Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, folks, welcome back to the drone on show. It's Mike. Today we have another episode where I was on the road at the drone convention, and I sat down with lots of different applicators at that show, just having casual conversations with them on how they got started and where they're at now. And so today is another one of those episodes where I'm on the road and having a conversation with another spray drone business. Let's get into it.
All right, guys. Well, we were recording this, and. And then. Landon. I'm gonna throw them under the bus. Did not hit record. Because I'm asking him. Get the cameras ready. Get this. Because we're literally on the road. We're gonna go do some drone spraying right now with Brent. And anyhow, we already had started talking this, so I'm just gonna have you recap. We're in the middle of nowhere, Kansas, and we're headed to a spray job right now. Brent, you have been spraying for over 25 years, right. And you average over 100,000 acres a year with ground rigs. Why did you decide to adopt drones?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, couple things. Just, I think it's probably the industry is moving towards that. And then during the wheat run, we had a lot of airplanes come in, and I watched the airplanes do their jobs, and depending on the pilot, you get good pilots, and you get pilots that. Just one acres.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: And so they're just flying to fly.
[00:01:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: And so I thought, you know what? These drones are going to cover every inch of those acres, and they're going to stay at the same height all the way through the field. And. Yeah. I just thought, why not try it?
[00:01:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: But you've been hearing about drones before. 20, 25 or not really.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So last year, I had a South African that worked for me, and he kind of said, man, you need to get into drones. And I thought, man, you're crazy. I don't. That's just one thing I don't need.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: And then this year, it kind of dawned on me, like. Yeah, I think I got a senior in high school, and he graduated, and I thought, no better way to. If that's something.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: He's perfect age.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: If he wants to step into this business. I mean, why not now?
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Is. Is this wheat right here that we're driving past?
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: So, like, an airplane would have been here spraying this.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Possibly. But.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: And the airplanes would always come here to spray this, or was. Was there a different scenario?
[00:02:16] Speaker B: There's just different. I mean, if rust moves in, airplanes move in, and so they kind of go with the rust run.
[00:02:21] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: But.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: And I don't know, I got a good friend that's a pilot that does ag. And we're actually partners in an airplane. And he.
He's nervous about these drones. And I said there's. These drones aren't going to replace airplanes out in this area. There's no way drones can do the mass. Yeah.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: You. You would need millions of drones.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Millions of drones.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: But for what we do and I mean just the customers that I have and I mean we plan on flying all the corn. All my corn, plus customers corn when it comes to insecticide and fungicide.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: So how do these drones.
I mean. Okay, so we're going to a place. You call it Terraces.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: You wouldn't.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: You.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: You wouldn't want to spray this with your ground rigs because it just the elevation change.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: We spray it all the time with the ground rigs, but it's. It's just rough. It's like I said, it's got terraces. You're constantly just going up and over the terraces. So. Yeah, but no, we've done it year after year with the ground rigs.
[00:03:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: So. But out here, if that type of terrain be able to do it faster with drones or not necessarily.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: That's. We're gonna find out.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: So literally that's what we're doing.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This first time we've flown them up here on me.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: We're starting to get into some hills and I'm really curious to know.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: So this is the state park right up in here. The Scott State Park.
[00:03:41] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: It's just a little lake down there. Great fishing, great camping area.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: This. It's actually really nice out here right now.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: If you're into the history. There's a white woman. I don't know what all it is. There's a lot of history out in here for Indians.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: Huh.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Cool. So your son is basically going to run this side of the. The business.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Once the ground. Right now it's wet where I can't be in a ground rig. And once it dries out enough, he'll be running them. And he's been running them. I don't really have any.
I mean I. I enjoy watching them, but I don't have any desire to go do it without him.
[00:04:18] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: I. Obviously looking at the new way trailer when I got here, I. It's so cool to see your added touches already. But then you're telling me like this and that. That you want to change.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: That is Another reason why I'm on the road is because I always want to improve my product. Like I don't want to be like this is you know, one and done and this is just the way it's going to be.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: I think for maybe back where you guys run, the smaller scale works. But for us out here where we're running, I mean we'll, we'll spray 600 plus acres today with these drones. And it's just amount of chemical it requires to, to carry that load. These trailers for us are not set up for this kind of running out here.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Do, do you get. Well yeah. You probably use tender trailers for your big ground rig.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Well, if you saw the ground rig trailers, they have nine places to put shuttles. So we can carry nine products of any, any type of herbicide on those trailers with the 3,700 gallon tank of water fertilizer. And then yeah, we just constantly have people tendering the sprayer.
