So welcome everyone to our February, our February lecture for the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum's free monthly lecture series. We have amazing presentation today by historian and author Jack Kelly, but before we get to him, I am just going to say a few words about this program and thank our sponsors for this program. First up, my name is Angie Grove. I'm the executive director at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. I am almost on my two year anniversary. So this is maybe my 10th or 11th lecture series. And the first one on Benedict Arnold. So I'm excited to learn about this infamous man. So our monthly lecture series is part of our larger community enrichment programs in which we have a book club. We have reenactment events. We do field trips and lots of other different programs that help the community have historical enrichment and education in their lives. Our community enrichment series is sponsored by some community organizations, including MNT Bank, North Country Federal Credit Union, and Vermont AARP. So thank you to them. And our monthly lecture series specifically has also had, grateful to have the partnership of CCTV, also known as town meeting TV, who records the programs and then makes them accessible on town meeting TV showing as well as on our YouTube page so that we can reach a broader audience and bring historical enrichment to more people. So thank you to all of our partners and the sponsors of these programs. Okay, I am going to turn over to John Devano, who is our recent past president of the Homestead Board of Directors, and he's going to introduce today's speaker for us. And one more technical thing. If you put anything in the chat box, I will be monitoring the chat box there. So if you have questions during the presentation, you can put them in the chat box to save for the end of the presentation and I'll be going through those questions. At the end, if you want to ask your question live, you'll also have the opportunity to do that as well. Okay, over to John. All right. Thank you, Angie. Welcome everyone and a special welcome to our viewers, our attendees from out of state today. I know we have several We are really pleased today to have Jack Kelly with us. Jack is an award-winning historian and novelist. His books about the revolution and early America include Band of Giants and Valkor. Kirkus Reviews described his latest book, God Save Benedict Arnold, in the following way is the true story of America's most hated man. It's a dazzling addition to the history of the American Revolution. The Wall Street Journal said that the book, quote, propels readers into the brutal action with vigorous prose and sentences that are often short and pugnacious, much like Arnold himself. Jack has received the DAR History Medal. He is a New York Foundation, he is a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in nonfiction literature and has appeared on NPR, C-SPAN, and the History Channel. He lives and works in New York's Hudson Valley and he promised us earlier today that he's going to come to the homestead later this summer. So with this, Jack, it's all yours. Thank you very much, John, and thank you, Angie, and thanks to everybody for tuning in. It's always great to talk about these events in the places where they happened. Much of Benedict Arnold's career really happened in the Champlain Hudson Valley. Everybody knows Benedict Arnold. He's probably the most well-known soldier of the Revolutionary War, other than George Washington himself. And everybody that knows Benedict Arnold knows one thing about him. And I don't have to say what that is, because you know what it is. But I wrote the book in part because it's a great story, but also to get across the idea that there's more to Benedict Arnold than that one thing. And it's really important to understand Arnold in order to get a clear picture of the Revolutionary War. My book is not a biography of Benedict Arnold as much as making the case for him. It's like a manifesto about Benedict Arnold. I sometimes think of it as Benedict Arnold's greatest hits. So the Revolutionary War began on the morning of May 19, 1775, when the red coat shot and killed eight minute men at Lexington Green. And the Patriots came back and killed more than 70 of the King's soldiers, and the war was on. Benedict Arnold, two days after the news of Lexington arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, where he lived and had a very successful trading business. Two days later, he was on the march towards Boston to join the war. He was very enthusiastic and one of the most avid soldiers to march off to war at that time. Three weeks later, on May 10, Arnold captured one of the most strategic fortifications in the 13 colonies at Fort Tide, Conor, Oga on Lake Champlain in Northern New York. And he not only captured the fort, but he went up into Canada on his own initiative without orders from anybody and captured a warship that was the only warship that the British had on land. On Lake Champlain at that time. So he thereby secured Lake Champlain for the Patriots. The question then arises, was this an important achievement of Arnold? And I think it was in part because the strategy of the British during the first two years of the war was to gain control of the water corridor that ran down the Richelieu River, Lake Champlain, Lake George, with a little portage over to the Hudson River, and then all the way down to New York City. This was the super highway of the colonies. And the British felt that if they gain control that water corridor, they would be able to split the colonies, isolate New England and win the war. So the obstacle to that achieving that goal was Fort Tide Conor over approximately in the middle. And in particular, the Patriot control Lake Champlain. And I'll talk in a minute how that hampered the British in putting their plan into progress. But in addition to that, there were an abundance of cannon at Fort Tide Conor over the Patriots desperately needed, and they very famously put them on sleds in the following winter, hauled them across the entire state of Massachusetts. And that gave George Washington, his first victory, allowed him to force the British out of Boston. That was a great achievement of his head of artillery, Henry Knox. So between the stopping the British invasion and getting the cannon to Boston, it seemed like this is a very important achievement. So we have to look at the history books and see what they say about it. And it's barely a footnote. The capture of Fort Tide Conorogue is usually mentioned and just passed over. And the credit when it is given is often given to Ethan Allen.  They really didn't start out having anything to do with the dispute with Britain. And the Allen and the Green Mountain Boys did provide the manpower for the takeover at Ticonderoga. But as soon as the excitement was over, the Green Mountain Boys basically went home. Ethan Allen had a controversial, to put it diplomatically, a controversial role in the Revolutionary War. And in fact, the idea for taking over the Fort Tide Conorogue was Benedict Arnold. The leader was Benedict Arnold. And I think most importantly, the initiative to gain control of Lake Champlain was all Benedict Arnold. So that now leads to the question, do we owe it to Benedict Arnold to get the history right? And I don't think we do because Benedict Arnold was certainly a traitor and there's nothing in my book that in any way exonerates him. In fact, I think his treason was actually much more serious than some people think. So we don't owe him anything, but I think we owe it to ourselves to get the iron out the discrepancies in history. Because Benedict Arnold is a paradox. He was both a hero and a villain. He was someone who was devoted and really devoted to the Patriot cause and then tried to destroy the Revolution later. And that's not an easy thing to get your head around, to understand. And so from beginning, immediately after his treason was uncovered, there's been attempts to sort of iron it out and just say, well, he was just a traitor all along. And his accomplishments were insignificant or his participation was minimal or his motives were suspect. Some of the early biographies even said that he was a nasty little boy and made up stories about things that he'd done as a child, which were totally fabricated to show that he'd been a traitor from the cradle. So I think it's important to understand that paradox, to understand that he actually was both a really important hero of the Revolution and our worst traitor. And partly it's because that's the truth of history. And partly it's because there are many paradoxical figures all through our history. If we just think of the Revolutionary War, there's people like Aaron Burr, Ethan Allen himself, General Charles Lee, Horatio Gates to some extent. These were people they weren't certainly didn't go as far as Arnold did and betraying the cause, but they wavered or they had doubts or they acted out of self interest. And they were complicated. And that's really the way history is, you know, I think we can get past the Parson Weems type of history where George Washington never told a lie. We can see that all the people are complicated and some are much more complicated than others. And those who are have the type of paradox that Benedict Arnold had can be dangerous and Arnold certainly was dangerous. So we jump ahead to 1776 and see why the capture of Taekwondo was so important. The British goal that year was to bring a 7,000 man army over to Canada, come down the Richelieu River down Lake Champlain and down to at least to Albany and get control of the Hudson River. But they couldn't do that, because if they were to move that army down towards or Taekwondo roga now controlled by the Patriots, they would have been subject to attack by gunboats like this. This is a replica of the of the gunboat Philadelphia that was built by the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. And that would have the troops in the British troop transports would have been able to be blasted out of the water. So the British had to build their own fleet of armed ships up in Canada in order to protect the troop transports in order to get the army down to Taekwondo roga and continue on their invasion. So they began an arms race that summer with Benedict Arnold in control in charge of the nautical defenses of Taekwondo