Patricks day out
The day was spent entirely in the Airspace Integration Workshop. Most of the global airspace integration usual suspects were in the room. Included where a few sUAS ARC participants, Rich Hanson (AMA), Ted Wierzbanowski (AV), Ardy Williams (FAA), and Andrew Lacher (MITRE). Speaking of MITRE, I here that there’s a picture of the Cracker Barrel and myself on/in their booth.
We were treated to several panel discussions that included Rick Prosek (UAPO), and representatives for many of the standards group’s worldwide. Including, but not limited to; Jeffery Goldfinger (ASTM F-38), John Walker (RTCA SC-203), Tore Kellevig (EUROCAE WG-73), Fillippo Tomasello (EASA), Phil Presgrave (CASA) and James Coyne (ICAO). I asked all of them to remember the small businessperson while crafting standards. I look forward to checking out the MITRE booth tomorrow as I make my way through the exhibit hall.
The mood as it pertains to integration is very optimistic. That is amongst the panelists, but for those in the audience, including myself, things are much more pessimistic. I made the point that we as a community will find it very hard to come up with technological solutions in an environment where you can’t legally fly or, find anyone who wants to invest in this conundrum. Much of the discussing found its way back to CAA UK’s CAP 722, Canada’s SFOC and CASA allowing commercial flights. That doesn’t do much for us here in the U.S. I asked Mr. Prosek what could be considered the keystone question. “Has the FAA put out a written data set they are trying to capture, and have they devised a capture mechanism like the GAATA survey? He replied, “I can’t answer that question.” (However, he did offer to talk more about it offline.) Whatever the case, many of us in attendance found the rest of the FAA Q&A superfluous.
