The vision I have for Sofcoast's Hybrid Air Systems is for an end user to only need one product name that has one part number from Sofcoast to have an easy to use and affordable product out of a bag or a box wherever or whenever necessary to establish stationary or slow moving aerial nodes for Command & Control, Computing, Communications, Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance purposes.
When I formed Sofcoast I decided to democratize and commercialize C4ISR systems. I set out to design and build the missing link - which was and still is an affordable platform to provide stationary and slow moving nodes the answer began looking more and more like some kind of lighter than air inflatable device. Put another way, As an Ex-Navy SEAL Communicator/Sniper/UAS expert and am now building a high performance lighter than air system.
So, as you might expect most people would cast a wary eye, or sometimes would be cynical about "building a balloon".
Oh well. No drama. I've seen that behavior before.
I love to see the lightbulb go on when I discuss or demonstrate Sofcoast's MAKO platform to people. I laugh when people ask me how I came up with so many innovations in one product category when there's been essentially no innovation with this product category (balloons) in over a hundred years. I tell people that I'm just the first SEAL who decided to solve those specific set of problems with small balloons.
Sofcoast is definining a new product category called the Rucksack Portable Tactical Aerostat System or RPTAS. Our participation in AFCEA West this year was without a doubt enormously successful for Sofcoast. During the event we gave the public an early glimpse one of the ISR payloads in development for Sofcoast's RPTAS called MAKO. You can find that post here if you'd like to review it.
So, we've given the people a glimpse of the ISR payload.
Now lets share the Comms and "other signals" payload. (Caveat: We flew another kind of payload, once we get some more data, I'll talk about that separately.)
Voice and Data Communications Repeater Demonstration
Purpose:
Demonstrate the ability for Sofcoast's MAKO RPTAS two enable two way communications between two common military handheld radio's when they would otherwise not have the ability to establish communications.
Specified Task:
Integrate, elevate and fly communications repeater on MAKO RPTAS
Connect two PRC-148 Multi-Band Intrateam Radio's (MBITR) to establish beyond line of site comms.
Results.
16.9 mile MBITR - MBITR range was demonstrated through Sofcoast's MAKO RPTAS comm repeater payload.
Total tactical system weight (platform, payload and radio's): 85 lbs.
MBITR - MBITR via MAKO Range Context - Image 1
MBITR - MBITR via MAKO Range Context - Image 2
MBITR - MBITR via MAKO Range Context - Image 3
Summary
We think that being able to give two handheld radio's at least a 30 mile range from two rucksacks is a pretty good value proposition for soldiers, police officers, firefighters, NGO's and others.
Growing up, my grandfather, an inventor, entrepreneur and business owner, R.L. Owens, used to have a John Wooden style placard above one of the doorways into his office. It read "successful people do what unsuccessful people won't do."
This always stuck with me and I think became something I was able to internalize as I was going through the process of becoming a Navy SEAL.
In SEAL Team training, there is a single word that means "it's time to pay".
That word is DROP!
This means get on your hands and knees in the lean and rest. Commands that could follow this word could be "push 'em out" or "hit the surf" or a long diatribe / sermon by the commanding voice of the instructor teaching everyone of us the ethos of becoming a Navy SEAL, which is all about the Team and the Mission and the Men. Everyone talks about this these days, so I'll dispense with repeating the narrative "du jour".
I found that over time I learned how to gauge the type of character of the guy to my right and left in those moments where we were told to "DROP!". Would they *sigh* and kind of amble down into the lean and rest? Would they move with a sense of purpose? Would they grumble under their breath? Were the zealously savoring the moment? Were they smiling or frowning? How did they act under this pressure? The pressure to "do more - now!". Which is what "DROP!" means.
Eventually, every student that graduates BUD/S (SEAL Training) gets to the point mentally and physically, where "DROP!" is simply part of the job. The student begins to relish the opportunity to "do more - now!" The "doing more" part is part of the gig. No big deal.
That's an uncommon and extraordinary response. Most people can't respond this way. Most people can't quite understand this response. Some might even cast a wary eye, or somehow be cynical about it.
That's common. That's ordinary.
How do you deal with those "DROP!" moments in your life? Are your responses common and ordinary? Or Are they uncommon and extraordinary?
Sofcoast is pioneering the development of a new category of flying system called a Hybrid Air System. Hybrid Air Systems combine the most desirable features of Small Unmanned Aerial System's, aerostats (balloons on strings) and kites to deliver a superior persistent fixed or mobile elevated platform.
