Chris Tonn 0:00
All right. All right. Welcome back to another episode of aerial podcast. Here today in the rocket drone studio, we're excited to have our first podcast with two guests very fortunate to have a little bit of a law enforcement background in this one, which is a very cool opportunity zone from the drone side of things. But I'll kick it off here with a quick little intro for our guests, Mario and Richard. So today we're excited to welcome two incredible guests the show. Mario worth CEO of crash crashby robotics and stem hub and Richard drain, owner of Aerotek Drone Services. Mario's drone journey began as a kid flying RC and professionally, took off in 2014 with expertise in nearly every aspect of drone work. He now specializes in class three fixed wing operations on government contracts. He's a proud accomplish. He's proud of accomplishments like the leading the first successful law enforcement UAS operation in the Florida Panhandle, building a heavy lift multi copter capable of lifting 800 pounds and founding crash press view. Richard, meanwhile, started working with drones two years ago as an operator for the Florida Highway Patrol, where he contributed to vital missions, including track of tracking criminals and recovering lost individuals. Now as the owner of Aerotech Drone Services, he specializes in aerial photography and videography, both guests bring an incredible expertise and shared passion for innovation guided by philosophies like Mario's. Don't be afraid to try it out and learn from your failures. And Richards in life, you have to be flexible so you don't get bent out of shape. We're diving into their unique journeys and the impact drones have on careers and community. So with that, welcome guys and thanks again for coming out for the show. Thanks for having us absolutely. So, you know, I always like to start with kind of the beginning chapters here. And you know, for those that don't know, this is a wonderful day in the life of a drone pilot from different walks of industry. And in particular, we've got a little bit new and a little bit of old to the picture of the drone space. So Mario, I'll kick it off with you. One of the fun things is just, how did you get involved with drones, and how did it land into a line of work? So
Mario Worth 2:11
my background is also flying helicopters, and I was flying out of a little little pad in the above and also up in South Dakota, up in South Dakota, we did some helicopter filming, did some commercial shoots, and all that we did, also some life like some wildlife counts and all the stuff that you see that are now like just normal for drones, and not so much helicopters anymore, right? But back in those days, drones weren't that popular. They were all manual flight. You would put a GoPro on them, or something similar to that, and you just guess if you got the footage or not, right. So I saw the shift in the industry in the helicopter side, from the actual physical helicopter to the drones, and I jumped on the bandwagon way too early, I believe, because people like I spent more of my time explaining what a drone is, that actually flying. So I realized that very quickly, but it did help me kind of be there for the beginning of the whole drone era, right when the FAA was trying to figure out, how do we accept these in their space? Because we have no regulations written except the hobby rules. And so now we have all these guys coming in and commercial wise. And you know, first, they pulled the chain a lot tighter than what it is. Now it's been released a little bit, but that's kind of how I got into it. It's, it's a saw the loss of business from helicopters shifting over to the drones,
Chris Tonn 3:46
makes sense. Days now you're, you're holding back a little bit. This wasn't any just regular helicopter that you were getting to have the experience to fly. I've seen it on TV a few times back in the oldie days. What was that helicopter?
Mario Worth 3:59
Yeah, so my specialty was in the old Mash helicop that a bell 47 I've flown almost every model of that, except B, J and soloy. So those are the last three that are on my bucket list that I'm gonna need to fly. And then I've flown every model, and it's about as far away from technology as you can get, yeah, literally, the old D models have a Kickstarter on the floor, like you have a little pedal that you hit on your foot, and it starts the engine, right? So, yeah, it's, it's pretty much as far away from technology as you can get to then jumping onto drones, which is as much cutting edge as it gets. So two opposite spectrums, right?
Chris Tonn 4:42
The full glass canopy cockpit, then the original FPV view. Man, back in the day? Well, very cool. And then, Richard, of course, we've got a newer chapter of getting into the drone space, but you've still got a couple years under the belt. How did it kind of get into the work world? And how did. You know, you first get involved with drones.
Richard Thomas 5:01
So my, my dad's always worked in aviation, and we, I grew up out of the airfields with him doing the RC planes. And so always had kind of an interest in drones and planes and, you know, RC helicopters and things like that. And several years go by, and there was an opportunity to come up whenever I was working for FHP, to get involved with the drone team there, to be able to do things like, you know, search and rescue, looking for people that run from, you know, different law enforcement agencies, and things like that. So I knew that it was a developing industry, and I knew that it was a one time opportunity was either take it now or, you know, leave it on the table. So I decided to go for it. And, you know, my little bit of knowledge about the different aerospace regulations and whatnot that I learned from my dad, I just use that applied towards the application for the the position. Fortunately, I was selected and kind of fell into it about two
Chris Tonn 6:02
years ago. That's so cool. Well, I love to hear that. It sounds like everybody starts with some of these, you know, consumer products, whether it be RC planes, RC helicopters, or even the smaller drones. And it just opens the imagination to where the path can point from there. So we're in our beginning chapters of getting into drone careers. What was kind of the first job opportunity that you really connected with on the drone path, and then, you know, catch us up also to where you are now.
Mario Worth 6:35
Yeah, so the first path, honestly, was real estate, and it was a tough one to get into, because back then, they just take pictures with the DSLR, and that was it, right? And so you're trying to break into that industry, and they don't want you, right? They don't want to spend that extra money, because they're out there on commissions, and they're gonna have to fork it out beforehand and hope that they get that sale for that return. And nobody was doing it back then. So why would they jump onto it, right? So, like I said, it was a lot of education, a lot of realtor breakfast, you know? And then I was in a networking group and got together with this realtor, and I'm like, Look, tell you what. I know. You won't hire me for these, you know, 200,000
Mario Worth 7:27
houses, you know, $100,000 houses you're selling.