roga was down here in Skeensboro. Today is Whitehall at the very tip of southern tip of Lake Champlain building more gunboats more small sailing ships armed with cannon and the British were up here in St. John's with a lot more resources, a lot more expertise, putting together a small fleet of of warships, but with a lot more guns and a lot more power than than what the Americans could muster down in the other end. That went on for all summer. In August, Benedict Arnold took his small fleet up to the north end of Lake Champlain, waited for the British and he waited and waited and all through September, nothing happened. They continued to build ships they wanted to have overwhelming firepower when they finally did come down the lake. But the delay was to prove to be very consequential. At the end of September, Arnold pulled back to Valkour Island here and had there was a protected bay between Valkour Island and New York shore. And he waited some more for the British it wasn't till October 11 the British finally came down the lake and when they patriots found out the size of the fleet that they had and the amount of firepower. Arnold second and command said, we got to get out of here where this is this is suicidal to stay here. And Arnold said, no, I have a plan. We're going to fight the Royal Navy and we're going to beat them. And he was so confident and so keen in his strategic thinking that his captain supported him they they lined up for battle. And his strategy this is a contemporary map of the battle. This was the American line in the north. The north end of the bay was closed off because it was too shallow for ships to come through there. So the British had to come around and a lot of their number of their bigger ships weren't able to get up in there. They couldn't tack back and forth enough to get through that narrow opening. This line here represents the British gunboats which they had many. And the battle basically came down to American gunboats firing at British gunboats. Very brutal formal warfare point blank cannon range firing back and forth. It went on for seven hours. The it got dark. The battle ended and the Americans were still standing. The British had not been able to break through that line of ships. But they'd expended three quarters of ammunition. The the many of their boats were damaged. So now what? Again, Arnold said I have a plan. And because of his foresight, they were able to escape from that trap of the bay in Velcker Island. Directly through the blockade that the British set up to the south. In the middle of the night, very quietly, they were able to slip away. It was almost like a fairy tale. There was more fighting down the lake. The majority of the American ships were destroyed in all that fighting. But the outcome was that by the time the British got their army down to Fort Ticonderoga, it was almost November and the British were afraid that the lake would freeze before they could take Fort Ticonderoga and then they'd be stuck there. They wouldn't be able to get back and they wouldn't couldn't go on. So they decided that they would go back try again in the spring. So the campaign of 1776 in the north was a complete success in the sense that it stopped that British invasion. And if we asked then, was it an important achievement? All we have to do is look at the other end of that water corridor down in New York City. George Washington had already lost the, in August, he lost the largest battle of the entire war in Brooklyn. He was forced out of New York City in September. He was forced over into New Jersey and then retreated all the way across New Jersey to Pennsylvania. His 20,000 man army had shrunk to 3,000 men and he wrote a letter to his brother at that time saying, I think the game is pretty near up. And it would have been up. I think it would have been curtains for Washington if he'd also had to contend with a British invasion coming down the Hudson River. But instead, because of the success in the north, Benedict Arnold and Horatio Gates, who was the commander of Ticonderoga, came south with more than 600 men and marched them out to join Washington's army in Pennsylvania. So some of the men who fought at Valcor Island also crossed the Delaware and Washington's famous Christmas night attack on the Hessians in Trenton is greatest and most consequential victory. Benedict Arnold was not among them because he'd been sent off on another assignment, but his men were there and he was able to get them down there because of the success he'd had. So what do they say in the history books? Well, I can't say it's just a footnote because this book of Alcor, the 1776 campaign to save the cause of liberty came out a couple of years ago, which I wrote myself. And it's a pretty good book. I would recommend it. And I was surprised, though, when I was doing the research for that book of how little had been written about the northern campaign. It's just something that slipped through the cracks and many of the accounts of that very crucial year 1776. So we jump back to 1777. This is Benedict Arnold's house in New Haven had one of the biggest houses in town and he had come home after a long. Many, many months of campaigning in order to take a rest. He was on leave there and he decided to resign his commission. He thought that he deserved promotions for his success at Alcor, which he didn't get George Washington supported him. But then as now the main promotions in the army were made by Congress. And there was a lot of politics and just general confusion in Congress as to how to handle the military. And they not only refused Arnold his promotion, but they promoted junior officers over his head, which was a slap in the face to any officer. So he decided to resign and have done with the war. He wrote out his resignation and went down to Philadelphia and he turned it in in July of 1777 by coincidence. On that same day, news arrived in Philadelphia that Fort Ticonderoga had fallen. General John Burgoyne had now brought that 7000 man army down. Very little opposition on Lake Champlain easily took Ticonderoga and was on the march toward Albany. Arnold forgot about his resignation, jumped on a horse, rode up to join General Gates, who's now in command in the north. Together they decided to meet Burgoyne at Bemis Heights on a high ground just beside the Hudson River and a few miles south of the village of Saratoga, which today is Skylarville. They fought two battles there collectively known as the Battle of Saratoga. In both battles General Burgoyne tried to sweep around the left end of the American lines and in both battles Benedict Arnold commanded the left division. In the first battle he fought Burgoyne to a standstill and inflicted pretty heavy casualties. And in the second battle he decisively defeated Burgoyne and then personally led a charge into the British field fortifications, broke through and put Burgoyne in a position where he had to do what he said he would never do, which was retreat. Benedict Arnold was severely wounded in that battle with a bullet through his leg, but ten days later Burgoyne had to surrender his entire army to General Gates. So if we get to the question was this an important achievement, it's referred to as the turning point of the Revolutionary War. Time magazine at one point said that they estimated this to be the most important single battle fought anywhere in the world in the last thousand years. So it sounds pretty important. So what are they saying in the history books? Well, they can't deny that it was important. So there's been a continuous and in almost every account of the Battle of Saratoga. Some attempt to diminish the contribution of Benedict Arnold. Some of the stories were he was drunk. Some said that he had been relieved of his command. He was pouting in his cabin. He was never on the battlefield or while they had to admit that he must have been out there at some point because he got wounded. He was just riding around like a madman. He wasn't he wasn't managing the battle. Those stories have over time gradually been debunked. And I think there's even been a there was recently about five years ago a new some new evidence that came out that really clarified. And I think today a lot of historians probably most historians would agree that Benedict Arnold really was the essential man in that very essential battle that that changed everything in the Revolutionary War. Three years later in 17 we come to the one thing that everybody knows about Arnold, which was that he committed treason. He went over to the British. This was an effigy of him that was dragged through the streets of Philadelphia after they found out. And of course, the question is immediately is why did he do it? And there's been many reasons proposed. And talked about a lot of historians have their favorite reason. Some said that it was all about the money. Some said that it was his wife. He'd married Peggy Shippen was a loyalist leaning young lady from Philadelphia and the she influenced him to do it. Some said that he didn't like the alliance with with the French that they developed after Saratoga. Some said he was just disgruntled over the still over the Congress's treatment of him and the promotions they didn't get. My own answer to that question was why you went over to the British is I don't know. I think Benedict Arnold is very enigmatic character, very hard to hard to penetrate and to look into his mind and see what he was thinking. What would have had so much weight that it would force him to make this 180 degree change. And I sometimes wonder if he knew or if he could have articulated himself, even why he did it. But he certainly did do it. And because he never did anything by haves. He gained command of the lower Hudson Valley. He asked George Washington to give him command of this. He was still suffering from his leg wound and then feel he could be out in the field. So he had first been in command of Philadelphia and then they moved him up here to the Southern Hudson Valley, which included West Point, a very crucial fort. It was not a military academy then, of course, it was a fort protecting the Hudson River. And he offered to the British to let them take over West Point, which they had wanted to do for years. And he was going to make that possible. So the unfolding of that plot is one of the great dramas in American history. He met in September 1780 in Haverstraw, which is on the west side of the Hudson River, with the head of British intelligence, Major John Andre, and gave him a map of the fort information about troop deployments there, other documents. And Major Andre was the go-between for the plot. Arnold then went home back to his headquarters, which was on the east side of the Hudson River opposite West Point. And Andre, after some delay, found himself riding on horseback down the east side from the peak skill ferry down the east side of the Hudson River. And he got almost down to Tarrytown. He was very excited and he was very nervous. And he was excited because he had accomplished really the greatest intelligence school of the war that was going to completely make his career, probably make his life by making this arrangement with Arnold. And he was nervous because this area of Westchester County was no man's land. It was below the American lines, but above the British lines that were down closer to New York. And it was patrolled by both loyalist and patriot militiamen. Major Andre was in civilian clothes riding along. Sure enough, three men jumped out of the bushes, stopped him at Musket Point. And then Andre made the mistake of saying, I hope you're of our party.  