Shilligan’s Island

Patrick Egan

When the #ChiComms floods your waders –

DJI has handled the “we don’t want your data” issue so poorly three times now that the insult to injury has had to cost them millions of dollars in revenue and their credibility is now comfortably perched two notches below laughable. The only thing funnier than the credibility-free fall is the video of Uncle RICO on the UK version of So You Think You Can Dance.

All right, okay, we’ve got it: DJI isn’t collecting data. But it must make it hard to comply with a government subpoena if you aren’t collecting data. “We’d love to help you out, judge, but, you see, we don’t collect customer data.” I assume that is everyone and not just the folks who aren’t having their data collected by default. Furthermore, DJI says the data they don’t collect is stored on domestic severs, so I am assuming they didn’t read down to the bottom of the AWS terms of service.

Don’t feel left out if you didn’t get one of those Christmas data breach letters that they sent out a few years ago. Just be thankful you are not the dude who left the DJI server password on GitHub, who won a fabulous six-month, all-inclusive vacation at the Hard Rock Hotel. The band-aid of hiring a “security” firm wasn’t even worth the good money after bad. When I called them on it, they gave me a response that might fly with your Best Buy bumpkins. They hired professional hacks to push low-grade propaganda and attack pieces that blew up in their faces Wiley Coyote style. Copies of DoD documents warning of the #ChiComms made their credibility careen into the mountain several times over.

And the poop rolls downhill –

Part 107.31 and 107. 33 (b) & (c) (2) waiver watch continues, and it is entirely plausible that no one has heard that the validity of the PrecisionHawk BVLOS waiver is in question. The best and brightest at the Chinese Toy Company assure the would-be ca-ballas that no one listens to that negative malcontent. Anyone that still believes that hogwash probably still thinks the FAA is running a square NAS integration game.

PHawkers are woke, and we have a good inclination that the brass at the FAA is well aware of the situation since the FAA Office of Communications asked me –

Patrick,

Since you are a member of the press, please direct any questions to the Office of Communications and not directly email or call various program offices within the FAA. Our policy is that all media queries come through us; therefore, the program offices will direct you to our office. We are working on your request, and if you have additional questions, please send them to us. Thank you in advance for adhering to our policy.

THX

I’ve got this hybrid concerned citizen/journalist thing going, as I’ve been asking questions as a private citizen from over a decade ago that are still, well, unresolved. As of late, I’ve been asking the DC folks about the waiver game plan, and no one apparently wants to talk about it. And I can dig it, since the optics on the 27-year “safety of the NAS” integration process appears to have a few speed holes in it. The 107-waiver process is a slow, tedious, expensive fustercluck even for those amongst you who have more VC money than common sense.

The only thing sensible advice from the FAA HQ was to call the local FSDO. Okay, I thought I had the Mayberry FSDO on the blower, as the manager had no clue as to what was going on in his jurisdiction and did not sound as though he wanted to leave the office or even figure out what he was supposed to look for. “We’re going to have to call Washington to figure out what is going on,” I told Barney that is where I got the idea to call him. If you don’t go out and look at the logbooks, how are you going to know about the purported crashes, shoot downs, and no VOs? Who knows what the heck was going on out there when the guy who is responsible for BVLOS waiver left the company almost a year ago.

I’m wondering how the FAA “leadership” thinks they are going to educate externally when the internal is uneducated and unaware. Whatever the case, other waivers are being pulled down, but not old PHawks ‘cause that thing is as clean as a whistle. Why else would they still be advertising it on their website?

A few examples of cooked waivers –

University of Arkansas

Donovan Davis

And one coming up this week –

San Diego Gas and Electric

AUVSI and the FAA UAS Symposium –

What a travesty has befallen us as an end-user community—and no, I’m not referencing Buzzy the drone. The perfunctory panels of experts populated with folks whose standings are for sale (got to feed the monkey upfront nowadays; no more credit) or in free-fall. The lobbyists overestimated their clients (and their own) credentials, and possibly it correlates to the amount the client (John) has on deposit, I don’t know… Worse, the carpetbagger drone shows are using photos and video from the FAA AUVSI cavalcade of contempt to hustle up some of the new clueless and careless rubes to fleece at their shows. Furthermore, I’ve seen several other examples of what would appear to the layperson to be Federal Government employee endorsements made with lobbyists. For some reason, the cake eater in me senses a little condescension in the glib smiles.

The DAC and Pony Show 2.1 –

Not vetting the PreciscionHawk CEO before naming him chairperson for the new DAC is either another heaping helping of FAA gross incompetence or possibly just some Obama-era leftovers hoping to resist change and ultimately trying to dismantle the transportation secretary’s credibility. Either way, it adds a hollow ring to the safety platitudes. They are all over the place on the RID and on who is doing what even though the RC hobbyist scapegoat has been banished to the hinterlands as a diversion to cover the dysfunction. This same gaggle of useless idiots that pulled a Benedict Arnold on the RC hobbyist would probably clamor to outsource the whole advisory process to the Chinese Toy Company if it meant they wouldn’t get publicly Airmaped.

What’ll you have? A Blue Ribbon committee –

Apparently, the ex-administrator (AKA “the golden parachute”) is coin-operated and makes those two over at the Commercial Drone Alliance look like pussycats when it comes to the laying on of the leaches (#Polivation). Apparently he has seen the light and is not only shilling for Israeli parachutes but Chinese ADS-B too! I’m telling you, these guys/gals leave the FAA and, shazam, it is like a regulatory drone fog totally clears within six months. Some lower echelon types have been observed shaking the regulatory doldrones in less than two weeks. Others are allegedly moonlighting inside the UASIO like it’s a farm team spring training camp for the private sector.