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. If you want to introduce yourself and we'll just get right into it.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: All right. My name is Ryan Seister. I own Veteran drone Services.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Cool.
Veteran Drone Services. So you're a veteran?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Yes. So I do not come from an agriculture background. I retired August of 23. 24 years in the army.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Oh, wow. You were in there for a while.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Yeah, 24 years.
Joined in 99. Uncle Sam was done with me. He had used and abused me all he wanted to, and I was no longer going to get paid to run around the woods with guns in my buddies anymore. So I had to figure out what to do. But I didn't want to grow up. So I went, went found the biggest, baddest toy I could find that I thought could make money and help people.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: How did you originally come across a drone of that size?
[00:01:08] Speaker B: So my last two years in the army, I spent in our research and development force modernization division.
So soldiers would come in and they'd say, hey, I need a product that does this.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: I would go scour the civilian market, see if I could find something that existed.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Bring civilian stuff into the military.
Or if it didn't exist and companies had something close, I would take a requirement order and say, hey, we have a requirement for this.
You guys can make and do it. And then it would be made for the military. Then years later, it gets demilitarized thing and then becomes a civilian.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: So, like, if you find a civilian product, let's. Let's just take a drone like a Mavic 3.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: If that's what the military wanted, they couldn't just necessarily take that product. You would have to. It was built specifically for the military.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: It depends on what it was. If. So if there was a product out there, let's say the Mavic 3. Let's just say a Mavic 3 is out there and the army has a need and a requirement for it. There's a unit that is acquisitions, and you just go out and be like, hey, we need to buy some of these. We get it approved, grab the funding, go buy some. Boom, there it Is now we have given you the tool you need. If we went out looking for it and it didn't exist, which a lot of times was because soldiers are creative. They've done their Internet research. They're finding it. But if it didn't, it doesn't exist, then we got to find somebody to manufacture it.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Then we've got to go into the getting it built and getting all that phase. And that's where you get the stuff that is coming out in the civilian world that the military's had for years. You know, we've been flying lidar on. On robot drones for years. Wow. You know what I mean? So once it kind of gets demilitarized and the army is beyond lidar, then they're dumb to down lidar. Stuff can come down and come into this process. So if you look at where the military's at and, you know, take their older stuff is still light years ahead of what we're used.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Guys asked me that oftentimes with my thermal drone deer recovery, they're like, is. Is this something that the army has? And I'm like, I am sure that they have something that is way beyond this.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: So. So one of my first jobs in the army, I was on a. I was started out mechanized infantry, so I was on a Bradley fighting vehicle, and we had our thermals on there. I could flip my thermals over, and at 1600 meters, I could read embroidery because it was one degree of temperature difference. So I could read embroidery like a mile. You know what I mean? It was phenomenal. And now we're acting like it's a big deal.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: You know, it's great.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: That is so cool you bring that up.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So then what? So then I take these pilots that have been using all this stuff, and that's what I help them transition into the world of agriculture or deer recovery, whatever they want to do with drones. If you want to get into drones, I got you. I can help find you an avenue somewhere.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: So let me come back to here. It's back. Recording.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: Recording.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: We might be back. Our. What is it? On the road Podcast thing died.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Landon.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: I'm gonna blame this. I'm gonna blame this on the. The production guy died. But we were. We were in the middle of talking about building product, dude. And I really appreciate you sharing where you're coming from because, like, when this thing died and we were talking, it's like, sharing where you come from. People can relate.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: And so the military came from. You're a veteran. You come out, you did find Turn me up a little bit. Yeah, it's really quiet.
You, you found drone, these big drones while in the military.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Right. So we were looking at, you know, we were doing a selection process basically looking for different drone options in the military. Right. So we're out in industry and we're going everywhere. I'm going, anybody that's got drones or anything, we're going to demos and live drops and drop an ordinance and thermal scans and long range and mesh networks are self healing. That's nothing, right? Like the whole thing out. And as I'm going through I'm like, I don't know what I'm gonna do next, but this industry is gonna explode. Okay, so, right, so this industry is gonna explode. I'm gonna do something in this autonomous industry because that's where it's gonna be. Didn't know what yet.
I was born and raised in, you know, small rural town, southern Indiana. That's where I was born and raised. So getting back to not agriculture because I didn't come from ag, but rural America. So when I get back to rural America, how am I going to take what I've been doing for the last 24 years to serve this country and still serve the people of this country? I didn't want to put on a badge, I didn't want to do all those things.
I wanted to be able to help the people in rural America and how can I do that?
So found these spray drones and I was like, I like America, farmers are good people. I like hanging out with farmers. Like farmers and veterans are both salt of the earth type people.
We can put these two people together and they can work in these conditions and these stipulations and run this equipment and I can bridge the gap between the technology and the 62 year old farmer that's trying to use it. And I can bridge that gap with a veteran that understands the technology but can get the respect of the farmer because of where he's from. So how do you get a 22 year old kid to earn the respect a farmer who's 62 years old, when he's telling him what he's doing?
[00:06:23] Speaker A: That's the point.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: You're like, I just got out of the army after six years in the Army. Instant respect from an agricultural farmer. They love their veterans. It's the same type of people. So as soon as he had that, now this 22 year old kid has the respect of this guy as a veteran, now he'll at least listen to him.