At that point, Major Andre had to guess. So he said the lower party, meaning the British down in New York. And the militiamen said, we're Americans, get down. They searched him. They found them documents. They didn't know exactly what he was up to, but it was very suspicious that he'd have this map of West Point and other documents on him. He offered them bribes. They refused the bribes. They took him over to their commanding officer, Colonel Jameson. I think Colonel Jameson was a little slow on the uptake because he, the first thing he did was to send a letter by courier to his commanding officer, Benedict Arnold, explaining this suspicious activity down in his district. He thought about it then the next day, and he's going, well, wait a minute, this is Benedict Arnold's handwriting. I'm not sure how to take all of this. I'll send the whole thing to George Washington. So he sent another courier off with the documents and another letter to George Washington. The twist in the plot comes in because George Washington wasn't at the American camp over on the New Jersey border, but had gone out to Hartford, Connecticut to meet with some French officers. He was on his way back to camp and he was scheduled the next morning to have breakfast with Benedict Arnold, and they were then going to go over to inspect West Point together. So you have the tense situation where you got two couriers. The second courier had found out that where Washington was going to be, so they were both headed towards Arnold's headquarters. George Washington also headed towards Arnold's headquarters from the north, who was going to get there first. Some of Washington's aides arrived at Benedict Arnold's house, said the Washington's just up the road, get ready, he'll be here in a few minutes. Then one of the couriers arrived, handed a letter to Arnold, Arnold read it. He said to his wife, I've got to go, and he told everybody else, he said, I'm going over to West Point, tell Washington to wait. He ran down to the boat launch on Hudson River, jumped in his boat and told his crew to row as fast as they could to the south. Meanwhile, Washington arrives at his headquarters, Arnold's not there. Where is he? He's over at West Point. Okay, Washington says we'll go over and do the inspection now. They go over, he takes his whole entourage over to West Point. The people there haven't seen Arnold in two days. So, watching this little puzzling, he looks around the fortifications that Arnold had supposed to have been building up were actually still falling down. A lot of the men had been sent away from West Point, there wasn't enough men to defend the fort. What was going on? So, Washington later described his own thinking at that moment. He said, my mind misgave me, but I had not the least idea of the real cause. And I think we can all identify with that feeling, it's like there's something wrong here, but I just can't put my finger on what it is. So, being the unflappable George Washington, he went back to Arnold's headquarters and decided to take a nap. Before he laid down in bed, another courier arrived and handed him a letter with the documents. He looked them over, he immediately knew what was going on. He called in his most trusted subordinate, Henry Knox, and he said, Arnold has betrayed us. Who can we trust now? And it was not a rhetorical question because Washington at that point didn't know who was involved in this plot and how far it went. So, he sent Alexander Hamilton racing down the Hudson River on horseback to try to catch up with Arnold. He sent a message over to the army on the west side of the Hudson to start marching troops up to West Point to protect the fort. And then the real drama began. Arnold's wife, Peggy, former Peggy Shepin, now Peggy Arnold, and this by the way is a drawing of Peggy that was done by Major John Andre. He was quite a pretty good artist and this was back when the British were in control of Philadelphia and Peggy was flirting with the British officers.  She was having a hysterical fit, they thought. And so the officers gathered around, tried to comfort her and they didn't suspect that she could be so devious that she had been in on the plot all along. And in fact, was putting on the scene in order to help her husband escape. And he did escape. He got down to a ship on Hudson River, went to New York City, was made a Brigadier General in the British Army, spent the next year fighting against Americans for the British, wearing the red coat himself. After Yorktown, went over to England and never set foot in America again. A few days after, of course, Major Andre, this is a portrait, a self portrait by Major Andre, drawn while he was waiting for his trial, which happened about a week later. And he was then immediately hanged as a spy. The three militiamen who captured Andre and refused to accept his bribes, received what turned out to be the first military decorations in American history of these silver medals with the word fidelity on them, of course, in contrast to the lack of fidelity by Benedict Arnold. A few days after the plot was discovered, one of Arnold's aides said that wouldn't have been better if the bullet that went through his leg at Saratoga had gone through his heart. And historians down the years have sort of echoed that sentiment a little differently by saying that if Benedict Arnold had been killed at Saratoga, he would be remembered as one of our greatest military heroes. And I think from what I've talked about here this afternoon that you can see the logic of that idea, but I don't think it's true. I think that if Benedict Arnold had been killed at Saratoga, he would have been forgotten in the same way that Nathaniel Green and Henry Knox and Richard Montgomery and all the great military heroes of the revolution have largely been forgotten by the general public. I live in the Hudson Valley, as I mentioned, we have Green County, Montgomery County, nearby, Sullivan County, Putnam County, all named for heroes of the revolution. What you ask people who's the place is named for, they're not really that clear about it. So I'm hoping that as we come up to the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War, which is fast approaching, that some new attention can be paid just to the men who did the fighting. We're going to remember Benedict Arnold, of course, but what about all the others who stayed faithful and particularly the men in the ranks who went through a great deal of hardship in order to create a country? If you read the letters and diaries of that time, you occasionally come across the phrase that they felt that they were fighting for freedom for generations unborn. They use that phrase, and we are those generations, and they were fighting for us. So thank you very much, and I'd be happy to take a few questions. I have a website, JackHelleyBooks.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter. I keep you abreast of what I'm doing and also occasionally send out an essay on history, as some people have found interesting. And you can pick up the book at any bookstore or online service. So thank you all very much. Thank you very much, Jack. Okay, so we're now opening the floor to any questions. You have a couple of different options. You can either use the raised hand function in Zoom. You can turn your camera on and physically raise your hand so I can see you. You can put a question into the chat box. And if you put it in the chat box, I'll assume you want me to read it out loud, but if you want to read it out loud, you could make a comment when you type it in to the chat box as well. So we're going to start, Jack, with a question that was submitted during your presentation into the chat box. This question is from Glenn. There's two parts of the question. So the first question is, have you watched Turn Washington Spies? It's a TV series, which depicts Arnold's personal life and his relationship with Washington and his treason. If so, does it portray him accurately? If you haven't seen it, there's a second question. Okay, I have seen that, and I think they did a very good job both in the production values, which were very well done, I thought. And also in the depiction of Benedict Orle and the general facts, I mean, there's always going to be in any kind of dramatic series like that, there's got to be drama and there's got to be a romance, of course, too. And there was plenty of that, and they made the mileage out of it in depicting his love affair with Peggy and the various ins and outs of it. I guess the one thing that kind of always bothered me, though, is I had read so much about Benedict Arnold and seen what portraits there are of him. And I had a picture of Benedict Arnold, and the guy who played Benedict Arnold did not fit that picture, and that always grated on me a little bit while I was watching it. But I was really impressed by that series. I think it would be great to see more series that are done that well and stick as close as they did to the facts, even though they had to put in a little element of melodrama. Yeah, my memory of that series is he, the way he came across to me was a little bit of a pretty boy by the guy they had him acting for it. Was that how you viewed