Chris Tonn 0:01
Well, that was pretty cool, bud. Yeah, it was, I tell you, it's not every day you get to dive a Saturn five rocket.
Chantry Holdman 0:08
No, not at all. It was definitely unique experience, for sure.
Chris Tonn 0:14
Well, we want to certainly take a moment to thank the folks over at visit Alabama for having us out on that amazing shoot. It was certainly something that ended up producing a really nice looking commercial as well, which we'll show you all in this video. But yeah, Chantry Holdman, everyone, part of the rocket drones team, Pelican drones team and all things drone professional, if you want to give us a little insight into how you got into this.
Chantry Holdman 0:43
Well, honestly, I got into RC helicopters and planes as a small kid, and then I served in the Marine Corps as a 04 81 landing sport specialist, and part of that job was to hang out on helicopters and do external lifts with them. And my love for helicopters really grew around reenlistment time. I tried to re enlist and switch over to the Marine Corps drum program, and unfortunately, because I was a sergeant, they wouldn't allow me to lat move over into that program. And so I said, Okay, well, I'm just going to do it on my own, and ever since then, 2010 I've been flying drones and multi rotors.
Chris Tonn 1:28
That's super cool. I know a lot of folks in the military think it's kind of just the Predator drones only. But now we're in a whole new chapter of all sorts of applications, from surveillance to weaponry to you name it, clearing landmines, off of a off of the field. It's got multiple uses. But did you? Did you start in the military? Did it? Did it just pique your interest? There? Where did it go from
Chantry Holdman 1:54
there? It was just a passion of mine. I've always been aviation fan, so ultimately, I just kind of cling to it naturally, because I couldn't be a jet pilot at that time, and so drones is what gave me that freedom to go ahead and fly like a bird.
Chris Tonn 2:12
So we started on small, little RC helicopters, small, when did like your first actual quad copter come into play
Chantry Holdman 2:22
a Reddit 2010 Yeah. And
Chris Tonn 2:24
was it the same kind of control pattern as the RC helicopters? Or where else did you get familiar with
Chantry Holdman 2:29
Yeah, all the control schematics are the same. You still have pitch, you have roll, yaw and thrust. Ultimately, it was the exact same mode two configuration for the control layout. And then ultimately it felt very similar, because multi rotor drones and coaxial and, you know, fixed pitch style helicopters all fly the same. And so it was very natural just moving right into it from helicopter. Do
Chris Tonn 2:59
you get any help from the video game world at all?
Chantry Holdman 3:02
Oh, absolutely. Mostly Battlefield, yeah, that's where it all really kicked in, with Battlefield three on the PlayStation three. That's probably one of the best games ever made. I think,
Chris Tonn 3:13
yeah, yeah, I was right there with you. I think that a lot of drone pilots, if you referenced that, or at least some, some that have been flying for some time, I should rephrase, but we all had, kind of had a moment in some of the games that either exposed us to similar control patterns as the drones or or somewhat, you know, easy to adapt from there. But what about, you know, did you? Did you, you know, first get into a, like an actual flying quad copter. What was that, you know, First Chapter, was it a toy? Was it a real deal, big drone? What was it?
Chantry Holdman 3:48
Yeah, it was actually a really small drone. I think at the time, it only had like a two or maybe one axis gyro in it, and it was fully enclosed. It was called a Skywalker. It was like in this little cage. And in the very first I would fly it and I crash it over and over again. So I was very thankful it had a full cage on it. But when I got better at it, I went ahead and clipped the cage off and was able to lose some weight on it, so it was much more agile and nimble. It didn't have any type of position hold or anything else. It was just, I'm going to stay stable and fly stable. But you're, you're in full control. There's no, you know, hovering position, so it was quite drifty at all times. So you had to learn how to counteract. And basically, it's like being out in space with, like, one of those Eva packs. When you shoot thrust this way, you've got to shoot thrust back this way in order to stop.
Chris Tonn 4:44
Yeah, there's no breaks in the air. Huh?
Chantry Holdman 4:47
Absolutely not.
Chris Tonn 4:49
Well, that's really cool. Did you find yourself kind of naturally leaning towards this newfound, you know, love of flying the drones towards, you know, commercial. Like, how did it ultimately connect back over to commercial opportunities?