Mario Worth 7:31
How about we do this? You just hire me on any house, and I'll do it for 100 bucks every house, just to get it kicked off. Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, in the end, I was losing money, yeah, but I needed to start somewhere. And he agreed with it. And that's really how it started in this area, like in the Crestview area, because Crestview doesn't have some of the high end houses that, like you would see in Pensacola destin and everything, right? So he used me on every single house he had 400 bucks, right? And all of a sudden those realtors in the area saw like, well, now I need to advertise, because he has a competitive advantage, because now he's getting clients and listings, because he's offering that service to those clients and listings. So it became a competitive realm there, of course, only he got the sweetheart deal, right? The next clients that were coming, I actually needed to make some money, yeah, so that's, that's how it got to that point with that, you know, it started to where I started modifying the old DJ eyes, you know, I built NDVI camera. I tried my luck at some of the farm stuff, which is a difficult industry in itself, because, you know, farmers, they don't want to know if they have problems in the field. A lot of times they just don't, you know, and that's across the board. So if you come with a solution for them to know the problems in the field, they're going to shut you down right away. And that kind of was like, well, we're doing mapping. So now let's go from the farm fields, maybe into some of the mapping for progress reporting. And keep in mind, back then, I still had to do a lot of calculations, and I had an iPad and had my DJI, and had to draw out my little lawnmower pattern on my iPad and then zoom out to a particular zoom and set it on like, you know, 10 second intervals or something, and just fly and help at my constant speed. So it was manual, collecting those mapping points and then stitching them together, because there was nothing out there back then it worked. It wasn't the greatest, but it worked right. And then that kind of forced me to build some custom equipment, and I didn't have really an engineering background or how to build the damn things, yeah, so I just went and just bought some stuff and put them together, and ended up it's working magically. I still don't know how, but that's kind of brought me into building and constructing. Adopting the things. And then, you know, Pixar came out with the Mission Planner. So that was kind of a shortcut for me building and that got me that experience, which led me all the way to friend of mine that builds to Osprey drones, unmanned aerial research. And, you know, he hit me up and was like, hey, I really could use somebody, you know, to help me on the he's been building them the entire time he's been flying him, but he hasn't had really a lot of experience with that mission planner and that ground patrol station and, you know, calibration and everything. So he asked me to come on board and kind of help him out with some of that. So I jumped right away on board and, you know, don't regret it. So now we're flying missions for the government on test flights where they're testing out new sensors, new equipment, flying in GPS denied environments, right? That kind of stuff. And we take those Osprey drones, fly them up to 8000 feet, AGL, and send them a k out about and, you know, hope they come back. People can realize when something is wrong and bring them back in time and hope that all the autonomy works that they're pushing onto our aircraft while we have control over the aircraft, right? Yep. So, yeah. So that's a that's a definitely nerve wracking and fun job, especially when you have, you know, couple, like, half a million dollar payload underneath that is now in your custody and control. So, yeah, that's no pressure, huh? No, no pressure at all.
Chris Tonn 11:30
Well, it's, it's neat that you, you painted that pathway a little bit too of starting out teaching yourself about some of these systems and then becoming a little bit known in the area that this is a capability that you have. And obviously the as the market grew, we now have more and more of these backyard while we were fortunate enough to be in very military high test environment here at Eglin Air Force Base and surrounding fields. But, you know, it sounds like there was a knowledge that, hey, Mario's got some experience here. We need to bring him over in, you know, from Richard's side. You know, just the difference here is wild, wild west of learning, education and protocols and and hopefully it sounds like Richard, you're kind of coming into this, you know, World of the Osprey drones as well, but it sounds like you may not go down the same Crash Course as Mario. Is there a little bit that y'all can share of this training that might be different from when you started to where we are now,
Mario Worth 12:32
absolutely, first thing I touch on it, you definitely have to have some faith. You have to have faith that these, these pieces of equipment are going to do what you want them to do, and actually come back and kind of, as Mario mentioned earlier, you know, they they do rely at certain points on GPS and things. And you know, during some of the search and rescue missions that we did, there was times where we did drop down below those tree canopies, and you lose that that signal, and you have to be able to remotely operate it yourself and trust that, trust your skills and put those to the test and come out of those situations, and not just rely on the technology. So I mean, there's still a level of do it yourself there, and then there's also a level of the relying on the equipment, the GPS and things like that. But overall, yes, I did come in whenever all this is already developed, it's I didn't go through the wild wild west moments of doing it completely by myself. So I was kind of fortunate in that sense. You know, I haven't quite got the experience on the the building side of things. I've just more so seen the practicality side of things, with actually operating them and putting them to use, things
Chris Tonn 13:42
like that. That's awesome, and so cool that we have some of these resources again right here in the panhandle of Florida. But I do want to, well one, I want to let the audience know too, that Mario's holding back on some really cool other projects, for sure. And in addition, he was a critical part in the launch of Pelican drones back in the beginning chapters, you know, 10 years ago, there was no 107 license where, you know, you could just go out and do the drone commercially without jumping through hoops. There was a 333, exemption and the requirement to have a sport pilot license or higher on site. So Mario was essentially a piece of essential compliance on all of our drone sites and and taught me so much about the airspace that is very dynamic in this area. But I want to hear a little bit more about law enforcement. Obviously, this is a really cool area to see utilization of the technology that helps some efficiencies of you know, we don't always have the budget for helicopters to go about researches and other things. I'm sure it's great for situational awareness and so on and so forth. But give us, give us a day in the life of law enforcement scenarios that might be of interest to our audience, Richard,
Mario Worth 14:58
that we use them for so many different. Of things. Again, one of the things already mentioned is finding people that ran search and recovery. But there's so much more than just that we use them for rebuilding crash scenes. You know, especially on Highway Patrol side. Highway Patrol is known for working travel crashes. Whenever they had fatalities, we were able to go out with the drones and use the drones to actually map the scene and then go back and use a picks software to actually put everything together and build 3d models. And then we had the search and rescue. We had the unfortunately for at times, body recoveries in different situations, although sad, is a very useful tool to be able to help, you know, bring peace to a family, to be able to hold money back in things like that, finding, again, search and rescue, finding elderly people that wander off to have Alzheimer's or dementia or kids with autism and Things like that. But yeah, various different uses, even just to be able to get an idea of what kind of damage has been done after a hurricane. Or, again, going back to the search and rescue flying through half collapsed buildings instead of sending people in, putting them in danger. And instead, we can use the drones to actually, you know, fly into buildings and and look for people and try to coordinate a rescue and things like that.
