Is Darrell Issa being set up?

E-mails don’t count?

I the first hearing of Texas Equusearch vs FAA the judge ruled that the FAA doesn’t have the authority to regulate a model airplane used by non-for profit. Then the appellate court threw out the law suit saying “E-mails are not subject to judicial review”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lois Lerner’s attorney tried to use this as a legal precident.

So you want to get into the comercial unmanned business?

So you want to get into the unmanned industry

Well you can get a degree in robotics, photogrammetry or aerospace engineering, you can designing and build a UAS platform and try and market it, you could learn integration, you can learn to fly a drone and hold yourself out there and try and pick up some work or you could find the people who need the work done and contract UAS pilots regionally to do the work. The first thing I recommend is join RCAPA. That is where I go to find the UAS pilots to do the work I line up for domestic projects.

Litigation

I know an unmanned professional who has been doing a lot of work and he gets the government entities who contract him to go after the approvals and indemnify him. I would have whomever I am contracting to indemnify me in the event that the FAA tries to come after me. If they don’t then move on.

The right tools for the job

Gene Robinson has made me a believer of the flying wing system for search and rescue and firefighting. The ability to float on a thermal and shut the motor down and save battery is amazing. His data and image transmission and data storage from IPS/NexGen is remarkable and that is what makes his product stand out. When it comes to hover technology, I think there are a few but HoverFly seems to have a great product at a great price and then when it comes to long duration for persistent surveillance or regional connectivity, nobody beats CTJA/AirShip V2, V5 and V9 products. Then are capital needs and that is where Eagle Capital comes in.

Where the market is

Precision Agriculture

There are a lot of people focused on precision agriculture but if you aren’t already working in this industry, you need to focus on setting up for next year. Farmers want to see what their crop is doing at the beginning of the growing season and they want to focus on the challenged areas where the shoots are slow to come up, making sure they are getting the right amount of fertilizer and water.

Oil and Gas

Almost everyone is focused on pipeline security and there is going to be a big demand for that but are areas of exploration that UAS technology is applicable.

Firefighting and SAR

Gene Robinson has mastered the art of using his Spectra flying wing UAS for firefighting. I would contact the department of forestry of sugar cane growers and ask them if you can practice flying over the controlled burns they are conducting get the feel for floating on the thermals and when you get the hang of it, take the video to all of the fire departments in your area and let them know you are available to fly whenever they have a fire and learn the process for an emergency COA. Also let them know you are available for search and rescue (SAR).

Surveying

There is no season on surveying. When it comes to DOT applications you are probably going to have to either work with a university photogrammetry department or get very friendly with your state DOT. They are going to be anxious about the FAA regulations and safety but their real concern is going to be safety, cost and accuracy. You may have to do some free flying and I don’t mean “Untethered”. You may have to fly an area that has been contracted by a manned aircraft and fly it with your UAS and show the difference in accuracy and cost savings. You might want to reach out to some of the contractors who are collecting the data for DOTs and offer your services. The areas you can help them pick up more business is in architecture and 3D reconstruction. Contact GUTC and we will direct you to resources that can give you the advantages with these types of projects.

Surveillance

If you are willing to go into high risk areas and you have experience with military UAV piloting, I know several contractors who are looking for you. You may be able to get contracted by your local police or sheriff’s departments. They have the most leeway as far as authorization for UAS operations but they are doing this mostly in house. This is one of the only applications that getting paid is authorized because you would either be employed or contracted with a government entity (Until someone challenges the FAA in court again).

Every other application, you need to be contract or employed by a government agency, USDA, Fire Department, DHS, DOT, USGS, Forestry Department, college, university, a one of the armed services, a state, county or city branch of Government. Unless you are contracted by a property owner and then not as a UAS pilot but for the data and imagery you are collecting. GUTC has resources for data analysis for photogrammetry, spectral data, behavior analytics or change overlay.

Until the FAA figures out the their operational guidelines, you either pay an attorney to fight the FAA in court for each specific commercial application or follow these methods others have been using to stay under the radar of the FAA.  

 

GUTC comment of Texas Equusearch ruling

The appellate court ruling on Texas Equusearch

Before I get started I want everyone to understand that I am not an attorney and GUTC is not offering legal advice. I am outlining the situation as I see it. Friday the ruling came down that the cease and desist was not valid because the FAA did not issue the order properly. They sent an e-mail. The court stated that Texas Equusearch and Gene Robinson could use UAS for search and rescue as long as they followed the current guidelines issued by the FAA.

