [3087.4] Frank: Like that's, that's fascinating that you've sort of had your hands on that technology. [3091.56] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. Yeah. And actually it was that it was a British company that makes the hydrogen fuel cell. [3095.48] Will O'Donnell: I can get the name for it before you guys. Um, so it was a British company that made the hydrogen [3100.76] Will O'Donnell: fuel cell integrated with the Harris aerial pretty easily. Um, and powered everything, uh, [3107.72] Will O'Donnell: shell oil at the time we installed a hydrogen condenser station at our location where we would [3115.56] Will O'Donnell: kind of convene operations. We'd be able to fill our own hydrogen tanks. And again, [3120.52] Will O'Donnell: that's like one of those crazy things is like, you know, Hey, yeah, great, great technology. [3125.16] Will O'Donnell: How do we do it? Like, and you're constantly just having to learn things well outside the drone [3131.16] Will O'Donnell: stuff. So we're like, all right, well, how are we going to, you know, so we found a company that [3134.92] Will O'Donnell: we could ship hydrogen tanks to it first and they would have like a one week turnaround. They'd fill [3140.04] Will O'Donnell: them, send them back. And then we were like, okay, cool. This is great. But now what if we need to [3144.12] Will O'Donnell: like fill our own tanks? So we bought a $12,000 hydrogen station, um, to be able to fill our own [3151.8] Will O'Donnell: hydrogen things. And then we had to learn how to do it. We had to learn all the safety and get [3156.04] Will O'Donnell: certified because interestingly enough, uh, which I did not know until I went through the safety [3161.32] Will O'Donnell: course is that if you are lit on fire with hydrogen, you cannot put it out. And you can't [3169.4] David Powell: even see that you're on fire. That doesn't sound pleasant. The explosive range is between five and [3176.36] David Powell: 95% as well. And it is quite a large explosive range on that. Yeah, it leaks through metal as [3183.0] Stephen: well, doesn't it? It's one of those gases that can leak through a metal container. Yeah, it's, uh, [3187.96] Will O'Donnell: it's a really interesting, uh, kind of thing, but ultimately it's, uh, you know, [3192.84] Will O'Donnell: it ended up being a better option than, uh, things that were. So what was the runtime? So you're [3199.56] Stephen: running gasoline engines and everyone's like, Oh yeah, but you're well understood, highly optimized, [3204.68] Stephen: very efficient, weight for weight. What was like the runtime of running, uh, your gasoline power [3210.2] Will O'Donnell: plant versus the equivalent weight of hydrogen? Yeah. So, I mean, it really only netted us [3216.68] Will O'Donnell: probably about 45 extra minutes. So on a gas man, and that's only the, and the reason why [3223.08] Will O'Donnell: is that because of all, by the way, Iris automation is that visual acuity thing that I mentioned, [3227.96] Will O'Donnell: I told you to pop into my head. So Iris automation, if anybody's looking for that kind of visual [3233.96] Will O'Donnell: detection, but because of all of that extra stuff, all that extra gear, all that extra crap [3239.0] Will O'Donnell: that we had to just put onto the drone. Um, you know, if we didn't have all of that, [3244.6] Will O'Donnell: even on the gas two stroke motor, we would probably get it about a four hour flight time, [3249.4] Will O'Donnell: but we were limited to about an hour and 15 minutes. And then on the hydrogen fuel cell, [3254.68] Will O'Donnell: we were about a two hour flight time, uh, on the hydrogen fuel cell. Now, if we didn't have to have [3260.28] Will O'Donnell: all of that extra stuff, we would easily be able to push about six hours. Um, so it would have been [3265.4] Stephen: a monumental increase down to the proportion of your flight weight. That is fuel versus [3271.0] David Powell: every safety speed as well. When you're doing that roughly. [3277.24] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. And what was interesting though, is when we were running the gas, uh, the gas motor, um, [3282.76] Will O'Donnell: as we flew longer, obviously we're burning weight, which was great in that sense, because, [3289.88] Will O'Donnell: you know, we actually became more optimized and efficient, the