Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, guys. Welcome to the drone on show, where we talk anything and everything. Drones. If you're a drone enthusiast, you're not going to want to miss this episode. Often we talk about the agricultural drones, we talk about thermal for deer recovery. But today we got kind of a different episode. We talk about how we're using thermal for search and rescue, how we're using different payloads. We even tell a story how we were doing research on our own and a drone actually ended up in the tree. All right, so let's go ahead and get into today's episode.
All right, guys, so we're going to do this podcast. Have any of you guys been on podcasts before?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: No?
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Nothing.
All right, so go ahead and just introduce yourselves. If you want to let people know how you're associated, you can do that. Or if you'd rather not make that association, you could just kind of leave that. That go as well. But yeah, just go ahead and introduce yourself and kind of. Yeah, we're going to start building the context before we get into talking about drones. Let's build context. Context. Talk about what Deadwood is, what Kazzak is and all that. So, yeah, we'll start over here with you.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: So I'm Jaden, this is my brother.
[00:01:05] Speaker C: That's unfortunate association.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: We'll get that out of the way.
I was part of the first team in Kazakh Rescue. We started in 2021.
And yeah, we do a lot of search and rescue training. Kind of our focus is to do international humanitarian aid and rescue and kind of multifaceted response to disasters, whether that's man made or natural disasters. So where we're at right now, Deadwood Outfitters Kazakh Rescue is now an owner of that, and we use that as kind of our training base. And then we also.
Deadwood Outfitter still operates like it normally does. Right now it's mostly renting cabins, providing meals to any of the people that are driving by if they want to buy a meal here. And then during the fall and winter, they have hunts, snowmobile trips, and that's elk, bear, wolf hunts, deer hunts, mule deer out here. So, yeah, then we come. Kazakh Rescue comes in every summer for kind of the end of the first year of training for our cadets. So right now we have our, our fourth class here doing their training.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: All right, and you are?
[00:02:19] Speaker C: My name is Ryan. And like Jaden said, brothers.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: And so your brother. You're both brothers. Wow, that's amazing.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Love it.
[00:02:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
And then so, yeah, I was.
I joined kind of around the same time Jaden did. I was on the, what they call the advanced team at that point and just kind of the guinea pigs going through a lot of the hard skills training that they had developed. And it was kind of an unofficial program where Jaden would have been part of the first like official official team program. So went through a lot of the water rescue training, the rope rescue training, different medical trainings.
And then coming out of that, I also also did a couple trips to Ukraine and doing food distribution and things like that during that time.
And so I did that for about a year and eight months and took a year off and then came back, took a full time staff. Staff position here with education department doing logistics. So that's what I've been doing for the last year or so now and really been enjoying it. Love coming out here and spending the summers at Deadwood Outfitters and just getting to know different. Different people like you guys that are helping us out with instruction and for your expertise in drones. And then we have a couple search and rescue guys here too and just love learning from their experience and know how and so. Yeah, yeah, it's always a good summer.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. It's been fun to be around so many people that have just. They're experts in their field, you know, whether it's ropes or search and rescue, learning how to use the SARS topo, like software, like some people. There's a lot of knowledge here.
Talk a little bit about just how Kazakh actually got started.
And if you guys hear a little hum in the background. This is just part of this setting here. It is so remote. Like we are how far from like the closest grocery store?
[00:04:28] Speaker C: At least an hour, probably an hour and a half.
And most of that's gravel road too.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So most of the buildings here, like the, the cabins are dry cabins, meaning that you don't have water. Barely electricity, like sometimes electricity. But then you have here the hot water heater and you have this whole building here. It's kind of the main lodge, but it's kind of limited to, you know, the generator. They actually have a big diesel generator here. So it is very primitive here. It's been so awesome to be in this setting. I felt myself just kind of relax as we were driving up through here. I mean, it took from the airport, it took like four hours.
