Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Explore your curiosity - Interesting people with fascinating stories.
Life consists of three things:
-The stories we tell others
-The stories others tell us
-The stories we tell ourselves.
Michael, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're gonna have fun today. We're gonna talk about something pretty cool, which is drones. Give me the, like the emotional experience that you had the first time, the very first time that you flew a drone.
Speaker 2:So my journey is a very emotional journey as it is because my middle daughter, I have five daughters. My middle daughter taught me how to fly a drone, which sparked my career. She had a little toy drone she got for Christmas years ago, and I was intrigued by it, but I just kept crashing it and getting frustrated. But then I just got that bite, right? And the drone industry was coming around.
Speaker 2:I was retiring from Microsoft looking for what's going be my next to do. And little did I know that it was going to grow into an internationally recognized expert role in drones.
Speaker 1:Oh, the hot, hot, hot. You have five daughters? Five? Yeah, five. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:We do get a little personal on this show, so with your permission, hold I have one daughter I can barely manage. For the frightened dads who are failing miserably with their daughters like the rest of us, what is your advice as a and I think your youngest of daughters is almost going to college or around that age?
Speaker 2:She is. She's 17. My advice of being a transplantection is to clean your handguns as often as the boys come over. Right? We we we have had some trials and tribulations in that arena.
Speaker 2:Girls are nothing but drama machines, but I love every single one of them to death. Right? I mean, I I I couldn't think of a life better than other than you see this behind me. This room is filled with autograph sports memorabilia.
Speaker 1:Beautiful.
Speaker 2:None of them care a word about it. The Michael Jordan basketballs, the Babe Ruth baseball, they don't care.
Speaker 1:Oh, he said you have autographed. Wow. That's amazing. What's what's the story behind that? How did that happen?
Speaker 2:So my grandfather ran the moonshine business for Al Capone on the South Side Of Chicago in the twenties. So I thought you were going
Speaker 1:to get the drones today. Hold on back out.
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's a lot there's, there's a lot to my story. But, so anyway, so they knew a lot of people, of course. Right? So I got introduced to a lot of people.
Speaker 2:And so, like, I've got a baseball signed by Babe Ruth to my grandmother. I've got a ball on my wall over here from the nineteen nineteen World Series, which was the whole Black Sox era of of White Sox baseball. So, I mean, I've got as you see in the corner, got autographed footballs and hymns. The whole room is just filled with autograph memorabilia. A lot of it's been handed down over the years and a lot of it's I've met people throughout the years.
Speaker 1:So you've got five daughters. Do what do you do?
Speaker 2:It's interesting is so when we built this house, we built this room on the back of the house. It's got its own security system, its own comms. Systems. So literally, I spend all my time in here and and I guess that throw crumbs under the door when it's time to eat. We all my girls are and my wife too have very busy lives.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 2:we're going in a million different directions. Those times that we do get together, we make sure it's just good quality time.
Speaker 1:I love that. So my daughter is 11, son 13, we have a little six year old raptor. What's the one piece of advice that you'll give me and any other audience listening to us today about child rearing?
Speaker 2:Good luck. Good luck. Good luck. Good luck. There is no book, right?
Speaker 2:I've done things right. I've done things wrong. It's about just sharing that love, being understanding, and just always being there. Know, your family's all you got, and you should always have your family's back no matter what the consequences, no matter what the situation is. Right.
Speaker 2:And I think, you know, I come from a large Italian family and we just believe that you're always familiar. You're always family. Right. And that comes before anything else.
Speaker 1:Right. Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Cause your times will be tried with children, especially with girls.
Speaker 1:So you're, you learn how to fly your first drone with your daughter. I think many adults have had that experience of getting this like shitty toy drone that you know you can barely keep it up in there without crashing into something, but professional drones are very different. So tell us the difference between you know a Mavic three which isn't exactly an expensive professional drone. And let's say, you know, those toy pieces are garbage for $200.
Speaker 2:Massive, massive difference, right? So I use those Mav Mini three's as trainers. People come to me and go, oh, I want to fly a drone. Never done it. I'm not gonna put a 10,020 thousand dollar drone in your hand.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna I'm gonna put one of these mini three's, which they're perfect. As you know, if you've ever flown a drone, they all fly the same. Right? But, you can put prop guards in a very relatively short amount of time. You've got people flying.
Speaker 2:Right? So it's it's an interesting experience. I love to work with people. I do a lot of public speaking. I do a lot of speaking at schools, talking to kids about careers in aviation and then I've been fortunate that I've been all over the world being licensed in The United States, Canada, The UK.
Speaker 2:I've traveled all over doing drones for a number of things from commercials to TV to infrastructure inspection, law enforcement, search and rescue. Right? Writing the drone laws in Texas. It's so funny now that so this my whole story has really come full circle because I told you my daughter, Aubrey, taught me how to apply drones. She's now at aerospace engineering school.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So she's at Milwaukee School of Engineering. Beautiful. Shout out Go Raiders. And she plays on the girls basketball team there.
