Episode 4: Aerial Perspectives - From Helicopter Crash to Global Drone Operations
Guest: Chris Odom (Aerial Cinematographer & Wind Turbine Inspection Lead)
Host: Chris Tonn
Location: Rocket Drones Studio, Pensacola, Florida
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00:00:00 Chris Tonn: Welcome back to another podcast here of Aerial Perspectives. Today we're really excited to have another guest, one of our more higher profile ones, if I were to round them up—at least on our local Pensacola front. We've had a lot of cool Pensacola guests to say the least, but I'll give a little brief intro and we'll kick things off.
So today we're excited to welcome Chris Odom, a seasoned drone expert with over a decade of experience spanning aerial cinematography, industrial inspections, and power line projects. Starting his journey in 2013, Chris has worked as an aerial cinematographer on 18 feature films, countless commercials and TV shows, while also helping to establish a global network of over 100 drone pilots. This network now services 35 countries, delivering automated wind turbine inspections worldwide.
Driven by the motto "Never stop learning," Chris brings a wealth of knowledge and passion to the world of UAVs, and we're thrilled to hear his insights and stories today. With that, welcome Chris to the show.
00:01:05 Chris Odom: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.
00:01:07 Chris Tonn: Yeah, no, it's one of those—I know me and you have known each other for about a decade now in the local Pensacola scene. But I always get a little jealous, because I get to hear some of your travel stories from everything ranging from movies to live production shows. Think we even had one fun one in Barbados. You got to do like Victoria's Secret fashion show, St. Barts. I mean, just the sailing competitions, the list goes on and on. But tell me a little bit how it all got started.
00:01:39 Chris Odom: It's funny enough. My background is I was a commercial photographer, and I covered yachts, super yachts, and sailing. And the preferred vehicle choice is a helicopter. Well, I was in a helicopter accident in 2005—I think, or 2006—put a helicopter in the drink while I was on assignment.
And so I said, I should probably rethink this helicopter thing. It was at that time that in the civilian market, drones were just starting to kind of hit the civilian market. Dragonfly, I think, was the only one that was available. It was a Canadian company. I think they had a payload of like 800 grams or something.
And so just with me being involved with technology, I'm like, I need to keep my eye on this. So I just monitored the situation. And then flash forward to probably 2010, they finally started getting like real as far as payloads, and it still wasn't there on the professional imaging side of things, but it was starting to get there.
So my thought process was, this is where I need to be. This is the direction I need to go, but I don't know anything about it. So I decided then—because I could buy a platform. That's the other thing—at the time, you could spend about $100K and you could have a platform. But my thought is, being a professional, what if I'm on set and something breaks? Like, what's my backup? I can't afford to buy two of these things.
So I made a decision to just dive into the world. So I built my first machine in 2010 and learned a lot and continued building until I kind of got really established. And so my machines really started performing about 2012. So I built a heavy lift. That was the first—I was flying my machines in production. But that build in 2012 was the first one that was rock solid.
00:03:49 Chris Tonn: Yeah, yeah. And now was this—were we in GoPro chapter of payload? What was kind of your method?
00:03:56 Chris Odom: So let's see—the first one, if you remember the DJI Flame Wheel 550? So what I did though was I just used the power distribution board off of that—that's it. And I used the Wookong-M at that time too. But everything else was garbage on that aircraft, by the way.
So working with another friend of mine, we remanufactured or re-rigged, made like motor mounts out of Delrin and used converted the arms to carbon fiber, developed a two-axis gimbal for the camera—and all this stuff. And at the time, these were all separate systems.
So there was no video transmission system at the time. Well, that's not true. There was one that was really—I can't remember, Passport I think is the name of it—very buggy and limited range. But then you couldn't get the signal out of the camera. It would only accept 480. The transmission was a nightmare stuff.
So I was flying and taking images, trying to shoot video, hoping I got something that was usable. So that's where I started. The camera was an NEX-5 actually.
