Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, guys, welcome back to the Drone on show. Like I say, oftentimes when I ask somebody to come on the podcast, it's just a conversation of, you know, how'd you get into the industry? And then, you know, from there. Usually it just goes on to who knows what. But today we have Medi from Talones on. Thanks for being here, Mehdi. You are. You're my age, right? You're pretty young.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: How old are you? We are young, I can tell you
[00:00:22] Speaker A: that, but, like, 34. I'm 34.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: I will be 34 in March.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Oh, so you're younger than me?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: A little bit, maybe.
[00:00:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Doggone. It does feel like the industry as a whole is pretty young.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: True. Most people.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Most people, yeah.
[00:00:38] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Why do you think that is?
Oh, Dennis is over there.
[00:00:43] Speaker D: Like, I'm the old guy. I know he was probably referring to me when he said most people.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: I'm the old guy in general.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: Like, I think most people are under 50 or maybe, you know.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: I would say it's just the fact that the technology came in when we were at the time of, like, choosing our industry and the work we want to do, and the drones came out.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: And it was the new thing for us, and we just picked it up. Honestly, I feel it's that mostly. And then it's easier at our age to learn all the features than we can explain it to other people. That's how I see it.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: I would like you. You got a pretty interesting background of how you get got in here. You've already shared it with me when we went to California. But can you tell us a little bit? Why are you in the position that you are now? How'd you get here?
[00:01:34] Speaker B: So, well, my background is mechanical engineering, and I got my master's in composite materials for aerospace from West Virginia University, actually.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Did you go to the school there, or was that online?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: No, I went to school in West Virginia University. Morgantown, actually.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Morgantown.
Wow.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: That's where Kurt Price is from. I think Kurt went to that school.
[00:01:57] Speaker C: I lived in Fairmont for a little while, which is right up the road from there, huh?
[00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So I was there for two years. I did my masters and. Yeah, so.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: So how'd you end up in West Virginia? Is that like the best school of some kind?
[00:02:10] Speaker B: No, no, no. My ex girlfriend actually got admission only from that school, and I just went there.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Well, we. We broke up two weeks before we got there.
That's a true story.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: That's good. That's exactly what we're looking for authentic.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Chose that university. I was like, okay. For her, I sacrificed in two weeks before every breakup. So don't do that if you want.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: So you get to the States, you go for your composite engineering.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: And Dr. Barbara was my advisor. And he is one of the best in the composite industry. He's a professor. Argentinian professor. Super nice. And so, yeah, then after the two years, I get my first job.
And it was for a chemical company that they were producing pheromones that these pheromones would confuse. Like, they would release one of the pheromones would release the smell of the female insect.
[00:03:14] Speaker C: For orchards.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: Yeah, they would use that.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Dude, me and Jay just learned about this the other day at your buddy's place. That does the. Yeah, yeah. So keep explaining. It's pretty cool.
[00:03:25] Speaker C: It's wild. It is.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: So. So. And it's so interesting. So anyways, like, they. It would release the pheromone so the male couldn't find the female, so they couldn't reproduce and they would die.
[00:03:36] Speaker D: That.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: And basically it was a chemical company, and I was the engineer over there. And we were. We came up with a drone. Actually. We built a drone for them.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: And here in the States.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Here in the state. In Riverside, California, actually.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: East Cot Technologies is the name of
[00:03:53] Speaker A: the company still going?
[00:03:55] Speaker B: Still going, yeah.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: Are they still building drones?
[00:03:58] Speaker B: They're not building drones, but they're. Their focus always has been the chemical. Chemical. But they wanted an application method because this product was like a toothpaste. The material, the viscosity was so high, so it would release the pheromone for a month sometimes, so they couldn't spray it with the drones that we have right now.
So I had to. First we built a drone and applicator. Then DJI came up with their first MG1 series. And I went to my boss at a time and I was like, look, this is the platform we gotta be using because it has everything we need to be in a farm. And that's where we want to be with these drones. Let's focus on the applicator. And then we won two phases of USDA grants, like more than a million dollars for that company.
So, yeah, so it was very exciting. And we came up with this applicator for the MG1 series.
I actually first tested a prototype on a Phantom series.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: So when you say this product, are you saying, did you create a software for the MG1?
[00:05:03] Speaker B: So we were creating software for the applicator instead of. So we tried to get into The DJI system. But it was not so easy to access that it was so closed.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: So I remember I proposed. I was like, okay, the drone does its flight. We come up with our own system. So it was like we put a GPS module and then we were using like Arduino Raspberry PI to kind of as microcontrollers to say, okay, every six feet, we want to drop one gram of these products.
So that's how we were like. But the program didn't need to get the information from the drone, so it would automatically, based on when you would reach a certain speed, it would just drop it.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Okay, yeah.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: You were just using the drone to fly your applicator around.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but then I had to learn a lot about the drones during that time. And yeah, so that's how I started learning about the drones. And I remember when we bought our first MG1, it was 2015, I think, or something in that company, there was not any distributor dealers. Like, right now, any questions I had about these drones, I had to ask directly from DJI. Wait 24 hours, 48 hours at least.
And then they would get back to me because of the time difference, but because I had to modify some parts of the drones, remove some of the sensors, remove the tanks at a time to replace them. So I had to learn a lot about these drones.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: And that's how organically, in a way, I educated myself on the drones. But then it got to a point, after three years working at that company, I told them, okay, I'd like to start my own engineering company at a time too.
And then after that, you wanted to
[00:06:56] Speaker A: start your own engineering company to do what?
[00:06:59] Speaker B: To do, like, to provide, like, engineering. I was doing, like, design work, solidworks, 3D printing, all that. And then also with the drones. But I had, like, some clients I would work with. And also I was in communication with DJI at the time.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: And DJI at that time, they had requirements. I had some savings. Honestly, it was just during the three years I was working, I had my savings and I put everything in it. I was like, that's it, let's go.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: You. You to buy drones from dj.