Chris Tonn 16:25
So that's so cool, and I'm sure it's just a good looky loo in a traffic situation, or a million other things that come handy for this situational awareness in this space. Now, Mario, I know you kind of brought a drone program to the Crestview police department. You tell a little bit about how that journey went and what that was like again, Wild Wild West. Here we go.
Mario Worth 16:50
Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, there was no standardized training. There was no real curriculums out there or anything. So we just the guys on the sticks and put them through the ringer. We applied for Section 333, is back then, and for exemptions. And it was a, it was, it was, it was difficult to make work because it wasn't even in the budget. So basically, they sent me to the academy and said, The only way, like, we can't subcontract the company, but we can hire an additional officer. So that's how I kind of worked the deal out. So they sent me to the academy, went through that came in as an officer, which is some tensions in law enforcement. You know, law enforcement is kind of a higher hierarchy that you get. And then, you know, I have a commander that's in charge of the new drone program, and he doesn't know anything about it, and so I'm advising him, right? But I'm just an officer down the down the line when you have all the other sergeants. But then, you know, I get caught off the road for hours and sit in the commander's office. And so the other guys are like, Well, is he an officer? What's going on? So there's a lot of tension, man, we
Mario Worth 18:09
doubled that a lot as well. How old choleside the drone program to FHP is fairly new. They had it a few years before I got into it. And not to interrupt, but just to speak on that a little bit, they had it a few years before I actually got on the team. However it was, there was a handful of officers across the state that were certified. So they were so widespread you couldn't have an officer. One officer over in Tallahassee be able to make it over a Pensacola or over to Crestview destined to do a mission like that. So we needed to expand and throw across the state, have people staggered throughout the state, so that way we could respond quicker. The problem was, as Mario mentioned, nobody over here was used to that. And so even whenever I got on, I was myself, as well as a couple of other officers that we all got on at the same time. We were the first drone pilots for FHP in in troop, a which covers all the way over from Pensacola, the other side of Panama City. But we were the first ones to all of our command staff. They didn't know how to utilize it, and they're still, you know, learning that now, even since I've left law enforcement, but we had to explain to them how this is useful, how we didn't use this for crash scenarios, for when people ran and and they they weren't thinking about it. And, you know, education is such a big part of of that, and we had to do a lot of it. Yeah, we did more education, I think, like Mario said in town, yeah. So I mean that the tactics too, like people don't think about the tactics that you have to employ. So give you an example. Unfortunately, the drone did not pick him up. That was one of the, one of my first missions that wasn't successful, unfortunately, but it was a huge lesson. Lot. So somebody escaped from the jail, right?
Mario Worth 20:04
So they called me out. I came out, you know, I threw over my my vest, and pulled out the drone, you know, and I was flying. And, you know, always said, like, I need somebody to be with me, because when I'm flying, my head is down, yeah, yeah. I'm looking at the screen. That's right. I'm not situationally wet. So if the guy comes out behind me, right, I'm screwed. Yeah? So and I'm down there and I tell him, like, hey, I need somebody there. You know, you've got enough people that are just sitting around and just on the radio, you know, kind of directing people. I need that person next to me, and so I'm down there. I'm flying. Next thing I look up, there's nobody around me, right? I'm like, What the heck? And now we've got civilians approaching and asking me, like, Hey, man, what you doing? And I'm like, I'm trying to focus on flying the drone, trying to find an escapee, right? And I have nobody around me to kind of block me, right? So it comes to tactics the same way as when they started deploying the canine, right, when they started having ultrasonic sensors on the bottom of the drones for height, right? They deployed the canine. I'm following the canine right, just to make sure that the canine is okay and doesn't get ambushed. And next thing I know, the canine stops the tracks and looks up, yeah, he's looking at that drone. He's now distracted from the track. So guess what? The canine handler, canine handlers, piss, yeah, because now I just ruined that canines track, yeah, right, with the drone. And that's kind of one of those realizations when we started this, that I didn't have any experience in law enforcement, really fresh out of the academy, complete rookie, right? And but I've got that drone experience. And even with that Drone Experience, like when you you don't think about that canine picking up the drone, you should, but you don't, right? And so then it comes out where you have to start developing these tactics and strategies and say, you know, that's where that conflict comes back in, because you want to command ourselves. Since you're saying like, hey, we need eight training days with the k9 were they running a track and I'm flying the drone over the k9 Yeah, and on that
Mario Worth 22:15
too, not only do you need to coordinate those trainings with the k9 but also your Q, R, F team, that which is the riot control team. So if you deploy to a riot they they understand that you can see way more than they can. So we need to be on the back lines being able to relay that information and give them real time data, as well as the SWAT teams, to be able to train with them. There's a lot more that goes into it than picking up the sticks and just flying trouble. I had a situation kind of like what he mentioned, where somebody was actually did pop out behind me. I spent quite a few months over in Texas, at the southern border, assisting over there. FHP had about 100, 110 troopers over there, around the Kant. I don't know if y'all,
Chris Tonn 23:03
I remember that, yeah, that's Santa's, yeah, send them over there. That's we had SRT
Mario Worth 23:07
units. We had drone pilots, you know, a broad scope all the way down to the patrol Trooper, the patrol guys. They would sit, you know, at one kind of stationary place and watch a, you know, an easy spot of the border. But you know, every once while they do get crossings, they put us strong guys out around the areas where we had the smugglers and, you know, the higher risk people. And there was a one particular day we were actually over there, and we were tracking this one group. I had eyes on them with the drone, and I dispatched our little team to go in the this script, migrants, and we had a couple of Trump pilots. There we were. We were all busy doing different things. One guy was, you know, recharging batteries, setting up stuff for his flight. One person was one other person was flying as well. We were set, you know, different altitudes, and so we're focused, like Mario said, you're looking down at your drone. You got to make sure you're not going to crash into something. And lo and behold, this group of three immigrants walks out right behind me. And you know, again, we're in a high risk, a high traffic, you know, weapons, main traffic kind of area. And they could have walked right up behind us. And, you know, probably taking us out. So on the law enforcement side, you have to have somebody there with you. But really, any, any kind of form of trolling work, you need to have somebody there with you. And so that provides its difficulties, like you said, with with getting somebody set up, especially, you know, teaching your command staff that we need, we need that extra body that also calls for extra funding, you know, extra money resources.