Sofcoast's first Hybrid Air System, MAKO, gives a wide variety of end user's the ability to easily transport and elevate lightweight technologies to provide actionable information to support a broad range of activity based information related needs for various end user's. Many fielded aerostat systems range from large to extremely large, requiring large logistics support infrastructure including transporting large steel bottles of helium. The MAKO system is truly man-portable, and coupled with the right types of payloads, in this instance a developmental pan tilt zoom (PTZ) HD Color and High Resolution Thermal Imager (EO/IR), MAKO provides a quiet, easy to use, easy to deploy and inexpensive aerial coverage asset for a wide variety of use cases and customer's.
We're making a presence at the first Federal show of the year, the West 2012 conference, which will take place January 24-26 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. We'll be exhibiting our MAKO hybrid air system in the STAR-TIDES booth (#602) so be sure to stop by to learn about Hybrid Air Systems and Sofcoast's vision which is to enable more people to see and share more of their world more often and in more cost effective ways.
West 2012 is co-sponsored by AFCEA International and the U.S. Naval Institute, and is the largest defense technology event on the U.S. west coast for communications, electronics, intelligence, information systems and imaging. The theme of this year’s West 2012 conference is “America’s Military at the Crossroads: What’s Out and What’s In for 2012 and Beyond?” Defense and industry leaders will discuss and debate the technologies and approaches for successful military programs this year.
Over the past four years I've been working to describe the vision I have for Sofcoast and our technologies. I continue to refine how I describe this vision.
In summary, Sofcoast's goal is to position ourselves at the crossroads of Unmanned Aviation and Mobile Computing and deliver compelling products to federal and commercial customers by leveragng our innovations in material science and applied research to eliminate barriers that exist in how people connect and share information with each other.
Below is a sketch I've drawn that outlines this vision.
Recap
2011 was a year for us to further our developmental efforts and to develop key early customer relatonships. We are happy with our work and our developmental systems as we continue to mature our prototypes and our thinking. I think the team shares in my sentiment that it's been a remarkably envigorating and enjoyable process to be a part of advancing and maturing our designs, concepts, methods and systems and to see the proverbial "lightbulb" turn on for people as they "get it".
What's Next
We're not satisfied with people simply understanding our concepts, methods, systems or approaches. We are focused on shattering barriers and assumptions and fundamentally changing the way people think and act.
This is a bold vision and won't happen over night.
We look forward to 2012 as the year where we transition from handbuilding and delivering mature prototypes to manufacturing and delivering perfected products. This is a tremendous accomplishment for all of us to look forward to and what this means is that we are tracking to achieve some key developmental milestones: from continued packaging improvements, delivering expanded all weather flight performance, integrating scalability and modularity as design features as well as compelling ease of use features.
We're also excited about 2012 being the year when we begin to unveil ground breaking payload technologies.
All in all, 2012 is shaping up to be another great year for us in the growth and evolution of Sofcoast and the maturity of our ASAP XP family of Hybrid Air Systems.
We appreciate your support and look forward to sharing more about Sofcoast in the coming weeks.
It's been a while since I've posted on the blog. In summary, we've been very busy delivering a small quantity of our latest MAKO hybrid air system to one of our customer's. As is expected we continue to refine and learn about our market, our product, the problem and our target customers. I think it's alot like practicing and playing golf. Over and over and over again and again and again we go. Just when we think we "know" - we learn something new about ourselves, our market, our customers or the fundamental problem we're solving.
So, I'm sharing our latest thinking about our core technology, specific products, target market and fundamental problem.
Cheers!
John
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Founded in June of 2008, Sofcoast, Inc designs, builds and delivers Hybrid Air Systems to various users on the front lines in federal and commercial markets.
Sofcoast is pioneering the development of a new category of flying system called a Hybrid Air System. Hybrid Air Systems combine the most desirable features of Small Unmanned Aerial System's, aerostats (balloons on strings) and kites on strings to deliver a superior persistent fixed and mobile elevated platform.
Our Mission...Help everyone get high ground to see or hear better when and where they need it.
THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM
"Gaining the high-ground" has been a problematic and costly objective for countless people spanning numerous industries, whether it's a military unit trying to keep it's people safe, a first responder searching for a lost child, to a prominent news or sporting channel delivering compelling news or sports broadcasts. Everyone want's high ground to see or hear better, but most can't get access to it when and where they need it.