[00:05:24] Speaker C: Huh.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: So out here guys like yourself, would you rather just have just the trailer platform and then you figure out the plumbing and tanks yourself?
[00:05:32] Speaker B: I think so. But at the time when I was, I finally, it was like a over weekend type deal. I was like we need drones, let's get them. And I thought well these guys back where you're from know what you're doing. Let's just let them do it and we'll, we'll figure it out later. So that's what we did. We just, I said let's do it, let's get them and then we'll figure it out.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: And so the thousand gallon tank you're thinking you want to throw, how big of a tank would you prefer to have on there?
[00:05:57] Speaker B: Oh, at least 2,000.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: 2,000 gallons and then have like a 330 gallon.
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's not as critical as the, the, the mixing tank that I want to have on there. Because that 175 gallon at 2 gallon, that's what 87 and a half acres loads that out here. There's not hardly. I mean we'll spray some 80s but most of them there's quarters.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: That is so wild to me. I mean we just, I love it, dude.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: All our farm is quarters or half sections. So we don't. Yeah, it's just, yeah.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: Who wants to mess with, you know, 175?
[00:06:32] Speaker B: So you need at least a 320 gallon inductor. Yeah. And, and then. Yeah, from there you can only get bigger.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: It's crazy.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: So this half sections are. Is it.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: I was just gonna ask what is Most of the crop that's growing in this area is it wheat.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: So wheat and corn.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: And then there'll be a lot of Milo starting to put in the ground now. When it dries out a little more, there'll be a lot of Milo. Guys plant a lot of Milo around here.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: That is crazy.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of it's fallow too. So there's a lot of fallow acres where guys will set it out for a year and fallow it.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: What does that mean?
[00:07:05] Speaker B: It's summer fallow. The wheat field on the east side is one of them that we did. It's. It's right up here.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: It is there. Oh, my gosh. Landon, if you can get shots outside out the side so that people understand one. When I'm looking out, I'm just like, in the total awe how huge this is.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Yeah, we. We sprayed this field right up here and we parked the drones right in the ditch.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: And you would be surprised. There was cars stopping, watching. Yeah.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: So I tell people that on the videos. They're like, ah, yeah, Mike's just saying that. But no, it's just so cool. It's so futuristic.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, Yeah. I was coming down the road in my semi with the trailer, and the one of the drones is coming in. I'm like, man, that thing better stop. And then right over the trailer.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: But, yeah, it is pretty crazy.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: So this field here we sprayed with the drones, and it's got. You see the little hump? That's a terrace.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: That's a terrace.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a terrace.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Oh, geez. Yeah, the drone will smoke that.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: So why are those things there, the terraces?
[00:08:05] Speaker B: To keep the water from running, washing out. It's like, see how it collects the water, keeps it from.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Okay, I'm sorry, guys, If I'm not a farmer, I. I love helping farmers. And so, like, I love to learn. So those things. That's really, really cool.
So do you see yourself having more drones or just kind of have a drone to clean up things here and there?
[00:08:28] Speaker B: So unless my son comes back permanently, I don't. I personally, they. I don't feel comfortable doing them by myself.
[00:08:36] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: So it's a younger generation deal, I.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: Think, type of thing. Yeah, I remember. I think you're right.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: I think when I. I remember when I got it, I graduated college and came back and bought sprayers, and dad was like, I don't want anything to do with that.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: I remember him saying that I don't want anything to do with the spraying. That's kind of how I feel with the drone.
[00:08:55] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: I mean, I got ground rigs. I can run a ground rig with my eyes closed. These drones coming into the trailer at 40 mile an hour or however fast they fly in, they stop and hover and then drop.
I'm auto landing it every time. And Griffin's yelling at me, don't auto land it. You're not getting it on the trailer straight. And this, I'm like, that's the only way I know how to land.
[00:09:14] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: So everybody has their, their way of how they want to do things. And that, that's not a bad thing. Like if you want to run ground rigs but you're adopting it with your smaller or younger generation. Yeah, that totally makes sense.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Well, and I think. And you can't hardly just buy a. What are these new sprayers? $600,000 sprayer. A kid. Somebody can't just come start a spraying business just for the wham.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: And the drones are priced good enough. I mean, they're still expensive, but. Yeah, he. For someone to step into a business, I figure no better way than to start another edge.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Do you, do you think actually we. We should get Griffin on. Do you think he wants to scale it? Like, is he already like, oh, I can get guys to fly these.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: And so that's the thing is he, he's. Well, he's got it. Pilot slides and he has pilot slides when he was a sophomore or as soon as he turned 16, he was soloing and then got his license at 17 or whatever. Whenever you can get it.