it? Is that what didn't match up to your view? I don't, it's hard to even put my finger on what it was. There was something about it. He just didn't look like the way I imagined Benedict Arnold looked. He seemed too tall and not, I always imagined Benedict Arnold was a little shorter and more athletic appearing, but he did a pretty good job, I'd say, but it doesn't always fit with the image you create in your mind. Yeah, for those viewers who may not be familiar with the series, I believe it was AMC, maybe that did the series, so it's something you might be able to find it online to watch it again, and I would, I recommend it. Okay, there's a few other questions that have come into the chat box. If we have time, we'll get to the second part of Glenn's question, but we'll get to some of other people's questions first. Okay. So, John Devano asked, I assume, well, we're going to turn this into a question. Are there any letters in which Benedict Arnold shared his thoughts about why he joined the British? Yes, actually, there are very few personal letters left that Benedict Arnold wrote, but he did write a public letter only a few days after the plot was discovered, which he called to the inhabitants of America, which I thought was a funny way of addressing his countrymen, but he said to the inhabitants of America, and he gave a whole list of reasons why he did it, and it was the French alliance was on the top of that list. And he said he had never been for independence. He thought, and basically the basic message of it, besides listing all these different reasons why he went over, is that he didn't feel he was committing treason. He felt he was doing what was right for the country, as he had done what was right when he first committed treason against the king, now he was committing treason against the cause, but it was, because it was the right thing to do. So I'm seeing something else here. So that was that letter turned out though that he Arnold didn't even write that letter that was written by a gentleman named Smith in New York was the British Attorney General of New York at that time. It was pretty much a standard loyalist propaganda points. It didn't have a personal sense of this is what really moved me to do it. In any case, and, and Arnold didn't really write it either so that was, that was the only explanation that ever came out of him. And he lived the rest of his life just either thinking he'd done the right thing or he wasn't going to talk about it. Thanks, Jeff. Again, I'm going to keep going through questions in the chat box but if you have a question you'd like to ask on video just raise your hand and your camera or use the raise hand function in zoom if you don't have a camera on. Okay, so another question from the chat box for you is from Kevin. Kevin said I'm reading Gore Vidal's historical fiction about Aaron Burr, her fought under Arnold and Quebec. Can you comment any further on the connection between the two people, if there wasn't. I didn't go into in my talk into the expedition to Quebec, but Arnold led a second army, the main army in the invasion of Canada which happened in late in the fall of 1775 was led first by Philip Schuyler and then by Richard Montgomery and actually took Montreal and got up as far as the city of Quebec. Benedict Arnold was sent by George Washington up into Maine, where they, he took a thousand man army over the mountains of Maine and in boats, going up the Kennebick River, and then walking from there. And they, they actually got to Quebec first. Very torturous expedition really put a strain on Arnold's leadership abilities and he came through we was able to get the whole army up there. There was no roads they were just walking along trails to get over the mountains with all their equipment. And then tried to attack or had hoped to attack Quebec but it just it didn't work they didn't have any cannon with them that was their main detriment. So Aaron Burr had signed on he was a young, I think still in his teens at that time was had been a student at Princeton and signed on as a volunteer. And that was like they did a lot of the clerical work volunteers were like AIDS. He followed Arnold to Quebec and then was sent down to make a connection with Montgomery is Montgomery was leading the main force up the St. Lawrence River and Burr then joined with Montgomery Burr, I think was a very much tended to be a career looking out for his own career. So that was a good career move he figured now I'd get up to the guy who was the commander not Benedict Arnold who was with Montgomery subordinate. And he joined him and I don't think they had much to do with the two of Arnold and Burr had much to do with each other. After that during the war. Of course, Aaron Burr ended up, I think he was tried for treason to so they had that in common later on. Correct. Yeah. So, in addition to Kevin who just asked that question that included Quebec. Rich and Glenn had also asked about Quebec. You've commented some on it. So to follow to add on to Richard's question also, he asked about Maine, which you briefly mentioned just now. So there's anything else you'd like to add about Quebec remains and there seem to be general intro. Yeah, I, it's understandable. A lot of people come and I myself remember reading and a lot of people I've talked to have gotten up their interest in Benedict Arnold. When they originally read the books by Kenneth Roberts, who did an enormous amount of research his books were fictional, but they were based on very, very solid research of that expedition. And the, the, the hardships of that expedition. And so that was many of the men that did that went over on that expedition kept diaries and Roberts actually collected all those diaries and published a book that included all the diaries. So he got very minute detail about what happened and it was, it was hard to believe what they went through to in terms. First of just the difficult climb waiting in ice water all day pushing boats up loaded with equipment and then ran out of food about halfway over and they didn't have enough food to get back. They didn't have enough, they didn't know what was coming when they got over. And then they started to starve to death and some of them did. So it was a rough and these, these guys would, they said they, they're wet all day, they would lie down on the ground, their clothes would freeze around them during the night. Then they get up and shake it off and another day of calling equipment. So it was, it was quite a expedition was compared to Hannibal going over the Alps. It's not like that faddle, but the people in the audience here might be interested in knowing about the home said books club. Next book discussion is on. It's called the fort by Bernard Conwell it is historical fiction but as Jack Kelly just mentioned seats in research. It's about the Panab Scott expedition up in Maine and 1779. So kind of a similar story. So if you have any interest in that you can check out the home seven museum website, which you can purchase the book from our online gift store and participate in that session in May. Speaking of book, Robert is asking Jack, have you read James L. Nelson's book Benedict Arnold Navy, and Robert would recommend it to everyone here. Yes, I found that that was a great book. And it went into the both the invasion of Canada and then it gave a good context for everything that happened at Valkyrie Island as well and he went into the Valkyrie Island, the building of the boats on Lake Champlain. So I definitely recommend that my book was much more focused on Valkyrie Island and just the just the Lake Champlain end of that story. He told a much broader story in that book, but definitely well worth reading. And Jack that your book that you're talking about is that the Valkor book. That's yeah that's called that's just called Valkour, the 1776 campaign to save the cause of liberty. And that goes into more a little more detail about the campaign I mentioned it in God Save Benedict Arnold as well but as part of the bigger picture in that book. Yeah, we'll have to get that book in our online gift shop as well we have God Save Benedict Arnold but I'll order some copies of Valkort. Yeah, very, very, very much like Champlain oriented story. Yeah. Okay, there's a question in the chat box from Tim. Do you feel that the rivalry between Arnold and Gates has been overblown in previous historical accounts. Yes. That's a, I'm glad he asked that question because it's part of the story of Saratoga which was that Arnold and worked together all through 1776 in the summer Gates at Ticonderoga and Arnold building the fleet on the lake. When Arnold came back he joined General Gates now in total command in the north and together they fought the battle of Saratoga. Between the first battle there were two battles about two weeks apart and after the first battle they had a very hot dispute over Arnold felt that he didn't get enough credit for what he'd done in the first battle when Gates reported it to Congress. Arnold that was all through his life he was very prickly character very sharp to defend his honor. That dispute was recorded in great detail by AIDS to Arnold and an aid to General Gates who was James Wilkinson who was a young man educated young man did a lot of the paperwork for Gates. Those AIDS were very partisan that the Arnold's AIDS were were all friends of Philip Schuyler. Philip Schuyler had been pushed out of the command by Gates they hated Gates. Wilkinson was protecting Gates and didn't like Arnold so they kind of instead of trying to sue things down they they fomented the dispute. It got into the record because they wrote a lot of letters back and forth. And people focused on that as showing that Benedict Arnold wasn't in command that Gates had pushed him aside that he had been relieved of his command etc etc. I think it was overblown and I think it was overblown because so much of it was recorded in these writings. And in fact it was it was a passing thing. They were both very under huge amount of stress. They had this dispute and then it passed over and they worked together at the battle Saratoga. And the look the information I talked about called the bachelor letter was found on eBay in 17 and in 2016. Written two days after the battle it's the second battle Saratoga by a New Hampshire militiamen to his wife and it was a genuine letter. New information from Sarah about the battle