Chris Tonn 24:48
You know, that's, it's so true, and it, it's funny y'all actually took my next question right on out of there, which was, what does a spicy day at work look like? And it sounds like that was a. Nice and spicy to say the least. You know. Fast forward to today, and the smaller you know chapters of where we started with a few police forces with these drones. In particular the panhandle, it sounds like y'all kind of led the way for the state. Was Miami, or were they
Mario Worth 25:19
doing other ones in, like, lower that quite a bigger budget, sure. Little crest here, right? But I can tell you, it was definitely an eye opener, especially for the Panhandle. Was being so much military, yeah, there's a lot of cooperation that you're going to have to do with the military, your FAA approvals and everything. So that's really what gave the edge, was my knowledge in that aviation right? Give you an example, too. I had a one of my competitors, you know, he reported me to the FAA back in the days, right? And that's where that knowledge comes in, right? And I think that's, that's the only reason why I was able to help that question. PD out and get it started and lead the way in that area, was because of that knowledge, because they wouldn't have gotten in that area just because of military airspace and all that kind of fun stuff. But, yeah, my competitor reported me to the FAA, and so he got a real estate, real estate offer were basically, hey, can you shoot this house for me? And it was on the south end of town past I 10 right, and I have my section 333, approval with a class Class E airspace, up to two nautical miles. So I could fly up to two nautical miles on a Class E airspace. Duke field was a Class D which I needed to stay five nautical miles away. Well, Class D airspace, that's where the house fell in, and it was that in that five nautical mile range, right? Well, I still flew it. And so he reported me to the FAA for flying that, in that, in that. And so I got a call from the FAA right from Pat Bruce back in the day. Yeah, sure. Great guy, too. Great guy. He really helped us out on a lot of the clarifications for regulations and everything. And so, you know, he calls me up and he's like, Hey, did you fly this? Like, got the video in front of me. I'm like, well, so you know, I flew it, yeah, well, that was Class D. I'm like, Yeah, I can tell you the data. Flew it. I've got the flight records. And he's like, Well, it's Class D. I'm like, look at that. A of D, because when the tower Duke is closed, it puts down to a Class E. And I flew it on the weekend when the tower was clubbed, that's right, got the flight records for it, which means I'm allowed to two nautical miles, which means I could take that on the weekend, right?
Chris Tonn 27:47
Read between the lines of where the details lied. Yes,
Mario Worth 27:51
exactly. So, you know, of course, because I just took that business away from the competitor, he was not happy, and that's why he ended up reporting me for that, because he turned down the job, versus actually having the knowledge and flying it on a weekend, versus, you know, yeah,
Mario Worth 28:07
that's where, you know, the education, again, is so important. Because, like he said, the whole south end of Crestview, once you get a little bit south of I 10, it does fall right there within, you know, Duke fields airspace. And if you don't know about these things, and there's not many people out there teaching these things, you could throw up a drum and be violating SNA regulations. That's federal regulations. You have to have some kind of knowledge of what you're doing. It's so important to have somebody out there that is, you know, pushing out this knowledge to young kids, especially, you know, we have a generation of, you know, technology, young kids that come up in nothing but technology.
Chris Tonn 28:48
You know, all the cell phones, computer uses, everything is digital now, and so having somebody teaching the those grade students is so important. Oh, absolutely. And something that we believe in in our core here at rocket drones. You know, I I can't say enough. It sounds like some of the takeaways here are just digging into that knowledge base and that skill set base of operations, but also being willing to volunteer when these opportunities present themselves, because they may not present themselves multiple times in the beginning chapters. Well, that's really cool. And fast forwarding a little bit more to today in law enforcement, just in our local area, this has grown quite a bit. Now we've got Pensacola Escambia County with their own drone divisions. I think IHMC and Pensacola Police Department joined forces on a on a joint project of thermal drones and FPV breach drones, and I think one of those drones was accredited to a first ever for Pensacola police department. They were doing a chase suspect fled from the car on Scenic highway and went to go hide in a garbage can at a residence house and. Course, this drone had thermal, and the thermal was able to pick up on this, this heat signature left over from crawling into the garbage can and boom. You know, we've got some really cool, you know, stories back in on law enforcement, just ranging from all over the place. So thanks for sharing a little bit in that day in the life. But I, I do want to jump over a little bit as well to, you know, once you're in that world of drone piloting, and you see all of the examples of what it can be used for, did it paint the picture of what you wanted to do next, once you started to get your, you know, kind of lay of the land and the clarity of capabilities, where did you really find the passion for the next steps, and where did it lead you? I start,
Mario Worth 30:47
well, actually, on the drive over here, like Richard and I was talking about, and then for me, it's kind of like I've got the problem of saying, of not, not being able to say, No, right? I think that's, that's the biggest problem that I have, because I sometimes like, like to take too big of a bite, but somehow I make it work. Somehow it just magically happens. Don't ask me why. I might have been just lucky all this time, but like the way my path goes, it was literally because I didn't say no, right? When somebody came in and said, Hey, I want you to build a drone that, literally, the military can shoot at with laser guns, and then it flies back home if they hit it right? I'm like, sure I know nothing about lasers. I don't know nothing about the systems, but I've built a couple of these, you know, flame wheels back then, so I'll try it, right? And that's kind of how that kind of engineering started and getting into it, you know. And again, it's like, you know, anybody would say, like, I don't know if I can do that. I don't think my company is set up for