So this is also what's so interesting about the space. This was pre-GoPro, but it was also at the beginning of the shift in the imaging space where everyone was abandoning—well, not quite—but they were starting to leave behind DSLRs, and Sony was in their mirrorless and so the NEX line was introduced. So all these things happened all at once.
And so I was seeing the quality—and being familiar with Moore's Law—I just, you know, give it some time. Hold your breath. Just wait and keep an eye on the space. And that's what I did. So as the imaging equipment was getting lighter, the quality was going up. On the other side, the drones were getting more payloads, getting more flight time. They were starting to have integrated systems. And that's kind of what I made the decision to go on that path.
Interesting fact though, along that path—I got my machine dialed in and ready to go, and then they introduced the first Phantom. And that changed everything for everyone, including myself.
So that first Phantom—basically, that machine, that first machine that I built that was built off the Flame Wheel kit, cost me about $8,000 to build myself. That's not paying someone—that's just in parts to build it myself, all those systems.
Now, this Phantom that was $1,500—or I think it was $1,200 maybe when it came out—this platform did everything that mine did and better for a fraction of the cost.
And so I made the decision at that point then to move away from the DSLR/mirrorless payloads into—I was like, well, it's going to take a while for them to catch up. So I jumped from there straight up into heavy lift. And then I built from there. I built like a flat eight. I built a coax X8. I built a six—so six and eight and a coax.
00:07:24 Chris Tonn: So the one thing in this chapter that a lot of dronies nowadays won't really know about is—you had to triple-check before you started those props. Not just your drone components, but your camera. Like, if your camera was—
00:07:40 Chris Odom: Everything. Yeah. The thing—this is what, this is why the Phantom was so brilliant. We can leave aside the discussion about the payload with the GoPro, okay, but the fact that you can now have an integrated system that all worked together.
The drones that I was flying, you had five different subsystems, and all it took was one of them to fail for you not to be able to complete your mission. That's a lot of risk. Yeah, especially when you're a quote "professional" being paid to do a job, and you have to tell your client, "Yeah, I'm sorry we can't finish this." And they're like, "What do you mean?" Like, there's no excuse.
And that's in the high-pressure world of especially cinematography, feature film world—that's why you have redundancies. There's no excuse. And that world is high pressure because it's a lot of waiting, waiting, but then when they call you, it's go time. Period.
And then you've got 10 minutes to perform, and then they're on to the next thing. And in those 10 minutes, if you don't get what you want, then your reputation is ruined. "You don't know what you're doing. Why did we hire you? Why are you here?"
00:08:49 Chris Tonn: The pressure. No, it builds your character. It certainly defines you as a cool operator if you can handle these types of pressures. But what really, as you go down this rabbit hole that opened up even more doors for you—what was kind of beyond knowing your stuff and knowing some of this piloting? How did you find your way into some of these cool feature film environments? Was it the previous experience in the camera world, or was it something that "Hey, I can bring this new technology to my old connections"? What was kind of that path?
00:09:30 Chris Odom: It was—the world that I came from in commercial photography opened the door into these productions. So I had a foothold already with a previous client base, but that just got me into the conversation.
You really in that world—you have to prove yourself. You have to know the tech. And at that stage of the game in the industry, on the business side of things, a lot of people were being burned as well. We didn't have Part 107. We barely had Section 333 available. Actually, if anybody remembers those days, it was the Wild Wild West.
And if you're working on a commercial production, it's just like, "Oh, we heard you can fly a drone." Okay, but that's all they knew to ask. They just assumed that if you could fly a drone, or you had a drone available to fly, that you could actually produce what you needed to produce.
And so I actually made my reputation better by being a true solution. I was called into a lot of projects behind people who got the call and sold themselves as something they were not. And I had to come in to save the day several times.
And then once you get that reputation—I mean, in especially a business like cinematography, feature film, any sort of commercial imaging—your reputation is everything. And these people, these budgets and their reputations are on the line, so the people that they hire reflect on them. So they have to know they can trust you.
But once that trust is established, then you're the only person they call. Because they're like, "Well, I worked with this guy. He's vetted. They know what they're doing, and we can get it done." And I don't have to worry about that.