longer flights, um, you know, [3295.32] Will O'Donnell: because we're not, we're not carrying as much weight, whereas on hydrogen, it doesn't matter. [3299.56] Will O'Donnell: Right. So like is even when you're, when you, I think they did the math and a full tank of [3306.76] Will O'Donnell: hydrogen actually is more efficient because of the lighter, lighter than air hydrogen, [3312.92] Will O'Donnell: not by much versus it is. Yeah. But what we found is that with a, with a full tank, it was a little [3322.04] Will O'Donnell: bit more efficient than with an empty tank versus the other way around is that the longer you flew [3327.16] Will O'Donnell: on a gas motor, it became more efficient that way. In my head, that's a bit like the voltage sag [3333.0] Frank: on a lipo. But, um, so, so what's, what's the sort of practicalities of that? So you've got your, [3339.88] Frank: your hydrogen tank that you've filled up with your condenser that you've spent $12,000 on. [3345.88] Frank: And then you strap that to your, your multirotor. And like in my head, you've got to like purge [3352.44] Frank: lines and things and like gases are awkward to deal with, right? Like is, is it just plug and play [3359.4] Frank: or do you have to like fiddle with it a lot to get it going? I will tell you it's, it's a lot, [3364.52] Will O'Donnell: a lot of checklists. Um, you know, so all our pilots, I mean, it was checklist, checklist after [3370.44] Will O'Donnell: checklist. And it was, it was purging lines. Um, on the hydrogen fuel cell, you have to recondition [3376.28] Will O'Donnell: the fuel cell every so many, you know, so I mean, every so many like hours. Um, there's a lot of [3382.36] Will O'Donnell: things. Um, you also had to send the hydrogen fuel cell back to the company for reconditioning as [3387.72] Will O'Donnell: well. So like you could do certain field test reconditionings, uh, so many hours and then [3393.48] Will O'Donnell: once they hit like 5,000 hours, you had to send it back to the company. Um, and then they would [3397.48] Will O'Donnell: do it in, in their shop. And it was the same thing even on our, on our gas motor as well. [3403.0] Will O'Donnell: We would have to send the entire gas motor back to Florida to get recondition. And that was every [3408.44] Will O'Donnell: 250 hours. Um, so, you know, when, you know, I think it was like, we would do, it was like once [3416.36] Will O'Donnell: a month. So we had three gas motors, uh, that we would keep in rotation. So like one would be gone, [3423.08] Will O'Donnell: one would be on the bird and one would be kind of as our backup. And so, you know, and the problem [3428.84] Will O'Donnell: is that these motors too, I mean, they're not manufactured by massive companies. Like they're [3436.92] Will O'Donnell: manufactured by us by small companies. Um, and like the weld joints would break because of just [3442.68] Will O'Donnell: a massive amount of pressure on, on the gas motor. So like sometimes we'd be out there, you know, [3448.36] Will O'Donnell: JB welding, uh, you know, exhaust systems. I mean, you know, you know, and you're, you're, [3457.8] Will O'Donnell: you're under constant pressure because you have, they have to get inspected, uh, these, [3462.52] Will O'Donnell: these pipelines once every 21 days. And if they bust that 21 day mark, that whole pipeline gets [3467.72] Will O'Donnell: shut down. Like they, they shut it down. So like we would do it every 14 days. And sometimes we [3474.28] Will O'Donnell: would go out there to do these inspections and, you know, one of our motors would be bad and we'd [3479.4] Will O'Donnell: have to send it off. And all of a sudden the backup's bad as well. And we're now on our third [3483.8] Will O'Donnell: one. And we're like, if this goes like, you know, so we would, a lot of times we'd be just, [3488.52] Will O'Donnell: just under the wire getting these inspections in before the mandate of where they would have to [3492.84] Will O'Donnell: shut it down. So, um, yeah, I mean, sorry, I've, I've been talking forever. What, what are the [3497.4] Frank: questions? This is fascinating. I mean, you, you have touched on so many sort of bleeding edge [3502.92] Frank: parts of, of the industry and the technology that it's, is, you know, we are in all, I think. [3509.96] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. Do