He's got an uncle that flies for Frontier. He's captain for Frontier. So he sees the lifestyle of a captain in the airline business. So that's been his whole dream. He's going to be an airline pilot. Well, so I don't, I don't want to crush his dream and say, you got to come back here and take this thing over.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: But there's a way to step in. And I, I figure if we don't do it now, dude, the future's gonna. It's gonna. Maybe we'll miss out.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Maybe. Like, so, so what I'm saying what I'm hearing is you're giving him a maybe a different in.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Into the business.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So if that's something that he wants to do, I mean, he's going to go to college. This, he's going to play football. So he's got other thing. When, when he leaves, it's going to be interesting because I'm Gonna be in a ground rig, and it's gonna be the Fritz. The South African is going to try to step in and.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Okay, so when does he go back?
[00:11:09] Speaker B: He's got to report August 9th.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Oh, geez. Yeah, that'll be coming up.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I know that'll be here before. It's almost making me a little bit nervous.
[00:11:16] Speaker C: Oh.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: What if he says, dad, I don't want to go back to college? I love this drone thing.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: His mom would kill me.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Oh, no, she.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I want him to college. And I mean, yeah, he needs to get away from western Kansas, but. And so I got a younger son that. What, he's 14. He'll be a freshman, so he could. He could probably do it if he. If I made him.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: Yeah, well, they.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: They all work. He works on the farm, so, I mean, he. He's capable of figuring it out, so.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Cool. So obviously you're running the T60X's biggest drones that we really have access to right now, but out here, I'm looking doggone. You could use a 200 gallon or a 500 gallon.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Well, I think that's. I think that's coming. I don't know which company is going to do it, but I. I just think the technology is out there, that it's. It's just a matter of time.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Oh, I. It's. It's coming. It's.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: And I think that, like, John Deere's trying to make autonomous tractors, and they're trying to do everything autonomous. This and that. Well, these drones pretty much are. I mean, you set the field up. Yep. And as long as you have it set up right, boundaries are set. Right. You pretty much let it go.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: Yep, Exactly.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: So are your ground rigs. Is that not GPS like you?
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, no, it. What? You got to be in it.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Oh, you do.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. You still drive them? You. We drive at the border. We. I mean, you got to make ab lines. We don't.
[00:12:45] Speaker C: Okay, okay.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: So you. But it's not like the drone. You have a field and then you. You just monitor your.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: Well, once you get it outlined, it will. It'll auto steer, but it won't turn around.
[00:12:55] Speaker C: Oh, okay.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: And you still got to go up. You raise your booms and up and over.
[00:12:59] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: I mean, it's got auto boom, auto shut off. It does a. It does a lot compared to back in the day when I first started with off of.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: I'm looking to the left here. Does that stuff get sprayed? What it.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Whatever that's pasture you could, you could. There's guys that probably would spray it.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: So, like, to try to knock down the stage to have more grass.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's musk. This whole stuff out there that would probably benefit spraying.
[00:13:23] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: I haven't hit up that aspect of it.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: But yeah, you could. You could easily spray that and do some good.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: That is cool.
What was I gonna. So. So we don't know at this point while doing this podcast, we don't know if the drones are on this stuff here, what we're doing, if they're more efficient than the ground range rigs.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
I would, I would venture to say they won't be. Just. I mean, with a ground rig, we can spray. I mean, on a normal day, 1500 acres, no problem.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: But where we're going, this type of terrain, how. How long would it take this section to be done with it with a ground rig?
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Oh, I mean, a couple hours.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: No way.
[00:14:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: So. But the. The thing is, with the crop up with the ground rigs, you're going up and over terraces, you're going to run over a lot more.
You're just going to do more damage. So. And that's kind of why I'm thinking these drones on these fields like this for sure are going to shine.
[00:14:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: So something I usually tell guys is if you want to Compare, we got CBs and everything in this truck, we are official landing.