[00:05:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: To get up in here. But yeah, just. Just talk a little bit like, how did you, you guys, or the founders kind of see the need for Kazakh to start? Are you government funded? How do you. How are you funded? What. What's kind of been the process of Kazakh so far.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: Yeah. So the, the original founders kind of had this idea. One of them specifically Sean, Sean Zimmerman would have spent some time in Iraq and mostly doing like humanitarian aid type of things, but there was a couple times where he had opportunities to either work with the local military or just different things where he would have been granted access to be able to help out if he had more training. And so all the people on his team maybe had a first aid training, but not much beyond that.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Nothing advanced enough to actually get access.
[00:06:07] Speaker C: So it really limited them what they were able to do, where they were able to go. And mostly because of the people higher up, like looking at them as a group going in, they're like, no, we can't be responsible for them.
So it came out of that and it's like, why isn't there more training or more people that are trained in going into these hard to reach areas, whether it's a war zone or natural disaster and being able to, to go in as a trained professional and bring hope, bring leadership and bring these different skills, offer these different skills.
So came out of that and just started kind of brainstorming with a couple other people and he ended up meeting up with Dan Lapp, who's a visionary and just loves helping get things started.
And so they kind of collaborated and brought a couple other people in, started working on what, what Kazakh is now. And that's, that was kind of the starting point for it.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: So are they, are they accredited? Like are they, are they working towards that or how's that set up?
[00:07:18] Speaker C: Yeah, so currently accredited through Anchor University, which is out of Florida and they are working on their accreditation. And so we're. It's currently a non accredited degree. Is that how it would be said?
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: And so, so Jaden would have done the first two years and so he has his associates through them.
And so there's a couple different colleges that would recognize that degree, but not very many at this point. And so, so we're kind of, we're, we're the biggest like accredited program through Anchor University. So we're actually kind of helping them get their accreditation because it does take a pretty long process and to just, yeah, I don't understand all that, all the academic side of things for that, but we are currently accredited through them.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: So. So have you been able to actually deploy teams yet to places that you wouldn't have been able to without? Like now that you've been doing some training that you've actually been able to send Teams deploy them in areas or that's still a process yet, too, to get them into, like, restricted access areas.
[00:08:26] Speaker C: Yeah, it's definitely still a process just getting the right connections and also being able to send people that are willing to just, you know, figure it out on the fly that are good with networking and connecting with the right people in different countries.
And so that's definitely been a challenge just to kind of get our name out there.
I was on a trip with the advanced team to Ukraine, where we worked with the Ukrainian MOD Ministry of Defense, and that was through a connection with one of our operations team members.
And that's one that I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have been able to get into had we not had some of those qualifications and trainings.
And so we were able to work with some of the local rescue teams in Ukraine there, which have a. They're doing an incredible job out there right now. And just. Yeah, like, war. War is always something that. That causes growth, unfortunately. I mean, fortunately and unfortunately, I guess, but.
And so, yeah, there's pretty incredible teams there that we got to know and work with out there. So.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: Yeah, and a lot of these places that we go into, like, we're talking a lot about, like, you know, Ministry of Defense in Ukraine or other militaries, and you think about a lot of the places that, like, where there's disaster zones, those are often managed by the local military. So if you don't have their permission to be there, then it's pretty difficult. And so that's where those connections come in.
Like, you know, we're not military.
We're not militant at all.
Our goal is to go in and rescue the people that are affected by whatever disaster is there.
And so, yeah, like Ryan was saying, if we have those certifications, it gives us legitimacy in their eyes to be in those places, and so they don't have to worry about us because you don't want to become a liability to those. The local people.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: So.
So how are you currently getting a lot of your funding right now?
[00:10:25] Speaker C: It's all through, like, businesses, churches, individuals.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:31] Speaker C: So, yeah. Different.
Not sure what the property name for. Different. Found, like, charitable foundations that give towards it as well.
But, yeah, that's where. That's where the majority of it. Of it comes from. And. Yeah.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so now we kind of understand a little bit Kazakh. And you're now going through your fourth cohort of cadets.
How many cadets do we have out here training. What does training look like right out here on Deadwood location? Yeah.