So now when he says, this is how to fly this, and this is how to do this. You have that common ground of, you know, some of these guys were veterans. Some of these guys are 62, came out, did a tour in Vietnam or whatever and came back. Or they Desert Storm for three years, then got out and haven't told nobody about it. Nobody really knows. I've come up to the field edge and these farmers just pouring out heartfelt stories to these veterans that have. They had no way to get this war story out and get it off their chest because they came home and didn't talk about it.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Well, now they're out there on a field edge by themselves, just those two, because the farmer wants to hang out and see what's going on. So now he's your visual observer, and him and his veteran are out there, and it's a bonding and a connecting moment. He's like, I had a good time with that guy, and he did a good job.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: That's.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Now I just added you to my book of work.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Now I can grow it.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: So. So you found. You found the equipment while you were in the military, and you. You got yourself a drone, and you were telling me last night you bought a drone and you tore the whole thing apart because you were like, I got to figure out how to. How this thing works.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So everybody else seems to have all these college.
College degrees. I got 80 on public school education, and I got.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: I went to eighth grade school. So I. I went to.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: I went to 24 years of the school. Hard knocks, man. And. And we kind of. We kind of learned it from there. And so.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: So the question was, you took it all apart.
[00:08:06] Speaker B: You wanted to know how. I did not know how to make something work that I didn't understand how it operated. Right. I've always been the how, the why guy, the question, everything.
So I come home, I get my T40, and I come checking it out. No water. I' it in the yard. I got like 14 minutes of flight time on it. I'm like, I don't understand it because I didn't understand agriculture either. So not only did I not know the size of this drone, but I didn't understand what we were trying to do with it. I had never even sprayed Roundup in my driveway at this point. You know, for years, I lived on post, so I didn't even have a yard really, or nothing. I'm living on post, so my wife and kids are taken care of, and I don't have to worry about them when I'm deployed. And I was like, I need to know how it works.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: So I got to look. And I was like, man, I could do this with a set of T handles. I started taking it apart.
So at the time, I had, you know, my wife was worried about what I was going to do, and I told her. I was like, hey, I don't know where our next paycheck's coming from when I retire, but I'm going to take 40 grand out of our savings account and I'm going to figure it out.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Was she excited about it?
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah. You know how that went? You know how that went over. It was not pretty well.
I went, picked it up, I bought it, brought it home, get it in the shop. I've got 14 minutes of flight time on it. I was like, I got a nil. She comes out to say, hey, dinner's ready. Come inside. And I've got every nut, bolt and screw out of that thing. And it's laid out my shop like a parts diagram because I need to know how it works.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: And then how long did it take you?
We were. I was probably a couple hours because I was taking it out, looking. Okay. Marking things, pictures. Like, I'm trying to put this whole thing together.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: That's it. That is impressive. That's cool.
[00:09:42] Speaker B: So I pulled it all apart. I'm grabbing this part and looking at it, trying to look in the manual, like, okay, aerial electronics module. Okay, that's probably gonna. Okay, what's that gonna do? How's that? Like, I needed to understand.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: The electrical circulatory system and the liquid circulatory system to understand when it's doing this.
Why is it doing that? Yeah, why is that happening? Okay, well, that's something with the ESCs. That's something with the pump for this. That's. This had to understand how it works.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that's cool.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Because I wanted to be able to explain it to anybody of why and what I was doing. Because I had moved to, you know, western Kentucky, small rural community, not coming from agriculture. How was I going to convince people I knew about this drone? They knew the ag. They weren't going to ask me ag questions. They weren't going to ask me what fungicide I use. They weren't going to ask me an application rate. They were going to ask me, how does drone work? How's this going to work?
So I had to be able to bridge that gap. I had to educate him on the drone.
I didn't need to know nothing about agriculture yet. I didn't know the drone.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: So once I could convince them the drone and I knew and understood it, then and only then did they trust me with their cash crop.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Dude, that's so crazy. You're telling me that. Because I had kind of the same thing, but I didn't take the whole drone apart like you did. I think that's really cool that you took it apart and then you understood, like, their electrical stuff. But I understood the drone as far as the technology and how it lays the product down and the efficiencies and, like, I educated my farmers based on that. But to hear that you went even deeper than what I did. Dude, that's what. That's what we are as a drone pilots. Not only are you a drone pilot, but you're going to educate the public.
And if you think that you're not, you're sadly mistaken, because people are going to ask you.
You have to know what you're talking about, too.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you're educating people.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Period. I don't care who you are, what you do. You're an educator. You are saying something that somebody is listening to. It is up to you whether you are properly informing them or you're misinforming them. So people. If you're gonna say things, people are gonna listen whether they walk around the corner and say, that guy's an idiot, or they walk around the corner like, hey, he said we can do this. I'm gonna go do it. Yeah, right. So whether you want to be or not, it's just like when you're raising your kids, man, if you say something, they're learning from you, you're teaching them kids. If you're out doing this, you're educating the farmer. Now you go the co op to get your chemicals. You'.
So, like, you have an inherent responsibility when you're an industry leader in something that's exploding, to know your.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: You got to know your shit.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Bottom line, you got to know what you're talking about, and you've got to be able to clearly articulate exactly what's happening and what's going on. Because it is also my job as a. As a drone pilot to instill confidence in that farmer that I know how to work my equipment.
He knows that the recipe he's given you and the chemistry he wants on that field. He knows. That's right.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: He needs to know that you know what you're doing with that drone. So instill confidence in the farmer. You know what you're talking about, and you're the Right guy for the job, dude, that's that right there will get you so much.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: So you got your first drone. You're going out to the farmers and you're starting to apply. How many acres did you fly until you were like really confident?
[00:13:01] Speaker B: So I started out again.
You guys are going to laugh and it's going to sound stupid, but I went to, you know, local soar and got the laser dye that you put in your sprayer so you can see where you spray.
And I bought every bottle they had of different color varieties. And I went home and I put it in my tank and I sprayed. I had like 15 acre hay pasture on my land and I sprayed that thing at every height. I increased a mile, an hour and a foot every pass. And I kept painting it. And I would see the streaking, I would see the striping. I understand what was going on. I didn't know at the time what determined all those things. So I was changing everything and messing with stuff. And then it'd all be red. So I mix green chemical and I'd fly it the other way. Wow. And I changed my chemical. So everybody laughed like for, for about, for about six weeks. My 15 acre hay pasture looked like a gay pride. Flag. Collars going everywhere. Dude, it was.