Saratoga that showed Arnold and Gates cooperating. That's been accepted by most historians now as a strong indication that the older story of the dispute and the fact that Arnold was not in command at Saratoga is has been debunked. So it's always interesting as history does continue to surprising 200 and some years later that still new evidence is coming up. Absolutely. We run into that at the homestead all the time where. Yeah, it's, there's still new things that we're learning about history every day and people in the story. Okay, another question in the chat box. Well actually this one's a comment. Robert real rock said many people don't realize that the first group enterprise spot in the battle Valkor Island. Thanks Robert for sharing that. And Robert Compton asked how was Arnold received in England after England lost the war. Yeah I was I was actually I just to mention that that first comment I was impressed myself because enterprise was a name that went down through the American Navy. Very prominently all through history and that was the first ship that was called enterprise was was one of the early ships of Arnold had gotten on Lake Champlain. And the, as far as what happened after he went over to England. He and Peggy both moved over to London. They were rewarded by the British government for what they tried to do Peggy got a stipend herself for her participation in it. Their sons of the head I think five sons in England were all made officers in the British Army, but they weren't well received and in particular, Arnold wanted to get back into active military service he loved the military they loved being in the in the in the mix in the war and the officers of the British Army hated them, but partly because he was a trader and even though he'd come to their side. They still considered him a trader untrustworthy and partly because he had killed a lot of British soldiers, you know, as an American officer. So they would never they always blocked his efforts to get back into a military command in England after he went over there. And he got back into business they lived for a while in Canada. He was never very happy.  But not. It was not a, I think the life of his dreams, but certainly better than many of the people that he, you know, what really always when I say his treason was more serious than people think he betrayed people he had led in battle, American soldiers. And, you know, wasn't just that he betrayed the cause or changes mind about the cause. He actually led British troops that killed Americans and that was, you know, a block on his reputation that will never be erased. So I have two more questions in the chat box, we probably have enough time for maybe three or four more questions total. So if you have a question that you're sitting on. Now's the chance to raise your hand or put it in the chat box. So the question I'm going to give you now is from John Devano. There are no statues of Benedict Arnold for obvious reason. John admits he has not been he has not visited the Saratoga battlefield, but he's heard a rumor is it true that there is a monument of a boot to recognize Arnold being wounded there. That was, I think, erected around 1900. And it's a it's a stone monument that just shows a boot and a cannon, I think, and it describes Arnold and his achievement there, but doesn't mention his name. And it's, I was talking to somebody said they remember that when they went to the battlefield as a child they thought that was the most interesting part of the whole battlefield is seeing a monument to a boot. But that was the way that they had of acknowledging what he'd done without without acknowledging him. Essentially, so he's been there was a something called cancel culture what we now call cancel culture that that started really in the Roman times.  That was the head of word for that I can't remember was in Latin. That's what was done Arnold. Everything about Arnold was erased except for the often very spurious accounts of him and the biographies that indicate indicated how how bad he was so there's the only place I could find. There's actually Arnold Bay down on Lake Champlain near virgins that was named for him. That's where his his fleet during the battle of the battle after Valkyrie Island. He ran his fleet. A ground the boats he had left and burnt them there and what's now called Arnold Bay so that's the one place I thought it was the one place in the whole country. Name for him but there's also an Arnold Lake I think up in Canada that his men had passed through on their way to over to Quebec. That's also still remains but there's no there's no Benedict Arnold junior high or anything like that. Okay, our last question for the afternoon comes from James Thornton. And it's kind of asking for you to do some speculative history here Jack because I know you've already said. Your final answer on this question is I don't know but it's asking about Arnold reasons for turning over so the question is, could part of Arnold's decision to aid the British, maybe be based on Arnold's lack of trust or confidence and Patriot and future US leaders. Well one thing that is a little bit confusing about the question from that perspective is Arnold made contact with the British in I think in the spring of 1779 when he was not yet in command at West Point. But he started talking to them and going back and forth secretly with Andre and Henry Clinton was done and British commander. Those negotiations and how much was he going to get paid to compensate him for his losses and so forth. And what could he give them that was they he wanted to give them and they of course wanted him to to hand over the biggest prize that they could and they all they thought West Point was that's what West Point was. And it took quite a while so it wasn't until I think about 16 months later that the fruit the plot came to his fruition and in 1780. In 1779. The Patriots were doing pretty well that was not an awful lot of fighting then by 1780. The, the, it looked like the Patriot cause was in deep trouble they lost Charleston South Carolina. General Gates have gone down there and lost the battle of Camden was really badly defeated. They were running out of money they had very little credit. The French Alliance didn't seem to be helping them much. So you could say Benedict Arnold was looking to get on the winning side he was he wanted to get with the British because it looked like the British going to win the war. I don't think that was the case because he had started his trees and back when the British were not didn't look like they're necessarily going to win the war the Patriots going to be defeated. So I think that his his looking into the future was was hard, you know, it's not a it's not something you could say one way or the other what did he imagine that this was going to help him. He thought that he was doing the right thing by ending the war so I would imagine he he thought of himself as being the hero. He was going to end the war by helping the British get back and control everything would go back to the way it was. And he would be considered a hero for not only for fighting but for for having brought an end to the war. Again, it's very hard to figure out what he was thinking to me. I just, I found him very enigmatic, and he himself was not a introspective person he was very. He did not think about what he was thinking about he just did things serve on the spur of the moment so I think it's always going to be a great element of mystery. Thanks, Jack. Okay, if everyone can stand for just one minute. I'm going to put some links in the chat box so you can go straight to our online store to put just Jack's book. And john Devano also has an announcement about the next lecture series program. Thank you Angie just before that I may talk about the next program. In my introduction I mentioned that Jack has appeared on c span. Yesterday I just did a Google search I put in c span Jack Kelly, and I ran across a talk he gave a while back on the Erie canal, called heavens ditch God, gold and murder on the Erie canal and I would highly recommend that you take some time to go back and take a look at it because I knew a little bit about the Erie canal but the amount of new information that was presented in that talk was amazing. So check it out just Google c span Jack Kelly, and you will find it. Our next talk is on St. Patrick's Day, March 17. And in honor of St. Patrick our speaker is Joe Bruchak, who is an anarchy poet. We're in the Hudson River Valley also. So let it not be said that the homestead just hones in on the Revolutionary War, right so it promises to be another very exciting talk. So this one also will be on zoom in February in March, come April we'll be back with our talks at the homestead. So thank you all for coming. John the talk in March is also half musical presentation is that correct. I believe. Yeah, it's going to be Joe and his son also are going and they're going to be doing some poetry apparently even an abnaki so probably with English subtitles I know we will have to figure out how that works but it promises to be a very unique and informative talk. So please join us on March 17. You'll get appropriate notices if you were here today. Thank you all for coming and I think we will, we'll sign off. Okay, thanks. Thanks everybody.