Okay, so. So at. At some point you had this business of engineering and you were like, I, I want to sell these things.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Okay. And then you. You had some savings and you're like, place an order with dji, I'm gonna figure out how to retail or distribute.
[00:07:48] Speaker C: Retail.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: So there was not any, like, okay, there was not anything.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: So you bought a bunch of drones what up to that point? 5, 6, 10?
[00:07:56] Speaker B: Around that? Almost. Yeah. You.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: You buy those drones from dji, they come to the States. What's your plan with. With them at that point?
[00:08:04] Speaker B: I would say took almost two, three months. I did not even have a sale. I went to China. Actually, I went to China for training. Back then, it wasn't like right now. And I went to China.
I did have my training at the DJI's facility for about two weeks. And I came back to the US and I have this business that I started that doesn't do much, but. And I invest all the money and Covid happens. Oh, so it was right about that time too. So Covid happens, but it didn't affect us in a big way, I would say, because agriculture was still happening.
[00:08:39] Speaker C: Do you think that actually helped you in a way?
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say in a way it helped me because I'm not a very extrovert person. So I was in my office just getting the job done. No distraction. Like, it was all me in the beginning, like, repair of the drones, warranty, everything was me.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: So how'd you sell your first drone?
[00:09:02] Speaker B: That's very interesting. So as I mentioned, probably two or three months, no sales.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: And then we had a website and we were doing advertisements. Then we got some people interested and someone said, I would like to see the drone. I still remember. Like, I was like, okay, let's see it. Come on in. To Riverside. They came from Mexico, actually, they came to Riverside from Chihuahua, Mexico, and they saw the drone, they went back. It took almost a month for them. They pulled the trigger. So the first drone I sold actually wasn't in the US no way.
That's what happened. They were the nicest people. Like, I still, like, every now and then we communicate super nice people. And I'm grateful because when you start a business and you don't sell anything, which is common because you're just new.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: It is kind of.
I don't say frustrating. It's more like you're thinking, like, am I doing the right thing?
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: What is happening?
[00:10:00] Speaker A: You know, so you never use the drones.
Like, you. You didn't provide a drone spray. So service up to that point, but you were using them, some here and there, to figure out how to do the pheromone thing.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: The pheromone things. We had to do trials too. So we had to spray that apply in a way.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: Because you weren't spraying it, you were dropping it.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Exactly. But I was like, we had to do trials, flying them and All I even that company, again, I'm grateful to that company. They sent me even to Turkey. They had a project on vineyards for these ferments.
So I got the chance to two times go to Izmir, Turkey, and do applications over there with them.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Wow, that's cool.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Yeah, but, but, yeah, so.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: So basically your retail started from doing advertising showing that this equipment is available, not necessarily doing true crop spray with it, but you just knew that it's capable.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Exactly. And then what I noticed is that people like to buy from someone that knows about the drone and they feel confident, not only they, you can answer their questions, they feel confident they can come back to you and you will be able to answer your questions. Yeah, it's different than just selling. Let's say something. I don't know. If you sell this, the guy buys it because it tastes good and then forgets about you. Yeah, forgets about the seller, doesn't care very well.
[00:11:21] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. It's definitely a product that is heavy after sales support. Heavy. Like it's, you know, like you just said, you sell one product here, I usually don't need help with my phone, but this is a piece of machinery. It's like things will break sometimes it'll have errors or whatever. And. Yeah, this heavy after sales support.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: So you, you started that you sold some drones and you were like, this is going to work. Huh?
[00:11:48] Speaker B: And I, yeah, I kept selling after that. It picked up.
I kind of learned. And you know what? English is my second language, obviously. And at the time, 2014, I came to the US 2019, I started the business.
So sometimes I remember I had these conversations that I would be like, is it me or is it what is going on? Like, you know, I was a little bit concerned. Am I understanding that? Okay, the accents are different all across the US 100%. So I gotta get myself familiarized with the different accents. Because when a Southern guy would call me, I would be like, okay, I remember I would push the phone to my ear to understand it. Yeah, it wouldn't help much, but that's cool.
[00:12:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: But then I got used to it. Yeah.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: So did you, what did you do something to try to improve your English speaking or that just kind of evolved?
[00:12:45] Speaker B: No, it just evolved.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: That's interesting.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: What are you thinking, Dana?
[00:12:50] Speaker D: Interesting.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Very interesting.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: But it was, I, I, I always like new cultures, new languages, and like a Spanish. Now I'm picking up Spanish, I'm learning it. So, yeah, I just love it.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: And that's one thing that has never intrigued me. Or interest me is learning a different language. But it would be so nice. Like Spanish, I think, like, that's going to be the most popular language.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I feel like you're English. Yeah.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: And then, you know what I like is the fact that I can communicate with people when I go visit a country. Like, if I go. Like, I went to Puerto Rico and I could, like, understand a little bit at that time. It was a long time ago, but. And I would see the people happy, talking, and then I was like, oh, I like to learn that.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Then I started learning Landon's.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Kind of like that. When we went to South Africa, you wanted to know all their words. But you've traveled all over the world too. Yeah. For some reason, that's just not been my thing. But, you know, it would be really nice to know.
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, Music is not my thing, for example.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
Didn't work.
So. So you started selling drones retail. They started taking off for you. At what point were you like, I want to do dealer network, or was that DJI approaching you?
[00:14:07] Speaker B: No, it was.
It was okay. Actually, Let me think it was both.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Because we had. So it took almost a year or two. And then some of our customers.