But I had to make it make sense in my mind. You know, I didn't, I'd never applied spray application. I didn't understand droplet size and what was going to happen and where my coverage needed to be and how I could use downforce to do, you know what it needs to do with these nozzles. People start talking about, oh, those won't work. We tried those in the 80s. So then I had to dig back and find out where these centrifugal nozzle things kind of started when they tried that. Okay, figure out why it didn't work and what they were saying about it then. See why does it work now? Oh, it's because we're putting rotor wash were pushing down directly on it. So then I had to understand how that works. So then I just sprayed my.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: That's more go into detail there. So the rotary nozzle.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: So yes, it's going to spin, but what a lot of people don't understand is you could rapidly flood your nozzles. Everybody thinks it is all about height and speed and as long as your pumps can keep up and your gallon per minute, you're fine. But no matter what your limiting factor, once you've got enough pump volume to, let's say when you, you want five gallon the acre work, it slows you down and only lets you do this, but it slows you down because the pumps can't keep up.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: It has no idea if you're flooding those atomizers or not.
So now that the drones got bigger pumps and can fly a lot faster, there is still a really good chance that you're flooding that atomizer. And what I mean by that is you're putting more chemical on there than what it can spin and actually atomize before it gets out.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Okay, Right.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: So I put too much in there. Now it's run over. Now it's getting dripping, coming over. Now I'm getting streaking underneath there because I'm putting too much down, or I'm not truly getting the droplet size it tells me I'm getting because I'm putting, you know, five gallons a minute on that little atomizer disc that's spinning at 4,500 RPMs and it can't truly atomize it. So the water sitting here and going through here, and this is doing it, but some of that water surface tension is holding here, so it's pouring off the edge.
So your ability to go fast with the pumps is one thing, but just because you can go that fast and the pumps can keep up doesn't mean you're truly getting the atomization you need, you know, so there's, you know, interesting to see that the new drones that are coming out with some different atomizer nozzles, there's a lot to that that they're saying their nozzles are different, and there's more to it. And the way it's actually atomized is different. That is 100% correct. I believe that I've not looked into that drone as much, but I know that is correct. Because if you look at those atomizers, if you. If you record that and slow that way down, you will see that water surface tension holding that over and that chemical running over here. Well, now that chemicals running over. So the mist droplets that came out of those atomization nozzle is collecting right into that big bulk that's pouring over, getting what you need. So you can back that off. There's a lot of things you can do, but it's. It's some of those things that people don't think about, and I didn't understand, so I had to go figure it out and learn it, then go back to the hay pasture, go buy more dye, and start over.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: Would you say that as. As we sit right now, we know Dji and Xhe how Their atomizers work. Would they have that pretty dialed in on the. The controller itself? Based on. If I choose 300 micron and I've chosen 3, 2 gallons, 3 gallons an acre, is it actually atomizing it at that at full speed, or do you think that that needs independent testing and then adjust it?
[00:17:14] Speaker B: If I had the time, I would independently test all that.
I would look at that too. Now, for right now, what they're doing fungicide on corn and mainly getting into that. Yes, it's doing for the most part what you're doing. I think there's like, you know, the XAGP150, there's a chance you could flood that atomizer. I think you're gonna have to be more careful with that. If you look at that disc, it's a much smaller disc. It's a single atomization nozzle. If put your single atomization nozzle on your T40 or T50, you'll flood it quicker. You can see the flooding happen. So we're going to be careful with the P150s and we're going to put about 35,000 acres on them the next three weeks. And we'll know exactly what's going on with that. But I've got to figure out to tell people, hey, yes, the drone is capable of this, but your application rate isn't going to be what it is because you're flooding that atomizer and you're going to have these results from it.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Does this make sense that you do 100%? Yeah.
I've never thought about that, but absolutely makes sense.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: I got to dumb things down, man. No, no, I like, we have.
[00:18:10] Speaker A: We have to because, you know, people that are listening to this or might think the same way you do. And to explain it like that, what you're saying, you're showing your hand as a cup and then it's flooding in. It might be spinning, but if it fills up too much and it can't fly through the, the little fins, it's going to just. Part of the problem too, is from the manufacturer, they don't give you the specs to read and tell you this is exactly how it works. Sometimes we have to go figure it out ourselves to see how it exactly works, dude. So you, you bring that up. Did you check out the T60X, their high flow system, the atomizer, how that works.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: I'd like to see it. I did get a chance to dig into it.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: We should walk down there and I want to show you how it works because Obviously the, it comes with dual atomizers where it. And I wonder how that works because it can't flow over like, because it's actually squeezing it out, the dual atomizer. But then they have a single atomizer like you're talking about. But it's coming down and then it's almost getting like sprayed out. It looks like a little nozzle, like a pressure washer.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: So. And it has multiple. Coming all the way out. But then there's a disc that's flying around. So imagine that it would be spraying flat and then this disc is cutting it as it's flying out.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: So I'm curious.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: I'd like to see that. Yeah, there was a bunch of people around it last couple days I kind of poked over my head and looked at it, you know, a little time checking out the battery latch, how that works. That was pretty interesting.
[00:19:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that battery.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: But I didn't get much into the, the nozzles on that. I was at the front of it. People were crowded on the backside. Yeah.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Yeah. We should walk down there.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Dude, that's so cool. So, veteran drone service. What's, what's the ultimate goal of veteran drone service?