00:11:15 Chris Tonn: It's something me and you were talking about a little bit before this session as well—about how sometimes we get into sessions of bringing on a new pilot, and we don't really know what we're getting into talent-wise until three weeks, six months later.
It's wonderful that we've found someone that's certified and has a little bit of general knowledge, but that buildup of skill set and trust is what takes the longest. So touching on that—is there something else that you would give as, again, the real helpful tool for the listeners on our side is kind of just understanding what it's like to be a day in your shoes and how you kind of got there?
So in addition to knowing your stuff on equipment and regulations and flying, what else is in that satchel of being able to show an employer that you could do a drone job of any kind? What would you kind of say is still missing from this toolbox?
00:12:20 Chris Odom: It's—how do I—I get—I'm trying to think of—there's so many things. I'm trying to think of like the one. I don't want to be cliché, but I think you have to have this drive to complete the mission.
And it's all in preparation. Like, you can't walk into a job not prepared, because you're setting yourself up to fail. You have to put in the time before you get there, and that is knowing your equipment, that's testing it, that's tweaking it, that's like actually wanting to learn this stuff.
I think in the early days, especially, a lot of people were into drones because it was just a buzzword. They had zero—and it is cool. I mean, let's be honest. Flying a drone is amazing, and the fact that you can have that power, and especially the entry point now.
But especially in today's world with drones, the entry into this field with a time investment to get your Part 107 and buying a Mavic or a Mavic Mini or an Air—whatever platform you're using—that does not make you a drone pilot. A successful drone pilot. That can open the door for you, but in order for you to fully walk through that door, you have to put the time in upfront.
You have to train yourself. You have to know these things. You have to know how to troubleshoot. You have to have some technical skills. You also got to have people skills. You got to have project management skills.
So like in my current role, these are the things that are not expressed on a resume. Like, I can say the entry point, the beginning stage to have an interview is like, "Do you have your Part 107?" Okay, great. Yes, that's required. How much stick time do you have? What platform is that stick time on?
If you've only flown a DJI Mavic—okay, it's not a game ender, but have you flown any FPV stuff? As soon as, for me right now, as soon as I hear someone that has flown FPV, I'm like, okay, you jump way ahead of this guy that's only flown a Mavic.
And why is that? It's the stick skills in that situation. So that's just one portion of what we look for when we hire for our team—you have to have that. And so that skill set will automatically place someone in a higher ranking.
However, the other soft skills that I was talking about, those are equally as important. And they can—I can train someone to fly if we want to make the investment. What those stick skills do on the piloting side of things, that just helps shortcut the training on that side.
And conversely, if someone has a really strong flight skill set, but maybe they're not so good on the project management side, or maybe they need some more technical skills—I can train that. It's all about the attitude.
Like, if you're willing to succeed and you want to put the work in and you want to put the time in, you can learn either side of it. Whatever your shortcomings are, you can make that up. But it's about the desire and the drive to get that done.
00:15:44 Chris Tonn: I couldn't agree more. And you put the nail on the head of just what I was kind of looking for in that question, because there's so much that is a low barrier to entry. So there's a lot of excitement around the drone industry. And I love that there is this opportunity to get a drone, start practicing, get your cert.
But it does take that next level of deeper dive and compassion for this, so that you're knowing okay, when I lose GPS, I also know how to be a manual pilot. Okay, if I get into a sticky situation where I don't like working with someone, I can still power through because I have good verbal and professional skills. We're all going to have to deal with these things, and we all have to have a balance of the skill set that we bring to employers. So that's really cool to hear.
Well, jumping into the day in a life part—give us, you know, I know there's been some of the cinematography world, there's also been some pretty exciting stuff here in your more established career here of inspection, in particular wind turbine inspections. I know you lead a team of maybe over 80 pilots in a global footprint. Tell us a little bit about that environment, and also some of the excitement that might happen on a fun mission there. What's going on in that world?
