Hello Channel Islands Chapter Members,



I'm a recent addition, but I'm not knew to the subject of UAS. I'm an Army Signal Corps vet, and I'm currently finishing up my B.A. in Geography with GIS at UCSB. Although I appreciate the military applications for remotely controlled and robotic systems across the board- my main interest in this field is for science and civil operations in the National Airspace. 



I'm not an engineer or pilot, so I don't claim to be an expert on unmanned systems. What I do know from being a soldier is that- UAS and drones have been getting a bad rap for their overseas applications and people will naturally fear their use here at home. Personally, I feel we have more to fear from our neighbors using small UAS with GoPro cameras than what the government could do to impede our rights and privacy. Nevertheless I do believe that privacy needs to be addressed.



So over the past 10 months I have become involved with learning about UAS and trying to inform people from academics to the public at large. Interested in getting to the heart of the "integration" challenge mandated for the FAA, I got in touch with a man named Chuck Johnson who's in charge of Integration of UAS in the NAS

 at NASA Dryden in Palmdale. I got access one day to interview him and I did my best to prepare questions that would cover the technical, organizational and legal components of a very broad subject that needs better explanation- so I believe.



I videoed the interview and made it into nine parts. Recently I created a video of myself talking about the interview so that there is one main link that gives a brief introduction with further links to each of the nine parts. Here is that video (Drones: The Big Picture): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elh1iTYsDuA 



If anyone has interest in helping to communicate to others about this subject, especially to people who have no background in the area, you might send them the link. My dearest interest is to educate people. 



I'm also interested in interviewing more people who are involved with UAS for domestic use, especially if it involves science and the environment. As a student of GIS and Remote Sensing, I know that UAS provide a viable alternative to orbital systems, or conventional piloted sensor platforms. 



So my overall interest and approach to the subject is to educate people through online media like Youtube. Also, I've been independently researching image based 3D modeling which can benefit from sUAS, so I'm interested in the immediate applications for reconstruction of scenes and environments. 



If any of you are involved with an important aspect of UAS that not only links to science, civil, and search and rescue, but also economic and political/legal challenges of domestic uses, I would be interested in profiling your involvement through interviews that can be published online. 



Here is an example of an article I wrote for the Department of Geography website at UCSB covering the topic of UAS: http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/events/department-news/1128/drones-good-for-sci...



I hope to attend one of the monthly meetings to find out more about the CI Chapter's members and their participation. 



Best Regards



Kevin Wengler