[00:19:53] Speaker B: So after, you know, I spent some time in special operations and you know, finished my career up there, but. And the one thing I missed when I did that was I didn't get soldiers right out of basic training anymore. I really enjoyed. Mom and dad had raised their child. Eighteen years old, he joins the army. They sent him off to basic training and they sent him to me. And it was my job to teach him and train him and grow him into a man in uniform. Right. So I missed molding those young, impressionable minds and growing them into something else. You know, I mean I, I missed having that influence and that opportunity with those guys. So I knew when I transitioned out, I wanted to do something that, that helped the veterans. I didn't want to start a nonprofit. I think those kind of things get crazy sometimes. There's a million people out there that want to blow this brand up and try to get funding and grants and all this stuff and, and when I was transitioning out, I told somebody that I wanted to try to help soldiers. And he said, if you really want to help soldiers, start a for profit business and be successful and you can do whatever you want with your money. You start a non profit. There's a whole bunch of people that you got to pay and all get a decision in what you do with the soldiers. So if you want to help more soldiers, be More successful, go to the grindstone and get after it. So we went out and figured out how I transitioned, realized the troubles and tribulations that I had as I tried to transition.
Selfishly, I would admit, maybe I started trying to transition other soldiers to help me transition because I could kind of wrap my mind around it. I kind of felt I had to be strong in that transition for them. And I kind of realized at that point that, like, there's a need for this and I can fill a gap. And we talked about the bridging, the gap between the farmers and the technology.
And so I talked to some people. I got set up. I got a soldier came out. He was a helicopter pilot. I was like, hey, man, I need somebody to go through this program first. It's going to be ugly. It's going to be brutal. Don't really know what I'm doing, but we'll figure it out along the way. And he's like, dude, I'm down. Let's figure it out. So he now owns his own company in Michigan, and he does mainly aquatic stuff. Again, now owns his own agricultural spray drone company in Michigan. But he came through and we kind of figured out what the process was, what it kind of needed to look like.
He had aviation background.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: When you're. When you referring to that, you're talking about a drone spray business, like how to.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: How to do it.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Right. We are teaching him how to use a spray drum.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: I was teaching him how to take. He had messed with some drones. He had like a little Air 3 or something. You know, I mean, he had been flying helicopters. He understood airspace, he understood all that stuff. I just had to show him how drones were, the spray drone. So we did that. We kind of built a process and at least built a start point. Right. Military. There's systems and processes. If you don't have a system of process, you don't really have anything. So I didn't have either one of those. And I said, hey, I'll teach you how to do this and help you do what you want to do, if you will be the guinea pig to help me build this process.
So he came through. We kind of built a training process.
And now when soldiers transition out of the military in their last six months, they can do an internship in a industry or with a company that they think they would like him to pursue employment with, and they can come out for eight to 12 weeks and work in that industry.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: And then we've got to get so many of them jobs. There's so much job guarantee stuff you got to do and at least provide interviews and this sort of stuff. So we started just bringing some soldiers to. If a soldier called and said, hey, I want to do this, I heard about it, come on. There was no structure to it, no nothing. I just never told anybody, no, if you want help, man, come on, I'll.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Help you, let's do it.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: And so we kind of went through that process and kind of the disorganization of all that. And then this year now, we've kind of got a little more structured, but a soldier coming out of the military can come to my program and for eight to 12 weeks, we'll train them, we'll get them if they have know nothing about drones and never touch a drone, we'll get them their 107 license, we'll get them their state applicator license. So their aerial and their regular pesticide applicator license, we will take them out to the field, they run a trailer for us. We show them how the operation works so they understand the workflow and how the efficiency and stuff needs to go. And then we take them back to the shop. And now they've been out there and seen that. Then we go back to the shop and it's time to disassemble a drone.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: Dude, come on, this is good. Rip it down.
So the mission is, is like get these people from where they were in the military to civilian and getting them into a potential drone spray business.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: So how does that benefit you?
[00:24:12] Speaker B: We had to have, have, you know how good it feels to help soldiers.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: And farmers, like, financially, does it benefit you any?
[00:24:16] Speaker B: Like, does he pay to get into this program financially? Doesn't make sense.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: So, so, but that's, it's more, it's more of a mission of wanting to help.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Right? So I been in the military, I had to have a mission statement. So I, I racked my brain for a couple days, couldn't think of nothing, said a bunch of cheesy one liners, you know, and one day I was on a friend, my buddy on the phone, my buddy, trying to tell him, you know, kind of what we were doing. And I was like, I think my mission statement is blah. And I blurted out, and he goes, stop, get off the phone right now. Write it down. So the mission statement of Veteran Drone Services is the veterans that have protected us have joined forces with the farmers that feed us to bring technologically advanced cost and carbon reduced farming solutions to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: That's what I wanted to do. And I started out, and I just keep that in my mind. We have now gone far beyond Kentucky. We're coast to coast. We're growing it beyond that. But the mission statement that started us all just with the most important part was the veterans that have protected us have joined forces with the farmers that feed us.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: And that is what drives what veteran drone services does every day.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: So we got to talk about something that I believe. Your company has been one of the first or the only companies so far that was able to get a no class 3 medical required if they're working for veteran drone services. And I believe I have to say this. Jonathan help you get that? Dude's very smart, although he doesn't like some of the stuff that I'm doing. But that.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Sure, sure.
Jonathan is. Is passionate about a lot of things. He cares about what he cares about. I respect that. The things that he doesn't like, he doesn't like. And I respect that too.
But, yeah, he. He. Jonathan has a special place in his heart for veterans. He's. He's very tied to the military and in his feelings and. And wanting to help the military. And he was a huge part of us getting to do this. If I hadn't gone through him, I would not have got it done.
The end of the day, what was happening was the third class medical requirement. There was. There's a list of seven questions in their grade, and if any one of those are yes, it automatically goes to a review board. Right. So sleep apnea, instant disqualifier. No way.