that, right? And that I have that problem of saying, not being able to say no, and just jumping into it and doing it, and it worked. Unfortunately, the program didn't go too well, because they realized very quickly that trying to shoot at a drone with an AR does not work very well. So it was actually demoralizing to the army because they couldn't hit the damn thing. Oh, wow, yeah. The funny part on that was the kind of scope always expands, right? You start off with it, and then you kind of deliver, and then it's like, oh, well, let's do it more. Well, they wanted us to put I dance like, underneath it, like, literally, what's in Ukraine. Keep in mind that was, I was right around 2018 or so, right? And they put these little mortar shells underneath it, right? And they had a little sensor in it. And the other there was another company that used to do simulated blasts, right? So the idea was, hey, we'll fly this drone over, and you, as a drone pilot, you just have to fly it over and try to drop the ident. If the drone gets hit with the laser, it returns to you, right? But if the item gets dropped, all the blast simulators around the army guys would go off, right? Yeah, that was blast simulators ran out of gas pretty quick. So yeah, it was definitely demoralizing. But that scope just expanded. So coming to the nowadays, you know, because going from that, that kind of gave me the expertise on what we're looking into now with unmanned aerial research. So, and it's not really, we're not getting any money or anything, but we kind of on that project yet. We're hoping to, but we're building a drone hunting missile. So, you know, we fly those class three aircrafts, and we kind of decided, hey, why don't we put a missile on that drone in order to seek and shoot down other drones, so, particularly mother ships, because, and that's kind of what I thought process. You know, a lot of times we're sitting around a table and, yeah, just talking shop and going like, this might be doable, yeah. And one of the issues was, you know, there was in Ukraine. Now the FPV drones up just a major disruption, yes, but they have the limit of range and battery time, so now they're getting clever, and they're packing all of those onto the bigger class three UAVs and dropping them, and then using the class three UAV as a relay to communicate that, right? But you take out the relay, you lose connection to those droughts, right? So the idea that we had is, well, we can already fly to 8000 feet, you know, we can already fly for six, seven hours later time, you know, as no big deal for us to strap a missile on there with the same control system that we're using for the off sprays, right? Yeah. And make a guided drone seeking missiles, so that if something comes in that realm, right, we'll just release the missile and take out the mothership. Yeah, right. So that's kind of, that's kind of where that comes in, and it kind of relates back to, well, back then I had to figure out a drop mechanism. Ism, you know, back then we had to figure out kind of laser guidance, you know. So it's kind of like that relates to everything else. So it's not that I kind of choose the path. It kind of chooses me by me not being able to say, No,
Chris Tonn 35:14
yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, that's so cool. And going back to some of the Ukraine components of how this is disrupting traditional warfare is, you know, just like chat, GPT has been a huge eye opener to the regular person of its capabilities. From here, here's 10 ingredients, and it gives me 50 recipes. Or, you know, I, as a general consumer or person can understand this technology, and now that we're seeing it in Ukraine, we're also very easily able to understand the technology's capabilities, but also how to kind of work around some, some next chapter evolutions of how we play the game better. So that's really cool. And then, of course, Richard, I gotta, I gotta hear what makes you tick over here in the drone space, I think
Mario Worth 36:00
I should have went first, because I don't know how I followed. All saw that completely. I think again, Marty is much more seasoned and in this world than I mine. Kind of just carried over out of law enforcement, from I separated from law enforcement. Decided to get away from it. Stressed the job. 10 years of doing it, yeah, decided to lay down that hat after I got out. A couple months went by and I realized how much I've missed, you know, the the drawing world. And I absolutely have missed it. And so I decided to start up Aerotech, and to be able to do things like the real estate photography, you already mentioned that the business advertising using these FPV drones in kind of a different way, not so much on the war side, sure, sure, but more on the everyday, you know, interacting with the public kind of way, being able to Take these FPV trolls, and do full tours of businesses and Hamilton's and and put them together in a video, and be able to, you know, provide to companies, and be being able to give them an avenue of advertising. There's all kinds of other things you can do with them too, between roofing inspections, tower inspections, so much more. Yeah, wild game locate is actually becoming a pretty big one, but yeah, my all mine is on the, how would say the civilian side of things?
Chris Tonn 37:29
No, I love that, and it's so cool to hear that you know, this is something that you know, not only can pull you in from the Hey, you're really good at this. We need to put you on this too. I love this, and I miss this. I can't not be around it now, and I think that's part of this career path, not to mention the versatility of maybe you don't like doing mapping, but you're still capable of doing 12 other things that you like with the drone. So it's really neat to see the space of versatility in a career path. But sometimes careers can get a little mundane and such. So really nice. Well, I got to spice it up a little bit. We're going to go into a bonus question here. Of you know, in today's news cycle, we keep hearing a lot about Jersey drones and sightings and things in that in that realm, any any thoughts as to the the jersey drones, what they may be, what they may be doing, and, yeah, this power
Mario Worth 38:27
was that you up there flying,
Mario Worth 38:30
I've been asked that multiple times too. Like, literally multiple times. Like,
Mario Worth 38:34
people associate you know, you as a drone pilot, and what's going on everywhere else you know, which is why this question, you know, comes up in the first place? So, yeah, I've been asked numerous times jokingly, you know, was that you What's your thoughts on that? And so it's definitely interesting to hear it come up here, too, but I don't know, kind of wild again, probably more of an area for Mario to answer on that.