So, for example, one of them Osprey in Texas, there were two friends. They bought two T20 drones, or T16. And actually one of the friends posted that video that crashed. He was lifting a kid, and then the motor flew and it flipped the other way. I think it was Mason's friend. Mason is the guy that is our dealer now in Texas, and he was a sprayer. And a lot of these customers that we had, they started because when you spray, you know it better than I do. In this scenario, it's like you're doing a demo for the customer too.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Yep, yep.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: And who better than the guy that is there for you to sell it to you?
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. 100%.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: That's what happened.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: When we first started coming to this spray drone conference. I would talk to guys that are just here to be applicators. And I said. I looked at that and I said, I guarantee you in a year from now, you will be selling drones.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Because it's like something you can. You almost can't avoid it. You're on your trailer, you're ripping your drones.
Neighbor guy comes up, walks up to you and is like, I'd like one of those. Do you know where to buy it? And then that's when it's like, ping. Oh, I could sell it to you, and I can teach you all you know, all it is that you need to know.
[00:15:40] Speaker C: So.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it happened kind of like both ways.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: That's cool. Yeah. Because as. As we started growing with dji, I just feel their, their corporate pressure. It's like they want you to hit certain numbers. They want you to do dealers. And I was like, I wonder if that is how everybody got pushed. Because right before this whole band DJI thing came around, it was like it was DJI or xag. Yeah. I mean, there was nobody else.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: That is true.
And then. Well, we can't call it DJI Band anymore.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no. It's not everybody.
[00:16:13] Speaker B: It's like everybody now got.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: It's an all foreign drone band for sure. But what, what I'm saying is if that wouldn't have happened.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
100.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: Even XAG didn't have a chance against the. I mean.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: The company has almost 80 market share.
[00:16:32] Speaker C: Well.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: And they produce. That's the thing is. Yeah, you can make a good spray drone, but can you produce enough?
[00:16:39] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Right. So even if DJI has a great product, if they can't produce enough units to support the demand, then you're going to lose it to the next guy that can't produce enough.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: That is true. And in addition to that, I would say what I learned, like as a distributor and as someone that is selling these drones, is that not only in drones, anything you sell, you want to sell something that has the highest quality 100%. Because as a person that is selling them, the last thing you want is to sell something and they come back to you. Like you sell 100 and then 20 of them come back to you. That's a problem. Y Y Y like you want to be selling like on the T60X, we sold a lot of them in 2025, I think less than 5 of them came back to our office for repair.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: The T60 has been the best drone that we've sold that. Yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: It's like reliable issues. So that's what. When we find a product like that, we're like, okay, that's it. We're gonna focus on it.
[00:17:42] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: And then DJI, all except T30, I'm gonna say it. Except T30 always had some of the highest reliability as well.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: T30 sucked, is that what you're saying?
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: Because I was spraying with a guy in Indiana. I had T40s at the time. He had T30s and he would take off and he would be very into his start point and it would just like land.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: It would overheat.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Overheat. Yeah.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: And it was kind of a. It wasn't for everyone. It was for the guys that they were the most efficient back to back.
It was.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: It was probably more a battery issue
[00:18:18] Speaker B: because if you would be one person just doing it, you wouldn't have any issues. Yeah.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Huh. I didn't know.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Probably not getting too hot.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: Getting too hot. That's interesting. Yeah. The reliability that we see now that the T6X was shocking.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: That's.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: It's crazy. And what goes with the T60X for us with a DJI14000 generator. And at the time when you and I started talking on that, you know, generator, you didn't think the generators were that important at that time.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: I see how the 14,000 generator is even more reliable than what the 12,000 was.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: That is true.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: It's impressive.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: That is correct. It is impressive. And again, actually, yeah, the generator is another product that we have so little amount of after sales work for it.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's.
[00:19:06] Speaker C: I would say the 12,000, we definitely has. Have issues with them. But the 14,000, from what we've sold already, I would think we had maybe two that came to the shop.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And we probably sold 100 or more.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Over 100.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker C: For sure.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: That's crazy.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: So again, but that's where we go back to the different brands. So we got to be careful of that.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And it's like, you know, now we're seeing after this whole proposal of band dji, and it's not DJI anymore.
[00:19:32] Speaker C: It's.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: It's all foreign drones. Is. We started seeing, you know, these drones that were here at the show starting to pop up and it's like that would have never been a thing.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: No, I mean, it was. I mean, I don't. I'm not against it.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: No, I'm not either.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: If they can, why not?
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Come on in. Let me see what you have. And you know what? It's good to have competition.
[00:19:53] Speaker C: It is. It will make everybody better.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: If we imagine like you guys didn't have any competition in your work.
[00:19:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Why would you even try? Like, the customer should come back in person.
[00:20:02] Speaker C: Oh, 100.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: It's already making us improve our trailer.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: Like, you know, the new way trailer.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: It looks really cool.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: It's really good. But we're already making tweaks and making it better because of all the other ones that are coming to the market.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's totally good. Yeah, that is true.
[00:20:18] Speaker C: And everybody uses them differently. So you have to listen to the customers too, on what they want.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: That is true.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: The way we use them might be different than somebody else.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: So you guys have some customization for your trailers too? If a customer wants something customized, do you do that too?
[00:20:31] Speaker A: We, we do, yeah, to a certain extent.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Jay deals with that. It's like we get so busy with
[00:20:39] Speaker C: like just our normal trailers and then we have guys that want to do, you know, different things and it just kind of throws a wrench in the whole system if we do one that's completely different.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah, the whole thing down would be different, the price would be different. You know, like when you are repeating the same thing, you don't have to
[00:20:54] Speaker A: think about anything that produces a lot of them is not custom work. It's like if you'd get a custom Chevy truck every time you want it, you know, your bed to be five and a half feet or, you know, four feet. You can't do that through your lineup. Yeah, it's screws up. Yeah. The whole production side of it. It's a platform. And if you want to customize it beyond what we have, then, you know, customize it how you want it. But now that you know, there's guys that want the trailer slightly longer, that type of stuff, we will do that. But it's not. We're not advertising. Yeah, we're not advertising it because we don't want to be a custom trailer builder. We are a mass producer of trailers and we're doing a pretty darn good job of it. Yep.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: But I just. It's not related, but I remember one question to ask with the generators, because you were talking about the generators.