Instant. If you have sleep apnea, you lose it. So I'm home sleeping with my CPAP machine, so I get a good night's rest. So I'm on the field edge, sleeping good. And it disqualifies.
Then you have anxiety, depression, anything PTSD related. Well, as you're coming out of the military, the VA is like, you have some form of PTSD. You have a slight PTSD. You have 10% PTSD or whatever. And these soldiers, you know, then you get VA disability for your compensations for what's wrong with you coming out of the military.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: So now they were kind of in a place of like, if I say no and lie to the va, I don't get any compensation for the things that's wrong with me.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: And if I say yes, I can't get my third class medical to fly these agricultural spray drones. So now what do I do? You can't lie to the faa, right?
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: You're gonna get in trouble there. You can't lie to the VA because that's just messing you up. Right? So we had this piece where soldiers getting out of the military, the VA was labeled with ptsd, sleep apnea, all these automatic disqualifiers. And then we were having to get disqualified. Then we would have to go to a himss, which is the next level that really digs into it. And then he'd go to him and he'd be like, alright, now you gotta go back to this. DOCT originally diagnosed this thing. And then you had to try to chase down a medical examiner like the pilot that I got now, one of my great pilots is a phenomenal guy. Flew armed MQ1s dropping missiles from 18,000ft for 6 years. The guy can get fungicide on corn, you know what I'm saying?
If he can put a. If he could put a missile from 18,000ft through your peephole in your door, he can hit the ear leaf. Right? We need these guys. So tell me somebody else in the world that's more capable than that. Right.
And you're just taking the most capable, knowledgeable pilots and eliminating from the pool of people we have to choose from.
And he is now able to do that. But you can take a brand new 20 year old kid that's got no health issues and don't know anything about this and you can get him his license like that.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: So they were providing a situation that eliminated the most talented and qualified unmanned aircraft pilots that our country has to offer.
Taking them out of the pool and taking these people that had no experience, no knowledge about nothing and you're good to go. Go.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: That's crazy. It is nuts.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: Insane, right? So I was like whoa, hold up. What are we doing here? So back and forth, Argan trying to go the hint.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: How long do you think it would have took you from the time you were like I'm gonna try to get this no class 3 medical thing till you actually got it from the FAA.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: How long did it actually take?
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Actually take?
[00:29:06] Speaker B: Physical take from the time.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: From the time you were going to. I'm going to try to. Did you amend your original amendment to my original petition?
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: Okay. So you had a petition. Then you're like I want to be.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: I had a right same one. Everybody had the original one advent 137 and got with Jonathan. I was like, here's the problem we're having. Because I had this pilot and he couldn't get. He wanted a job. He was going to come work for me. Couldn't get his third Class medical.
So we started trying to work. Every time I would go to these shows and they would come to ramp check me, I would be like, I'll make a deal with you. I'll go get all my paperwork and lay it out neat, not make you dig through it. If you'll give me 15 minutes, your time to explain a problem I'm having for veterans.
And they'd be like, okay, I'm like, ramp check me. Here you go. I'd lay it all out, everything's good. I'm like, here's the problem. And I found that a lot of the FAA folks were also veterans, and they were like, ah. I knew all three of those rules, but I never saw them far enough to see where they intersect to cause a problem, right? They're like, this is a line, this is a line, this is a line. But they were looking at it right here in the first 50ft. Well, when you really got all the way down there to 150, 200ft out, when you get down to veterans trying to get into this, those lines intersected. We were cutting them off.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Okay?
[00:30:16] Speaker B: So now this soldier transitioned out, feeling kind of down anyway, having some issues. The VA just told him he's got ptsd, but it's not gonna affect anything you want to do. He wants to fly drones, turns around, and he just eliminated himself. So right after getting diagnosed with ptsd, the first thing that happens is the government denies him his ability to do what he wants to do, even though he's been doing it for six years.
When he got denied his claim, he got denied his third class medical physical. At the same time, the army could have called him back up and said, hey, you're gonna go fly this 45 mil, 4500 pound armed asset. And it was fine.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: That is right.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: So because the army has a blanket piece, the army accepts a responsibility. So then they. They have their regulations, and then they can do whatever they want inside there, right? So it was a thing that he had a military waiver because of some medication that he was on.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: That then when they came out, they're like. They called it. You know, they said it was depression when he was in because they couldn't put him with PTSD while he's in. So then the VA switches it, right? So this whole process of guys having mental issues or sleep issues or any of those things that are automatic disqualifiers coming out of the military, when you go to the hims, you had to go find that original person that signed off on your waiver oh, my God. Well, when he did that was four years ago, he was a private at Fort Carson, Colorado. Where's that doctor at? That Dr. PCs moved. He's PCs? No. How am I going to find that guy? He doesn't even. He's out now. He doesn't have access to the military email channels. So it was really kind of stifling them down. So I was like, what are we going to do? We got to fix this. You know, I mean. So I started hitting up the FAA folks. They want. You want to ramp check me? Let me ask you some questions. I'll trade. I'll make it easy on you. You make it easy on me. Give me a platform to be able to listen to what I'm saying, because that Fizzo can go back and say something. I just was like. Like, if I get in front of enough of these guys, somebody will say, I care about that, too.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: So I found enough guys that were Fizzos and understood and va. Or the FAA has a lot of veterans to work for them because you get to continue your government service.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Right. So if you get out of the military and then go into government services, continue your government service type of deal. Right. So it helps with furthering that. But it actually started where it got. Got kind of. The big break was in Ohio. I was in Ohio at the Farm Science Review, and the fisdo came down there, and he had some other people down, and there was a group, and they were coming around. This was not last year, but the year before.
[00:32:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: And they come up to me and, like, ask me these questions. I was like, hey, I got some questions for you guys. Because they wanted us to hand out their FA Flyers. Right.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: They were there last year.