As an example, pre-dating Small Unmanned Aerial Systems’, lighter than air systems (LTAS for short) have been used. From hot air balloons, to large football shaped dirigibles (akin to the Goodyear Blimp) to the present day where tethered inflatable lighter than air systems (aerostats) demonstrate the benefits derived from airborne observation posts.
The constant challenges with these technologies are that the operating performance of these devices are highly susceptibile to atmospheric conditions. In order to compensate, the traditional approach has been to make the aerostats larger (e.g. larger cables) which results in costly and large footprints, in order to meet tactical needs in austere and harsh combat environments.
The emergence of Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) resolved some problems with large aerostats, with exceptions. It is known that it is difficult and problematic for SUAS’ to deliver a stable, fixed point or slow moving elevated platform. SUAS craft are highly mobile and maneuverable, but because of their small size and limited thrust are also susceptible to atmospherics. SUAS technology requires qualified operators, constant flight management and monitoring. Other disadvantages to SUAS are their noise and limited dwell times. Operational limits and costs of SUAS are problematic, with accident rates of 100x that of manned aircraft, SUAS can create operational challenges for users and financial issues for program managers, particularly when maintaining an elevated / airborne observation post.
It is highly inefficient to use SUAS technologies in certain emergent applications for tactical users, such as providing persistent stare / persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for fixed points or for slow moving mounted operations. Additional problems with SUAS technologies are vibration, speed over target and wind buffeting, which can and do negatively affect imagery quality or situational awareness. Much can occur during the time off target, or in the instance of weather moving in underneath the higher flying UAS to obscure or impede effective area imaging. Lastly, many restrictions exist to flying UAS, including no-fly zones near borders, urban areas and areas of high civilian or commercial aviation traffic.
Sofcoast, working in conjunction with end-user communities, academia and aerial system experts, have addressed these concerns and have designed and built a solution in response to these fundamental needs.
======
Approach
The core of Sofcoast's core design and innovation processes are based in three areas.
Materials, Process and Technology.
Materials: ASAP-XP systems consist of aerodynamically shaped, lightweight and robust plastic bladders that are designed and built in-house using electronically welded seams and filled with simple welder’s supply helium. The flight management system is comprised of an advanced carbon fiber composite wingset and vertical stabilizer. The flight management system is mounted to the inflatable bladder via a lightweight rip-stop nylon harness, which has been designed and engineered for its high strength and low weight properties. Tethering is enabled through lightweight and proven Spectra line, while several times stronger than the maximum designed load, also contributes greatly to the overall weight savings. This combination of materials are key enablers to efficiently maximizing and delivering useable net lift for payloads, as any weight spent on tether, envelope, airframe and flight management is effectively weight not available for payload.
Process: Sofcoast has pioneered the use of a proprietary high-pressure gas charging methodology, to enable bladder filling systems to be highly portable. Using Commercial, Off-The-Shelf (COTS) systems, this transfer technology allows a field unit to reduce the mass of carrying helium lifting gas by a minimum of 60%. The system also uses a robust and commercially available deep-sea fishing sourced rod and reel assembly for line management, launch and recovery.
Technology: The Sofcoast ASAP-XP combines the most desirable features of SUAS’s, aerostats and kites to deliver a superior tethered hybrid air vehicle system. The theory of operation of the system is to combine and integrate flight stabilization benefits of unmanned systems, aerodynamic stability of fixed wing aircraft, and independent lift of lighter than air devices such as balloons along with the stationary security of a kite.
The system accomplishes this by leveraging and managing the buoyant lift, aerodynamic energy, dynamic torque and drag load. Embedded in the wingset the onboard inertial measurement unit, flight controls, GPS receiver, and flight battery enables this Hybrid Lighter Than Air Systems (LTAS) to react immediately to changing wind conditions and provide exceptional levels of stability and flight performance. This patented system enables the air vehicle to “climb” the tether or “transition” from balloon flight to aerodynamic flight unlike any other tethered inflatable device in the marketplace. The vehicle’s unique design allows it to autonomously station itself within a fixed area to provide a stable platform for various integrated payloads such as imagery pods, antennas or communications relays.
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ASAP XP
The Affordable Stationary Aerial Platform, Extremely Portable (ASAP-XP) family of hybrid air systems represents a new approach to providing field users with an affordable, rapidly deployable day/night persistent lighter than air aerial platforms.