Okay, so I just wanted to talk about a patient that I saw in the neuro-optimology clinic with Dr. Katz. This is a patient that saw her physician because of some migraines and she was referred to neuro-optimology because during the exam she was told that her left optic nerve was swollen. She's 14 years old. These migraines have been going on for about three years and review of systems was negative except for that whenever she had migraines, she would also get blurry vision. Her past medical history and family history were non-contributory. On exam, almost everything was very normal. Her acuity, tenometry, there's no afferent pupillary defect. Visual fields and extraocular movements were fold bilaterally. External exam and slit lamp exam were also normal. The abnormalities though became apparent on the funnest exam. The right eye, everything looked very normal. In the left eye though, there was some nasal elevation of the optic disc and there was what appeared to be some anomalous branching of the vessels within the optic disc. This is her right eye and left eye on a funnoscopic exam as you can see, you know, a pretty normal looking optic disc over here and then some nasal elevation over here. Some asymmetry between the vessel branching patterns between the left and right eye. And so the referring physician thought that she had papillodema from increased intracranial pressure and so when looking at someone who might have papillodema or say an anomalous optic nerve, as far as symptoms go, there's no other disease process going on. The patient should be asymptomatic whereas someone has increased intracranial pressure. Most all of them have headache. Some of the very common symptoms are transient visual obscurations, pulse synchronous tinnitus, dyphelopia. On exam, someone has papillodema, they'll frequently have a central cut that is maintained throughout the disease until the disease becomes very chronic, very long standing. Vest sole branching pattern is normal in papillodema whereas it frequently is abnormal in someone with an anomalous optic nerve. They may have loops, trafications, and just increased branching. The optic nerve margins in papillodema frequently are blurred and so if someone has very, very crisp optic nerve margins, it's unlikely that they have papillodema. So it's thought that this patient might have some kind of anomalous optic nerve. So these are just some examples of different types of anomalous nerves compared with papillodema, morning glory, congenital tilted optic nerve, myelinated nerve fibers, optic nerve hypoplasia, optic nerve coloboma, and optic nerve drusen. And currently it's thought that this patient has bilateral optic nerve drusen. And so further workup in a patient with a suspected optic nerve head drusen. D-mode ultrasound scan is very good at showing the drusen because of scheduling and timing. That has not yet happened with this particular patient, although she has scheduled to have a B-scan ultrasound. OCT can be used to quantify optic nerve swelling if there is any. And it can identify some of the more superficial optic nerve head drusen, but it doesn't penetrate as deep as some of the other imaging modalities. And so it's hard to see some of the deeper drusen or maybe the posterior surface of any drusen. Allofluorescence, drusen are very positively allofluorescent, and so they typically show up on that. And then EDI-OCT, in addition to identifying optic nerve drusen because it penetrates deeper, you can see the structure of the drusen itself and see both the anterior and posterior surface of the optic nerve head drusen. And so this is just an example of not the specific patient, but someone with optic nerve head drusen identified on B-scan ultrasound. And so you see the drusen right here with the shadow behind it and the same thing over here. Again, we don't yet have the results of this patient's ultrasound. Someone with optic nerve head drusen identified on allofluorescence. Pretty obvious all of these bright spots right here are the optic nerve head drusen. This patient's allofluorescent, definitely not as obvious, nothing nearly as obvious or apparent as in this example right here. On the patient's right, there's these little areas of lightness right here that might be something, but definitely nothing real definitive. This is an example of EDI-OCT showing optic nerve head drusen on this mass right here. So it'll be lighter, I guess, on the image. In this patient's EDI-OCT, the patient's right eye, the patient's left eye, nowhere near as obvious as that previous example. Here on the patient's left, you can see the tilting of the optic nerve. You can see over here what might look like some optic nerve head drusen. So we're waiting again for the ultrasound to confirm the suspected diagnosis. So assuming that this patient does, in fact, have bilateral optic nerve head drusen and no other intracranial or ophthalmic pathology going on, we would continue to follow her. We would examine her fundus at each visit and compare what it looks like in the present visit with any previous visits and see if there's any changes. And then, similar thing, we would continue to monitor her optic nerve function with visual acuity, perimetry, and other tests of that sort and see if there's any changes, see if there's any deterioration, then might point towards some kind of pathologic process going on that is starting to pick up. That's that. I just wanted to say thank you very much to everyone. As I rotate here, you've been very helpful in specifically Dr. Katz, Dr. Warner, Dr. Crumb, and Dr. Joss in neuro-optimology. I've been very helpful in patienting, explaining these things to me and helping me out with neuro-optimology. Any questions about this patient?


Good afternoon, folks. Ted Rawson here in our downtown Hong Kong Studios, ThinkTech Studios, ThinkTech Hawaii, with our show, Where the Drone Leads. And this show is known by the people that brings on as guests, and we keep going increasing in our scale and scope of our guests every time we have a show. And I would like to introduce the guest we have today. He's in Reston, Virginia right now, well into the evening hours. And thanks, Brian Nguyen, for coming on with us from afar. And there you are in Reston, Virginia, wearing your aloha shirt. So we totally appreciate that. Happy beer, Ted. Thank you. Brian is the President and Chief Executive Officer of AUVSI. That's a term and the name we've used many times on this show. That's the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, not just local, that's international. This is the daddy rabbit of the unmanned air systems and unmanned surface systems and unmanned underwater systems, robotics in general, that are going on for a long time. And these guys are the ones who really set the stage for us, set the path and drive the future through advocacy with Congress and through assistance and rulemaking and such. Anyway, Brian, so much appreciate you coming on here after a very busy week. And tell us a little bit about the week, Brian. This is a fairly unique week, I think, in the White House. Well, it was and I can't think of a better week in memory. We've been working on a lot of different things, but this week at the White House with the, we co-hosted an event with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, OSPP, which featured a number of government agency folks that have been flying unmanned aircraft systems and a number of people that represent industries that are very eager to utilize this technology as well, like the electricity industry. And basically, you know, as we prepare for the implementation of part 107, we had the platform of the White House basically to say, this is a great technology. We have a lot of value that we're going to create for industry and for society in general, and there's still a lot of work to be done. So we convene much like this medium utilizing the internet. I think we got a lot of people interested. And then we retired, as it were, to the museum, which is one of my favorite venues in Washington, D.C., to do a demonstration with a lot of young people in attendance. And then we did some really hard work and breakout sessions to talk about what we can do to advance this a little bit faster. So it's a really, really good week. I dare say one of the best weeks we've had in our community from a policy perspective. And let me tell you what it looked like from the outside. Here we are, six miles away in Hawaii, and we had a representative from our unmanned air systems test range complex out of Alaska present. But what we kept seeing, Brian, was releases about every six hours on various media releases and such, and each one itself was really complete and really interesting in the subject matter it contained. The next one would top that, and the next one would top that. So like about Thursday, we wondered, is this ever going to end? What's going on here? Because there was so much change, so much innovation, so much creative thought, so much motivation to expand that just kept coming out of the media releases. And so that's why it's great you're on here because you were actually there and you saw what was like from the inside, and you can tell us, but from the outside it was just like, is this ever going to end? This is incredible. What's going on here? And if I can characterize this how I saw it from where we sit here, this whole year has been that way. The whole year of 2016 has seen more change and more advancing of the world of unmanned air systems than we've ever seen. I just think a lot about the big categories where things changed. Public aircraft ops, all the efforts that John Steventon and Steve Pants have been putting forth in order to generate COAS, certificates of authorization to allow public service agencies of fire health and police and such to use UAVs. That got expanded incredibly in this year with now with the blanket COAS. I saw the first one of those yesterday and I was astounded at how blanket it is. Then we got the educational release that took place at your conference down in New Orleans. And that sort of becomes a low barrier of entry to the Indiana educational system to generate concepts of operation and generate education in this domain. Now we have 107 came out about a month ago. It'll hit for real at the end of this month. The first time we've ever seen certification of UASs in a standard form, which is I think getting the attention of the world from what I understand in terms of such a well done job. Then we have this White House conference that you probably had a lot to do with putting together this week where business and government and research and the whole futures began taking shape in a way that could only occur at the White House. So what's going to happen next? In Washington we like to say it's not why it's why now. And as you point out there are a lot of things that are converging right now that are coming together. It's the result of a lot of really really hard work. So in some respects I think raising the visibility of this is extremely important. Giving a visibility to the good work that's been done, some of the folks that you've mentioned, the way this technology is going to be used. I mean I'm very excited about any number of things that we could talk about. First and foremost let's talk about the educational pieces. I've talked with Embry Real University. I've talked with Auburn University. I've talked with Atlantic Cape Community College. I talked to Sinclair Community College. All of them are