[00:32:50] Speaker B: Right. So I'm like, I'll do this for you guys. I'll put everybody in there and tell it about. But I need 30 minutes of your time for me to explain to you a problem I'm having with veterans. And all four of them were veterans. Veterans. Wow. So we sit down and talked about it, and they're like, yeah, that's a problem. We didn't. We didn't realize those things intersected like that. And I think once the FAA finally realized, hey, this doesn't make sense.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So. So you talking to in person with them was one thing, but you still had to go through the process of amending your current exemption that you had. And that. That is like writing the faa.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: That. That is.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Is.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: That is where that is when I went to Jonathan.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And that. So When Jonathan first submitted that paperwork for you, how long after the first time? Because I'm sure it wasn't just the very first time you gave it to him, Boom, they gave it to you.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: There was, there was some, some legwork before it was ever done.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Oh, okay, right.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: So the process and the systems, there was some legwork that was done and some conversations that were had ahead of time saying, hey, here's a process problem, like yep, we can see that. Right. So people were starting to hear about it. So we were word of mouth getting it in there and they were agreeing that it was okay. It was a friction point. Right. So we kind of started the whisper campaign, get that going through the FAA. Multiple FISDOs have now heard the complaints and the deal. We kind of get it through there. And then I went and got him, went and got him his DOT physical. So I was going to get him a Class A CDL and let him drive an 85,000 pound semi down the highway next to people's families and see if that would work. And they were going to let him. It was fine, good to go, no issues.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: So. So you, you tell me that story. So you told an FAA guy.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: So I was explaining to him how they were eliminating their most talented pool. Right, you.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: And you're, you're explaining this to the faa?
[00:34:32] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: Said if your priority is safety, you're taking a guy with thousands hours of flight time, years of experience, flying beyond visual line of sight the majority of the time doing all these things, combat deployments, all. Yeah, you're not going to find a remote pilot more experience than that. And because he sleeps at night with a CPAP machine on, so he gets a good night's rest. He can't do that. Like does that, does that make any sense? And like. Well, we got to have regulations and actually, you know, the NAA was the. Fought me harder than anybody else did. The NAA wanted no part of it.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: I seen the, some of the comments that were left on the original paperwork that was filed was definitely from groups that, that would not be for the, the industry moving forward. But I do think that the NAA is starting to like drones.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: Don't you think so like to be seen. Oh yeah, we've started to talk about it. Okay, let's see. You know, there's, you know, and this not going to turn into to an intro, a conversation. My curiosity is first, first indicator that pops up to me is what percentage of the crop dusters are out there, members of the intro AAA.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: What percentage? Probably about 30ish, right. So if they can't even get their own people to join their organization, that's the indicator comes to me and I want to know like, explain to me like I want to be pro. Pro this, this organization and growing this. And I want it to be safe. I want it to be right. I want to do this the right way. But I also don't remember it being this big a deal when we went from airplanes, crop dust into helicopter.
Why is all of a sudden this some earth shattering stuff? We're acting like we ain't been doing aerial application, like we got classes going on talking about whoa, drift.
What watching airplane spray, right?
[00:36:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: And you're talking to me about drift. Like that's. I don't even have enough chemical on board to drift that far. You know what I mean? It's crazy.
He's flying over all kinds of areas from the local airport with chemicals.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Dude.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Dude. I'm never leaving over the. My drone generally never leaves over the part that I'm authorized to put the chemicals on.
[00:36:38] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: And this guy is loading up in an airport somewhere then flying over everywhere with way more chemical than I do. And you're worried about my little ten and a half gallons, bro. It's crazy. You know, I want to do this. I want NAA to come on board with us. I want them to help us make this safe. I want them to make it help us advance this. I want to work with planes and helicopters. I think there's room for everybody and I think it's the right tool for the job. You know, it's when we came up with zero turns, we didn't, you know, stop making push mowers and weed eaters.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: Like there's still a community there that we have to get over as many acres as possible. None of us can do it alone.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. So let's bring this back. We started talking about semi. So you were going to.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: So at that time he was legal and made all the requirements to go get his Class A CDL and drive an 85,000 pound semi down the interstate at 80 miles Monarch.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: And you tell the FAA guy and.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: I'm like, so he's gonna go do this and now he's gonna be driving this truck down the interstate four feet from your wife and kids. Like, does this, does this make sense to you? But he can't be in rural America four miles from the nearest house, 12 foot over top of corn because he's not mentally stable. Like, come on now.
You should be putting the mentally Unstable ones out farther in rural America. Right. Like, this doesn't make sense. Sense. Like you can't even apply common sense to make this. So once they realized that's what it was and we was able to get the word and explain to them where the friction point was happening, the actual request was I wanted to use because I still wanted some form of measure. Right. I didn't want to just eliminate all rules together. Let's just make rules that make sense.
[00:38:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: So I was like, okay, if you've got a valid state driver's license. Good. If you are physically capable of driving a vehicle down the highway near everybody's family, you should be everything you need to fly these drones.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Yeah, Right.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: The reason they wouldn't is because federal regulations all have to be standardized no matter where you're at. State driver's license all have different levels of requirements. So there was no. You could be legal in Illinois, but illegal in Missouri because of different things. Right. So they're like, that's not gonna work and it's not possible. We understand where you were going because that was gonna give us our vision to test.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: So the reason we can't fly with no third class medical at night is because there's no vision.
Which I argued. I gave them one little try, and they'd already given me this much. I didn't want to push the issue, but I was like, I will go put this drone three quarters of a mile across this field up against the tree line at noon, and I'm going to do it at midnight. You tell me which one you need glasses to see. You know what I mean, dude?
[00:39:18] Speaker A: That's valid. Like, don't.