[00:11:04] Speaker C: Currently we have five cadets out here going through the training. Our max, our max team size is 12. And so we do try to, you know, get as many applicants as possible and to. Because team of five is a pretty small team for what we're. What we're trying to do and. But yeah, it just worked out that way. That's what we have out here this year and.
Yeah.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah. So what kind of skills are they learning right now in this segment of being out here?
[00:11:35] Speaker C: So it's a lot of focus on first response skills because this is just a great place environment to do that.
It's a combination of search and rescue, rope rescue, high angle rescue type things and then wilderness search and rescue as well as urban search and rescue. So there's a couple old buildings around here that we use for scenarios and like urban rescue and stuff like that. Also do a professional communications course. And so they're learning about how to, you know, fill out the different documentation things that we have that we require. Just like, you know, daily situation reports and mission briefs, things like that.
And so they're, they're all, they're learning that right alongside all the, all the search and rescue skills as well that way then when they get to the point where they're starting to deploy and go overseas, that those, those things kind of come together the. Because both of them are equally important when it comes to, I think especially international first response, but even, even national response is just that, that thing of professional communication. Whether that's documenting something or, or sharing at a church or with government officials, things like that.
It's just important to, to come in and have the, have the appearance and the sound and look like a professional is what we really, what we really want in our, in our teams as we go out.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: So.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So transitioning a little bit, talking about the whole getting into drones now.
So the, the founder of Drone Deer Recovery and New Way Ag and what do we got going on here? Nice.
Look at that.
That. You know, these, these horses and mules on this property, they just roam around.
They're not free range, free range. They take off during the, during the night and they come back in the morning and you can, you can come here, get trail rides. They're part of the way that I understand it is there's kind of two different hunts that they offer as far as like they do a drop camp like where you, you have your tent, you have your beds, your stoves all set up and you basically go back in or you can do guided hunts that are. They're more based out of here. Is that kind of a correct?
[00:14:00] Speaker C: And the guided hunts, where the. The guides have more. They're out there hunting with you where the job camps. It's more. You go out and you do their. Your thing, and then they help you pack out your elk or mule deer, whatever you have there.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Yeah. So how many mules and horses do they have here?
[00:14:16] Speaker B: I think it's 18 right now. Yeah, something like that.
[00:14:18] Speaker C: I think four of those are meals. So 14 horses. Four meals.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: Cool. Well, that's definitely a little bit of a sidetrack there. But, you know, you got to talk about what's happening around here, so that's pretty awesome. So we were. We were just talking about getting back into the drones, and the founder, the company that I work for, Drone Deer Recovery, New Way Ag, have a connection with Kazakh and decided to donate drones to Kazakh to help kind of propel them, launch them, no, our pun intended, into developing that program a lot quicker for you guys.
And they would basically just tap me on the shoulder and said, hey, Austin, develop this. Work with you guys in trying to get this going. So I hadn't had much experience in search and rescue, but for the last six months, I was working with Jess, which is also an employee of Drone Deer Recovery, in trying to figure out how we can best assist you guys with introducing drones into your program. And it has just been wild and blast and pushing our research to the max. I mean, in our research, back at our headquarters, you know, we crashed a few drones just because we wanted to push the limits of what can we do with these drones so that we know how to tell you guys how to use them the best way. But, yeah, just talk about a little bit how you started thinking about wanting to have a drone program part of what you're offering to Kazakh.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: So I would say a big thing for us was, um, we had a friend of ours that actually took a drone to North Carolina during Hurricane Haileen. And I was. I would say that's where we really started to see, like, a big benefit to, oh, there's a dog.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Good thing it didn't trip on any cords down here.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: So, yeah, seeing that and thinking about, okay, how can we incorporate this into what we do?
We spent some time in North Carolina soon after the hurricane. And, yeah, just thinking about, you know, people don't know what happened to their loved ones. They don't know where they're at, and being able to locate those people and communicate back then to family members and say, you know, we found your family member.