Mario Worth 38:59
Yeah. I mean, you know, you want to say that, yeah, it's completely top secret government, and they're just tying on to trying it out in the urban environment. Yeah, you know, Yeah, unfortunately, being in a testing and evaluation realm for the government, as far as flight goes, they're not as well put together, as you would hope. I think I don't want to affect them. But, you know, in a lot of ways, it's like, it's a much easier if you just outsource that. And I've been, I've been saying that a lot like, give you an example, real life example. So we wanted to do some RTK. So we needed to mark a spot on the on the runway right where we gonna put our stationary GPS on there to do some GPS survey. So we were sitting in a briefing, and we were going, like, we're gonna need a spray can, you know, mark our spot. And they're like, oh. We don't have any, but you can fill out form so and so, email it to so and so, within three to four weeks, they're going to give you a purchase order that then you can purchase, you know, from decent, disapproved vendors. And I'm like, we're flying tomorrow, you know, and us as contractors going in there, you know, we're like, you know what? They're just, just, magically one appear in our truck, you know, I mean, it's, it's just like, we're gonna go off to lunch, and there may be magically one just appeared in our truck. Because, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's just on a daily basis, right, like that. And so I want to say it's yeah, that testing some high level stuff out, but it's more likely that it's actually a government contractor, you know, that got a contract that is just, you know, not supposed to do it. So that's why they do it at night. But hey, they have a government contract to fulfill, so they're gonna just, yeah, hold that thing up. Oh,
Chris Tonn 41:00
absolutely. I think the theories can go down some even wilder rabbit holes as well, as you know from watching Social Media and such. But one other theory I have is maybe it's a way to increase drone Regulations now that we're realizing how capable an over the shelf product truly can be and whether or not we want to put some additional restrictions on that. Just this morning, I was reading an article out of Los Angeles with the firefighting. One of the old, beloved planes that picks up the water, lands, picks up 1600 gallons of water, goes back, drops it on the fire actually ran into a drone and grounded the whole operation, grounded that plane from further interactions. And it turns out it was a pilot for the Los Angeles Times that was one of the pilots responsible for this incident. And in addition, there was a TFR, as we know when there's firefighting going on, there's gonna be a TFR. So this is really interesting territory to see that regulations, though they're there, we don't really have a lot of folks sometimes paying attention to them. Any thoughts on that newest update out of Cali or thoughts
Mario Worth 42:17
in general? I know this is gonna sound a little redundant, but I think it goes back again to the education. If that reporter had been educated properly or followed his education, then that would have never happened in the first place. And that's where I can respect rocket drones and you know, doing what y'all are doing for getting into the schools and teaching these kids and whatnot. But education, education, education. I mean, that would have prevented that whole entire thing. If he knew what he was doing, if he had looked at flight radars, he would he should have seen that and that firefighting, firefighting plane flying in the area. And he could have known him to, you know, land or come to a lower altitude. He should have known there was a TFR and that he could fly there in the first place, but had there not been a TFR, at least, to get out of the way of said plane? So I think that's, that's the biggest thing I can say on it is just, you know, being educated, there's, there's so much to learn. I've kind of like Mario in a different sense. I've learned a lot of this stuff myself. I was helped the basic foundations with FHP, but we we had a lot of COAs in place to be able to fly in airspace, as you normally couldn't. So whenever I got out, I had to go and self educate on a lot of this stuff. I had to do research on Dr Google, and that's done on YouTube and, you know, just searching all the different FAA regulations that now apply to me in the civilian world. And so anyone that is looking to get into as a reporter or in any other field, you just got to be educated. No, absolutely
Chris Tonn 43:53
couldn't agree more. Mario, any any thoughts on that one? Or
Mario Worth 43:56
I'm, I'm just gonna throw this one out. Then that's, that's like, you know, coming from the aviation industry, you know. And when I was in flight school, one of my instructors said something to me, and it stuck with me, and it's so true. So the FAA, you know, is CFR 14, which pertains to aviation regulations. It's a big book. And when you go through flight training, that's the book that they give you, and you're going to have to tap it all out in order to go to your flight training. Well, my instructor came, and he brought me my first CFR, 14, right book, and put it down and said, you know, that thing is written in blood, because whenever somebody dies, there's a new regulation that pops up into it, you know, and it's sad, but that's the honest to God truth, right? And, you know, just coming back to because it's been on my mind a lot, on our adversary, like, as far as the US goes, you know, with China and everything, and, um. Um, coming down to drones and our restrictions, right? So there was a reason, back in the days when the blood supply company out of Africa, right, they operate out of Africa, because there wasn't as much airspace in there, but Africa wouldn't put any regulations on it either, right? A zip line. Is this zip line? Yes, that's it, right? And, you know, it's less air traffic, so they could do a pretty good success story on that, right? Great, great company. They did great stuff for the industry. But when you're looking at, why did they have to go to Africa? Is because that would have never happened over here, right? They could have never started it. And it comes back down to, you know, we are limiting ourselves a lot of times with these regulations. And I see that our adversary, unfortunately, those adversary, have a lower and I want to get a little bit dark here, sure, sure they have a little bit lower value for human life, right? And so they can advance a lot quicker, because they have a lot more risk tolerance as far as that goes, right. And what I mean by that is, if China has an automatic driving semi truck, right, and that semi truck plows through a crowd, right? That's a risk they take and they're willing to take in order to advance that technology of autonomously driving, right? We will never take that risk in the US. We will never take that risk. And so with that in mind, when it then comes that they're just going to be able to collect more data in that country, right? And now, with that safety data, they can get permission to drive over here in the US, right? Because they're way more advanced on that safety data, yeah, so that's the scary part on our regulation. So it's like, it's a fine line that you have to walk with this new technology in order to actually, you know, advance and stay ahead of your adversary. And a lot of times, as a civilian company, you cannot afford because you can do those kind of tests safely. But as a civilian company, you cannot afford to place these facilities, to own these facilities, where you can do all of this testing. When you're thinking about test ranges for UAVs and all those kind of things, right? It's, it's billions of dollars that are flowing in these test ranges, right? And at the same time, you know, with the military being so restrictive, you know, and not letting us really in these tests, and they test it out a lot, we will see it on Eglin, where Eglin, the Air Force Base, on their test facility, is double booked a lot of times, right? There's such a high demand, but so many regulations in place to even test in a safe environment, because they're worried about smaller things that might not even cost human life, right? They're worried about a little fire Well, you have a fire department on standby. They're worried about, you know, a piece of hardware crashing, right? It's, I wish that, and what needs to happen is we need to have that open up, be a little bit more affordable, right? And therefore open us, open us up to advance our technology and keep up with our adversary.