[00:39:21] Speaker B: Don't say it's because we don't have a vision test. The easiest thing in the world to see is a drone at night.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: You know, I mean, because you can see it for three nautical miles, Right? That's what the rules say. Like what, dude? It's not like it doesn't make sense. But I didn't want to go down that road, that the rule change didn't make sense because I got to win. And now I could. The goal was to allow soldiers to be able to get the licensing to start.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Well, dude, congratulations.
That's good. I mean, that's a win for everybody.
[00:39:48] Speaker B: I was talking to somebody here and they had a guy that came up to me. He's like, I'm not a veteran. I got a medical condition and I cannot get my third class medical. Can I still get that unless I'M a veteran without being a veteran. I said, absolutely, you can get it. It was made because we had this little barrier. We had gotten to the point we had started saying, dude comes in, he's like, hey, I want to buy a drone. It's going to save me so much money. I love it. We had to be like, go get a third class medical and if you can pass that for 150 bucks, then we'll start this other process. But if you can't, that one piece, the whole deal's off the table. That's what I want to do. Adjust. Because that guy's medical condition could be something that has nothing to do with it.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Like, I don't imagine there's a crazy amount of medical requirements you got to have beyond a driver's license to fly a drone.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: It's, it's more about having the education and the skill set, knowing what you're doing with the.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Wasn't there a guy in a wheelchair that called us like, I don't know, probably two years ago and wanting to get into it, but he couldn't, couldn't get the, the physical done.
Yeah. Because he was in a wheelchair.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Dude, let's find him, let's get him into drones and let's put a wheelchair ramp on a trailer and the exemption and let's get this dude out there flying. Let's help him.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: I, I think there is a, a guy in a wheelchair flying a drone over 55 pounds in Michigan.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: I think good, good for him, you know, I mean, but those, that guy's already got some barriers. Let's like help him break down those.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: Barriers, you know, I mean, that's the.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: That'S the thing that's fun to me is finding how I can help somebody. That's. That's a niche one off case or an odd thing. Like you want to do things that help everybody, but it really feels good when you connect down and like, that guy's got a bunch of bears, he needs help. Let's do it. You know what I mean?
[00:41:27] Speaker A: I agree. I agree. Dude, it's so cool that you were able to do that for veterans and for other people as well.
So you would say the reason that it probably got pushed through is because you probably put the, the, you started the whisper campaign. You got it got people thinking about it, like using common sense to like, think about these things. And then once you actually submitted the paperwork, then it was just an approval.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: It really wasn't that long.
It was, it was months. Wow. Months from the time we Actually submitted. Now, it took a lot of work back and forth, and we worked on the process of understanding the problem, understanding where the friction points were. Why is that friction point there? How like, in this industry, and especially with the.
The government tries to find a way to know y. Right. Like, they want to. We want to get to yes. Like, can I spray that field? Don't tell me no. Say yes. But you got to do this, this, and this. Fine, I'll do that. Like, if I go to the FA and like, hey, I. I want to do this. I want to do this with my fly cart. Like, no. Yeah, say yes. But you have these stipulations. Because I'll do them. Like, I want to do it the right way. I'm trying to follow the rules. But if your rules are just no. Well, that's not rule.
[00:42:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, right.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: It just doesn't make sense. So I like the. If you're gonna say no, not that way, but if you did it this way, you could.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: Right.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: And the government doesn't always do that. Well, they don't always have time or whatever. Their excuse is not. Not pushing nothing to them. But it's our duty to do our due diligence to find out where the friction points are. Like, we can't just blindly push into it. You got to push into it. When you get there, you gotta, like, pull on this one a little bit. You gotta figure out which things cost.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: You could be spending a bunch of time pulling on these levers over here. And that's not the hang up at all. You know, it's like you pick a lock when you. When you're pushing it down, you feel a little catching, like, oh, that's the one. That's Tumbler one. That's Tumbler two. Right. You have to do that with. With. With government policy, dude.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: I'm learning that.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Got to push it, right? So you could be pushing hard on a lever, and it's the wrong lever. Like, it's not even what they're hung up on. Right. And you're putting a ton of effort and energy into something that's not even their health. Hang up, push on each one a little bit, tug along, see where the friction point is. And like, okay, this is a friction point. Now pick your head up, look around, and find out how to get around that friction point. And sometimes getting around that friction point is you making a sacrifice. And sometimes getting around that friction point is them making a sacrifice. Right? So, like, hey, we'll line that up with this and not do that. Or hey, we'll do this or not that, or we'll call it this or that. Right. So don't spend your time pushing on a bunch of rods that aren't the hang up point. Make sure you understand truly where the friction point is and then work on that piece of it. And that's what we were able to do once we understood where their problem was.
[00:44:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: Then we were able to get the FAA to understand that they were taking all these pilots out there. And once I told them, here's the skill set of everybody you're denying.
Yep, here's what you're losing, here's why you're losing it, here's how you could fix it.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: And that. That's where it kind of made sense. Yeah, that was. That was another one of those big wins for us that we just felt good about putting that feather in our cap and have really put that on the backs of the soldiers that are coming out that were helping. Right. Like, we didn't do that. Veteran drone services didn't do that. Like, the soldiers coming out, like, they kept coming and wanting it. Like, I had 49 soldiers begging to come through my program that want to be licensed agricultural drone pilots and come to work for people. And if they hadn't come pushing on the door and kept going, it never would have got done. So they did it. Veteran drone services didn't do it. Ryan Seister didn't do it. Those soldiers transitioning out of the military, shoulder to shoulder, pushing forward, making changes in policy was what was impressive and fun to see for me, you know, so.
[00:45:08] Speaker A: So how many guys that went through your program?
[00:45:11] Speaker B: 10. Okay, 10 last year.