And that brings a sense of, yeah, just really for those people. And it also is like being able to provide aid to those people in areas that we can't access by foot or by vehicle or I should say land vehicle, aerial vehicles now.
And yeah, another thing in, in North Carolina is there's a lot of helicopters. I mean they're flying everywhere and thinking about being able to limit that liability, having helicopters, like manned helicopters flying around and being able to have the option of potentially transporting, you know, whether it's Starlinks or for fire departments that don't have road access or anything like that. Being able to just fly that in and not risk a life essentially by going up in a helicopter. Yeah, those were some of the things that I think as we started looking at the drone thing and you guys started reaching out to us, it kind of felt like those, those things kind of aligned around the same time. So.
[00:17:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say the. Yeah, similar because so when we were in North Carolina, friend he mentioned, reached out and was like, hey, is there any way that I can help out with drones?
And at that point I didn't know a lot of like all the capabilities of drones. And so he was telling me some of the different things as far as like, you know, if we need radio comms, you can lift up a repeater, something like that. So you can like, you could even do it, you know, on the top of every hour when everyone knows they have to check in and make sure everyone's alright and all that.
And so doing stuff like that, you know, carrying in supplies, so many different uses for them.
And so, so at that point I didn't, didn't or like for what, what we were doing, it didn't, didn't look like a need. And so he found another group and was helping do actually find, find bodies in the rubble with the, with the thermal imaging.
So that was yeah, just pretty incredible the, the capabilities there.
And then yeah, fast, fast forward to when you guys started reaching out about what it looked like to introduce drones into our, our training program.
And originally we were like that, that looked like a dream for like, you know, 10 years down the road.
And then you guys helped bump that up about 10 years. And so as soon as we were starting to have that conversation, I was like, oh, I bet Jaden would enjoy doing something like that and kind of heading that up from the Kazakh side and, and so reached out to him and let him know and he got on board with that, got excited about that and kind of took it to the next level with you guys, and I was kind of helping introduce it in and kind of have that person within the organization that's working directly with you guys and gleaning all the knowledge and experience from you guys. So that's been pretty awesome to see him jump into that and see you guys invest into him as well as the students out here this week.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: So, yeah, we have been pushing the cadets hard the last few days, you know, with our training, taking them from a very basic knowledge of, you know, how the drones work. And, you know, we've been hitting, you know, the thermal side of it pretty hard just because that is a. That's a big learning curve of knowing how to look at those heat signatures and recognize that. But not only that, but there's a part of efficiency that has to be learned and taught that you're not stopping to look at every single deer, because once you learn what that heat signature is, then you got to, you got to say, hey, you know what? I recognize that that's a heat signature of a deer. You got to move on. That way you continue to be, you know, because time is of the essence, you know, when you're in those situations, you know, an extra 30 minutes you save could save, you know, a life in a situation like North Carolina or, you know, those high intensity situations. And so just really pushing these guys to the max. But, but also just, you know, just discovering all the ways that you can use a drone and utilizing it out here with, you know, lifting payloads with the winch system, dropping things with our drop system, using floodlights to light up an area. So if you have to work at night, you know, you're able to have a huge light on these drones. So there's just so much that you can use. Pulling a lead line, you know, and wrapping it around a tree, you know, and then being able to drop that rope. Like, there's so much that, that. That we're using.
But yeah. What, what has been your perception of watching these guys train? What, what do you think? How valuable is it going to be for them to kind of have this skill to where they can kind of go plug that in anywhere? Like, what are your thoughts as you've been watching the training happen over the couple days? Last couple days?
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Going back to something that Ryan said earlier about, like, having that professional, like being able to be professionals as we go out and help in disasters, I think one of the big things I see as valuable for drones, particularly in the state side, because international, it'll be a little interesting to see like some countries won't allow us to bring drones in. So that's kind of. We'll see how that goes.
But as far as stateside, being able to show up with that resource just adds to our, you know, we're not asking for funds from the locals. We're not asking for, you know, state support. We can show up and be available and have all these incredible resources.