Chris Tonn 48:35
I couldn't agree more. Actually, I think that there's a lot of red tape when it comes to the R and D side of these environments, but also into the entry side of becoming a commercial drone pilot. I am confused a little bit and why rocket drones kind of exist in the first place is because, you know, we don't let student drivers behind the wheel of a car. We don't let you know, pilots behind the wheel of an airplane without passing a skill set, you know, exam of some kind or a ride check, whatever we want to call it. But in the drone space, this is completely different. You just have to pass the 107 60 question exam with a 70 or higher, and you are good to go. Now. Will you get hired? You know, bypassing a 60 question exam probably not. What does get us to the top of the line? And what we, you know, really practice as a baseline skill set is proving that you can still pilot the drone without all the fancy sensors, the GPS and the altitude control and everything else. Because, guess what? These sensors are subject to a lot of different failures in the field, whether you're just simply under a structure or a tree, or, if you're, you know, just out in a weird interference environment. So, you know, industry is going to want to know that when you don't have GPS, the winds blowing, that you're not saying, uh oh, you're, you say, I got it, you know. So you have any thoughts, both y'all on this area, you know, if I'm, I'm. Wanting to go the commercial route. You know, how do I get to the top of the hiring list when it comes to that job interview?
Mario Worth 50:09
That's a great question. Absolutely great question. I think finding somebody that knows a lot about the industry probably like Mario, somebody that runs a rocket drones and, you know, talk to them, and if they're willing to, you know, let them take you under your wing, under their wing, and seed off of them. I think that's a good starting point for sure. Don't just go out there and recklessly, you know, fly and, you know, kind of like going back to the gentleman with the news reporter going out there and kind of recklessly flying, even though he's employed somewhere, he is recklessly flying and looked at he put a lot of people's lives in danger, because, you know what it comes down to. So, you know, definitely finding somebody who has that knowledge base and feeding off of them and finding an entry level position to get into, to get practice and get hours on the sticks, and be able to understand how the drone reacts to what you're doing, always having that situational awareness of where is the drone, where am I located? What's the wind speed? Are there structures just, you know, building a simple, basic foundation, you know, of your your surroundings, and that along will, I think, prevent a lot of accidents. You know, if you lose that GPS signal, or if the wind picks up, you know what's around you, and you know what elevation you have to go to to fly back home and bring it home safely. I think it's, you know, getting into the field, though it can be difficult. You have to find the right place to start. But you know, hours on the sticks, that's going to that's going to help you a lot. Absolutely, think that's, that's the key. Love it.
Mario Worth 52:04
I completely agree. It's the hours on the stick. I mean, just thinking about, you know, when I first started, and how my stick work is now, you know, I mean, it's, it's, there's no substitute for putting it at work, right? Yeah, I think that's the big key, especially when it's something that requires you to have muscle memory and know your equipment. So give you an example with my old Mavic, like one of the first mavics that came out. I just used one yesterday and to take because I wasn't going to climb on a ladder to take pictures of a gutter. So, you know, so I used that yesterday, but one of the things is you start to get to know the equipment. And, you know, you can look up you see what an obstacle is, right? And you can literally almost multitask. Because, you know, if I put the stick on this position, right, I know it's gonna take that drone exactly this amount of time before it gets close to that obstacle, to where I have to look back up, right? So you have your camera angled down while you're flying, and you can determine that, so you can look at your screen and you know you won't be hitting that obstacle. Keep in mind, there's no obstacle avoidance on my old Mavic, yeah, that's, that's why that's, that's that skill that is that has to be developed. And a lot of times what I see with the younger pilots that are coming into the industry, they take the shortcuts, right? They they're afraid to turn off the obstacle avoidance. They don't want to learn these distances. They don't want to really they rely on the autonomy more than anything, and we see that even in the R and D side right. Give you an example. On the R and D side. On high level, we were flying a $500,000 payload on an osprey, and it was the government's aircraft, so we were just hired to come in as pilots. So that means we don't touch the aircraft. We don't do anything to the aircraft. All we do is fly Tariq, the owner of unmanned aerial research. He was on the sticks. I was on the ground control station right. Air Force fires up that engine. And I'm literally, I'm walking over to Tariq, and I'm telling them, like, man, that that engine, it does not sound like it's lean enough, like it sounds a little lean there, like it needs to be a little bit richer, you know. And he goes, Yeah, I kind of agree. And so we kind of mentioned it, and they're like, Well, no, we checked our aircraft out. You guys are just flying. And keep on going right, like, all right. So we take off, we climb to about 8000 feet. That day was a high density altitude. When you're starting to get up there, you really need to watch it density altitude. So we had about when the ground like on sea level, we had about density altitude of like 1500 feet. So you know, we would technically when we're flying at 8000 the aircraft thinks it's literally at 9500 feet. Right. So almost 10,000 feet, that's thin air up there. What do you think happens to a lean aircraft on the ground when it gets into that thin air? Right? So engines starve, yeah. So we were on high alert, of course, right? So we were flying, and, you know, sure enough, we approached that 8000 mark, and I look and I see a descent rate at my throttle indicator. We didn't have RPMs or anything, so you have to base it on your throttle positioning for it, which was another issue that we kind of addressed. And you know, so it was packed out at 100% and we started again, descent rate in and I immediately go, engine out, engine out, engine out right, which means it is out there. It's at 8000 and now it's in my hands to bring it back into the optics hand. And that optic, you know, now has to dead stick land that aircraft was a half a million dollar payload onto a tiny, little runway. No pressure, yeah, no pressure at all. And that's like, you know? And I have to say, like, I had to easy job on that, right? Because all I had to figure out is engine out, and I had to make sure that that aircraft that I reacted quick enough that I can get that aircraft within visual range of the optic, right, yeah. Tariq had a difficult job get the dead stick land that right, not relying on technology, exactly, right? So that's a dead stick landing. Well, keep in mind, most of these pilots nowadays going under onto that kind of testing and evaluation, they used to fly in by fly by wire a, that aircraft would have not made it on a runway was fly by wire a, there's no way, right? But Tariq, since he was a little kid, he's been doing RC, balsa wood and everything else. So he's a really good dead stick. I mean, gliders, everything. So I think anybody else on that stick, that aircraft would have not been on that runway, right? And again, there is no substitute for the hard work that you put in. And that is a perfect example, because it did save that aircraft. It saved a half a million dollar payload, yeah. And guess what? We just adjusted the idle screw, and we were back up and going, right, you know,
Mario Worth 57:14
thaw on all this, if you're the head of our military, right? Would you send over a group of hunters that have been hunting Northwest Florida for, you know, six months to go fight for our country? You wouldn't now. You would send silt Team Six? Yeah, right. Those guys have training on training, on training. They have time on the trigger. They have time going through houses. They have time building their knowledge base, building their skill base, right? And not to knock any curl up hunters. Love you guys, but they they're not prepped, they're not equipped, they're not on the trigger every day. You know, multiple times a day. They're not practicing for what's to come. You know, they're going out there and, you know, finding, finding a good kill for the for the day, that's about it.