00:17:00 Chris Odom: A lot of change. It's a really exciting space. So high level view—we have an autonomous drone solution that inspects wind turbines, and that space has grown tremendously. As we know, wind is a hot button topic, no matter where you land on the topic itself. Wind energy, solar energy—it's not going anywhere. It's here to stay. There's massive investment from governments into it, and there's a lot of opportunity there.
In order to keep these big machines running, we have to have some way to do this. And the old way they used to do it was send guys up on ropes. And the part of the wind turbine, from a business owner standpoint, that makes sense, is every time you shut that wind turbine down, you're costing them money. They can't generate energy, which is how they make their money.
So the old way that you did it was having a team of guys on a set of ropes inspecting, taking images—that shut down for like half of a day. Our autonomous drone solution can inspect the wind turbine in about 15 minutes. So I mean, it's just like 100x the workload.
So from that perspective, ton of opportunity for us. We operate around the world, like you mentioned, 35 countries. Not only—but the exciting part about that is we're doing external and we're also working with robotics internally. So not only do we fly around the turbine, around the blades on the outside, we also inspect internally as well.
And that's using a rover, a crawler type robot that's got LiDAR and all the stuff you can use for damage assessment. So again, even if—like in these skills translate—if you're flying a drone, it doesn't matter. Because the vehicle, the platform—all the skill sets that you have from flying a drone translate over into a ground base, because they're all there. It's a drone still, it's just it doesn't fly. It's on the ground. Same stuff.
Super exciting on that side of things.
00:19:12 Chris Tonn: Take us through, you know, some of the—okay, it's not running autopilot, I'm having a little bit of a challenging day. What might that look like when you're taking control of this system, or if you're field repairing? Oftentimes we get into situations where sometimes folks just think, "Oh, well, the drone's having a bad day. I guess we got to go back to the office." Explain that a little bit.
00:19:39 Chris Odom: That's not possible, because—well, there's a couple of scenarios where that's not possible for what we do. Number one, most importantly, is the cost involved. It costs a lot of money to mobilize a pilot to a job site.
The second part of that is we also operate offshore, and those vessels are expensive. And it's a lot of effort just to get our team out to those turbines to start the inspections. So if the drone is not working, you can't just call it a day.
The great part about this is we have a wonderful support team. We have a technical operations that know the drones like the back of their hand, but they're sitting in the office and you're in the field. So you have to have excellent communication and troubleshooting skills.
And this is where communication comes in. Just because you can describe a problem that you think is clear, that does not mean that the tech on the other end trying to help you solve your problem or tell you what to fix understands exactly what you're telling them. So communication is huge.
That's the biggest part. In the field, our pilots have to take off their piloting—their drone pilot hat—and they have to put on their troubleshooting technician hats.
00:20:59 Chris Tonn: So cool. You've got the system dialed in with all these pilots. And how many pilots was it again?
00:21:06 Chris Odom: We had about 100. About 100 around the world.
00:21:10 Chris Tonn: And is training centralized? Do you do it in each—
00:21:15 Chris Odom: We—yep. So we do have a facility. We have two facilities here in the US, so we train at both facilities. So there's a week of virtual training, online training, and that's also our onboarding onto our company.
From there, we then move into a one-week in-person training. So that's where you actually put your hands on the equipment and start working through that.
Let me back up and say—during the onboarding, the virtual week, the week prior to you starting your actual classes, we have an online learning system so you start familiarizing yourself with all the technical documents that we have, our pilot handbook, our troubleshooting manual, how our communication system works.
We utilize Slack, so everybody is on Slack. Slack is amazing. It's a super powerful tool. And I know when I transitioned into Slack, I was like, "What is this thing?" But I couldn't live without it now.
So when you learn all those skill sets, in addition to having formal classes in that onboarding week, then you move into the hands-on week. So then you're actually learning how to run a mission, from mobilization, from when you actually are deployed, getting to your site, you have to go through all the orientation, how to learn all the safety protocols for that particular wind site.
Then you move out into the field. So we run through this entire process and all of our systems that support every step of that process. Once that's finished, then you're assigned one-on-one with a senior pilot, instructor pilot, in the field for three weeks.