Thanks in a huge part to you guys because you guys are just offering them to us instead of us having to kind of rally up the funds for something like that. So being able to show up and be professionals. So that's a huge, huge thing I see. As far as the value of having them train. And yeah, some of the things you were talking about is thinking about efficiency. So thinking about one of the things we had them do was carry stuff with the 350.
And yeah, thinking about efficiency of transport, I think even helps them. Thinking about, okay, so maybe someplace we go, there's a helicopter that we have that's not ours, but someone that's helping us out and thinking about, okay, you know, how do we want to be efficient with this load? And it gets their brains already going that way. It's not a new concept when the, when the helicopter arrives. So I think there's, yeah, there's a bunch of different ways to look at it. Obviously the searching aspect and finding people, being able to communicate with people and yeah, also giving them again, an opportunity to work as a team and coordinate. Okay, so we're going to have these people search here and this person search here.
Just. Yeah, helps them to, like you were saying, be efficient and think through those things. So.
[00:23:11] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, and I think, I think it's, it helps them problem solve too, like as they, as they learn the capabilities of the drone and just get used to using it. Like, like right now it's just a lot to learn, just like handling the drone. And so it's, that's kind of the focus right now. And it's hard to, hard to think about how you're using the drone and, and how you're doing search and rescue at the same time. But, but once they get proficient in that, being able to problem solve in even other situations, like you said with, like if a helicopter is an available resource, how are you utilizing those resources to accomplish the goal that you're trying to complete there I think is a huge learning part that goes along with the drone training.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Yeah, there was this.
I feel like the scenarios that we've been able to set up out here are as Realistic as possible without them actually being real search and rescue, like where we've been, you know, planting lost people with medical conditions and they've got to be able to find them, but then they got to learn how to communicate and then put boots on the ground. Like the whole package, it's not just, oh, let me look and see and, and search for that thermal, but it's how do you use drones throughout the whole process of like whether you can use a drone to help guide your team in if it's late at night, using that spotlight to light up their path, or all of those things. But yeah, just like teaching, you know, in the, one of the last scenarios we did, we had a team that was setting up and we had our, our point of interest was along the river. And you know, they would set up a spot along the river and then they would fly up and down the river and then they would tear down and pack everything up and then move a mile up the road and, you know, set up again. And I was like, wait guys, time out here.
Think about what, what is our objective here? And they're like, you know, to search the river. Like, what do we have beside the river? We have a road. And I was like, you guys have two guys in this mission.
One guy can be driving a truck and the other guy can be flying the drone. And you can literally be watching your drone and driving beside it and you could cover a couple miles of that stretch without even needing to land the drone. And so just just helping them work through those processes. Efficiency and research has been so, so good because I feel like some of the trainings that we have done have just kind of been in the backyard of our headquarters back in Ohio. And there's just. It feels so limited because it's like unless people go out, you know, we're doing it for deer recovery. So people actually go out there and get that experience. That's Experience is the best teacher. But out here, man, it feels real. It feels real from the get go. So it's been awesome.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And with that, that real piece that you were talking about. So out here, we're in the middle of nowhere. There's not like there's no wires coming here from town or anything. Like, yeah, everything that's powered is powered by something internal. And so like thinking about, you know, being efficient with our power banks and our battery packs, our generators, like, how are we going to power all these drones? And it adds to the fact that we're flying so many drones for such like, long periods of Time, which is also realistic if you're constantly running. And so, yeah, having that, that's again, that efficiency. And how are we going to manage all these resources and power? Everything.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:36] Speaker C: And even them, like, thinking through like, so we're down in a valley here and there's mountains on both sides. And so thinking through, like, when, when the sun comes up, when it goes down, you know, which. Which sides of the mountains are still going to be hit by the sun where, like thermal imaging isn't. Isn't going to be great. And so just like, that's a great environment for thinking through those types of things for when are the best times to use thermal and how to use them.
When it's still kind of warm and still kind of light outside and all those things.