So on, for example, T60X first, how many batteries on the generator would continuously.
Like a 14,000 watt generator and a T60X. How many batteries do you. Do you need to spray, let's say eight hours a day?
[00:21:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: So that's such an open question because it depends on your fields, it depends on your rows. So if you have one straight line that the drone is flying, a 1200 foot run is one thing. If it's running a 3000 foot run, then it's another thing because are you throwing 13 gallons in every time or are you running it the most efficient, where you fill up your tank just to go up back into the trailer. Now you consume less energy, much less energy. So but with the correct management of energy and payload, three batteries, 14,000 generator, you're probably going to be good. Now. It was very, very tough at times when we were running in Kentucky this year, you had to be right on those batteries in a second. Soon as that fourth light came solid, you ripped it out and you threw the other one in. There's no doubt that it was, it was really tight. It was really.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: There were definitely times where we did run out of battery too.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Obviously you've been in the industry long enough to be super efficient, so if,
[00:23:03] Speaker A: if efficiency on your batteries, it gets tight.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: What about T100?
[00:23:08] Speaker A: We don't have enough experience to truly say. What I can tell you right now is the T100 is not a 26 gallon drone, but all day long. It's not a 26 gallon drone all day long. Is it an 18 to 20 gallon drone? Most of the areas in the states, yes.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: What do you mean by that?
[00:23:26] Speaker A: What I mean is you will not load up your drone every time with 26 gallons. If you load up your drone every single time with 26 gallons, you will run out of battery energy, period.
Unless you're running two generators to one drone. So two 14,000 generators and four batteries, maybe.
Maybe. But it wouldn't also make Sense to put 26 gallons in your drone and
[00:23:53] Speaker B: just go to the point.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yeah, if it's. It's making a bunch of small little turns.
[00:23:57] Speaker C: Makes no sense.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah. You're carrying that load with you for so long. So that's why I say it's an 18 to 20 gallon drone probably all day long in most scenarios.
[00:24:07] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: And also I noticed with The, I mean, 65ft per second is the max speed.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: So if you have a smaller field, you don't even reach that speed.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:18] Speaker C: You can't if the line is not really short. Yeah.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: So what do you have an idea? Because you apply too. So like at what range you recommend what drone? Like what acreage?
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think it's going to be based on what the field sizes are in length. So like you just said, it can hardly get up to six speed. Let's say I. I think we need to do this test a little bit better, but it won't get up to speed to that 65ft per second till probably close to a thousand feet.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Is what we've been seeing. Right. It might get up there to 500, but by the time. Right. If it's a smaller field than that, by the time it gets to 500, it's already slowing down. Yeah. It's already thinking, okay, I gotta start slowing down. There's no need to keep full throttle because I won't get my payload Stopped by the time I get there.
[00:25:05] Speaker C: But the big thing with the T100 though, you can apply like 3 to 4 gallons per AC and still cover a lot more than what you can with the six.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: That is true.
[00:25:13] Speaker C: Like that's the big thing with the T100.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Okay, got it. And then.
But it's safe to say, like, the longer the line it gets, the more you can get out of your T100.
[00:25:24] Speaker C: Oh, 100.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Well, either way, the, the T100 is going to be a better drone than what a T50 or T60X will be because it will allow you to do a higher volume. So if you're doing fungicide, most of it was done at 2 gallon work usually. But if I can go to the farmer and say, hey, I can do three gallon work, he's going to be like, oh, that's going to be better coverage. And for me, it's not going to take me much longer to do 3 gallon work compared to 2 gallon work with a T60X or a T. Would
[00:25:55] Speaker B: you charge differently if you.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: I probably, I probably won't in the future because I'm going to need to be the most competitive and the best application to the farmer in order for him to go with me. So guy comes in, says, I'll do 2 gallon work at 12 bucks to the acre. I'm going to be like, well, okay, so he has T50s, he's going to need 12 bucks because he's going to be slower. But then I have a T100 that I can do three gallon work and I'll come in and tell him, you know what, I'll, I'll do three gallon work for 12 bucks.
And then he's going to be like, well, that's going to be better.
So that.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: It depends on the scenario.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: It depends on the scenario. But I do think, you know, as drones get bigger, just like the T100 and guys don't upgrade their equipment, that's when they're gonna start losing acres to the next guy because he's going to have the latest and greatest and fastest and he'll be able to do a better job for them.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Yeah, because these drones, like you can use them. Like we have customers that they have drones from. Like, I don't know, the first drones we sold, 20, 19, they still have them, they work with them, but they have like the fields for themselves. They're spraying.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: They're a farmer, they bought a drone and they're using it.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: But if you are in the application location service, so you Gotta have the best. You can't be.
[00:27:06] Speaker C: Yeah. That will only last so long. We've gotten acres from people like that that are still using T30s. And the farmers are like, we don't want these anymore because they're not as good and they don't get them done.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Did you feel any of that? Not yet. With the T60X. Right. Because you didn't. You weren't running the C60X, you were running T50s.