Speaker 1:Beautiful.
Speaker 2:And from that, you know, I just train a lot of people and what in my workings through my career, helped write the drone laws in Texas. I helped bring package delivery to Texas. Walmart is delivering to 75% of Dallas right now via drones. And it's so great because I put a post on my LinkedIn this weekend. I was working in the backyard and I was thirsty and didn't have nothing in the fridge to drink.
Speaker 2:I got on the Walmart app. Bang. They had a drone deliver a Gatorade to me in my backyard. Right? For me, this has really come full circle from a guy that came from the tech industry and business industry, started his own drone services company, wrote drone laws, got involved in the regulatory side.
Speaker 2:Now I do workforce development, helping people get trained to get into jobs. Then with my daughter at aerospace engineering school, it's really come full circle for me. So it's, it's kind of interesting and just a great pleasure to be a part of it.
Speaker 1:What a beautiful story. Absolutely love that. So, so these, you know, we think about, you know, it's called the muggles, right? That didn't know nothing about drones. We think about drones as these toys.
Speaker 1:We've heard that you know Amazon and Walmart are doing something and like okay they're going to deliver packages. It just doesn't seem to hit the mark in any significant way but what most of us don't know is that drones are being used by police, fire, search and rescue in ways that save lives. Tell us about this, like educate our audience who knows nothing about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's really my passion now is training law enforcement first responders. Coming from that arena, having helped support FEMA in five hurricane missions with a drone team, I understand how useful the tool is. So it's really interesting to go into many agencies now that are flying drones and using them for a whole array of things. Accident reconstruction, Overwatch, search and rescue is a really big, big one.
Speaker 2:I've had the pleasure
Speaker 1:of having- Hold on, hold on, not everybody here is law enforcement, Leo. What's Overwatch? What does that even mean?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sorry. Overwatch is, I say that not to scare people, know, but surveillance, right? If you throw the word surveillance out there, immediately everybody goes on the defense, right? If you throw Overwatch out there, it kind of rolls through the conversation and keeps to the pleasant tone in the conversation.
Speaker 1:Fair enough.
Speaker 2:I apologize, but that's what that is, any type of surveillance that they want to do for an event or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:And think like massive sports, they've got a, they've got a, you know, a drone that just stays up there for hours because it's got a cable connected to the drone and it's just making sure everything's okay. Nobody's getting hurt. Nothing bad's happening. I mean, they're used in ways that keep the public safe. They're used in ways that actually help find people.
Speaker 1:I have a friend, police officer, they found somebody lost in a forest and it was the drone flying back and forth. There's so many stories like this almost every day, every week around the world.
Speaker 2:What's so the funny. It's so funny. I hate to interrupt you, but it's so funny that you say that because to feed into that, my neighbors all know what I do and we live on the back of a lake on a greenbelt. So when they lose their dogs or cats, they'll get on Facebook and go, hey are you home? Can you help us?
Speaker 2:Right, so I'm out looking for animals most of the time.
Speaker 1:I love that. I just put a, what's it called, an eye, the Apple tags on my two dogs.
Speaker 2:Air tags.
Speaker 1:Yeah, air tags, that's right. So, okay, let's get a little serious here. You said you participated in search and rescue or some aspect of five hurricanes. Give us the first time, your first hurricane where you were participating in this effort. What did that look like?
Speaker 1:What was the strong, I assume emotions going through your mind? Kind of bring us with you to that journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah so it's interesting so as I'm going along in my drone career training law enforcement early on we had a hurricane here in Texas, Harvey, right? So we went down to support our law enforcement friends in South Texas, really trying to figure out how do we use them? How can we use them? Because it's such a complex environment. Give us so many things that are going on, right?
Speaker 2:High stress, no resources. You're basically you're you gotta be your own resource, right? And so we went down to Harvey, worked with our law enforcement friends down there, learned what worked, what didn't work. Well, Texas legislator heard about our efforts. I was fortunate enough that I got elected to two of the Texas legislators committees on what's advanced air mobility.
Speaker 2:How do we use drones for this kind of scenario? Right? So with that, I was the director of unmanned operations for the civil air patrol, which is the largest search and rescue organization in the world. Right? So that's how I got into it.
Speaker 2:It wasn't like I just showed up at an event and wanted to do that. Right? I would highly advise anybody not to do that. So I had an already end to it. So what happens is when we get there, the useful tool that we have is the drone.