[00:27:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I know from like our standpoint, you know, we, we have a lot of guys that purchase thermal drones from our company. And really I want to figure out ways that we can teach guys that anybody that has a thermal drone how to be able to go up to, you know, a professional rescue team and say, hey, I have this drone. How can I be a assistant if. If someone's just like, has no background in search and rescue, they're not going to be very useful. But really, from our perspective, and part of why we've come out to Deadwood is because we want to be able to build a training course that will help anybody that has a thermal drone. So that way, when something, particularly in the US happens, like a natural disaster, that we can help guys that have these thermal drones actually be a useful resource instead of being kind of like, you know, almost come to it like, hey, I have this toy and they don't really know how to use it.
You've been in those situations where everybody wants to help, and sometimes it's always almost too much help if there's not enough training.
And it almost, you know, bottlenecks or plugs the system when you just have guys with good intentions but don't actually have, you know, any training with that. So, yeah, I just love, love what we're able to learn out here. And we've been pushing the limits out here even as we're training. And you know what I'm getting at here? You know, exactly what I'm getting at here. But we had the cadets out doing trading and so Jaden and I were like, we needed to push the limit on one of. With 350 with the Dji trees. 350 to see kind of where, where it could go because this is a new terror. This is not Ohio. This is not Ohio. We're talking about understanding, you know, the. The difference of how drone operates in high elevation. As the higher you go, the thinner the air is, the more that the, you know, the props are gonna like. I need some air to. To capture here. So. So anyway, tell us a little bit about. And we love stories. Everybody loves stories. We gotta get a good story in here. Tell us a little bit about some of our research and how it went.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yeah, so we went up to. We wanted to see if we could deliver something from the road which kind of snakes through the valley. We could get something from there up to a peak that you can just kind of barely see through the mountains.
But, yeah, still had line of sight, so we could fly the whole way up there. So we took the 350, and the distance was. It was like 2.3 miles, I think is what we figured out. Yeah. So we had the winch system set up on the 350. Now, unfortunately, this kind of is an added element that becomes important later. But our double. Our dual. Our dual attachment system was not working. So we only had one attachment point. So we decided to use that for the camera instead of the winch. However, we wanted the winch to be attached so we could test because the winch itself has some weight to it. So we ended up tying off the winch, which, yeah, was probably our first mistake.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it was our. It's our first mistake, you know, and because the winch has a system in it that if you get caught in something that. That you can actually just cut the. The rope and then you. You lose your. Your winch system in the unlikely situation.
Unlikely scenario.
But since we just decided to pull out what, you know, 20ft of rope and then just tie it off to the winch just so that. Because that. That winch was completely useless because it wasn't powered on. So, you know, we thought we were being smart because we were, you know, kind of rednecking the system because we didn't have the dual payload actually working. But. But, yeah, anyway, continue on.
[00:30:47] Speaker B: Yep. So then Austin was like, hey, I'll take the first flight, you know, just in case something happens.
So he took test flight, and it went pretty well, actually. We got the whole way to the top. There's a small helicopter pad up there. So we went low enough that the attachment would touch the ground or that the bottom of the winch touched the ground just to test that flew back, and we had, like, 40% battery.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And that was starting with 90%?
[00:31:14] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So 2.3 miles up there, bringing that attachment down, coming back down that two miles back and still had 40% battery life.
[00:31:23] Speaker C: And you didn't have anything on the attachment at this point?
[00:31:25] Speaker B: No, not at this point.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: So then we were like, well, let's put weight on it. And Austin was like, well, now that we did a test flight, surely Jayden can fly it. So that was the thought. Anyways, so I took off, started flying up and about a little over halfway. Well, actually, no, probably about halfway there. I started noticing that every once in a while I would try to go up and it would drop a few feet and then it would go up. And I was like, well, this, that's not, you know, what's going on here. But decided to keep going up. That was.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: That should have been a turn around. Yeah.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: So it got to a point where like we were. Because it was dropping, so the way the, the terrain is, it kind of goes up and flattens out. And because it was dropping, we started losing signal. So that was adding to the. It's. The drone itself is dropping and we're losing signals. So we can't keep it high enough off the ground. So as it was kind of coming in and out, you know, the screens like glitching. I spun it around and just started heading back without being able to really see where I was going because it was. It was glitching. I could still, like, obviously my compass was still working so I could head towards home, but I couldn't actually see where I was going. And by the time then we got to a spot where we could.