I love it.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Just keep following me. Fritz, he's so far back, he can't see us.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: So what I was going to say is if guys want to compare apples to apples, like usually they say, well, an airplane can do this many more. Well, an airplane costs you $2.2 million. If you take that $2 million and put it all into drones, I know it's going to take more manpower and. And I get people when they say that, but if you actually get more equipment at the same dollar amount, I actually think it can keep up if you have the manpower.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Well, that's the thing is manpower.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: You got to have somebody that can run the equipment. Yep. And that's where we will. It's just like the ground rigs. The kid I got running the ground rig, he's a stud, but yeah, you don't get a lot of those.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: So something that I'm seeing, and I don't know, is it just because I got a little bit of a social media presence, is a lot of foreigners from South America, South Africa, all over the place are DMing me for jobs because it's like winter for them and it's summer here. And they do this in their country. Yeah, they actually do more of this in there.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: You'll be turning up here.
Yeah.
So are they the same quality?
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I don't. I don't know.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: It's.
[00:15:55] Speaker A: It's hard.
No, I get. I totally get what you're saying because that is a problem that all business or companies have is scaling and getting the.
Getting the people that they need to run their stuff.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the biggest drawback on any of the farming aspect in western Kansas is just help and good help.
[00:16:18] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Everybody thinks they can do it until they get here.
[00:16:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: And then it changes.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: I couldn't imagine farming out here. I mean, some of these fields, it feels like you're sitting in the same field for days, doesn't it?
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yeah. But if you go up into the Dakotas, I've heard there's 10,000 acre fields.
[00:16:37] Speaker C: Jeez.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: It's crazy. So crazy.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Well, Landon, what else should I ask them? I'm excited to see how this operation is going to go. I am going to tell you guys, I'm out here to see how they run, but then we're having some issues with the T60X batteries not keeping up with their system. And I have had zero problem with that. But I'm just going to see how they're running and maybe there's some software issues or something, but hopefully we can get this figured out because when this system was engineered or created, it was to run. A 14,000 generator will supercharge your battery at the same. Basically at the same speed as it's being consumed. And obviously if it's not going to do that, it's going to suck to.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Well, that. That's the biggest drawback that we've seen. But then we discovered that we weren't flying them at the full speed. So. Yeah, I'm glad you're out here just because we're going to learn from you. You might think you're learning.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Oh, I'm definitely learning.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: But we want, we want your input on how you would. How would you change this? And there's a few things. I mean, I've done it just enough to know that I'm dangerous like this where we're going. Just for instance, would you.
Would you do the boundaries plus borders or do you just do.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: I mean, I probably would because that. I become comfortable with that.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: And so what we did is we uploaded our planting data from John Deere, my John Deere, into These controllers. Controllers. So we sent all that information. So everything should be set up. The field boundary, everything.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: And I think you might be able to get away with that out here because you don't have trees on the lake. I don't know. Edge.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Where back home, if we try to take that data, the tractor drove underneath the trees and then the drones trying to go underneath the trees and it doesn't work.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: So that, that could potentially work out here.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that and yeah, we don't have any trees, as you can see.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: Is this just.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: That's just CRP grass.
[00:18:33] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: And why would somebody grow that?
[00:18:36] Speaker B: For those.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Oh, for cows.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: But this isn't pastured off. So the government probably set some money aside for a CRP payment and these guys put it to CRP to get the government payment.
[00:18:47] Speaker C: Huh.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Interesting.
Alrighty. I don't have anything more to, to add. I don't want to just poke around, but I appreciate you hopping on while we're headed out to this field. Well, it's, I'm excited to see how this is going to go today.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: I'm excited too, because this, this will be, it'll be fun.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: All righty.
All right, so we're back now with Griffin.
[00:19:10] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: The son of just, he just. Brent.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Brent. Yep.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: And so we're out here. We're like I told you guys earlier in this podcast that they were having some problems with the T60X running out of battery. And so we're out here testing that and totally found out. I'm just going to address it real quick and then we'll, we'll get chatting with Griffin. But you cannot, you cannot do 2 gallon work with the T60X with the 15 gallon tank. So if you're going to load it up at 15.9 gallons doing to 2 gallon work, you will run out of battery. If you are using two generators and six batteries with two drones now, I think you might be able to get away with it if you have an extra generator, but I don't know for sure. So if you're hoping to do two gallon work and never run out of battery, it's probably not going to happen. If you're running the 15.9 gallon tank, stick with the 13.2, you're probably not going to be having a problem. So we're out here actually right now we're waiting on the batteries to catch up because I want to do a 13.2 test on that, but I thought I'd get you down here and talk to you. You're Young fella flying drones. Your dad approached you about this, or did you approach him about this?
[00:20:19] Speaker D: It was kind of a equal decision. He kind of approached me first and asked if I wanted to go 50. 50 on him.