Speaker 2:A helicopter has a difficulty getting into a close area to see if maybe somebody's trapped in their attic, where I can take a drone, fly in an open space into an attic, look around inside of an attic, see if anybody's inside there. Or if there's anybody on the rooftop or anywhere around it where a helicopter has more difficulty getting into that to be able to see that. So for us, we can deploy drones into there. We use the GPS locations to report back to the helicopter. If there is someone there, then they can airlift them out of there, so to speak.
Speaker 2:And then a good portion after all that happens is mapping the area for erosion control. They want to see before and after pictures of an area after a storm runs through. So historically, they're keeping those records to see how bad is the damage, what do they need to repair, all of those things. So it's a whole series of things that we coordinate with drones, helicopters, and airplanes to collect data, find people, all kinds of things that need to be found, located, and understood.
Speaker 1:So just to flip the picture for a second, let's say I'm the one who's lost. I hear the drone flying above me. Is there something that, you know, if you want to be found by the drone you should do or like, you know, how do you interact with this technology if you're in trouble?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. Right. So you don't ever grab at the drone, don't ever throw something at the drone.
Speaker 1:Unless you want to lose your fingers. That's the
Speaker 2:Yeah, well that too. And if you down the drone, you've lost your search efforts, right? They're not going to find you. So if you're in a situation like that, and I pray that you're not, I would find the most open area you can find. Hopefully, you'll be able to get yourself to that area.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, drones aren't like helicopters and airplanes that have to be at five or 600 feet. I can be at 75 feet and look and see what color your eyes are. I can drop a thermal blanket in a bottle of water to you. I can communicate through a speaker to you and let you know that my ground efforts are on their way to you. So I would say that is the biggest thing because if you're in too much cover, no one's going to see you.
Speaker 2:But if you are in a situation like that, get to an open area where we can find you, we can get to you and get you out of that situation.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. I love that. You said like don't go to an event, obviously don't go to event, but LEO, FIRE, they are actually looking to volunteers. What is the process? I would love to do this.
Speaker 1:What's the process that an individual needs to go through from, you know, a muggle who knows nothing about drones to get their training seven. We'll explain what that is, guess, and then actually volunteer with their local efforts. What would that look like? So
Speaker 2:that's what Uncrude Aerospace does. That's my company. We are a drone consultancy and training company that we train and consult companies globally. So we have online and in person to get your part one zero seven. And what I'll explain briefly to your to your listeners is what's the difference?
Speaker 1:And FAA looks at what's a one zero seven?
Speaker 2:That's what I'm gonna explain. Yeah. That's what I'll explain because it kinda helps understand. Right? So how the FAA looks at you is in two aspects as a wreck as a drone pilot.
Speaker 2:You like to fly drones. Just put them on your Instagram, Facebook. You're not making any money. You can take what's called the FAA trust test. It's a little twenty minute test online that you can take, but it'll give you a certificate that says I understand the airspace.
Speaker 2:I understand flying the rules. I am not doing a commercial operation and you are in compliance with the FAA. If you want to commercialize it, you wanna be a drone service provider, you wanna work for a company, you wanna trade and do whatever, then you're actual commercial drone operator. You have to go to a course such as ours. We teach you everything you need to know to go past the FAA part one zero seven exam, which is the commercial drone pilot's license exam that everybody has to have.
Speaker 2:Right? If you're gonna be a commercial drone operator. It's a very tough test. You have to get a 70% on the test. You got ninety minutes to take the test.
Speaker 2:But we teach you everything you need to know to pass the test. But once you get that license, it's very much like your driver's license, right? Now you're able to figure out, drive, fly your aircraft, right? So that's really the first steps for anybody is to differentiate that. Along with that, a lot of people come up to me and say, what do I how what drone do I buy?
Speaker 2:I tell them, don't go spend a $5,000 drone because you're gonna crash it. And when you do, you're out of $5,000 drone versus a $50 drone and they fly the same. Your skills will get better and better and you'll advance. So that's how I advanced in my career. I now have I have five drones.
Speaker 2:And as I got a as I got a client and my my skills advanced, I bought a drone for that. I bought a partner for that. And and so you're gonna do that the same. So start off with something reasonable, stay away from objects, and you'll learn to fly. It's a great experience.
Speaker 1:You know, there's something very beautiful I think about learning the material. You're learning about aviation, right? Learning about forces and wind and lift and, you know, forces on the drone. Mean there's something I think very fun about going through the 107 that's exciting right and then it's not only just theoretical knowledge, you're not learning physics for physics, you're gonna use that then later on when flying the plane, the aircraft.
Speaker 2:Is the one time you're gonna learn physics that you're actually going to use it.
Speaker 1:You're actually gonna use it, that's right. So, you know, if you put weights on your drone, an accessory, if it's too much to the front, to the back, like all these things suddenly become the difference between are you out a thousand dollars or more on your drone because it just crashed because it couldn't land.
Speaker 2:Animals. There's a lot of variables, lot of variance.