So our total investment—it takes us, in order to take someone who already comes to us with stick skills—that's a requirement to start—it still takes us about six weeks to fully train someone. And even then, they're still kind of on quote "probation" for another six months.
00:23:07 Chris Tonn: Well, and it's like you said—there's not just training going on with piloting. It's the sensors, the software, processes and procedures of getting on a site, the safety, it just keeps going on and on. So I get it.
What—just so people are informed too—is there a range of pay that someone might see in the inspection field, in particular wind turbines? What's kind of that pay range looking like?
00:23:33 Chris Odom: Here's the interesting thing—and I'll probably get a lot of pushback—but the entry point is 20 to 25 bucks an hour.
Now, the caveat to that is, most people in the drone world are used to comparing pay in like a contractor situation. This is a W-2 job. So everything's provided.
Not only that, there's a full benefits package, 401K matching, full insurance benefits, you're issued a company truck—brand new 2500 that's fully kitted out with charging and Starlink and all the fun stuff, all the tools, all the fun stuff.
It's an investment on that side of things. And those pieces of the puzzle—that's what's required of you. If you come on to a project as a contractor, you have to provide all that. And that stuff is not cheap.
I would guesstimate that a new hire with us is easily issued in the range of about $180,000 worth of equipment. It's a lot of responsibility just for someone that we met two weeks ago in an interview process.
So I kind of say that to let most people know—there's a lot of people saying like, "Well, I could work at McDonald's for 20 bucks an hour." But it does sound low on the outside. However, our guys typically put in like 60 hours a week, so there's overtime right off the bat.
When it's all said and done, our pilots coming in brand new—I mean, they're in like $80,000-$85,000.
00:25:20 Chris Tonn: Yeah. And we're talking age-wise too—
00:25:25 Chris Odom: That's like 21, 22. Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean, honestly, we have some contractors outside of the US. We kind of have—we can't hire them now because of insurance. We have one person that was under 21 when we hired them.
So we have a guy that literally just out of high school who is making over $100,000 doing exactly this. He is a contractor, so he has a little more responsibility, skin in the game. But even on our contractor status, we provide the equipment. It's a pretty healthy—we have all the reimbursements, the per diem, your travel.
00:26:08 Chris Tonn: Well, and I think the one thing to remember that maybe we're not talking heavily enough on, is that when you're self-employed, you are the one finding where the next paycheck is coming from. It's not on autopilot. "You're going to this site next. You're going to that site next." That's a huge relief off your back.
But I also want to know, on the other end of the spectrum—film and television and making our own content. This is something where now we're paying per project, and these project prices can range from, I'm sure, a few hundred bucks to several thousand. Can you elaborate a little bit more in that world?
00:26:48 Chris Odom: Sure, yeah, I can contrast that, because I came—I know that world. So for a basis, I can say—like feature film—you'll sign a contract, and you may be on set for like three weeks, for example. And they'll stipulate you're almost kind of like on call, and your day rate reflects that.
So basically the more commitment of time, your day rate comes down. You back that up against like a commercial, for example, where you're on set for three days. So your day rate may be four times what your feature film rate is, and it's just related to the amount of time.
Like, there are plenty of feature films where I literally would sit on set all day long, and I'm in the schedule and I'm supposed to fly, and they just skip right over me. You don't even fly. But you still get paid, but you still have to hang out. But the moment that you're called on, you have to start.
The one thing I want to point out is—those projects for me—when I—and I haven't been in that world in five years probably—so when I left that, a feature film project was, the paycheck was probably 30 grand. Commercials are probably in like the $12,000 to $15,000 range.
However, just like I mentioned in the inspection world, the amount of equipment that we have to provide to a new hire—I had to provide that to myself. So my personal investment, I had about $120K worth of equipment invested.
And so that's what I was referencing earlier—if you're on a movie set, or if you're on a commercial shoot, and it's your time to go and your drone stops working, you don't have time to troubleshoot. Guess what? You just go, "Okay," straight to backup. And your backup's got to be there, ready to go, fully kitted. And then I have backups to my backups. Always.
