[00:00:00] Doug McDonald: Historically, it was always dirty, dull and dangerous. That's what drones are for.
So in the case of wind blades, they used to have to repel down out of the top of the tower itself just to check and see if it was a fracture, a delamination, or just, you know, some discoloration. You know, I mean, that's time consuming, costly, dangerous.
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Welcome to Hangar X Studios and we are live at the Hive in Grand Forks, North Dakota. And you know what? Today, today we wanted to talk about what are the commercial applications?
We hear all of this information and news and stories about drones and the drone industries, American made drones, Chinese drones. But the real question is how are real companies using drones to solve real problems for profit companies out there in the world. And that's why we brought On TODAY Doug McDonald. So, Doug, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:51] Doug McDonald: Thank you, John.
[00:01:52] John Ramstead: And you have eyesight Drones. It's a company you founded. And tell us a little bit about eyesight and what you guys, what you do for your customers.
[00:01:59] Doug McDonald: Yeah, sure.
So we drone service provider. I mean that's kind of our moniker.
We have about 30 plus pilots. Okay. We work nationally, 47 states, seven countries, focusing primarily on critical energy infrastructure infrastructure. So that includes everything from wind blade inspections, solar panel inspections, utility poles, cell towers, stuff like that. So, you know, that's 95% of our work. Okay. And the rest of it's kind of one offs. We do construction monitoring, we do thermal, you know, facades of buildings and roofs, you know, anything to kind of make a dollar. And typically those one offs our operators are out on, they get deployed for two to three weeks at a stretch, send them down to Texas, crush work, come back, catch up with their mail, their girlfriend, their laundry. And then we like to have local and regional stuff for them to kind of backfill, keep their skills sharp and help pay the lights.
[00:03:09] John Ramstead: Yeah, so, so what does it, what does it look like? They go down there, they're two weeks. Like the drone is really a Platform with sensors.
How did this work used to be done and what did the drone do as far as the value proposition for the client?
[00:03:24] Doug McDonald: You know, so typically, let me backtrack a little bit. I mean, I tell people, really a logistics company that happens to fly drones, Right. I mean, we send a truck out loaded with equipment, generator, multiple drones. I mean, we never send out one of our operators without more than two drones. Okay. I mean, the intent is if one goes down and you've only got one, you're done for two or three weeks. Yeah. So ideally we can hot swap equipment and kind of skeletonize as required, so kind of keep the ball in motion.
The work itself is. Yeah. Collect images using, you know, multiple sensors.
For a lot of our work, our primary customer is wind blade inspection.
We use multiple lidar on in aircraft and essentially paint a picture of that blade itself.
[00:04:18] John Ramstead: So are you combining both the lidar and like the electro. The electro optical. Like, yeah. Tell me a little bit about like, you know, kind of the technology behind it. Like, what does the customer get? Is there AI involved in the processing?
[00:04:31] Doug McDonald: So typically what the customer gets, you know, I, whether it's agriculture, wind blades or solar panels, they want to know what the problem is. They don't need a mountain of data. They've are, you know, they're drowning in.
[00:04:45] John Ramstead: They want to say this blade is good or this blade needs.
[00:04:48] Doug McDonald: This thing right here is delaminating at 34 meters. Okay. You know, so in the case of wind blades, they used to have to repel down out of the top of the tower itself just to check and see if it was a fracture, a delamination, or just, you know, some discoloration.
[00:05:10] John Ramstead: Right.
[00:05:10] Doug McDonald: And then climb back up, get what kind of equipment they need to, materials to fix it. You know, I mean, that's time consuming, costly, dangerous. You know, I mean, historically it was always dirty, dill and dangerous. That's what drones are for, right?
[00:05:28] John Ramstead: Anything dirty, dull and dangerous.
[00:05:30] Doug McDonald: Yeah.
[00:05:31] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:05:31] Doug McDonald: Yeah. And so you imagine, like in our work with precision agriculture, we're looking at multiple things.
Stand counts, weed infestation.
You essentially just are doing a lawnmower pattern over a field, you know, 40 acres, 320 acres, whatever the size of field is, you know, typically that used to be done by either farmer walking the field as they advance on a four wheeler, and the intent on that one is to minimize the amount of like pesticides or fertilizer that you're needing. So on two fronts. One, it's saving the farmer or the egg producer, you know, money by not Putting, putting as much product on this.
[00:06:20] John Ramstead: Field because I might not need it here, but I need it over here.
[00:06:23] Doug McDonald: Exactly.
[00:06:23] John Ramstead: And your sensors can say, hey, there's weeds growing. You can actually look at the difference between the crop and something that's not supposed to be there.