ASAP XP MAKO A
ASAP XP MAKO A
Designed and built by Sofcoast Inc. a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business and based on 15+ years of internal research and development, Hybrid Air Systems are Sofcoast’s industry leading solution, delivering the fixed and slow moving airborne platform capabilities of Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS’s), without the associated limitations. ASAP-XP’s are tethered, helium filled inflatable devices which allow small units to rapidly deploy critical elevated observation positions. ASAP-XP’s are deployable, attachable and towable from multiple platforms, ranging from foot patrols in the field to various sized tactical and commercial sized vehicles (including four-wheelers and boats). Sofcoast’s patented gyro-stabilized station keeping features deliver payload providers, tactical commanders and end users with unprecedented stability, performance and versatility from an inflatable device. This flexible platform provides small teams with a best in class persistent aerial coverage capability to support and meet existing, unmet and unrecognized emergent mission needs and requirements for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) situational awareness and communications.
Until this week, Sofcoast has built eighteen versions of the Affordable Stationary Aerial Platform. (Kind of like saying an Apple building eighteen different versions of the iMac...) As might be expected, each version gets better and better.
Sofcoast's Version 19, ASAP XP Mako is no different. Version 19 changes everything when it comes to ease of use, capability and performance.
I'm travelling back to KY today and look forward to sharing more about version 19 soon.
2011 is turning out to be the transition year for us. Great things are happening with our product as well as our sales. It's an honor to have Scott Swanson join our team and I'm looking forward to a very bright future for our company, our customers, our investors and partners.
Sharing a video clip of Mako flying over the Tourmaline Surf Park in Pacific Beach, San Diego, California. Pretty straightforward, lots of folks approached me and asked me about it.
Also including a couple of still photos as well...
Sharing a 'down and dirty' video of today's launch and raw footage aloft. By 'down and dirty' I mean unedited and not salesy - just turned the camera on and went.
Couple of points to keep in mind.
We've essentially bolted a little Hero HD camera under the wing - there is no stabilization, pan/tilt/zoom in this payload config. Zip. Nada.
The FAA weather report from the nearest airport today forecast 6-16kt with 10 kt gust spreads on the ground. I'd say we were easily 5kts above ground winds at 500 ft. Now imagine the last time you went by a McDonalds parking lot or car lot with a balloon flying over it on a windy day.
Not a pretty sight.
Again - according to the aero engineer today, you actually have to see this thing fly in order to believe it.
Thank you to the STAR-TIDES organization which allowed us to co-exhibit with them.
Here's a little bit of information about them:
Sustainable, Affordable Support to Stressed Populations
TIDES is a research project dedicated to open-source knowledge sharing to promote sustainable support to populations under severe stress—post-war, post-disaster, or impoverished, in foreign or domestic contexts, for short-term or long-term (multi-year) operations. The project provides reach-back "knowledge on demand" to decision-makers and those working in the field. It helps catalyze public-private, whole-of-government, and trans-national approaches to encourage unity of action among diverse organizations where there is no unity of command. TIDES maintains this website, where anyone in the project’s network (called STAR-TIDES) can publish their work for feedback and critique.
Also, I want to thank everyone who stopped by to express interest, give us words of encouragement or just to show their support, we greatly appreciate it.
OK, so I'm thinking about another way to describe Sofcoast and what we're doing for people that's not so "jargony"... (I realize that I have a tendency to use acronyms and jargon that's industry specific or frankly get a little bit nerdy when I get excited about this project..) I'm now focusing on articulating what we're doing from an everyday person's perspective so they can understand how this product makes people's lives better and isn't available in the world yet or if it is how this product is better. I guess there is a natural tendency for the inventor to focus on talking about the invention (It happens) and it's an area that I'm working on.
I admit that it does look like we're building a balloon and we are, but we're also building more than a balloon, and this isn't obvious to people at first glance... In a nutshell, at Sofcoast we are the inventors, designers and builders of the worlds first small unmanned inflatable airplane on a string.
By now most people have heard or seen information about the recent flooding in Southern California, to include San Diego County. I hadn't planned to fly camera's this week until I talked to a friend about the value of being able to capture detailed high resolution video from multiple locations within a time period. He asked me if I could do that. I decided to give it a shot.
Image courtesy Sofcoast, Inc.