What are the current FAA guidelines?

In order for Texas Equusearch to be compliant with the current FAA guidelines Texas Equusearch and Gene Robinson would have to fly a FAA certified UAS airframe. Now that might lead you to believe that he must fly a Puma, Raven or Scan Eagle but the Colorado Mesa County Sheriff’s Department has received multiple COAs for their Tremble UX5 flying wing designed UAS. So does Gene Robinson have to abandon his Spectra flying wing UAS and adopt the UX5? When the FAA approved the LiveSky tethered quad-rotor they opened the door for every other tethered quad-rotor with the same capability to operate as a tethered device up to 149 feet. They might have to go to court but the judge is going allow it. This will be the same for Gene Robinson’s Spectra, if they authorize the UX5 they are going to have to authorize Gene’s Spectra or get sued. What is amazing is that Gene has been using the Spectra before any of the FAA restrictions and he probably has more flight time logged that any other UAS that has been FAA certified.

All of the law suits

I was feeling sorry for Brendan Schulman, I was thinking this one little law suit would open up the whole commercial unmanned industry, multiple billions of dollars of business and he would just get his little retainer from Texas Equusearch and Gene Robinson but now I am seeing that there is a winnable law suit for requiring a UAS pilot to be contracted by a government entity, another for requiring an FAA certified UAS, another for restricting commercial use on private property, another for restricting commercial authorized commercial use when authorized over public property, another for limiting commercial UAS operations for government entities to only high priced UAS systems used by the military, another to get authorization for jobs typically performed by manned aircraft where a pilot is making the decision on which technology to be used….etc.

So I no longer think Brendan needs my sympathy.  

Press Release – FAA Statement on Texas Equusearch UAS Court Decision

http://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=16674

Real-Estate marketing with Drones

Real-Estate marketing with Drones

I wish I still had my Real-Estate Broker’s license. Using some of the old proven strategies taught to me by the first Broker I hung my license with. I would call up Coldwell Banker Brokers agent’s listing and ask for permission to market their properties. I would gin up a flier of their listed property and the day of their open house I would talk door to door for three blocks in every direction and promote the open house and hand out the fliers with my contact number and e-mail. With those that I meet face to face I would hand them my business cards. Because I also brokered mortgages I would let them know if they were interested in putting and offer on the property I was promoting and that I could pre-qualify them.

No if I had a quad-rotor UAS/Drone I would create a blog with the MLS data for that specific property but I would also be ready to show some of my own listings with the aerial video from my quad-rotor. Then I would ask if the neighbor wanted a free aerial video of their home that I would send them a link of so they could post on their social media sites and if they decided they wanted to sell their house and they wanted to list with Coldwell Banker, they would be able to use the video I made for them but if any of their friends who see the panoramic video I create for them express interest in buying a property or selling their own, would they give me the referral? I would let them also know that I would promote their property with the video I create for them on my social media sites.

In the event I list and sell a property in that neighborhood prior to the Coldwell Banker listing I helped promote. I would make an offer for that agent to hang his license with me.

Technology's Effect on Real-Estate

Technology’s effect on Real-Estate

You are about to see a dramatic effect of technology on the Real-Estate market. I held my Real-Estate Broker’s license in California from six years and I was a licensed agent for six years before that. It is more than just finding buyers and sellers, the sellers what to get their houses sold fast and the buyers want to close quickly too, the agents want inventory and qualified buyers and they want broker support and the brokers to retain their agents.

Government intrusion

Recently the FAA has been cracking down on Realtors using off of the shelf UAS or Drones to capture aerial and 360 degree imagery of the properties they are selling. I don’t believe the FAA has jurisdiction over commerce but when a Realtor captures the aerial overhead and 360 imagery of the property using an off of the shelf product, legally sold to stream on her marketing web-site, that Real-Estate agent or broker is paid nothing to collect that imagery. She doesn’t get paid a dime unless the house gets sold and there isn’t even a line item on the HUD1 for the cost of advertising or for UAS services to collect this data. As long as the Realtor isn’t paying a hobbyist to do the flying for her she is not breaking any law even if there were a law restricting the commercial use of the technology but this doesn’t even constitute an infringement of the proposed FAA guidelines.