[00:27:24] Speaker D: Well, I don't think enough people were flying the T60 last season to. To really feel that. To where you're talking about, like, that they were able to give the farmer a cheaper price than me. No, but I. The other thing is we had enough work kind of set already that, you know, I. I wouldn't say it affected me much, but. Yeah, like, now, this season, I'm like, nah, you gotta upgrade, like, to be. To stay competitive. Like you were saying, like, as an applicator, you want to have the best so you can be the most competitive and stay. Stay on. On the edge. And the other thing, the question on the T100 versus, like, it was saying, at what point is it really worth getting a T100? But if you would only fill the T100 to 16 gallons, wouldn't it be great even for the smaller fields?
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:28:16] Speaker D: So that's the thing, is you can always.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:19] Speaker C: If you don't put the extra five gallons into it.
[00:28:21] Speaker D: Right.
[00:28:21] Speaker C: So the battery lasts so much longer.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: It's actually crazy.
[00:28:25] Speaker D: So compared to the T50 with, what, 10, 10 and a half gallons in a T50, like, you're still way better off with the T100. Even in the smallest, crappiest field, you just put less liquid in it.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: That makes sense. Again, like the T50, 32ft per second, T60 x 45ft per second, speed T165. Roughly, I think.
So you have an upgrade there.
But the question at that point would be, okay, like, I don't know, like 12, like around 40k for the T100.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:58] Speaker C: I would say it's gonna be cost. It's gonna.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: It would be like 12k more. It's like, I can. If I can go buy the Denali, all the line, I'm gonna go get the Denali.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: But it's for my work. And I feel like, okay, one F150 will get the job done. I'm gonna get the F150, which is what I did, you know?
[00:29:16] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: And the thing is.
[00:29:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:18] Speaker D: If a farmer is like, okay, I Have a thousand acres, I can easily.
With the T50, that might make sense for him. But as an applicator, I'm thinking, well, I do want a drone that can do the small stuff, but if I get that big job, I want to be able to be a.
That's why probably almost any commercial applicator is going to want to. The best drone, the biggest, just as an option. But the farmer might. Might want to just go with.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: I'm going to throw a curveball at you now too. If I'm a farmer and I do get that T50 versus a T100 and I want to do a fertilizer application, if I have the T100, it's going to give me that option to actually do a heavy fertilizer application at 250, 400 pounds to the acre, because the T100 can take a lot more with it.
[00:30:06] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: So, I mean, so you have to talk to the farmer and be like, well, I know you're not thinking about potentially doing, you know, granule application, but if you are, look, you can do your fields so much faster if you were to get the T100.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:21] Speaker D: Oh, I. I agree. In most situations, even for the farmer, it's probably gonna make more sense to go bigger. The.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: The only thing is tech. The latest tech.
[00:30:31] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Yeah.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: There's a lot about it.
[00:30:35] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: That obviously makes it the best in
[00:30:37] Speaker A: the market, I would say. Yeah.
[00:30:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: The best. Okay. So guys.
So guys always ask me, well, what. Why is it the best? So, Medi, why isn't the best?
[00:30:46] Speaker B: I mean, again, going back, number one, we never pick a product that doesn't have the reliability because. And again, not only for our customers,
[00:30:56] Speaker A: for ourselves, but, Mehdi, what type of reliability do you have? The T100 just got to your warehouse.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Well, DJI drones, usually one year before they come to the US they are being tested in China.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: Sweet.
[00:31:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So. And again, we got to go check the brand's history and that will tell us, like, iPhone 17 just came out. I'm not going to question that. Is it going to be good or not? It's Apple, so there you go.
[00:31:25] Speaker C: There you go.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: That's how I see.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: That's a good way to.
[00:31:27] Speaker C: I just.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: I just want you to say it because I say the same thing, and it's like, oh, Mike's just saying that because that's what he's selling. Of course you're selling DJI as well. But that's my point to it is like, why? Why? If it's Been reliable, Would you go and use something else?
[00:31:42] Speaker B: And why are we selling dji? I mean, sometimes customers or like some people might see this and they would be like, oh, this guy is selling dji. That's why he's saying it. But have you ever thought about the fact, why are we selling dji? Why aren't you think it's hard to pick up any other brands here.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: I mean, as a distributor, a lot of these brands, they would love for us to be working with them because we are doing the groundwork.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: So if we chose it for ourselves, and that's why we were telling you it's good, it's not because we want you to get it. It's just because we want to put the information out there.
[00:32:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: And we did it for ourselves.
[00:32:19] Speaker C: Yeah. 100%.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: That's how I see.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: Yep. Like, for us, we would not want to sell a crappy product because of all the after sales support that, support those things. Like, we do not want to do that. We want to sell the best equipment available.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:32] Speaker C: If something else comes out that's much better than dji, we're probably gonna start selling that.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. I mean, the point is that we chose it because it's the best.
[00:32:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: And again, a lot of times we don't really. When you sell a product, I would say the product sells itself. But you sell a product like dji.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the reliability, like, they're just. There is no other manufacturer that has produced as many units as what DJI has. And yes, sometimes things don't work on the unit, but if you look at the percentage based on the volume that produced it is at a small, small percentage of units that either break or a sensor is bad or whatever it might be compared to everything else.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah, that is correct. They have that ability to increase their reliability because they have the market.
[00:33:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: That's how it is.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: So what were some of the biggest challenges last season for your company?
[00:33:34] Speaker B: Well, every year there is. If 100% come on, we are in business. If they're not challenges, everyone had to have a business right now.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:33:43] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: And I would encourage people, if you feel like you can have a business, go for it, by all means. But it's not easy. Like, if you think like you're gonna personally like myself, when I started the business, I'm not joking, but I was thinking, hey, I want more free time.
I started a business, I was like, I at least had PTOs back then.
24, 7.
What is going on. But then I liked it. You know why? Because I made the decisions and I was responsible for my decisions, so. And for me in general, if I even make a mistake, it's a lot easier for me to accept it and move on. When I make the decision, I'm wrong.