[00:20:25] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:20:25] Speaker D: On the drones with him. And I was totally down to do that. These. I think these are the future of the agriculture.
[00:20:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: So how'd you figure. How'd you find out about drones or.
[00:20:35] Speaker D: I've seen them on social media and. Yeah, there's nothing like that around here.
[00:20:40] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:20:40] Speaker D: Basically just social media.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: And so nobody. Nobody really close here is an applicator using drones?
[00:20:45] Speaker D: No, no. There's one local farmer that just got some of the T50s.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:20:52] Speaker D: And like three weeks before we got ours. And he. He doesn't do any custom stuff.
[00:20:56] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: So. Just for himself?
[00:20:58] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, just for himself.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Your dad said you're a pilot.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: What.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: What are you wanting to do with your pilot's license?
[00:21:03] Speaker D: Originally my plan was to become a airline pilot or a crop duster.
[00:21:08] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:21:09] Speaker D: But now that we got these drones, I don't really know, I might come back here and take over the farm.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Oh, no, I haven't decided yet what.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: I'm.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: So.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: So you're that fired up about it?
[00:21:18] Speaker D: Like, you're. That things are awesome. Yeah.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: No way. That is cool, dude. I think if guys at your age get into it, you're going to be so far ahead of anybody that tries to get into it in the next five years. Like, dude. Okay, so your dad was talking to us on the way up here. He said that you were thinking about doing something in the airlines, and I really wanted to ask you that question to see what you're thinking now, because I think that a guy can have a fleet of these.
[00:21:43] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, no doubt.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: They're teachable.
[00:21:45] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: I know it's hard to find good work and people to operate them, but this is teachable.
[00:21:51] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So do you see yourself doing that?
[00:21:53] Speaker D: I could see. Yeah, I could see myself doing that.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: Having fleets of these things.
[00:21:57] Speaker D: Yeah. Doing that. Taking over our ground rigs, too, and then the farm eventually.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:02] Speaker D: Yeah, I could see myself doing that.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: That's crazy. What's. What are some of the coolest things that you've noticed using these drain drones since you, what? Only three weeks. Since.
[00:22:12] Speaker D: Yeah, Only three weeks. I. The coolest thing is the terrain following. We've been doing a lot of spring tree rows and farmsteads for, like, fungicide and insecticides, spraying mosquitoes. Mosquitoes and flies. And the way those things follow trees is incredible.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Crazy.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:29] Speaker D: Oh yeah.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: But they're going much slower than they are.
[00:22:31] Speaker D: They're going much sl.
[00:22:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:33] Speaker D: But it is still incredible.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:35] Speaker A: Out here we're doing 45ft per second on the right. Honestly, this is kind of rolling, not like rolling back home in Ohio, but they do still need to terrain fall and that's One thing that T60X is still struggling a little bit is it likes to buck at full speed. But hopefully they'll get that figured out. So the terrain falling on trees, train falling out here usually isn't a problem if you got big wide open fields like this. But back where we're from, it, it can actually kind of suck.
What, so how many acres have you covered with these drones since you've had them?
[00:23:08] Speaker D: I think over 2,500 acres in three weeks.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: Geez. And you're still learning how to be efficient and learn how to do that is.
[00:23:16] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: So crazy. What would you tell somebody that is thinking about wanting to get into the drone space and being an applicator?
[00:23:23] Speaker D: You gotta, you gotta know technology, you gotta be somewhat decent with technology or it's going to be a huge learning curve.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:31] Speaker D: I'm not very technologically smart and this, it was a pretty big learning curve, but I'm getting the hang of it now.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Okay, but you're also flying airplanes?
[00:23:40] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, I, I got the, I got the aerial part of it down. Just the, the spraying and the, the technology that goes into these drones is insane. Yeah, there's so much technology.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: How many what, what type of ratings you got?
[00:23:52] Speaker D: I got my private pilot and then my high performance and complex endorsements and I'm about four and a half hours from getting my instrument.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Nice. Do you have multi engine at all? No, no, I, I got my obviously high performance private pilot and instrument. I was going to do commercial, but this time doing other things.
[00:24:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Well that's cool. So what, what are you going to use this for compared to your ground rigs? Do you know that already?
[00:24:23] Speaker D: Well, we'll use these for like we used them a little bit when we just got them the first day we got them, we put them out on a wheat field and we're spraying fungicide. So you're not leaving tracks in the wheat. And then once the corn starts to tassel and you're spray, when the corn run comes, the ground rigs can't get in there because the corn is too tall. So you either got to use an airplane or drones.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Okay, so if you put a ground rig in this corn, is there damage? Because you probably come out here and turn around, right?