So that's a lot of money. That's a lot of investment. So there's a lot of skin in the game on the other side. And you also mentioned it too—in the commercial imaging world, it's like you flow from project to project.
So I was kind of fortunate with my reputation. I was able—but even with that, I was only able to plan like four months out. And that kept—that was me constantly marketing, constantly networking, saying, "Hey, what projects are going on?" Like talking to people and trying to build up that pipeline.
00:29:10 Chris Tonn: All while at the same time, more competition's coming into the market. New gear is launching every month. Yeah, it's a balancing act of where to show discipline and focus your attention on.
So you've made yourself into a Swiss Army knife, which I think is the other really cool part about the drone world—you get to experience a lot of different job scenarios and work environments. Is there any just favorites that stick out from whether it's the film world or the inspection world? Is there a story or an occasion that you just recall as, "Wow, that was really amazing"?
00:29:44 Chris Odom: Yeah, actually. And this will probably resonate with a lot of your listeners too. This is one of the things when I do talk to students and people looking at the industry as a whole. This hits on several levels.
So I worked with an ad agency—this is probably five years ago, six years ago—I worked with an ad agency that I answered an ad on an industry site, and it was kind of a low price, right? But I was okay with that, because I was able to work them into my other production schedule.
So as I was moving to commercial productions or feature film or whatever assignment I was working on for travel, I would just send the art director an email and say, "Hey, for the next three months, these are my projects. This is where I'm going." And she would come back and say, "Ooh, can you spend two days in this city? And here's a shot list. Can you spend two days here? Here's a shot list."
So I built this great relationship from that. And it was kind of—half—it's not a slight on their end, but their shot list was half-baked. They didn't take into account like sunrise, sunset, the shot that they were asking for wasn't the best that could be at that spot, basically.
So several times I would re-engineer the shoot. I would send them notes and say, "Hey, I know you asked for this. However, we should do it this way, and here's why." And then I would just take it on my own and stay an extra night, stay an extra day, whatever it took and got the shot.
So again, I built a relationship with this person. They trusted me. Flash forward, two years later, I get a phone call from this art director, and she says, "Hey, we have this assignment that I don't know if you're interested in, but we're looking for someone to shoot in 25 cities, 19 countries in Europe. Is that something you're interested in?"
And I'm like, "Absolutely." So I was able then to put together—but I don't have—I learned some producer skills, but that level of production, as far as travel budget and hotel budget—and again, I did that on a small case, but this is over the course of like three and a half months is what this assignment was.
So anyway, I successfully won the bid. I put it together. Not only did I make money for myself, but I got this amazing trip. So I was able to go across Europe. And this is still—even the landscape in Europe right now is still changing airspace-wise—but back then, there's a lot of countries that I had to actually have someone who was a citizen in that country next to you or on the sticks.
And so I had to direct them, so I would operate the camera, my equipment, but I'd have to get them to register my drone. It was a nightmare logistically, you can imagine. I'm traveling through Europe with five cases of equipment. You can't fly, so I had to rent a car and drive everywhere.
However, amazing experience. So what I kind of bring out of that is a couple of points. Number one—everybody's watching you. Everybody. The people—when you think that people don't notice the extra effort that you put in, they do. I promise you, they notice.
And that's exactly how I got myself into that situation. And then why she asked me—I think she didn't have anyone else to bid on it. They wanted me. But that's just the way it was presented, because we already had that relationship, and they wanted me to go.
I mean, that's just a perfect example of what can happen when you perform your job. And that's the thing I want to say too—it's not just a job. Like, I genuinely wanted to create the best images I could, period, no matter what. It wasn't about a paycheck for me. It was about making a quality product.
00:33:29 Chris Tonn: You're absolutely right. And going back to communication being the strong suit of where it shines, on the creation side in general, whether it be drones or any other creative type of service—you get into these situations where you can speak up like you were doing and say, "Hey, I can assist in additional shot types to make sure we've spent all this time and energy to get me to this location. We certainly don't want to send me back. So let's have that moment of just making sure I got what you need, and I've thrown in a few extra just in case the shadowing was too much in the morning and we needed less."