Then someone else telling me to do it, then I have the option to be like, look what he did. Look what he said. Yeah, but when you own a business, that's different.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: So. But challenges.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: Going back to the question, just. Just give me like one or two management.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Because of the, like, there were some issues getting the drones, but do you
[00:34:52] Speaker A: think that it will ever be solved? Like, can we get enough in because the.
The demand is so high, especially.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I think why not? It's.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: So you believe enough can be produced to solve the shortage that we're having due to the demand.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Yes. And then because we face that challenge, we are working on that to fix it. So if you didn't have that issue and it would happen this year, so we would be starting to work on it. Yeah, but it happened already, so multiple years.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: Like. Yeah, you know, we can talk about other distributors as well. It's always been an issue sourcing.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Not just us.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: It's not just us. And we can see right now the FCC was like, all foreign manufacturer drones cannot register new models here. So all drone manufacturer drones outside of the US had issues getting these things in.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: And again.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: Don't quote me on that. I said all. But maybe one got lucky.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: Whoever had their pockets in the politicians.
[00:35:58] Speaker C: Well, they basically put everybody on the list. And now they're letting. They're gonna let some people off. I feel like.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe that. Yeah, I heard like, they did some for. Because even for defense, we have European countries.
[00:36:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: Giving us drones.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, it. It was a blanket. And then they can retract whoever they want.
[00:36:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: But it's. It's fun. I tell Jay, if we wouldn't have challenges, what we would be doing.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: But we will have other challenges. Yeah. That's. If this wasn't a challenge. Something. We always will have challenges. You got to just accept it.
[00:36:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: And again, when I say challenges, it's not just. It's not product related. It's just challenges. Order.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: In a business.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Yeah. If a guy wants to start this spray drone business, not that you're necessarily an applicator yourself. Is he too late? Like, I just spoke to a guy this morning in the lobby. He was like, he wasn't sure if he's too late or too early, I was like, well, he meant too early. Is the equipment good enough? Yeah, yeah. Too late.
Am I going to get enough?
[00:37:02] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: I think this is one of the best times to get in. The product is it's better than it
[00:37:08] Speaker A: ever has been, and it's really good.
[00:37:10] Speaker B: And it's already at a point that at 26 gallons per, you guys have spray all the time. Like, you gotta think about how big is too big.
[00:37:19] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: Because if you have like 50 gallons, can you guys, like, have the same trailer, same operation?
[00:37:24] Speaker A: Dude, it's getting.
[00:37:25] Speaker C: Well, at what point are you better off using a helicopter? Yeah.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: And then all these people that. They started this business, two guys can lift it, put it in, and then that's it. You lose all of that helicopter. But it's not too early, and it's not too late to just say it frankly to you, because in China, they sold more than 200,000 units of agricultural sprayer drones last year. 20, 25.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: For their own market.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: For their own market in their own country.
[00:37:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: In US that number again, I don't know the exact number, but roughly 5, 6K.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So 5 to 6,000. I know, I know. When I was talking to the Ukrainian that works for the un he is saying with the data that he's collected and he's on payroll with them with the United nations, and he's saying that there will need to be a minimum of a hundred thousand spray drones sold in the United States just to keep up with the demand.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: Just based on that number. It means whoever joins now is going to be one of the pioneers.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so early.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it is early, but it's not like too early to say you buy something that is going to be obsolete.
[00:38:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:38:44] Speaker B: That's how I see it.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Again, I agree.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Honest opinion.
[00:38:47] Speaker A: Do you feel like your T40s are obsolete, Dennis?
[00:38:49] Speaker D: They're almost. I still use them to seed. Sometimes too tight to buy the seeding tanks for. For the. The T50, so. And they're actually okay for seating because you. You spread at 25ft above the ground, you know, so. So they are actually.
They're actually still quite usable. The other thing is they have a habit of breaking, you know, when not really. There's nothing really there, you know, corn top and stuff. Last year I just turned the brake off, and if they crash, they crash, but they just added y. I just used mass backups here and there. But actually it worked out pretty good. However, like, I can now tell Like a lot of the motors are going bad and stuff like that. So I probably won't spend much time money repairing them. But they were actually for the amount of crap we had to deal with with them, they, they still got the job done. But even the improvement from the 40s to the 50 was drastic. And I tried not to use the 60s more than possible because I didn't want to have to. There's always the question asked as business is how fast do I upgrade?
You know, do I want to be upgrading my drones every year? Like, it's, you're going to have a hard time getting ahead financially if you're doing that, but also don't want to get lost or stay behind. But I didn't go with the 60s because I knew the 100 was probably going to come.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:12] Speaker D: So the idea is more like jumping from the 50s to the hundreds. But yeah, we'll see.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: I think it's not a bad decision. I mean, if you can put that to use, why not?
[00:40:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's cool. Yeah. Well, I don't really have anything else. If you want to add something to it.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: Some, maybe some technical questions. How about that? I was asking you about the relay connectivity and you. I know you tested a lot of drones out there. Yeah. So I'm not gonna. I don't know how to show it. But in general, I don't like to talk negative about a specific brands because
[00:40:44] Speaker A: everyone here is, oh, I do their shit. Like, if your drone falls out of the sky, we'll talk about it.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: No, that I know he's drawing.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: No, no, no. I'm just saying. Hey, I'll tell you right now that the T100 can't jump a pivot and you'll see a video of it smacking a pivot.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: I heard the story. Don't blame it on him, honestly.
[00:41:01] Speaker C: Well, we had to test it
[00:41:05] Speaker A: at full speed, 100. But we're gonna do it, right?
[00:41:10] Speaker B: That's correct. That is correct.