Chantry Holdman 5:04
I seen a lot of commercial capabilities at the time. After I got out in the military, I worked as a screen printer, and I also did oil fill and part of one things I did when I developed a DJI f4 50. I mean, that's pretty much where we all started, unless you started out on a phantom or something. I would map the oil site and then create a print of it. I would bring a printer with me, and I would give that to the company man. And they're like, you just did that. I'm like, Yeah, this drone technology is really cool, isn't it? It can be quite helpful, you know, and trying to sell it and trying to figure out where it fits into commercial industry, because during that time, it wasn't legal for us to be doing anything commercial. It wasn't until like 2016 that they really opened it up, unless you had your actual pilot's
Chris Tonn 5:58
license. Yeah, no, that was an evolving chapter of regulations, but it's interesting you bring up kind of helping to paint the picture for the potential business use cases that you know one might hire you for, whether it's a photo of the job site or a scan of the 3d assets on on site, or real estate for sale. I'm sure it started to really paint the picture nicely. What happened after, you know, oil field side of things. Where did it go? From there, I
Chantry Holdman 6:30
moved over to Pensacola, Florida. As a matter of fact, contacted you right when I got here. And after that, we kind of some of my friends, we got together and we created a drone racing program here in the in the city of Pensacola. We were quite successful in the first three years, and then I went ahead and just got busier and busier with my commercial drone work. So moved on from that and got into the whole wide world of commercialized operations, and then, yeah, the rest is history. I mean, we're here at rocket drones because they're all,
Chris Tonn 7:09
yeah, yeah. It's kind of a kind of crazy how it feels like yesterday, some of this stuff was just getting started, and you've been, you've been big on the building and design side of things. I think there was a cool project that comes to mind with, you know, spray drone for vegetation that was growing on a hotel exterior in New Orleans. You want to bring us up to speed on that one too. That was a
Chantry Holdman 7:37
that was, that was very interesting. And you had a client, as a matter of fact, that wanted to kill plants that were going on the side of their their building there, and we only wanted to do it with like a phantom. So the payload was very small. It was probably about the size of a can of Coke, yeah, about 12 ounces of fluid. It flew not very well due to the shiftment of the water inside, but ultimately it did spray, and it would have done the job with the skilled pilot behind it, but I think they found it a little bit easier at the time to just send somebody over on a rope.
Chris Tonn 8:22
Yeah, well, it's, it's amazing to see the ability to take an idea, bring it to life with 3d printers, design a little bit of parts from another world of Walmart
Chantry Holdman 8:37
exactly got the spraying system and apparatus from the bug spring, yeah. And then I modified it to be radio controlled, and so then I could just spray it, and it had its own little pumping system all all built in. It screwed right onto the the Phantom, and it was just a little modular package. It was pretty good,
Chris Tonn 8:59
yeah, I think that's the one of the keys to your pathways of success is that you said yes a lot along the way of building things and flying missions. And I, I want to say there was a unique one when it comes to disaster response that you also got to be previewed to. What was that hurricane?
Chantry Holdman 9:20
Was Matthew or Michael. It confuses me so much to still today, but it was over there in Bay County of Florida. Worked directly under Bay County EOC, the Emergency Operations Command Center and the Florida State University and Florida UAS group, and basically we got parachuted in to do disaster response route clearance, and then ultimately we mapped all of Mexico beach where the storm actually made landfall to do mapping studies, and then our data in. It up on the USAA website, and it was, it was really cool to be part of, yeah, yeah.