There's just so much that goes into that. You bring up a really good point about that. I'm glad you did. Well, very cool.
I know that there's a lot of—I'm sure we could continue down story after story on these drone adventures. But I do have to ask—where does some of the future look towards when we fast forward a little bit? Obviously, everybody knows drones are going to have a very versatile role on basically every industry that you can put out there. But what's some of the stuff you're looking forward to and where you see potential opportunity in the next chapter of job growth?
00:34:47 Chris Odom: I see it—like my current role in the industrial inspection space—it's, I see it more—we're moving away from like a pilot, in the sense that we're kind of the paradigm we're in right now where you're a "drone pilot." We're kind of already out of that, really, except for like in cases of FPV, very specialized.
But the great part about that is those skills are still—it's like the foundation I think going forward. AI, machine learning, machine vision—all these technologies are gonna—and they do that better than a human does. And like vast—not every solution, but a lot of them.
I think the really exciting space on this is integrating all this together, creating a new platform. And there's some technologies that I've seen already that on the automated side of things—and then plus looking at Beyond Visual Line of Sight—having an automated takeoff and landing system that can create a geo-fence around like the deck of a ship to inspect offshore. That's pretty amazing.
I mean, we're down to centimeter accuracy for landing and for takeoff on a deck that's pitching. There's some of this stuff that we're seeing now is absolutely amazing. They had that before too, where they had this articulated platform that kept that level. You don't need that anymore.
It's amazing—things we don't need anymore. I think for me, this is an exciting time. I think if you embrace the fact that you're not a pilot per se, you're more of a technician, and you have to have all these other skill sets. You have to bring all these other things to the table.
And the thing is, flying drones—it's also like playing high school sports. Even though you're not going to be a professional football or baseball player, the things that you learn about working with a team, being a part of a team, understanding your role, having people depend on you, depending on other people, community—all these skills, this is what drones also teach you as well.
This is the great part about this, and from those skills, that translates over into this next phase that we're moving into with technology. Look, it's not going anywhere, and it's only going to get stronger.
And I think the sooner that you really embrace and understand that—because I've talked to a lot of guys, and they're just kind of like, "Well, I'm a pilot." And I'm like, "That's great. That's cool. So what's that application there? What else can you do besides just pilot?" Because I can pilot, you know? But just piloting is not really employable. That's like the entry point.
And it's kind of like in the cinematography game—when I'm up against bids—everyone that I'm up against, we're all at the same level. So these people start looking at other things. Like, you're in the conversation because you have those skills, but that's not what gets you hired.
So as you level up your game and get into these other areas, the really exciting areas of drone technology or whatever industry you're in—that's what separates you. Those extra things. Because that's what—when I say people notice—when you start working with people, they remember, "Oh, he was not only thrown into a really difficult situation, came through, but did it with a smile." Those things matter.
00:38:19 Chris Tonn: Agreed. And you started the conversation early on with how the barrier to entry is so low. I truly can go study real quick, take the 107 exam, pass with a 70 or higher on 60 questions, and go buy a DJI Mavic or something. And now I'm a "drone pilot."
So you're right. You have to have that extra layer of knowledge, that layer of communication, safety awareness, adaptation to solving problems on the fly with the technology curveballs that were thrown all day long.
We didn't talk about it a lot on this show, but one of the things that's probably gotten you a few job opportunities is just your ability to get a waiver for an airspace that was a little tricky, or your ability to do a foreign travel scenario with batteries and everything else that goes with it.
So yeah, that's huge to hear that there's a way more net to capture here. Well, good. I won't keep you all day. I really appreciate the time and the insights on all this, and just greatly appreciate—
00:39:30 Chris Odom: Of course, yeah. Exciting times, man. Absolutely.
00:39:34 Chris Tonn: Well, with that, I guess that's another wonderful show of Aerial Perspectives. And with that, we're out.