Being former military, I needed a very clear mission objective so here it is.
Mission
With 1 person collect at least 10 minutes of viewable HD Video from a minimum altitude of 500 ft. above ground level of 5 areas of interest at 5 separate locations in San Diego county. Accomplish this in less than five hours of total time. (not counting sleep time). You will be provided $250 cash, One tank of helium and one mako system.
Go.
Here are a couple of tidbits about the five locations we covered.
Village Park shopping center parking lot at 10PM on wednesday night.
Sharing a video I put together of the first sales demo we completed with the ASAP XP "MAKO" system in San Diego, CA.
ASAP XP "MAKO" is presently a hand-built prototype product substitute for aerial surveillance, imagery and rapid, ad-hoc, lightweight, mobile towers. As a team, we've spent 2+ years and built 18 prototypes in the product development phase. We're now transitioning to a Go-To-Market strategy. Yesterday, 16 December 2010 marked our first beta product sale for MAKO. We're keeping additional details mum for now.
We are now actively marketing to commercial and federal buyers and this is one of the first of many marketing video's we'll be putting together. We're delighted with the image quality of the GOPRO Hero HD and we think you will be as well.
One of Sofcoast's core enabling technologies is the Affordable Stationary Aerial Platform Extremely Portable (ASAP XP MAKO) which represents a dramatic departure from the typical aerostat lifting systems on the market today. ASAP XP MAKO is an easy to deploy, easy to repair, scalable, modular and highly flexible tethered flight system designed to provide tactical users with maximum flexibility in meeting their coverage needs.
Some specifics about the dam we flew over and around: The 282 foot (86 m) high dam was built between 1964 and 1974. It is a combination earth and rock-fill dam. Hydropower production began in 1977. As of 2006, it produced an average annual energy of 67 gigawatt hours of hydroelectricity.
Today we were putting the finishing touches on our first demo system for the ASAP XP MAKO. Check out the photostream on flickr at http://tinyurl.com/2bvdpdk
"Whether or not the people who control the expenditure of funds in the DoD or investment capital in the commercial sector are smart enough to pick up on this is something we can only speculate about, but the need is so obvious and the application so straightforward, it is almost pathetic it has not already been done.”
- Former Pentagon Director of Air Warfare Chuck Myers, a retired combat/test pilot who now runs a Virginia-based mini-think tank called AeroCounsel Inc. (excerpt from DefenseMediaNetwork article "Return of the Military Airship")
"In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions."
Early on in previous posts, I briefly discussed Blank’s book "The Four Steps To The Epiphany" which is essential reading for anyone starting something new. Stephen Blank has devoted many years to trying to answer the questions of "Who is the customer? and will they buy this? and will it make any money?" , with a theory he calls Customer Development. This theory has become so influential that some have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. His book is fantastic, but it’s a tough read because it’s basically a bunch of his teaching notes compiled into a book.
In some of my early posts I discussed one of the key components of his Customer Development theory called “product/market fit”. I think it’s a good time to talk a little bit more about the Customer Development Model and how it relates to Sofcoast and (more than likely) how it relates to other startups.
After two plus years of blood, sweat and tears and multiple pivots, we're moving from customer discovery into customer validation. I also call the customer discovery process the [can-we-what-do-we-build-is-it-viable] hump. Everyone who has been following the journey with Sofcoast may at some point or another have said "what are they doing?" or they may have said "what are they doing now?" or "what are they building now?" What you've been witnessing is the customer discovery process in action.
According to Stephen Blank, the goal of Customer Discovery is to find out who the customers for our product are and whether the problem we are solving is important to them. This step involves lots of discovery. Discovering whether the problem, product and customer theory is correct. Stephen Blank stresses the importance of “getting out of the building” in order to learn what the high-value customer problems are and what it is about our product that solves these problems and then identify who the actual customers are who will buy and use the products on a daily basis.
The goal of this process is not to collect feature lists, it’s to test the hypothesis of the founders and product development team. In a startup the founders and product development team define the first product based on the founder’s vision. The Customer Discovery process is seeing whether customers and markets exist for this first product. This is also the process of achieving product/market fit.