Chris Tonn 10:04
That is, I'm sure, a different scenario of now you're going into a disaster site that doesn't have power. You need to charge batteries, you need to get footage to where it needs to go. You were probably dealing with some new challenges all together. But that's what, really, I think, has made you resilient. But you tell me, I mean, what was the most eye opening of that journey in itself, besides the sheer destruction, I was a cat five, you know, Storm,
Chantry Holdman 10:32
yeah, so very much. So it was, it was like being in a war zone. I've been in one of those before, and it and it was very similar. Ultimately, we were having to cut our way in. People's homes were completely destroyed. They haven't had contact with anybody since the beginning of the storm. A lot of times we were cutting into neighborhoods, and people are like, what's going on? You know? We we lost power. We don't have any way of knowing what's going on or anything. So it was, it was very chaotic. Power was limited. We were running little two stroke generators in the back of the trucks at all times, keeping our batteries charged. Ultimately, there was some crime going on. So it was kind of dangerous. We had to have, you know, a member of our team kind of looking out for us at all times, because people were getting into some bad trouble, stealing from stores, you know, just trying to get basic necessities or whatever. And it was just like I said. It was just like a war zone, yeah, you know, you didn't know what to expect and then, or what kind of conditions or what you were going to be facing,
Chris Tonn 11:47
yeah. Well, that's what makes these drone missions never is one the same as another, in some cases, very extreme ways. Well, tell us a little bit about, you know, some other fun projects. I know you've got a few. I know you ended up in, you know, the advanced piloting side of FPV. That's led to some stuff. You know, you tell us what's been your favorite project to work on?
Chantry Holdman 12:08
Oh, by far, the Delta five or the Saturn five rocket. That to me, I'm such a Aviation and Space nerd, most of my most prideful pieces of work have to deal with aviation. So whether it be the Saturn five rocket, or it be the National Naval Aviation Museum here in Pensacola, getting to fly around all those historic aircraft, or it could be flying the LCS ships out there in Mobile Bay, just being kind of back into the military world, and being able to fly and show off my skills is kind of like, Ah, see, you know you shouldn't let me go, yep.
Chris Tonn 12:51
That's right. That's right. Because now let's fast forward for a second. Marines are now making a move to be all equipped with drones.
Chantry Holdman 12:59
Yeah, the saying has always been every Marine arrival in now, it's kind of like every Marine a drone operator now, yeah, with the advancements of the drone technology in the battle space all the way up to the Space Force back here, where, you know, they have people that utilize drones all the time. You know, the satellites. What is that? That is a big, giant drone, and you remotely control it, so they need all kinds of smart people in it, in their ranks.
Chris Tonn 13:26
Now, no, absolutely. It's a it's a changed environment, to say the least, but really cool that you were early to it at the same time, and enjoying those times with the drones. But what about some of the not so fun stuff? You know, obviously it's always fun to reminisce on the good stuff. But were there any, like, challenging moments where you felt like, you know, wow, this is really probably one of the more challenging areas that I've messed with. Is it in the building sector? Was it in the pilot side? Where was it?
Chantry Holdman 13:55
See, the building is always tough when you take on your first FPV drone, learning how to solder, learning how to program, tune, and get all those settings dialed in just right to your flying style, and then also ensuring that it's not causing micro oscillations in the footage. You know that's that's like climbing Mount Everest, when you first start out, you're like, How in the world am I ever going to get up to the top of this mouth? But you keep chewing away at it and don't give up. And, you know, eventually see yourself at the top, you know, looking around and enjoying the view. So
Chris Tonn 14:32
I love it. That's a That's a beautiful way to look at it. And I know it's now It blends with other skill set areas like, for example, I guess you could be a really good drone pilot, but if you're, you know, not smooth on your turns, or you're not being respectful of what looks good on camera, you have another area of skill set to unlock. You know, did you find the camera side to be like an enjoyment of. Of extra drone stuff, or was it just a whole nother box?
Chantry Holdman 15:03
Yeah, I grew up taking pictures. I always loved operating cameras, you know, because my mind's really mechanical and always wanting to know how to figure how things worked and and so cameras was one of those things. And I'd always had a great appreciation for nature, and you know, just what beauty you can find. And so the additional bonus of having these high definition cameras on on these drones was just like being completely free, like I say, You're You're the bird, and you get to find beauty and capture it. So that's, you know, what's led up to my skill set and further pushing me into this world.
Chris Tonn 15:43
And what's your favorite kind of drone to fly? Oh, FPV, all day, every day, any particular size or class of FPV, probably
Chantry Holdman 15:53
two and a half inch. Two and a half inch is well within the legal you know, usually below 250 grams, so it opens up a little bit more of the rules and regulations where you can and can apply. And ultimately, they're just so fun, agile and fast that you really can go anywhere with them and feel completely safe. You can go to a park, you can go to the beach, and it's not really overly threatening to anybody. Also the Tiny Whoop size class drones, you know, 65 millimeter wheel based diameters. Those are probably my favorite, because I don't even have to leave my front room, you know, I've got a full little drone race track in my in my house right now.