[00:06:29] Doug McDonald: Yep. And when you look at the advances in economy, you know, there's self steering tractors, you know, some are, you know, taking the data straight from the drone right to the tractor.
And this is a weird thing to say the. More most.
The best conference I've ever been on was one on weed spraying and nozzle and spray dispersion.
[00:06:53] John Ramstead: You know, Doug, you need to get out more.
[00:06:56] Doug McDonald: I tell myself that I bore myself.
Right. The next other one was about rust, so. Yes, rust, yeah.
[00:07:03] John Ramstead: Weed spray and rust.
[00:07:05] Doug McDonald: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:06] John Ramstead: Well, you know, a good friend of mine is the one who manufactures the precision axles for those John Deere tractors. And they are incredibly expensive because these huge plots of, you know, farmland and you have to be accurate going back and forth. And one of the things you guys do now, which I'm sure enhances that, is some rock mapping. Could you talk a little bit about that?
[00:07:27] Doug McDonald: Yeah.
[00:07:28] John Ramstead: Which is actually kind of neat. I'm sure the farmers love this when you have a huge plot.
[00:07:32] Doug McDonald: So I'm born and raised in North Dakota.
As a young, young kid, I mean, that was always the. What are you doing this weekend?
I don't know. Why? Come on out, you know, Uncle Charles's place and we're gonna do some rock picking. So truly, you'd walk a field and pick rocks up, throw them in an old card, you know. Now the opportunity is to again fly, fly that field. We can break it down by 8 inch rocks, 10 inch rocks, whatever size rocks that may or may not, you.
[00:08:03] John Ramstead: Know, can it see under the surface?
[00:08:06] Doug McDonald: No. No. Okay. No. I mean, we've got, we've got lidar, we've got sensors that can see a little bit underneath the surface. But this is just straight, what we call rgb. Red, green, blue. It's enhanced optical. Right, Right. But I think, you know, there, if you imagine the cost of a combine header at a hundred thousand dollars, and if you hit a rock one again, you're done for the day. Two, you have to call the John Deere dealer and get it fixed.
This is a great opportunity to do it. So we partnered with a construction company, we developed a map and they go and pick up the rocks and get them out of harm's way for the producer. Yeah.
[00:08:49] John Ramstead: Now I'm curious because, you know, a lot of years has been focused on critical infrastructure.
[00:08:53] Doug McDonald: Yep.
[00:08:54] John Ramstead: Right. And there's some big categories. Right. We have consumer, we have monitoring for drones, we have security, we have defense. And you talked a little bit before we got started. Also delivery is something right from. It could be from my groceries and every we've heard about Amazon. But also critical medicines in rural areas.
[00:09:10] Doug McDonald: Yep.
[00:09:10] John Ramstead: If we're looking just one and two years out, in addition to critical infrastructure, where do you think some of the areas for your company that are going to probably be there be the most, you know, the biggest opportunities?
[00:09:21] Doug McDonald: Well, again, I think the term these days called advanced air mobility, which is essentially delivery. Right. Okay. So our model is really to work with a larger health system to take required medical supplies no matter what they are, and take them from the hub out to the spokes.
[00:09:42] John Ramstead: So I know that's a big focus of the va. Yeah, there's a lot of vets that are in some rural areas. It's hard for them to get their, their medications well.
[00:09:50] Doug McDonald: And you imagine if you're a vet or if you're a senior, if you're infirm in any way to drive two and a half, three hours, get, that can be really problematic. Right.
So hopefully we can reduce that last mile and get it to them quicker, cheaper, easier, and minimize the, the pain and the discomfort that kind of comes with having to get it. It's also a timely aspect. If you need a pint of O negative blood, we can get it there. So our aircraft, the aircraft we use is actually, it's a hybrid aircraft. So it's hybrid in multiple ways. One takes off like a VTOL or a helicopter and then kicks in with gas motor and goes.
[00:10:35] John Ramstead: So what's the range and speed of that?
[00:10:39] Doug McDonald: Seven hours, about 70 miles an hour. So we can cover about 400, 500 miles in one flight.
[00:10:44] John Ramstead: Oh, no kidding.
[00:10:45] Doug McDonald: Yeah.
[00:10:45] John Ramstead: So you can go there and back, ideally.
[00:10:48] Doug McDonald: So yeah, we're kind of trying to figure out that kind of concentric circle of service. Yeah. To one, you know, make sure that we can get there and back and do it effectively and cost effectively. Right.