For us this has been an iterative process to build out the founder’s vision (my vision) which admitadly, has been a fight and struggle to build for a variety of reasons - most importantly a matter of having the right customer development team onboard. Once we got the right team onboard things have and are moving much faster. By the way, as a 15 year veteran Special Operations & SEAL operator, my vision wasn't to build a kite - or a flying mattress - or anything that required a tractor trailor or lots of complexity - it was something small, valuable, powerful, disruptive, game changing, cool, surprising and interesting - and I’m ecstatic to say that you can now see it - because it finally exists.
Watch this video. I'm standing by myself holding onto this thing in 24 MPH winds with no problems. 'Nuff said.
If you want to summarize for people you might speak to, Sofcoast's primary product is an autonomous rucksack portable tactical aerostat system (RPTAS) or an intelligent balloon or smart balloon. Essentially we've developed something that is quite elegant in it's simplicity and functionality. One thing that you may not be able to see is that the system is autonomous which has always been a core element of my vision - turn something old and inefficient like a balloon into something new, modern and relevant by designing it elegantly and making it intelligent.
It took time to find the right group of people that would constitute Sofcoast’s Customer Development Team. Navigating the challenges with having the right team to build out the founder’s envisioned product for us was one of the biggest challenges we faced – and we weathered the storm. Additionally, this is essentially where as the founder and CEO of the business, I had the ability and responsibility of making the decisions to continue to pivot the product as the customer hypothesis continued to crystallize. By the way, I was also determined to get what I had envisioned built in order for us to be able to defend our patent portfolio.
One important note: It might be of interest to note that Sofcoast's customer development team is unique because in addition to myself as the founding CEO and visionary, 75% of our Customer Development Team are former subject matter experts in Unmanned Systems and in-the-field information technologies, who represent several of our targeted early key customers and end user groups. Translation: We understand what these individuals need very well - we also understand the high value problems they are faced with intimately. (Imagine being able to remove a couple of layers of people when managing a project and moving information or instructions through a group of people...and replace them with industry leaders...things move faster and with more fidelity the fewer the nodes...) This has also given us an important advantage in narrowing our product focus on key problems and capability gaps translating into a compelling value proposition for our customers.
Additionally, this phase is where lots of iterations and stress on our team, partners, investors, advisors, suppliers, directors and everyone's families can occur in order to achieve the envisioned product/market fit. It truly takes a special group of people to weather this process and stick with it in order to get to the next phase which Blank calls Customer Validation.
According to Blank, in the Customer Validation step, the startup is focused on finding visionary customers and to get them to make a purchase. Unlike “mainstream” customers who want to buy a finished, completed, and tested product, earlyvangelists are willing to make a leap of faith and buy from a startup. The reasons will vary greatly but these customers will buy yet-to-be-delivered, unfinished product.
I'm happy to share that we are generating momentum in developing early sales with visionary customers and look forward to checking back in with everyone as we transition from the validation step towards the creation step, which may actually end up being a much quicker sequence than the customer discovery process.
Then again, it may not.
Of course, the pace at which we continue to learn and improve as a Customer Development Team will directly correlate to all areas of performance relating to our execution on sales, product quality, market entry and ultimately our profitability and growth profile as we mature.
We're pretty happy to share that we continue to have very positive results in our testing and development process of the ASAP XP MAKO system. This week we flew in Ft. Collins, Colorado and are very happy with the results of our flight tests.
To day we launched, flew and recovered in up to 22 kt. winds. In this test we flew at 200 ft. above ground level at a density altitude of 5,000 ft.
We took a picture right before we headed out today, on my right is Coby, yours truly is in the center with David to my left. It was a fantastic day with fantastic people building a fantastic product.
Life is good.
Cheers,
John
It's hard to believe that I'm standing there holding on to MAKO with one hand in 22kt winds!
Here's a brief video from today. (The sound of the wind is actually pretty dramatic.)
I've already pointed out in a previous thread the dilemma of buying and operating an 800K platform to fly a $400 camera over a place. That's definitely not a highly scalable model, I'd say.
We all get that social is scaling, I caught the movie "The Social Network" this weekend and thought it rocked. Mobile is scaling - there's an "app" for just about everything now.
Real-time, localized and relevant information can scale - but right now it's not truly scalable. Ask Apple. Ask AT&T. Ask anyone who's looked at their house in Google Earth and said "that's not my house anymore!". Ask military members on the front lines. Ask First Responders. Ask NGO's. Ask anyone who drives through the mojave desert.
I mean, think about this - When Apple unveiled the iPad awhile back, the network went down and Steve Jobs had to "voluntell" everyone to get off the damn wifi so he could continue with his demo.