Chris Tonn 16:38
So that's so cool. Well, that's, that's the that's the fun part of this side of of it too, is sometimes you can't tell the difference between work and play. Well, what about your your favorite style of, you know, the drone, FPV flight. Is it freestyle? Or you like the racing? Yeah.
Chantry Holdman 16:56
I mean, freestyle is free, natural, but in racing is adrenaline packed, and I love all of it. Ultimately, though, the cinematography side of FPV flying is where I really enjoy because I've learned how to freestyle. I learned how to race. No, it's like, how do I make money? Yeah, how do I continue doing this as a job in progressing my skills, because the first two were is all about like, rapid movements, and it can be quite jerky. And when you get to the racer, it's like, okay, now fly course and do all these maneuvers. But cinematography really brings that professionalism into it, to where you know you're on a music video set, or you're on a movie shoot, you're you've got like, these once or twice opportunities to get the shot right, and then, you know, because the drilling gets flowing. Like, sure, you know, it's a high pressure environment, yeah. Like, especially if, like, pyrotechnics are on the line or something, you know. So you've only got sometimes that one shot get to get the shot right. And so while I'm flying, I'm okay, but as soon as I'm done, I'm a nervous wreck. You know, it's like, Okay, guys, I'm gonna need to calm down for a second, let this adrenaline wear off, and then I'll be able to, you know, answer any questions or review footage and everything. First,
Chris Tonn 18:21
nice, nice. Well, what's, what's the next project in line for testing your skill set?
Chantry Holdman 18:27
Uh, let's see. I think we got a golf shot coming up, so they're wanting me to fly and chase a golf ball. So that's going to be really neat. Yeah, we're gonna have professional golfer do it as safe as possible utilizing a smaller drone set. And they want that swing and that Tom Brady shot, basically, that got viral. What two years
Chris Tonn 18:53
ago? Yeah, that was a cool shot, and that was the hole in one shot. Of all things on the first take
Chantry Holdman 18:58
that's incredible. Like, I still don't know how they managed to get the timing right, the shot right, and everything all in one take. Yeah, but they did, yeah.
Chris Tonn 19:09
Well, that's so cool. Well, what about, you know, some of the things that you have for advice for some of the younger generation that's getting into this field, as far as you know, where do they start? Where's the areas to focus the most on.
Chantry Holdman 19:22
Definitely, practice, practice, practice on a simulator. That's, that's the number one key. I save so much money, you know? And then once you do get into that physical drone, start off with the small get the stick coordination, because now you're, you're you're fighting environment, you know, and it's an invisible force up there. It only thing you can do is react. You can't be proactive with unless you absolutely know what those conditions are. And so once you develop how to react to those invisible forces, you. Then start moving up in that size of drone, and get more and more comfortable. And you know, ultimately go from freestyle, which I think everybody kind of starts at with FPV, and then move into the racing to get those fine motor skills, and then ultimately on to your professional career, whether it be cinematography, fire, EMS, agriculture, it doesn't matter, but ultimately it's going to take you through multiple stages of self regulation and stress management and different things that you're going to learn through that process. Because even while I'm shaky. That only happens, but after the flight, during the flight, I'm rock solid, ready to roll. It's just due to that experience over the past 15 years of just continuously going and then don't be afraid to crash. Ultimately, if you're not pushing the boundaries, and you don't crash. You know, you're not learning. So push those boundaries. Push yourself harder and harder. How do I make it around the course faster and faster? And if you crash, you crash, you know, sometimes turtle. Get back up if you can, if it's completely down and out, that's just how racing goes sometimes.