[00:41:11] Speaker C: We're gonna do it.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: But yeah, again, like, and we sent
[00:41:15] Speaker C: the stuff to DJI and hopefully they will improve it.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: Yo, for sure. Like, yeah, that's how it should be.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: And we're gonna show it. That's the thing. I'm gonna show it like it. We're not gonna do something and then be like, oh crap, it sucks at this. And then not show you.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: Remember when we brought the T60X? I told you I'll send you one, make a video, give your honest opinion. And you did. A lot of it was good because the product was good, but if there were smallest issues, you would mention them. And I know that, and that's okay, you know, but it's just. For me, it's just in general, I just, I don't know, people know it themselves, so I don't see a need for me to go out and mention it. But in general, to the technical side, connectivity of these drones, I want to know what is your experience with the T100 and if you have to use DJI relay for it or not?
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Yeah, so we haven't gotten into anything that I needed to relay, but I can tell you that I've sent the T100 into areas that you would think you'd need a relay and you didn't need it. Like you definitely a thousand percent would have needed a relay if. If you would have put a T50 where I sent the 100.
So the T60X was really doggone good with the connectivity. Never used the relay with the T60X. There were just a few scenarios where I lost connections. But for the most part, we sprayed every dog on acre without a relay. And yeah, yeah, we were doing some crazy.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: So, rtk. How many. What are the scenarios you use rtk?
[00:42:44] Speaker A: We never, never use rtk.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: Do you spray orchard or not?
[00:42:47] Speaker A: No.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: You don't spray or.
[00:42:49] Speaker A: No.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:42:49] Speaker A: No.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: And do you use orchard mapping at all for mountainous areas?
[00:42:56] Speaker A: We don't really have mountains where we're at. We did do an orchard map mapping mission, but we flew it with the Mavic3e.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Mavic3e. First you stitch the photos together and then you created that. Okay, so. So the RTK is not really that to us.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: It's not necessary. No, that's good. But we also have.
[00:43:15] Speaker C: In Ohio, we have networks that we can connect to if we would have to use rtk. And there's different states that have that too. I don't know everyone has it, but.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that.
[00:43:25] Speaker C: That's not even a state thing.
0.1 RTK or something like that.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a subscription base.
[00:43:31] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:43:33] Speaker C: 150 bucks a month, I think.
[00:43:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: In California there is a free one. Crtn.
[00:43:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: It's just.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: You get rtk.
[00:43:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:40] Speaker B: Well, at least they have a tower.
[00:43:41] Speaker A: ODNR has theirs as well. Odinar ODOT has their own that you can connect to, but if you're in a. Down in a hill or something, it's. It's hard to connect to your drone until it's at altitude.
[00:43:54] Speaker C: So.
[00:43:54] Speaker A: Yeah, we don't use rtk.
[00:43:56] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:43:57] Speaker A: I was talking to a guy in Canada and he's trying to say that based on the earth tilt in Canada that they all need rtk. I was like, okay, whatever.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: GP is not. GPS is not as accurate.
[00:44:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I believe it. Because if you think of it like it's round, it's more round up there than it is down here.
So the GPS might not be quite as accurate.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: Satellites over there either, they're focused on us. We have gnss. So it's different in style of satellites.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. Because like when airplanes navigate and they go to Iceland, they're on GPS and they're pretty accurate.
[00:44:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know how it works.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: One more question. I mean, I have a couple.
We are out of time probably. If you don't want to put them on the podcast, that's.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: No, it's all good.
[00:44:40] Speaker B: Swath or spray with, let's say on the T100.
How do you decide what swaths to use? Because you know, when you see the videos, like introduction videos, 36ft swath, 42ft swath. How do you go. I know pesticide is different and herbicide, when you are doing it, but how do you go about that?
[00:45:00] Speaker A: For me, I, I just go super cautious. So if I'm doing a herbicide work, they say 42ft, I'm never spraying it at 42ft. If I do herbicide at 4 gallon work, I'm probably going to be about a 35 foot swath. Because I can tell you physically looking at the drone as it's flying away and looking at the curves and picking a point there to a point there and then measuring it that it's going to be at least 35.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: Right. And then when you're. If you put it 35, you just increase the time a little bit. But you still tell your drone how many gallons per acre you want for gallon per acre you mentioned. And it's not going to change. Right. One line more per acre or something. So the customer shouldn't worry about that, right?
[00:45:38] Speaker A: No, should not worry.
[00:45:40] Speaker C: Drone is never going to put out more than what it's supposed to.
[00:45:42] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:45:43] Speaker C: Doesn't matter what you choose.
[00:45:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:44] Speaker A: Yep. But as far as efficiency. Right. This game right now is what drone is the most efficient and gets the most acres done in. In an hour you do a 42 foot swath, what's your coverage like?
Can it. Does it have a true 42 foot swath? Maybe. But should you be spraying at that? Probably not to get the best coverage for the farmer.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: Got it.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: Did you see the video? I did 90. 98.
[00:46:08] Speaker B: Yep. I said.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: I mean, I says, homo fish. That's insane. But then I was like, screw that. Like, let's do a 36 foot swath and an 80 acre piece. And I still did 80 acres in an hour.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: And you're sure of your coverage. You go home and you know that job is perfect.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:46:23] Speaker B: And you don't overspray. Right. Are there scenarios that you will be.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: I think that you're maybe putting it on heavier than you maybe would have to, but you're getting that overlap to make sure that there's no spaces that have missed.
[00:46:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Like if you put 20ft, you're gonna have like.
[00:46:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Then you're going way beyond what you probably would need to.
[00:46:46] Speaker C: And it depends on your speed of your drone too. You slow down the drone at 20ft per second, you're gonna have a swath that's going to be a lot narrow.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: That is true. And then speaking of that, you know how like the height of the target.