[00:24:51] Speaker D: No, not necessarily. You'll just.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: Oh, there's a girl.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: There's a ground rig pulling up right now.
[00:24:55] Speaker D: Yeah, that.
[00:24:56] Speaker A: Is that your guy?
[00:24:57] Speaker D: No, that's, that's one of my. He, that actually got. He used to work for us for about 10, 15 years ago. Oh, he worked for us for.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: So he has. And I don't know if you guys can see there's a, there's a semi truck with a big spray rig on the back of it. Dude, those trailers are so cool. I had no clue that like we don't have that back home. Yeah, like if there's a sprayer, it's small, it just drives down the road and I had no clue. But anyhow, got a little around here.
[00:25:23] Speaker D: You can't, you can't not drive us. You have to drive it on a truck. You can't, you can't rot a sprayer everywhere. Well, yeah, that's like get nothing done.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: The fields are so huge. I mean, geez, out here they're 600 acre fields. Crazy. It's so. So on this field here, you wouldn't necessarily damage corn or you would.
[00:25:40] Speaker D: No. So with the ground rigs, they'll, they'll be. Your tires will be in the row in between the rows.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:25:47] Speaker D: So you won't damage anything going down. You might hit a couple on your turns, but other than that you're not gonna.
[00:25:52] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: So not a huge yield loss.
[00:25:55] Speaker D: Not a huge. No.
[00:25:56] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: More on like beans and wheat.
[00:25:59] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Is that, that's where.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:01] Speaker D: When you're, when you got that thick, you can't put your tires in between the rows.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: How many drones do you think it would take to keep up with a ground rig like that's out there right now?
[00:26:10] Speaker D: Five or six?
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Oh yeah, probably. So. So those, those guys are pretty fast.
[00:26:14] Speaker D: Yeah, they're, they're, they're averaging 1500 to 2500 acres a day.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: I think I could do 1000 acres a day with one. One rig myself.
If you have decent fields, right?
[00:26:27] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:26:28] Speaker A: But if you take the same amount of money, I was telling your dad, if you take same amount of money that you put in that ground rig and put it into drones, then it'll probably be about the same if you have guys to run them.
[00:26:38] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, no doubt.
[00:26:39] Speaker C: Huh.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: That's cool. Have you guys done any night spraying out here?
[00:26:42] Speaker D: Yes. Yeah, we have actually. That is awesome. That is another thing that I really like about these drones and the trailer, the trailer lights up really nice and Those drones. Those drones, they got the two light LED lights there, and those are brighter than just my pickup.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it's crazy. It is crazy how bright they are.
[00:26:58] Speaker D: That's awesome.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: You know, the.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: The low light camera on the T60X is really.
[00:27:01] Speaker D: That is cool.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Have you switched it from red, green, blue, to black and white?
[00:27:06] Speaker D: It was just on black and white. I didn't know.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: So there's an option that you can switch to have it just a normal camera. It's called RGB camera, or red, green, blue. But.
But if you've been running and it's doing it on auto, that's. That's fine too, but. Cool. All right. I don't have anything else other than. I think it's cool that you're this young, getting into it. I think, obviously, the drones are only going to get better, bigger, and things are going to get more acres will be covered with drones than I think in the future from other, you know, from ground rigs or airplanes or helicopters. I just think it's going to take hundreds of thousands of drones to do it. Yeah, but the cost of operating is much less than.
[00:27:47] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
I think out here it'll take a while for the drones to beat a ground rig because there's not a lot that can beat a ground rig in acres. The planes can beat a ground rig in acres easily.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:02] Speaker D: But their coverage is not even comparable.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: So I.
[00:28:05] Speaker D: And that's another good thing about these drones, is they get just about as good as a. Coverage as a ground rig.
[00:28:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: I would like to test that someday. You bring your ground rig out, you get 600 some acres or a thousand acres, and then we bring three trailers and we. We see who gets more done.
[00:28:20] Speaker D: Yeah, let's do it.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: That would be cool. I mean, guys ask about it all the time. It's like, well, I don't really know which one would win, but we could put it head to head and see what happens.
[00:28:32] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: All righty. I don't have anything else. What. What do you think, Landon?
[00:28:37] Speaker C: No.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: All righty. Thanks for your time.
[00:28:39] Speaker D: Thank you.