Even Steve Jobs legendary product demo's and unveilings aren't impervious to the problems of infrastructure collapse or constraints. (I guarantee you that no expense will ever be spared again to ensure that never happens again...but again who's got wads of money like Apple?) Needless to say, mobile and ad-hoc infrastructure is limited and expensive - which (once again) limits information relevance, availablity and scalability.
We think the ASAP coverage system can change this and actually enable scalability because if we're successful then we've dropped the cost of rapid, mobile and ad-hoc infrastructure to close to as close to zero as we can feasibly get it.
General Interconnected Coverage Concept (above)
Do you think it's feasible to have a mesh network with towers and airborne (even inflatable) systems if the systems drive the costs up by orders of magnitude? Not unless your The US DoD during the Bush years.
And we're all pinching pennies these days but still demand our apps and mobile and information.
So what does one do?
Call us.
Single Panel ASAP (ASAP XP - "extremely portable")
Image from 300 ft. above ground level via a Smartphone from the ASAP XP (Single Panel) in Utah at 8,000 ft. Density Altitude. (above)
We had a pretty good week of testing the Affordable Stationary Aerial Platform Single Panel (ASAP SP) in the mountains of Utah. You can find lots of system pics at my photostream here.
This is a pretty good aerial image taken with a smartphone attached to an ASAP Single Panel. You can see more aerial images here.
As you can see, we're not balloonists - we're former military operators and subject matter experts. We've been working on this problem for about three years now and very early on decided that there wasn't much innovation that would suit or satisfy a guy on the ground with a backpack working to solve complex problems in complex environments, so we decided to build something that we personally would be willing/able to use. We don't want big stuff. We don't want to be (and aren't) balloon nerds. Our designs are for a tactical user's or person's on the front lines with backpack's and pickup trucks.
As a result, we didn't know anything about balloons and balloon supply chains so we developed our own systems methods and techniques and now, in a nutshell, we build small, high performance inflatable flying things made out of ripstop nylon and garbage bags.
We think it's kind of like what the Rutan's did with general aviation when they decided to build composite airplanes.
By the way, this was my first time in Utah and it was beautiful. I'm definitely looking forward to my next visit.
Whether it’s our
emphasis on the tactical user problem set, our commitment to producing opportunities for
industrial diversification for various regions such as Southeastern Kentucky where we are headquartered,
providing jobs for disadvantaged and disabled workers through our partnerships
or simply challenging the status quo by tackling very difficult problems, when
our customers, partners, investors and employees choose to work with (or for)
Sofcoast, they are really buying into a philosophy of Low Friction Innovation - a way of seeing themselves and their world - and of viewing
problems, problem spaces and innovations - through a socially responsible lens
that emphasizes continuous iteration, improvement and contributions to humanity. A philosophy about innovation where emphasis is placed on an open and transparent product development and R&D process that is customer focused and doesn't compromise the needs, interests and concerns of tactical users.
We will be posting various tests such as this series of failure tests, as time and capacity permits.
In summary, we found that one bridle attachment point will break at a
seam at 400 lbs. Based on our systems design this equates to a worst
case load bearing capability per bridle attachment point of 35 mph -
that's the number we start to see failure (on a single bridle attachment point).
sending out a quick update...more video is being processed and on the way......
Today we conducted a test flight of what we call the single panel ASAP
XP. The single panel is a very small platform for elevating technology
for short duration periods.
Most importantly, Mark H. demonstrated that he can eat
leftover kettle korn from Petco Park while providing moral support and
encouragement to me as I flight test Sofcoast's latest creation - aka
project ditto... good stuff.
Long Video (Unedited and raw....9 minutes in length)
Airborne Video clip
Another clip of airborne video
For this flight test we flew in my
backyard and decided to deploy the system winchless. We tied off the
tether to a concrete footer we purchased from lowes.
We lifted a Sony DSC-H20 high definition digital still video camera to 120 ft. above ground.
In
this test we were focused on demonstrating that the ASAP system is
highly modular and flexible. We think it might be considered the first 'scalable'
tethered system in the world.
We flew one bladder with a single shell attached to standard bridle lines and to a non powered tether.
Yesterday we flew a ubiquiti bullet with a 9db omni antennae along with a power tether to 150 ft.
I meant to post some video's and a photostream of the Land Mobile Radio repeater payload flight testing we conducted last week alot earlier than tonight, we've been busy this week and I've finally been able to get to it.