No, no, the height. We used to say like 12ft is the standard.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: T100. If you fly under 17ft above the crop, it's not gonna go max speed.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: It does. It will go max speed.
[00:47:13] Speaker C: They won't warranty it if it crashes.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: No, if you are flying under 17ft.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: Are you sure?
[00:47:20] Speaker A: 112 foot. 12 foot and smack the pit.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: And then what is the settings that you have to change for someone that has a T100.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:47:30] Speaker B: Because when you go in it and you put 14ft and you go to 65, it gives an error.
[00:47:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: And it says you got to be flying over 17ft.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Well, it just has a little box. It has a little box that says that it's not recommended to go 65ft per second if you're below 5 meters.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: It's just telling you you should not do this.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: You think it's override it.
[00:47:55] Speaker A: It's going faster.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: For us, when we tested it, it was actually going. It wasn't. We set it to 65. You have videos of it. It was not hitting the 65.
[00:48:03] Speaker C: How fast was it going?
[00:48:04] Speaker B: It was like 40 something. 40. I don't know, but it was.
[00:48:08] Speaker A: I wonder if it had to do with route spacing. Yeah, route spacing and volume that you were putting down.
[00:48:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:14] Speaker C: How many gallons per acre were you doing?
[00:48:15] Speaker B: We were actually not doing. It was a test. So two gallon per acre. It was when we got the first T100.
[00:48:21] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: And why was it that the T6X wasn't doing this. I went to Kansas and figured X
[00:48:27] Speaker C: if you were flying underneath nine feet
[00:48:29] Speaker B: and it wouldn't fly on T100, if you were flying under 17ft, it would not let us. And we have videos that. And I remember we were testing it. It was right when maybe the new update doesn't have that.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: I bet it had something to do with your route spacing.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: Maybe you were too wide. And it was like, well, I can't do this many gallons per acre based on the swath that you've chosen.
[00:48:53] Speaker B: It was 35.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: 35.
[00:48:55] Speaker C: Okay. I mean, it might have been the
[00:48:58] Speaker B: software because we had to redo that video.
[00:49:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:03] Speaker D: In the beginning, like, everybody was saying, no, you have to be under 7 or under above 16 or 17ft to 5.
[00:49:13] Speaker B: No, it was. I know. Because when you go out to take a video, you know, the effort and everything. And then we were like, we set it to 65, but it's not going at 65. So we had to redo the video. So now maybe on the new firmware, updated, it would be good to see that.
[00:49:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:30] Speaker A: We just flew it, what, two weeks
[00:49:31] Speaker C: ago, three weeks ago. And yeah, 12 foot. We flew it at 10 foot.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:36] Speaker C: Completely full speed. 65.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: But it was flat.
[00:49:38] Speaker C: It was flat.
[00:49:39] Speaker A: I mean, but if you have a
[00:49:41] Speaker C: little knoll, you're not gonna do that in the hills.
[00:49:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it's good.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Okay. Now it's something for me to check.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: It lets you override it.
[00:49:48] Speaker C: Like, it'll. It'll pop up a little box maybe, like you say.
[00:49:50] Speaker B: Okay, I know it.
[00:49:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:49:51] Speaker C: You have to check. Yep.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: So since we're talking about this, right. We always want DGI to quickly change something when we have an issue. But you just mentioned about selling 200,000 units in China. How many thousand units did they sell in Brazil? How many thousand did they sell in Europe? Then it's all of a sudden, like, well, they don't listen to us. Excuse me. Those suckers have millions of drones out there, out there, and they're just going to bow to us. Because the terrain following is to make that one change.
[00:50:19] Speaker B: We want you. You know, the schedule of their engineering. How.
How probably tight that is.
[00:50:25] Speaker A: Dude. It's wild. If people would understand what DJI is doing for us. I was in their towers. What do they call their towers?
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Sky something.
Sky City.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: The amount of people that were flooding through the doors to go to their work, it's just insane.
[00:50:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: To think what actually they're doing to build the good product that they build.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: Exactly. But then again, a lot of times we give them the feedback from. They collect the feed. But they have a time. They're like, okay, when the firmware is going to be released, it's going to be in it. But it's not that we can't expect them to send them something and they change it because they're not a small company.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: And I prefer that because they're serious about it.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:08] Speaker A: 100, dude. I was drilling them for three hours and at one point the engineer's like, do you like anything about dji? I was like. I was like, I'm not here to talk about how good your product is.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm here.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: I'm here to tell you all the downfalls that it has and let's make it better. Yes, that's it. And then mic drop, let's move on.
[00:51:27] Speaker B: I love that about the way you review things and the way that you give feedback. I want to compliment you on that because on the T60X, it was very helpful. Then your feedback, you remember you were sending me these long messages.
[00:51:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: I love that. Some of them might be like, okay, why is that? No, for me, I was like, yes, that's good. Maybe we wouldn't have known this.
[00:51:46] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: And then we fixed.
[00:51:47] Speaker C: Everybody was like, oh, yeah, it's pestrone ever. Like, there's nothing I change about it then.
[00:51:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:51] Speaker C: Yeah. Then it won't make it better. Yeah.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: I love the feedback.
[00:51:54] Speaker A: Yep. It's just so. Yeah. I think if somebody doesn't want feedback, then like we said earlier in the podcast, it's like, you're not innovating.
[00:52:00] Speaker C: You.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: You stopped. Yeah. And that's one thing DJI is not stopping. They're like an apple. It's that simple. They will always make another product to, you know, be better than their previous one.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:52:12] Speaker C: Cool.
[00:52:12] Speaker B: Thank you, guys.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Thanks for being on.
[00:52:15] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:52:16] Speaker C: Alrighty, guys.
[00:52:16] Speaker A: There you go. That's all we got for you guys on today's Drone on show. Until next time.