Chris Tonn 21:22
Yeah, now you bring up a good point too, with, you know, the simulator and the crashes, it's so much more affordable to be able to press the space bar and reset than some of these drones that are out there. Because in the beginning chapters, the drones were crazy expensive. You know, for professional works sides, they're also the build your own. But it felt like, you know, if you crash one of those $10,000 bus drones, it might, like, it might scar you enough to walk away. So
Chantry Holdman 21:53
it is a bad day. You know, even the $1,000 was hurt big time. It's like, you know, the bigger the drone is, you know, they're, they're kind of easier to fly. You know, they've got Position Hold, they've got radar sensors and stuff like that. But ultimately, you just got to fly mining money, mindful, yeah, of what you're doing, how close you are, you to that building, you know, whether you're doing inspections or cinematography or, you know, just continuously keep that situational awareness about where the drone is and what's around your airspace and who's below your drone too, because at any moment I've, I've even had it on one of our shoots, I was 60 feet up in the air, and all of a sudden, complete loss of power in the drone because the battery lead vibrated out of the out of his plug holder, and that drone fell down and smacked the ground into a lot of pieces. But luckily, I wasn't over any of the vehicles. I wasn't over any people or anything, and so it was just the drone that was broken that, yeah,
Chris Tonn 23:01
it's, it's interesting you say that you know, amount of discipline that it can take to not be over people and cars and things of that nature, because these things do happen, and it's a balancing act that's probably going through your mind When you're flying of safe to safe this past you know, best shot. Everybody is timed, right? All of those things probably going through your head. But if at any given moment, a failure can occur. Could be a bird strike, could be anything,
Chantry Holdman 23:36
yeah, it happens. Birds coming. They'll try to grab your drone out, right, out of the sky. Sometimes, like I said, you'll lose power, or you'll lose an IMU or something. It's almost if something doesn't go wrong in the shoot, I get really worried, because there's always, usually some hurdle to overcome. And if everything goes right, I get a little sketched out. I'm like, oh, is the footage okay? And so I have to review the footage real quick make sure I hit record. Yeah. I mean, that's that can happen too
Chris Tonn 24:08
well. Give us a little insight on the the world of the FPV pilot pay, because I know it can range from something like super simple flying through a little quick house to something where we're in a national TV commercial flying through a Dodge Ram window and out the other what? What are these a ranges in the FPV film category.
Chantry Holdman 24:30
I mean, for me, personally, I kept it pretty clean, simple and charged a flat hourly rate. But ultimately, you can move on up into these bigger projects. You know, sometimes it's like $1,500 a day. Sometimes it's $10,000 a day. It really depends on the project and your skill level, whether or not you can perform, and whether or not you already have the equipment and have backing equipment for the equipment, because you. Um, that's also part of the part of the game too, because if you crash your drone on set and you don't have parts, you're offset, somebody else is on, um, they're not going to wait on you to, you know, hold on. I got to send it off to, you know, the company and get it back two weeks later. You know you're on set that day, so you have to fix it that day.
Chris Tonn 25:27
So in addition to flying safely and capturing the shot properly, I got to be able to communicate and turn around with any issues that that occur. What's, what's the what's been, the little bit of a glimpse into the customer experience side. Do you show the customers the shot? Do they have you kind of give input. You do it again. You know, where have you found some of the strengths in in, you know, working well with your your clients,
Chantry Holdman 25:51
I try to do exactly what they ask. Sometimes, they're really well versed in what the drones capabilities and what pilots of this style can do sometimes not but ultimately, I try to give them what they want. And then when I find those little moments that I can just kind of like, Hey, check this out. Yeah, they usually end up going with that shot.
Chris Tonn 26:15
Yeah, that's interesting, that your experience can sometimes show a shot that may not have originally been on a storyboard or or just from flying around, getting the feel for the area too. So that's really cool. Well, what else is coming in the future? You know, as far as beyond, you know, not just your work, but the world of which you play in the FPV arena. What are we seeing around the corner? What's next to come in the hardware space.
Chantry Holdman 26:41
We're going to see more and more smart drones come out of the manufacturing, more manufacturing houses going to start opening up in America. You know, ultimately, our military and our law enforcement, pretty much every industry, is going to be wanting drone pilots. Ultimately, if you have the manual flight skills, you're going to get a lot further in advance amongst your peers, because those manual skill sets, especially for law enforcement military use, it's highly requested, because you can do the things that most drone pilots can't. Some drones won't even allow you to fly too close to a building, yet alone fly through the window.