We're. We're scheduled for 16 this year.
[00:45:17] Speaker A: Wow, that's cool.
[00:45:18] Speaker B: We're trying to grow it at different locations, but it's difficult to. To manage and grow it in a certain way because we got to be careful not to just, I could train a hundred soldiers, but if I can't place them, they're coming out of the military and they are looking at me and saying, I want to come do your insurance.
I want to come do your intern program.
What they're saying, really, if you think about it, is, hey, I don't know what I'm doing when I get out of the army and I have this period of time where I can get help and I'm going to trust you to help me. Right. So I can't let them down.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:55] Speaker B: Like, if I spend all this time and they spend that time getting all this training and Doing all this. I'm like, alright, guys, good luck. Bye. And they're like, now I'm out of the army, I wasted the time. I had to get a job on this guy and he didn't put me to work.
Now I got to figure out what to do, right? So there's inherent responsibility there to find this guy something. And maybe they're like, hey man, this drone thing is not for me, but I'm super glad I learned this. I had a guy that came through the program and then went off to college to. He was going to go be an engineer.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: He just like, drones are going to be the next big thing. I'm going to college. I can't really do an internship with that. There's no internship for college around, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I'm going to come to your program and see how drones are going to work in engineering. He's going to learn about drones. So now going to be a civil engineer. He's got a drone drone license in his hand. That's when he goes in there. Because what we found is engineer companies don't want to hire drone pilots. Right?
[00:46:48] Speaker A: So like independent, right?
[00:46:50] Speaker B: If I'm, if I do bridge inspections. Yeah, Right. They do not want that civil engineer to have to explain to me what pictures to take and how to get those angles and cracks and this, that and the other other. They're like, I want my engineer to learn to fly one of those drones. If you can fly that drone at 16 years old, I want you to just teach my engineer how to fly the drone. I'm already paying him.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: It's not costing me any more money. I buy a drone, give it to him. I just need you to train him. He already knows what pictures take. He already knows what to do. Right. So you can't always just produce pilots to be running around. You know, I'm a pilot looking for drone work. Right. Sometimes you've got to turn it around and find an industry that needs drones and train those guys on drones and then sell them those drones to help make their jobs easier, you know?
[00:47:37] Speaker A: That's cool. So he's a, he's a veteran with a drone license. He'll be a civil engineer and he's going to be able to do his own.
[00:47:42] Speaker B: Be able to do his own inspections, his own things. Right? So it's like, that's cool. He just wanted to like, I'm doing this. Like, this is cool. Like, dude, he spent like three weeks on a field edge spraying fungicide on corn. He's like, I'm never going to get to do this again. Dude, this is awesome. I had no idea how agriculture worked. I'm from the city. I knew nothing about farming.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: Right?
[00:48:00] Speaker B: So now this kid from the city that grew up in, you know, suburbia and all this and never even seen anything, he now has a greater appreciation for what that farmer's doing, how he's doing it, what it takes to get food to his table. Like, we educated the city kids on how the rural kids work, and now he's gonna go back, live in the city, live in his little loft apartment in suburbia, and never have a car and concrete and all that. And just. But now he has an appreciation for rural America because he came to this program and now he's licensed.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: So that's so good.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: Different angle of feel good about it, you know.
[00:48:30] Speaker A: How many acres would you say you covered?
[00:48:33] Speaker B: Not near as many as a lot of people. Right. So my acreage count is not near as impressive.
I try to get between 8 to 10,000 acres a year.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: Is the goal.
[00:48:42] Speaker A: That's so good. Acres.
[00:48:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, you know, there are people, you know, I. I don't go knock out 124,000 acres in 11 days.
[00:48:50] Speaker A: And, you know, it wasn't 124,000. It was. It was. I made 132,000. Oh, that 11,000 acres in 2024 days.
[00:48:59] Speaker B: Right? There you go. So doing that is. You got to have the right conditions, right? Like that. Everybody's like, oh, he did that. I'm gonna go do that three times.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: A year, and I'm gonna do it.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: You know what I mean? Like, the conditions and the situation's gotta line up. And, you know, the part that's not on there is like, after that was done, we laid up, and I didn't do anything.
[00:49:17] Speaker A: I'm gonna make a video showing me how I looked. How much weight. Yeah, how much weight I lost, Dude. Yeah, that's cool.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: Protein shakes and, you know, Zen pouches got you through.
[00:49:28] Speaker A: That's so cool. Well, than for Sharon, I really. I do believe that if. If somebody was listening to this, they can relate to that. That have gone through those situations with veterans. Obviously, I've never been in the military, so I don't know, but I can only imagine the stuff that those guys deal with. And now that you put in this work and like you said, you put it back to the guys that kept pushing that wanted to come through your programs, helped the FAA loosen up on some of those requirements. They. They say you need to have a class, three months medical now you don't. And I, I just really appreciate you coming on, sharing how that went and I think it's awesome what you're doing for those guys.
[00:50:07] Speaker B: So appreciate it, man. I, I really appreciate it, man. It's been a, been an honor to be on this with you guys. I've watched your watch a lot of what you guys have done. I've learned a lot from you guys. I've laughed a lot with you guys. I've seen some things that I can repeat. I've seen some things that I can't because of where I work, you know, but I've seen the things, I've seen the things you guys do with the deer recovery. I, I, one of my buddies actually does some of your stuff and got his stuff through you and he's right down the mean and I told him when he was going to get it, I was like, yeah, I'll sell it so you can get it from me, but you're not going to get what you're going to get if you go there. You know what I mean? So appreciate what you guys are doing with rural America and the wildlife stuff. I appreciate the support, man, and I look forward to working with you again, man.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: Dude, my pleasure. Thanks so much.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: Appreciate it, Mike. Thanks, buddy.