Speaker 1:What's the weirdest accident that you've had with the drones that that you know, the laws of physics that you forgot?
Speaker 2:I've got one and it's on my YouTube channel. You can find my YouTube channel. It's on there. So I was doing some offshore flying for a major oil and gas company. They wanted a 100 pounds, 100 miles out from offshore and the drone was $250,000 On my YouTube channel, it shows it going up, having a mechanical failure and crashing into a palm tree.
Speaker 1:Holy crap. Well, I guess mechanical failure, you're off the hook. Yeah. But I mean that
Speaker 2:it happens.
Speaker 1:That's, that's true. What happened? I mean, did you, were you on the hook for that or the insurance company?
Speaker 2:Thankfully, right? I mean, I always have a rule that two is one and one is none. So if you have one and it's out and you have a backup, then you continue on for your client. If you don't, you're out of the game. So we always kept the spare and everything was fine.
Speaker 2:We did an internal investigation, found out it was a bad bearing on it had dual props, one in the front of the head, one in the back of the head because it would lift the boxes and and deliver them offshore. But I've had a lot of stuff. I've had coyotes and birds and bees and bats and all kinds of stuff try to attack my drones. I think it's something with that pitch. Right?
Speaker 2:I've been flying a lot too. I've got over six thousand hours over 7,800 missions I've done. I just celebrated my tenth year in the drone industry. Right?
Speaker 1:So that's a lot.
Speaker 2:I've had just a lot of stuff that has happened. Some of it's very interesting and some of it, you know, is suspected.
Speaker 1:Michael, what an absolute pleasure. This has been a delight. Is one question that we, believe it or not, we're already out of our time. There's one question that we ask every single one of our guests and it's a little bit of a difficult question. If you had to go back to the hardest part of your life, whether it was a year ago or ten years ago, whatever, what advice would you give yourself?
Speaker 2:So I go back to my roots. I grew up in the South Side Of Chicago, right? So very, very tough neighborhood in the 60s and 70s, right? So if I could go back to that time period, I would, you know, I I do a lot of public speaking at schools and I tell kids that the one thing that would have drastically changed my life is if somebody would have came to me, spent the time with me to teach me about aviation, to teach me about other things that were out there in the world to do. I'm a street kid.
Speaker 2:I'm hustling. I'm, you know, doing this and that to get by. Had I had somebody come to it like I do at the schools now, it would have drastically changed my life. In aviation, I would have became the best Top Gun pilot this country ever saw. I'm so passionate about aviation.
Speaker 2:So if it's that, I would want a mentor to just spend a little time with me and show me what is out
Speaker 1:And I'll mention for the audience that over the years you've done more than 10 different volunteer activities. I myself love that. And I do a lot of JA, junior achievement and rotary and other stuff. I think that's absolutely wonderful. So deeply, deeply appreciate it.
Speaker 1:I want to give you the opportunity to just call out one or two of your favorite nonprofit volunteer activities to kind of bring awareness so people know about them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I got two of them. One is the Bessie Coleman Foundation. Bessie Coleman was a hero of mine growing up. Look up the story about Bessie and how she couldn't get her pilot's license in The United States because she was an African American from the South Side Of Chicago. So the Bessie Coleman Foundation, her family still runs it.
Speaker 2:Gigi Coleman, shout out to you. What a great job that they're doing. The other one that's really dear to my heart is the Lions organization. My wife is a former president of the Lions organization at Oak Cliff Lions Club here in Dallas, Texas, and a very active member. We have done some events in that to help support their site and tissue foundation and some other efforts for them, but really great organization.
Speaker 2:We have a handful of others that we like to support, but those two come to the top of my mind. Yeah. So it's very much like Rotary, right? Supporting the community, supporting community efforts. One of the things that I love about the Oak Cliff Lions Club that my wife's been a part of for, wow, forty some years.
Speaker 2:I think she's been a part of that club is the Sight and Tissue Foundation. They've got their own van. They've got their own eye doctors. What they'll do is they'll pull out to a school or community center and give three eye exams and glasses to students, right? And they found by doing this improves their grades, improves their their irritability.
Speaker 2:So many things because they're having trouble seeing, right? So that's one of the many, many things that the Ilecliffe Lions Club does or all Lions Clubs do around their community and supporting their communities. Good work. Beautiful. Michael,
Speaker 1:thank you so much for joining the show. This was so much fun. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thank you for having me. If your followers want to follow me, they can find me on LinkedIn, Michael Hill, the drone pro. You can find us under Uncrude Aerospace on social media and YouTube. Love to connect with anybody.
Speaker 2:I write a lot of blogs and do a lot of a lot of podcasts telling people about the great things going on in the drone industry. So I love to connect with people. Thank you for having me today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It was
Speaker 2:a
Speaker 1:lot of fun.