Free market backlash

So with Coldwell Banker restricting their Broker Associates and agents from using these effective resource to showcase their seller’s properties, why would a seller list with Coldwell Banker when they can use a competing Real-Estate Brokerage and for the same 6% they can have this added service to showcase their property? The agents can use it as a marketing tool and go door to door asking the neighbors if they would like a panoramic view of their property to post on their blog or social media web-sites. I’m sure this generates more sales when the home owner gets inquiries asking if their home is for sales. I think of the possible referrals for prospective sales that those home owners might know or how many Coldwell Banker agents who were using UAS/Drones to market in these ways will move on to other Brokers. I wonder will other brokerages promote their agent’s ability to exercise their free market rights to serve their clients to the best of their abilities. Will there be a surge in patriotic marketing, promoting the American dream of home ownership and property rights? I think somebody is going to feel like they walked across someone’s yard and felt that all familiar feeling of something dogs leave behind that stinks for allowing themselves to have the government dictate their business practices.

Coldwell Banker

Business models and artificial bearers

Business models to follow

There is a concern that the big UAS manufactures, Aerovironment, Insitu, BAE systems, Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin have undue influence on the FAA and giving them an unfair advantage. From the beginning I have wondered why the industry hasn’t adopted the strategy of the Japanese auto manufactures by saturating the market with low cost, low maintenance, high mileage vehicles and then once they have established a beachhead in the market come out with the higher cost, higher quality products i.e. from Toyota to Lexus, Datsun to Nissan. It appears that these established UAS manufactures have conspired with the FAA to force their high priced systems on to the market claiming because they have logged the most flight hours in combat. Look at how that worked with HUMVEE/Hummers? The market doesn’t care about combat flight hours. The investment advisors are promoting these established UAV Manufactures but they should be looking at the smart companies who have already modeled the process of the Japanese automakers and they are 3D Robotics and DJI.

These products are the perfect platforms to implement a business model Brett Gardener the director of ACADEMI’s unmanned program has been filling my ear with for a couple years now. He says “It’s going to be like the cell phone industry where they give you the cell phones and charge you for the service.” There are a number of cloud providers out there where the data can be streamed to these cloud services and analysts can download the data and do their analysis and find determine the actions needed based upon the information they glean from the imagery.

The benefit of UAS

Sure there are cost and safety benefits compared to manned aircraft but the technical benefit is the ability to slow down the imagery by the analyst sitting behind a laptop and find whatever is desired. The human eye, even with binoculars can’t deal with the movement. Gene Robinson’s Texas Equusearch is successful for this exact reason. There are hundreds of examples where he has been able to find bodies after search teams have walked past and flown over the exact areas where he went back and flown over the same area with his Spectra flying wing UAS. I really like this platform for firefighting too because of the ability to float on a thermal produced by the fire and save battery. That is a capability that is not practical with quad-rotor or from one of the UAS used by the military. It is a pusher design where the prop is in the back but he is hand launched which is an issue with most pusher design but Gene’s system knows when it is being launched and doesn’t start up until after the pilot throws it into the air.

Property rights

The news it all about the FAA restriction on unmanned aerial systems. These fly in the face of individual property rights but while studying for my real-estate broker’s license we were taught that individual property right go from the center of the earth to end of the atmosphere. The hobby restrictions are up to 400’ except in 5 miles from the path of established runways. Congress has mandated that commercial airways be open for unmanned operations. This is the law! Well the law for personal property rights is just as established. Almost three years ago I talked with Jim Williams the manager of the FAA’s unmanned program and he told me that the business owner had to be the operator of the unmanned system. I challenged him on that and then shortly after the restricted all commercial unmanned operations. The laws are already established, no matter what the FAA says that protect property owners to operate commercial equipment on their property and to contract professionals to operate equipment on their property. There are attorneys who are just waiting to take the FAA to task defending private property rights. The lines are being blurred for commercial unmanned operations for operating with authorization over private property and flying over public and private property without authorization. The model is already in place with the use of manned aircraft where the operator isn’t required to get permission from private owners or authorities governing public property. They don’t need any special permission to capture imagery or data over that private of public property.

Artificial barriers

There are plenty of examples from training flees and elephants by establishing bearers that they just get used to so those bearers are removed or now longer viable but the limits are still adhered to. This is what is happening with the restriction on the commercial use of unmanned aerial systems. Personal property right trump the FAA restrictions. They are going to challenge that but they haven’t take that to court because they know that they will lose. The mandate to open the airways by 2015 is law and they must do it. This means the same ability to fly over public and private property just like manned aircraft do now but if unmanned operations are conducted with expressed written permission by the property owner or government authority of the property of the operations are being conducted, it is authorized. Don’t take my word for it, I hear from precision agriculture UAS professionals where the FAA has turned their heads and countless news and TV stations who are using this technology right now.