spinning up really exciting programs to start training operators and not a moment too soon because here you've got groups like the Sinclair Broadcast Group and CNN and so forth all wanting to step in, utilize this technology as the regulations become available the permission to fly is there and of course our ability to provide very professional operators, folks that understand the airspace, folks that understand the platforms that they're utilizing, know how to implement safety management systems. All of those things are going to be extremely important to keep advancing the effort as fast as the technology is advancing. So there are many many different pieces to this and I can't tell you exactly what's going to happen next week. All I know is we've got a tremendous amount of work to do. We've got the momentum now so we're going to take advantage of it. You know that you just mentioned and implied something about the educational aspect that I haven't thought of and that's that as the technology and the ability to manufacture and now certify these systems expands we do have to have a trained workforce that understands that from a safety and an operational perspective and brings an aviator mindset into it and the educational domain be it high school, be it community colleges, be it universities, be it professional training operations, all of those are the places where this can occur and the educational interpretation where education is considered in the recreational domain which then opens up that the use of UASs in training programs in a great way and a low barrier of entry as I like to say I think is a is a great way to get that get that workforce and that interest going. I agree and I'm I'm personally I am an airman. I've been a pilot for 25 years. I'm an aircraft owner. Fly instruments in the airspace all the time. So I've been very gratified to see that the FAA has a they've they've backed away from hey you've got to have you know what at one point we're we were talking about you've got to be an instrument rated pilot to be able to fly UAS. Now we've got much more reasonable things you know coming into play here but as I went through the course that they put online for us part 61 certificated pilots I was also very pleased to see that they're pulling through exactly the same kinds of concepts that that that are very second nature to me and all pilots like pilot and command as a as a as a very serious concept of responsibility and accountability. We're just moving we're putting remote in front of that now we've got remote pilot and command but for those of us that aren't airmen and and there's a whole there's a whole host of of young people coming along. My son among them who's a firefighter who's been you know at a very young age was chasing grandma and the cat with you know with with an early stage drone but now these folks are you know they've got probably better stick and rudder skills than I do with the drone and and and yet they need to be taught the principles of airmanship if they're going to operate aircraft in the airspace with other aircraft. So this is really a critical moment in time for us not to get as I like to say and as my brother said he was also a pilot and said to me after my first landing in the aircraft he said don't get cocky right that was a good landing but don't get cocky. I kind of feel that way at the end of this week we got a lot going on but there's a lot of work to be done so that we take advantage we keep building this momentum and we execute the introduction of this technology in the marketplace as as as brilliantly as I think it deserves. And you know that leads to the the thought that goes through my mind a lot and I'm sure others who were associated with the various FAA state test ranges and we have one here in Hawaii we're part of the Alaska, Oregon, Hawaii, Pan-Pacific, Unmanned Air Systems Test and Research Center and our Test Resource Center and because in addition to the grand expansion on the economic side that was discussed at the White House and all the different parties like the Department of Interior and such you can use these systems later on outside that that conference the administrator of the FAA was identified and quoted as saying that that's good we can expand that but we really need the data we need the certification processes we need the methods of of measuring things we need the means of control and standardization we need all those things to go along with this economic expansion in order to have a circumstance the situation is controlled upon is going to get it right and that to me takes us right to the six FAA designated state test ranges so this from a selfish perspective can you say what you might have taken away from the conference in terms of additional inspiration to push those push that that work into those test sites yeah we we we kind of went behind closed doors as it were to to be able to use Chatham House rules as we say you know not not we weren't attributing things to particular individuals but we had government people in the room obviously industry people in the room as well as researchers and academicians in the room and we broke out into different groups and we're talking about things like what comes after part 107 you know what about UTM unmanned aircraft systems traffic management there was a whole a whole range of different things and AVSI under the guise of our foundation we're pulling those things together into a report to to that will be public but my takeaway from this is you know part 107 represents the least the lowest risk kind of flying that we can contemplate right now and that's a great way to start to the administrators point and we have a great relationship with the administrator he's been he's been really very proactive in pulling industry in and and we've developed a very very good collaboration between industry and the regulator you know we do have to base the more complex operations that we want to evolve into on data we need to make certain that uh that that as we're executing this technology to do whether it's flying at night whether it's flying extended visual line of sight or beyond visual line of sight in urban areas over people etc what we need to be applying you know we need to be data driven we need to be facts based on the way we're doing this the good news is that we're starting to fly under part 107 very soon we've got a vanguard of folks that are out there they've been flying under exemptions that are part 61 certificated pilots so they're airmen that vanguard are very sophisticated kind of folks and we've got the six test sites as you say to start building safety cases for the kinds of things that we're going to need to do to optimize this opportunity as we go forward and truly make the technology mainstream all of that's going to come together all of that is uh is extremely relevant and now strategic patients comes into play here at some point you know we can't do it all at the same time now we need to we need to be a little bit more uh we need to think about how are we allocating and and I think there are some things that the test sites can do very very effectively that probably can't be done in other places and frankly up until now if it weren't for the test sites in places where we've got the ability to fly more complex operations like why I think that a lot of that work would be going overseas and that's that's a fantastic testimony to why the test sites are are useful and are going to be effective in taking us in this data driven direction and you know in fact we're even looking at these test ranges now as sort of a not look at not like a geospatial definition of a ticket arrange but pretty much but since we were using operating under a blanket co-op that anywhere class to your spaces these test ranges become virtual they can they can take advantage of the opportunity to operate in different areas uh as the challenges are brought up so they're not stuck just like ever zero four space or something like that to a certain geospatial location it does allow us to spread out and and take advantage of the uh the different threats and and the environmental challenges and the topographical issues that are presented in fact here in Hawaii for example beyond line of sight uh doesn't mean the same thing as beyond line of sight in kansas which make me six miles here beyond line of sight could be 500 meters because you're over a cliff and so it's a it's a whole different perspective as we see things here so our challenge i think in the test ranges is to take the the economic and business interests that were evident in the white house workshop and associate those that can be addressed by testing and by extreme testing beyond the current limitations in the various test range areas and then generate ideas that can be addressed by the the companies and the foundations and such that are promoting uas operations and generate programs that then execute the data collection that the is needed by the administrator to support what the white house workshop generated yeah and i think you've got all the pieces that you need i mean let's take the utility sector i did some work with eco and an earlier earlier part of my career i know they're very forward leaning in terms of technology in many instances um you know being able to to utilize i'm imagining that you've got wind farms out there and and things like that so you know that there are ways that we can immediately apply this technology um utilizing those areas but i think what what the real game is going to be is trying to push the limits a little bit um because let's face it in aviation you know we're going to need some margin of error here we're going to need to figure out where that error is and we're going to need to learn how to correct for it very quickly and and that is really the the the role of the safety agencies is in whether it's automated vehicles and in nitza or the f a with regard to uas or the coast guard when it comes to maritime systems their job is to try and figure out okay what are the the good possibilities here that we want to try and we want to try and move toward and and then industry's job is to bring those technology solutions forward and demonstrate that i think the big difference between aviation before and unmanned systems today uh is that we're just not going to be able to specify the regulations in a prescriptive way the way we did before