[00:11:03] John Ramstead: So question, you know, as a business owner and drones are how you're doing business. Right. There's been a lot of talk about US drones, manufactured drones. China has really been one of the biggest suppliers and drivers of not only drones, but drone tech and drone parts, replacement parts, servicing. You know, DJI is a name everybody knows. What are you seeing with some of the changes, you know, globally, with just running a company based on drones with what's Happening.
[00:11:31] Doug McDonald: Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, so the whole DJI aspect, they are leading the pack. You know, it's a less complex system.
If, if it tanks on you, you can probably go to Best Buy and replace it that day.
[00:11:46] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:11:46] Doug McDonald: And it's, and it's cost effective and.
[00:11:49] John Ramstead: And, and they're fairly reliable.
[00:11:51] Doug McDonald: Well, really reliable. And all our pilots, whether it's the smallest one, a Mavic to the biggest one, we've got an M350 now which is bright, probably five foot diameter. You know, it's a big quad. You know, if you can fly one, you can fly them all. Yeah. Which is awesome.
So on a given day, we'll send out two M3 hundreds, 16 batteries, you know, eight full sets and a generator and we'll go for 12 hours non stop, just hot swapping batteries and giddy up and go.
With American aircraft, it's a cost and complexity thing.
So they're not all, they're not all made the same. Yeah. And the one, you know, the ones that we've liked and actually so our big aircraft is American made.
That's really cost prohibitive. You know, we have to. Again, back to, you never buy one airplane, you always have to too.
But you know, for smaller ones that we would use kind of in our space, you know, they go from $10,000 aircraft to a 25, $30,000 aircraft. The biggest problem, double or triple. Yeah.
[00:13:09] John Ramstead: You mean a Chinese versus a US made.
[00:13:11] Doug McDonald: Yes, sir. And, and you have to get all new cameras, all new sensors, all new gimbals.
[00:13:19] John Ramstead: Oh, they're not, they're not compatible.
[00:13:21] Doug McDonald: Many are not. And certainly the gimbals are not okay. But the cameras, they're also probably made in China, as are the batteries. So batteries is a big sticking point.
So we were talking with one manufacturer, he said, yep, we got as many as you want. And you come and they come with one battery.
[00:13:39] John Ramstead: Well, I need 16.
[00:13:41] Doug McDonald: Well, one battery is, is barely a hobbyist in my estimation. Yeah, you get 25 to 30 minutes of flight and then have to charge it for an hour and a half or two.
There's, it's not repeatable, it's not scalable.
[00:13:56] John Ramstead: Right.
[00:13:57] Doug McDonald: Again, we send out multiple multiples and we're charging all the day, all day long as well.
[00:14:04] John Ramstead: So when you said one battery, is that all they have because of, because of supply chain?
[00:14:08] Doug McDonald: Yep.
[00:14:09] John Ramstead: So if you want to buy a drone and 20 batteries, the answer is like we can't, we can't do that.
[00:14:14] Doug McDonald: Yep.
And to that end, those batteries are made in China. Now there, there is a company here in North Dakota that's ramping up on battery production, Badlands batteries.
But again, they can't feel probably all the requirements of all the different drones. So it's not going to be, I think at one point they're going to collapse and there's going to be one big company that's providing us drones and that technology, it's not there yet. So it's a bunch of one offs.
[00:14:46] John Ramstead: So I got a solution.
[00:14:48] Doug McDonald: Let's talk.
[00:14:48] John Ramstead: We go find some great entrepreneurs.
[00:14:50] Doug McDonald: Yep.
[00:14:51] John Ramstead: They come here to the Hive in North Dakota and they figure out how to make low cost drones because there's a huge opportunity right now because DJI needs to could be replaced by an American company. And this could be the, this could be the headquarters of, of a revolution of new drone supply.
[00:15:07] Doug McDonald: Oh, 100.
[00:15:08] John Ramstead: What do you think?
[00:15:09] Doug McDonald: I agree 100%, John. And to that point, here at the Hive, there is a drone manufacturer. I think their focus is kind of larger drones, but I think, you know, with service providers, with, you know, comlinks and all the different kind of aspects of, you know, it's a system. Right. An unmanned aircraft system. So, you know, this is a good spot to be the hive. And certainly here in North Dakota, we kind of hopefully scratch a lot of different inches. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:40] John Ramstead: Well, Doug, it's been great meeting you. Hey, keep knocking them alive, my friend.
[00:15:43] Doug McDonald: Yeah, will do.
[00:15:43] John Ramstead: Thanks for your time.
[00:15:44] Doug McDonald: Thank you, John. Yeah.
[00:15:45] John Ramstead: Have a great one.
[00:15:46] Doug McDonald: Yeah.