you fly for fun? Yeah. Yeah, I still do. I I've got a, uh, I've got a Mavic three pro [3517.24] Will O'Donnell: sinner edition. Um, you know, that I still, I still fly. Um, I'll, I'll take it on trips with me, [3523.8] David Powell: um, on, on my website. What was that? I think I was on the receiving end of that. [3529.56] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. Yeah. You got to see some of it. Uh, some of my flying, uh, you know, and I'll take it on a [3534.6] Will O'Donnell: lot of, a lot of holidays with me and I'll do, I, I love still photography. Um, you know, that's, [3540.6] Will O'Donnell: I think the drone world, everyone's doing videos. It's cool. It's great. It's awesome. Uh, but like [3546.28] Will O'Donnell: for me, I just love that kind of that moment in time where your imagination can really kind of, [3552.52] Will O'Donnell: you take that still photo and let that kind of dictate your kind of emotions and imagination, [3559.56] Will O'Donnell: right? What was going on in this one moment in time. So I, I, you know, I do sell some of my, [3564.6] Will O'Donnell: my still photography on my website. Um, so it's will O'Donnell.com that has a whole bunch of my [3571.48] Will O'Donnell: like acting stuff as well. But if you go to like my artwork, you'll see some of my trips. I've [3576.36] Will O'Donnell: taken a photo at the Parthenon in Athens, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Um, you know, so I, you [3583.8] Will O'Donnell: know, yeah, you know, and I, I love doing it. You know, I just, I really do enjoy the, the still [3590.44] Will O'Donnell: photography side of it. And you know, the hot, you know, so I still do fly for drone, just to put a, [3595.48] Stephen: put a camera somewhere you can't reach. What was that? Do you use a drone just to put a camera [3601.56] Stephen: somewhere you can't reach them rather than necessarily flying a course? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, [3607.16] Will O'Donnell: you know, just, uh, you know, I mean, obviously things, things that I might need to see, I'll [3613.0] Will O'Donnell: even do it locally here. Like, you know, I was, uh, I, I did it years ago. Um, when my kids were [3619.32] Will O'Donnell: playing down at the park, um, I told them, I said, if you see a drone overhead, come home. Uh, so I [3625.32] Will O'Donnell: would sometimes fly the drone. I'd see the drone and I'd fly it over and I kind of make a lot of [3631.08] Will O'Donnell: noise. And they, that was my way to get my kids to come home. They knew they, you know, there was, [3639.16] Will O'Donnell: there was times that they would come in and they go, yeah, we saw the drone. I'm like, I wasn't, [3642.84] Will O'Donnell: I wasn't flying. We're going back out then. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, I do, I do enjoy, [3650.68] Will O'Donnell: I mean, for the most part, professionally I did, uh, in, in 2019 I'd made the big after Miami win. [3657.64] Will O'Donnell: Um, I started kind of getting into more of the acting side. So I do stuff in front of the camera. [3662.92] Will O'Donnell: Um, I've got, you know, I know you guys don't care cause it's not drone work, but I just, uh, [3669.64] Will O'Donnell: it's a, so I've got a picture that just, just came out a couple of months ago that I did with [3674.12] Will O'Donnell: James Franco. Um, so I did a small, smaller role. I did six scenes with James Franco, [3679.8] Will O'Donnell: just finished another feature film, uh, that's called cult night. That's supposed to be out, [3685.16] Will O'Donnell: uh, independent film on that one. And I've got a TV show on the peacock network or sky. Um, [3691.8] Will O'Donnell: what's that called? John Carpenter suburban screams. So the, uh, the director was John Carpenter, [3697.8] Will O'Donnell: which is the director of the Halloween series. Um, I played the lead role in episode two of that, [3702.36] Stephen: uh, TV series. So congratulations. John Carpenter suburban screen. [3710.04] Will O'Donnell: And then, uh, Hey, Joe is the movie with James Franco. If you guys know who that is, [3714.84] Will O'Donnell: he's the big American actor. He was in Spider-Man movies. [3722.52] Will O'Donnell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. So it was great. Great working with him. [3728.6] Will O'Donnell: You know, that was all