that's just not going to work and it would actually inhibit the the development of the advancement of the technology what we really need to do is be performance-based uh and and we're still going to be figuring out we talked about that a lot this week but we're still going to need to figure out exactly what that means part of that will be case by case basis under 107 we'll have the waiver process stand you know we were still figuring out exactly what that means uh but we'll know in in pretty short order here once the the regulations are implemented later this month uh we'll start testing that process but for things like you know how do you get from you know below basically class g aerospace up to class a airspace for some of the larger platforms that's where uh that's where i think we're you know we've got to have data we've got to have ways of dealing with it and um and and we need to the test centers i think will help us to move from uh accommodation in the airspace into true integration in the airspace and then ultimately uh we're evolving with the technologies so that even manned aircraft are benefiting from the scale that of the technologies that we're developing in the unmanned area you know a couple things you said made me think uh the aspect of the performance-based operations and uh certifications almost in what what i've seen i talked a lot of guys in the faa is as the 107 was being evolved and such and uh what's interesting to me anyway as i took it was that the historical use of public aircraft ops in manned days manned aviation days uh begat the operate the use of uas in that in that uh pao domain that i was that the trust that was developed on the manned aircraft led to the use of unmanned systems under public aircraft ops the experience in the uas with public aircraft ops was part of what informed the 333 exemption process to how to use uncertified aircraft in in operations the 333 as you mentioned the the you know 10,000 guys out there with exemptions uh actually in informed 107 to a certain extent it's all that that performance-based aspect and the trust that went with it so the whole system behaved in a trustworthy fashion and it was uh uh there were some extremes perhaps but by and large the system worked and i think that led to one of the things we've seen in the 107 that was a bit of a surprise is recall i think when the nprm came out for 107 there was or maybe it was the in the fAA's uh roadmap a couple of years ago there was going to be still the concept of a uh uh coa associated with a 107 on a certified operation that's gone it's been replaced by the performance of the pilot or the operator who now has the knowledge and the ability to operate in the airspace properly and therefore doesn't need a coa that's that's an incredible uh uh bridge of trust it's been that's occurred and uh so an interesting aspect is how do we continue building on that established bridge of trust and that is another thing that i think these the state test ranges can get into because you will have the human interaction you'll have the interaction with the existing airspace and so the ability to test this idea as to whether the trust can continue to work in that integration is is evaluatable really only in those test ranges yeah and i i completely agree i think i think that that process you know it has been really very very constructive i think the other element that's going to start coming into play here it is that the industries that are going to be utilizing this technology they're going to have their own safety concerns well beyond the way the fAA thinks about this uh i'm going to stay with the utility industry for just a second you know what's the most important thing with the utility industry well reliability comes to mind they're not going to want this technology resulting in a grid getting knocked out because somebody runs into a transformer or into a high power line so what are they going to require etc etc well currently they can't answer that question and and that's where this collaboration comes into into play it to great benefit because the industry itself needs to be responsive to the needs of of whatever the customer wants and the customer's requirements in some instances are going to be well beyond the safety requirements of the fAA and that's not unusual in aviation you know if i think about my aircraft i fly a single-engine piston high performance aircraft there are lots of pilots that theoretically according to the fAA are qualified to fly my aircraft but not my insurance company my insurance company would say oh i need you know 500 hours i need you know 100 hours and retractable gear complex etc etc and and and at least 50 hours in type and maybe 20 hours with uh you know or 10 hours dual time with an instructor so you know these additional requirements come into play and what i'm suggesting here is is that the element that we haven't had up until now and that i think will be really really critical in moving forward and particularly in moving beyond some bad experiences that we might have because we have those in aviation from time to time will be the support of those end-user communities they have an enormous economic incentive to help us help them they clearly see the benefits of this technology in some instances improving the safety of their operations um by getting people out of harnesses 100 feet off the ground and things like that so that's a phenomenon here that i think we're going to benefit from as well and and that's uh that is a really big subject getting the user to stand tall and state in terms that the manufacturers can understand what the requirements are that are needed in order for the system to behave in an economic and a and a good life cycle cost of life benefit to the company in fact you mentioned heco uh we don't have anybody from heco on however we have this little guy on the table here one of our little friends who's uh making video show up on the screen here i don't think people see that what camera am i looking at here okay you'd think i would know what this studio is all about wouldn't you but uh anyway uh if you were up at heco you'd probably see something looking very much like this these days and um and bigger but uh we're we're actually working collaboratively at the university with heco on where this is all going and uh took a bunch of researchers up into the mountains where the heco lines are and said okay what's it going to take to operate day in and day out up here we got rain we got wind we got winds here we got 40 knot winds we've got 1600 feet per minute climb rate on the coals we've got turbulence um and we got to sit 20 feet set back off the wires and automatically pursue down the wires with sensors that are picking up corrosion or other damage in the conductors and such um and we better better better be able to handle light rain we better be able to handle salt water intrusion there's a number of things we have to think about those other requirements that we have to work on and bring forth and have then the manufacturers and you through the universities start coming up with solutions to those issues so that's a fascinating part but heco is uh certainly a leading force out here and we really appreciate uh the the very senior and uh solid support they've got and the way they're very carefully proceeding down the path of making uh making good use out of these systems but you know um uh i saw a NOAA spec recently uh for shipboard operations of unmanned systems they wanted uh five years of a good life cycle operation onboard ship 40 knots is their wind speed as well of course arctic conditions as well as tropical conditions they wanted something like two to three hours per day uh operation for that five-year period if i do the math that's like 1600 days or 1700 days of continuous operation there's nothing more than the daily maintenance that is prescribed in the manual that's what they wanted they wanted a piece of gear just like a marlin hook you know something that you buy and it lasts for a long time and and perhaps that's where the change is in fact i suspect that that economic uh workshop you ran uh would have a lot of that themology coming out of it that is what is really needed and what's important in a in a truly surviving economic business with these systems and and we can't answer all those questions that all of those things you're emerging now which is why having the freedom that you're describing under those coas is extremely important we need to be able to demonstrate not just to the f a that we've got to handle on the safety issues we need to be able to demonstrate the customers help the customers develop those requirements with industry that will actually accelerate the adoption of the technology in some ways almost just as fast and because i think the safety requirements will be more stringent and we can meet the safety requirements once we know what they are and and you know at the end of the day it's the customer that's going to matter the customer is not going to allow us to do things that put their operations or their people at risk so if we if we can now we can get focusing on that i think we're going to be good and i think we're going to cease and really continue to see this momentum built that's great i mean the momentum is just what this is all about and speaking of momentum we have we've accelerated right through our time period we have a half hour show in days gone by we could have had 45 minutes and we're going to talk some more but we'll have to pick you up at a later time brian and you can take that aloha shirt and wear it on an airplane get out here sometime and actually sit here at the table where jim williams is set and gretchen west has set and a lot of other people have set in the past and but at this point we thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom here from this great weekend at the white house and i think we'll be feeding off this one for a long time to come with that i i i hope to come out in december uh when the foundation does a competition out in uh in oahu uh so hopefully i get a chance to sit there and and uh count myself among those very distinguished guests that you've had friday at four o'clock on the show outstanding brian win a ceo of a ubsi in reston washington thanks very much you can get back to the nightlife in dc now and we'll get on with it out here and folks we'll see you next friday