Where we ran up a hill behind us so that we had better access to it.
Austin took over and he looked down and our med kit that we had attached to it was in the. In the side of a tree and the rope was. I mean, we had no idea where the rope was all tangled up. It probably went all around that thing.
And about that time as well, we started losing battery power.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: We were at, I forget, 23% by that point.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: So it just started dropping right away because we're fighting now with this channel tree in this medkit and it tried to auto land. So Austin's like canceling it and we're trying to figure this thing out.
And then we lost signal and it just kind of. Yeah. Austin was trying to get it off the tree. It wasn't working. And then it just went dark, basically.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Just went dark.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: So we had the 4T with us. So we took the 4T up flew out and found it. I still am confused how this happened, but it was upside. It's upside down currently. Unless they found it upside down in, like, the top three feet of a tree of a tall pine. And I'm not sure if you can tell anything about the pine trees behind us, but they're pretty tall and narrow.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: So, I mean, my first thought was, like, great scenario for the cadets. You know, great rescue mission. An actual rescue mission here.
[00:33:55] Speaker C: I love how you called it. Like our research. Yeah, it's part of our research. And now we know scenario.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Now we have a scenario out of our research. Yeah, yeah, Perfect. So. So, yeah, no, we're still learning. And one of the things that I'm going to take away with this is one of the things that we realized was that once the voltage went down, I forget the voltage level, but I know the batteries were below 50% is when the weight would handle the weight just fine, but after the voltage was too low, then it would actually kind of naturally start coming down. And so one of the points of research that I want to continue going back is figuring out how much can I actually put on that drone when the voltage is at certain points by setting up the drone with the winch and then keep adding weight and seeing at what point. So obviously, we want to be able to text. We want to test this equipment to the max, so you guys know what you can actually do in a real scenario.
It's just part of the learning process. And that was a little bit of an exciting time yesterday.
Yeah.
Cool.
So, yeah, I don't know if you guys have anything else to say.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: Well, I just want to say thank you to you guys for all this. All. I mean, you're offering us so much, and I don't. Yeah. The biggest way I know how to repay you at this point is just to say thank you.
You guys have provided us with drones, with drop systems, with lights, I mean, all the things that are helpful for us to do, the things that we want to do with drones. And then on top of that, coming out and providing trading. So I want to thank you guys for that in a huge way.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it's exciting for me to just be part of it. And obviously, you know, the founders, Jay, Mike, and Kevin had a big part of just saying, you know what we're going to donate, you know, the 350. We're going to donate payloads for that drone, a 30T and payloads for that. And just. Yeah, just really offering a lot. And then, you know, I feel so privileged to be part of that because it's just like, okay, now we're going to do this. Now we want you to go out and. And provide that training. And so, I mean, like, who wouldn't want to come out to Idaho for, you know, a week and. And enjoy the. The amazing setting here, just the hospitality and everything. So I hope this is just the beginning of our being able to. To work with you guys. And it's really exciting to see, like, where Kazakh is going and to. To be able to look ahead, you know, five years just to see where what all is going to happen. And you guys definitely have to keep us in the loop as you start using drones in actual scenarios and be exciting to hear how that actually helps in. In those situations. So appreciate you guys jumping in on this podcast. It looks like the rain has let up, so I think we're actually going to go do some trail riding here a little bit. And then they're actually. The cadets are probably getting to the point where they're going to be actually rescuing that drone here pretty soon. Soon. So we may buzz a drone out and just watch them. Watch them do that. See how they can get that drone off the top of the tree. So appreciate it and stick around. We'll catch you on the next one.