in front of the camera though. So that's, that's really been my dream. [3732.44] Will O'Donnell: My whole life is to do is, is to act, but I just, I got derailed by the military and then [3739.64] Stephen: did the technology side. Sounds like you said you want a very interesting path. [3746.84] Will O'Donnell: It has been wonderful. I mean, uh, you know, I always tell people it's never too late to just [3750.68] Will O'Donnell: start over, you know, do whatever, you know, at any point in your life, I mean, just to go, [3755.08] Will O'Donnell: you know, this is the path I'm going to go. And you know, sometimes you have to juggle the old [3759.16] Will O'Donnell: life at the same time. Uh, you kind of do, do both until one can, you know, kind of diverge [3764.6] Will O'Donnell: into a path, but you know, I've, I've been fortunate. Like I said, I I've done, you know, [3769.96] Will O'Donnell: film work. I've done the industrial inspection. I was a NASA test pilot on the NASA TCL four, [3776.84] Will O'Donnell: which was NASA's test program, uh, to try to integrate drones into the national airspace. [3783.16] Will O'Donnell: So I did a whole summer flying drones for NASA doing beyond visual line of sight in major urban [3788.52] Will O'Donnell: areas. Uh, the whole goal was testing out newer technologies that will do airspace deconfliction [3795.48] Will O'Donnell: with multiple drones. Um, so they would actually, you would request an aerospace tunnel and then [3801.56] Will O'Donnell: that would be your tunnel for specific times. And it would constantly be talking to the NASA [3805.16] Will O'Donnell: computer. And then if another drone requested a tunnel that might've intersected with yours [3810.2] Will O'Donnell: at the same altitude, it would work airspace deconfliction to make sure you guys didn't [3814.04] Will O'Donnell: crash into each other. I did that for a whole summer. I did an FAA, I was an FAA test pilot [3819.32] Will O'Donnell: as well for a different summer for the UPP program. So yeah, it was, uh, it's, yeah, life [3824.76] David Powell: was just taking me on like quadcopter sort of multirotors or were they like planes as well. [3830.04] Will O'Donnell: Yep. It was, it was all, all multirotor. Um, cause ultimately the, the good news is, is like they, [3835.88] Will O'Donnell: it didn't really matter if it was fixed wing or multirotor as long as you stay, it was, [3840.52] Will O'Donnell: it was testing out the software that was tracking the system and making sure the deconfliction [3845.48] Will O'Donnell: happened. Now, obviously if a fixed wing, um, would have to go into a loiter pattern, um, [3850.84] Will O'Donnell: if it needed to. Um, but the, the ultimate test was can it stay within this airspace allocation [3856.6] Will O'Donnell: tunnel? And would it be able to, uh, like make sure it deconflicted with everything else? [3866.44] Jack: Right. Unfortunately, that is all we've got time for. Will, you've been amazing. [3873.08] Jack: To let thrown out a supported, uh, by all our lovely Patreons Frank, [3877.72] Jack: would you like to tell people what went wrong? [3882.76] Frank: No, if you want to know what went wrong, you can, you can listen to last week's episode, [3887.4] Frank: but, uh, if you want to continue listening to the audio only edited version of the podcast [3895.32] Frank: every weekend, dropping into your feeds, uh, like clockwork, then go to patreon.com forward slash [3901.8] Jack: catch thrown out. Uh, couldn't have said it better myself. Uh, yes. Thank you very much. [3910.04] Jack: You've been joined by Kerry kitten stepped away. The man with my star Steven. [3915.72] Jack: Good night, everyone. Uh, look, a Lord master and savior Andrew slash Frank, [3922.68] Jack: the, uh, supporting role, David Powell, [3925.88] Jack: but, and our wonderful guests for tonight. Willow Donald. [3932.28] Will O'Donnell: Appreciate it guys. And, uh, if anybody has any questions for me, that's any of your listeners, [3936.52] Will O'Donnell: uh, feel free. Hit me up on Instagram. I have no problem helping anybody out and [3941.32] Will O'Donnell: kind of point them in any of the stuff I've mentioned. I can give you guys links for as well. [3945.16] Jack: So I've been bright until I fly. Thank you. You've been listed. Let's show now. Good night. [3953.4] Jack: Bye. Thank you. Good night.