Chris Tonn 27:29
Well, it's like you just said a minute ago, if something's not going wrong on a shoot with the drone, something's wrong in general. It's funny how often technology, you know, is great when it works. But with drones, particularly, they are throwing you curveballs left and right
Chantry Holdman 27:47
and, yeah, you got to be adaptable to every situation. So whether it be environmental wins, you know, all of a sudden, a squall line could be coming in, like, you know, the Saturn five shot we were set to go at this time, and but all of a sudden this huge squall line come moving in in the weather pattern, and we had to get rolling really fast. So everything got rushed really quick. And then I played havoc on my nerves, and was able, you know, but once I got goggles down and I said, Okay, here we go. You know, my piloting and all of my training kicked back in and I was able to get the shot.
Chris Tonn 28:26
So, yeah, I forgot about that storm. So just just to give the audience a little bit more insight on that particular shoot, you were off to the side, set up, goggled up, ready to fly. Give us kind of that play by play of how that went, and was there talent involved, you know, what, what all was that.
Chantry Holdman 28:47
So about 30 minutes before that shoot, it was almost windless. It was like a breeze. I was like, Okay, this is perfect, because if there's wind, it could throw you off of your dive, it can, you know, push you around up there. And everything was doing just fine. I couldn't really gage the wind, because there was no flags out anywhere around that campus at the time, so I didn't know which particular direction the wind was going to be coming from once the squall line kind of kicked in. So ultimately, I had to go and give a few practice dives to understand what was going up, you know, 400 feet up in the air, you know, and then at the same time, what kind of venturi, like wind turbulence effect is that rocket giving off too. So ultimately, it took me, like, four or five good solid dives to realize that I had to be off the rocket about 40 to 50 feet to the right of it in order to start my role. Because if I tried to just flip over right at the top of the rocket, I would end up 40 to 50. Feet off to the left of the rock. But once I got that line dialed in and kept dropping and dropping, you know, and the director was working on his timing, getting everybody to move in in the in one smooth sequence, it was very challenging and but ultimately it was, you know, repetition, repetition. And then, you know, finally, I had one or two dives where everybody was like, that's the one, yeah, you know, it's just inches off the off the rock. It come down, see the family. We were flying off to the side of the family for safety. Because ultimately I'm coming down and mock holy, yeah, you know, really, really fast coming down that dive, and then I have to J hook, kind of pull out, and then get smooth at a tree line area to see this family walking down the hill, yeah, you know, and I hit the trees a few times. The actors were kind of scared and ducking, you know, in some of the takes. But once we all got used to what was happening and what needed to go on, it was just it made magic.
Chris Tonn 31:06
Yeah, no, it certainly did. And all while an approaching squall line is on the way,
Chantry Holdman 31:12
I think that battery was since I unplugged, it started raining, yeah, yeah, so it was just in the very nick of time. Yeah, no, that
Chris Tonn 31:23
is so cool. Well, any other just exciting stories while we're on story time side of things? Because, you know, people love hearing some of these more in the behind the scenes sides of of it all. And I know that you've been on some exciting ones that one's probably one of the more spicy stories. But any others come to mind, or any other just passion, ones that you really enjoyed,
Chantry Holdman 31:47
I flew through an F 18 Hornet, oh yeah, intake through the After Burner, and I was the first person to ever do that through an actual jet. And it was kind of my own silly way of like, hey, this exactly where a drone shouldn't go, but I'm getting to go anyway. That's awesome. That's why I really wanted to do that. And I got to do that in the restoration hangar of the national angle Aviation Museum for some project works, for some documentaries and stuff. So that was really fun.
Chris Tonn 32:20
That is, that is, wow. Well, Chantry, you've certainly been on some projects to keep us all wanting to do more, to say the least. But any other just little tidbits, as we sign off here, and want to, you know, give any other insights of how else to get involved with drones and how else to kind of just tear down that barrier a little bit.
Chantry Holdman 32:46
Yeah, don't stop learning. Ever. Never stop learning is power. Knowledge is power is it's been a saying for a long time. It's true. The more you learn about drones and what their capabilities are, from ortho mosaic mapping to LIDAR to drone delivery, everything all the way up into the satellites. You know, it's it's limitless, and you have a career available in this technology, and it's up to you how far you actually go
Chris Tonn 33:21
couldn't agree more, and super thankful to have you on the show. And guess that's another episode of aerial perspectives. Thanks for tuning in.