Chris Tonn 58:18
The the SEAL team, they have so much practice. Well, we got to do the same thing in our industry, right? Kind of, you know, obviously different industries, they're, they're training on on the trigger, we're training on the sticks, but you have to do the same thing. So that way, when you get into these kind of situations, you're not lost. You don't, you know, rely on the technology that may not even be there in some situations, but just having that again, having that foundation, you know, that education and training there, I think that is again, biggest, biggest thing for new pilots is, you know, building that sick time. I couldn't agree more. And technology is great when it works. And that was a dozen? Yeah, sometimes, if not oftentimes, in the drum space, it is finicky. And sometimes it's not just a failure, it's just a limitation. You know, under structures, under things, you're going to have to know these manual piloting skill sets. And honestly, if you have a way of logging these hours, building your portfolio, just like in the business model of going and launching your drone business and showing the audience your capabilities is kind of a similar approach to how I look at the hiring pathway of like, if they don't know the questions to ask for you to impress them on the hire, you might have to steal the show and say, let me show you what I can do to increase your trust level and in my confidence as a hire. So love to hear that that is a universal voice across multi industries. Well, with that, fellas, I think this kind of concludes our interview, and I do want to take a moment before I forget, to allow Mario to just give us a little insight on. Crash, you know, that's a, that's a really cool, advanced chapter of, kind of, all things robotics. And you guys are leading the charge in our in our Florida Panhandle, yeah.
Mario Worth 1:00:10
So crash is a nonprofit. It stands for Crestview robotics and Steph hub. The idea is that we want to build some of the future engineers, right? And we want to teach them. We follow a lot of the first program and the first model, but we include some cybersecurity as well in there. We do some robotic dog hacking. So we kind of do a wide variety of STEM activities. It is a pure passion of mine with these kids, because a lot of these kids, and you have the same in the drone industry, a lot of the kids, they're nerds, right? If you think of the kids at prom that are standing on the wall and not interacting, those are the kids, right? Yeah, that's what it is. But you don't see them not interacting when you put them in a row with other kids like that, and they start working on those drawings, on the robotic dogs, on building a robot, right? And one of the big skill when it comes to hiring, since we're talking about, talked so much about hiring, is that articulation, your teamwork, and just being able to, you know, have a personality that people can interact with. And a lot of times these geniuses don't have that, right, absolutely. And so I always like to say that these kids are way more, way more intelligent than I am, right? But what I can teach them is the people skills. So with crash. You know, there's these that these kids that, if you sit in front of them in an interview right now, right? You'd be like, Oh my god, I'm not hiring this kid. By the time they come out of the program, they're like, all right, I'm hiring this kid, right? And that's kind of the goal of crash. But in the meantime, we get to do a lot of cool stuff. We get to build a lot of cool robots. And we're on a cutting edge of, literally, AI robotics and anything that is going to come in the future, right? And one of the I'm gonna leave you with this, this, this is kind of like, you know, sometimes, like, the lamp goes on. We did fundraisers. And part of our fundraisers because we're nonprofit, and it costs us technology, it's about $100,000 to run a program every year that's not including facility or anything like that. That's just we got to raise $100,000 each year in order to stay alive, right? So we do a lot of fundraisers, and we did a lot of car washes, and now by ACE. And so we were out by ACE, and truck pulls in. Just came mudding kids cleaned that truck right. Took him two hours to clean that truck. The guy gives him six bucks. That was the last day we did a fundraiser like that. Because I'm like, hang on a minute. We're technology company. Like we're doing technology. Why the heck are we washing fires? Yeah, so that day, we got with the goat club, right? And the goat club helped us out with some basic starter code, and we started building an AI photo booth to, you know, rent out AI photo booth for events and stuff like that. So again, that's what really got us into the AI realm, right? But it kind of comes back to now the kids have to even interact more with the public, right? Because they're sitting there running an AI photo booth.
Chris Tonn 1:03:31
Yes, I love that. I love that. I love to see the soft skills. In addition to all the skill set stuff, it's important to communicate. It's the it's the it's the streamline way to getting ahead in today's world of losing some of that skill set as well. So I love that. Now, where can people find out more? If they want
Mario Worth 1:03:50
to check, yeah, yeah, the best way is on Facebook. You know, just search us under crash Crestview robotics on STEM hub, and you'll find us. We've got a little robot logo. That's that we use. But, yeah,
Chris Tonn 1:04:06
love it. Love it. Well, guys, thank you again. This has been a wonderful podcast to say the least that covered a lot of great subjects. And can't thank you enough for coming out. So thank you for having us. Yeah, genuinely appreciate it absolutely got these. And with that, we're out bus.