In summary, I think the coolest thing about this demonstration and test was the fact that we were able to establish voice radio communications at a range of over 5 kilometers between two $600 dollar UHF handheld radios.
Very cool.
Also, of note, since this flight we've flown a couple of times for the CWID exercise successfully. We'll continue interoperability demonstrations this week of the primary payload which is the Land Mobile Radio (voice repeater) as well as perform additional integration and interoperability demos of a data repeater as well as our Three2Link software system.
Here's the concept of operations and a graphical summary of what we achieved with the system.
Here's a picture of the Motorola EX500 handheld radios we used at range via the ASAP airborne radio repeater payload. Here's a link to the product page at Motorola's website.
Here are a couple of very brief video's of a six panel ASAP XP with a land mobile radio repeater payload in flight.
Another short video clip of a 6 panel ASAP XP with Land Mobile Radio Repeater payload.
We're also pleasantly surprised that the 6 panel system flew with 5 fully inflated panels and a partially inflated sixth panel.
Aft view post flight picture
In flight front view picture
For what it's worth, we decided to fly the system on 5 panels to see what would happen. We were pretty happy to learn that on standard day conditions at 400 ft. above sea level that 5 panels were sufficient.
We patched this panel on post flight and have flown it twice since this event for another exercise and it's holding up just fine.
Here's a picture of the ASAP XP bladder patch kit....
As a founder and CEO of a new company building new products for an "emerging" expeditionary enterprise user market, I've grown to love the "children's book" The Little Prince, by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. My favorite quote comes after the author describes a book he read about the Jungle called True Stories. He shows a picture of a boa constrictor swallowing a "wild beast". (Here's an online version of the book.)
One of the most interesting points about this story is in the second chapter when the narrator meets The Little Prince in the Sahara desert after his emergency landing leaves him stranded with a pretty uncertain future.
The Prince asks the narrator to draw him a sheep and after repeated unsuccessful attempts to draw the sheep to the specific satisfaction of the Prince, the narrator draws a box and explains that "This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside." (The Prince got very excited and was tickled about this. He imagined what the sheep might look or be like - and obviously the Prince liked his vision of the sheep in the box more than the narrator's drawings..)
I hear lots of talk about web 2.0, web 3.0, web 4.0, web x.x, cloud this, mobile that, etc., etc., etc....
Sure patterns of human behavior and the tools we use are changing - but the fundamentals are the same.
By definition, scarcity is everywhere abundance isn't.
The idea behind Sofcoast is simply to focus on applying tech to target the abundant scarcity problem set as it pertains to information and communications. Unfortunately with all of the stuff happening in the world today, it's getting easier for the average person to get a whiff of what might happen when "scarcity" hits and escalates. (some examples...)
Scarcity of information.
Scarcity of communications.
Scarcity of safety.
Scarcity of money.
Scarcity of food.
Scarcity of energy.
Scarcity of freedom.
Now think about the technology we take for granted, like being able to pick up your mobile phone and dial a number and someone answers on the other end...or better yet, you pick up your iPhone which has a full battery and great cellular or wifi reception and download that app to entertain yourself - it just works.
That's abundance.
Now...think about the time where you couldn't make that phone call or couldn't download that app. (your battery died, you couldn't get access to a network, your service was shut down because you didn't pay your bill...wait that was me....) all of these are examples of scarcity.
Now...imagine that you needed to use your mobile device for something more than ordering takeout or playing a game - imagine that you were a first responder responding in a crisis such as a hurricane, a flood, an earthquake, a search and rescue event.
Scarcity happens quickly and when it does people can and do suddenly find themselves in "abundant scarcity" mode. Meaning those individuals (and organizations) must be able to effectively cope in order to survive. We consider groups of people who are responsible for responding during these types of situations to be "expeditionary enterprise users".
The military is great at organizing, synchronizing and operating in expeditionary mode or "abundant scarcity" mode. They've spent eons and gazillions of dollars figuring out how to cope with scarcity.
Consumer tech is advancing at warp speed tantalizing us all with tech that allows us to exploit abundant network and bandwidth availability, processor power and energy.
What about those folks in between magical consumer gizmo's that "just work" and are powered by "freemium" business models and the military tech that, if it isn't classified, is ridiculously pricey or hard to (acquire|operate|integrate|manage|support|maintain).
