AUDIO-mp3  (link to WMA on Somervell County website-thank you to Michelle Reynolds and Brian of IT for the WMA) 

Here was the agenda for that meeting, including board packet

Rough Transcript: Present to court for perusal (Dwayne, Shane and Allen all attended training). Brought UAV to show features, will plug it in and show what it does. Will beep and jump. Flight camera-observer and a pilot, always 2 preferably 3 people. Pilot wears occulus. Once you put these on and look forward, wheneer you turn your head left, you can see on the screen, look down, cameras are moving with operator's head, also being project inside occulus so pilot also sees. Can flight by Point of sight, Ipad or occulus. Has a Go Pro camera on the bottom. Controller can switch between whatever camera you want to watch. Infrard (put hand on shoulder and let it build up heat)GoPro is high definiont. (Griffin arms but it does not fly). Full checklist to go through before leaves the ground, making sure props are not cracked, all components in ground station. Flies off 14 different satellites, station by where it needs to go by GPS. GoPro stays steady no matter what you're watching, so person watching after doesn't get drunk from watching video. Several antennas for transmitting information, good for up to 2 miles. FAA regulations require line of sight of pilot or observer. 30 minute batteries, smaller batteries on for more lifting capacity, can lift 6 pounds as it sits, cellphone, water, radio, drop it off for someone, 22 minutes. Larger batteries, can lift but cuts lifting capacity by 2 pounds, can run these a full 30 minutes before have to land. Chart with minimum battery voltage. Rate of ascent or descent by meter, velocity, satellite tracking, asmuth reading, height off ground, distance from home position. Flip switch will fly home, 5 or 10 minutes will come back and land by itself. 7000 watt power inverter in Griffin's truck to charge batteries. 15 minutes to charge. Thru flight check after landing, put on new batteries and put it back out, 2 minutes. Can set way points; tell it how high you want to fly and then go don't have to touch controller, tell it if you want it stop and hover, rotate, bank turn, can preprogram all that into ipad. Can also program, touch ipad with preprogrammed flight grids, can select the grid you want, will take off and go. Shows actual ground lay, so can preprogram over the river, if we're searching for someone in the river. Brian Jones on fire department also trained, all 3 plus Brian have certificates, 12 full hours of training. Privacy. Texas State law as "Texas Privacy Act" specifically geared towards UAVs. SOP (standard operating procedure) has the Texas Privacy Act. First contact is the judge, judge has to give authorization for it to fly. If pilot finds that weather conditions are not conducive, he can cancel, but solely up to the judge. If judge not available, SOP Dwayne, Sherrif or Fire Chief are all heads over this, then 2 of the other 3 have to concur that this is a mission necessary. 4 trained will act as observers, can also train additional observers. Watch voltage and air traffic to make sure no airplanes in the vicinity. For security reasons, FAA closes certain airspaces (like for President) so have to watch for that. Checked online before flown. Should not ever be in Glen Rose, we are in class "G" airspace by FAA. Can go up to 8000 feet can never be flown over 400 feet over the ground. Stays out of trail of private and commercial aircraft (private is 500 feet). Any UAV not allowed to fly over 400 feet, realistically anything over 200 feet cameras are no good anyway, so would probably be 100 feet or less, right over tree lines. Any restriction around nuclear plant? Comanche Peak doesn't want them flying around nuclear plant, going for a MOU (memorandum of understanding) in case of terrorist attack, etc. Safe limit of 21 and a half volts must have it back on the ground. If over a body of water will set itself down in body of water if it runs out of battery. (WARNING SOUND) Heat proof? 0 degrees to 110 degrees farenheit on ground. Discussed flying over wildfires won't hurt it unless you fly it through the flame. Can fly on heavy overcast day but don't recommend in the rain, wouldn't bring it down but could hurt the avionics. Under 15 mph wind fine unless you take it off GPS. Can go get coffee and a donut and come back will hold position with GPS. If take off with GPS and wind gust, will take off. Don't know why you'd want to fly it out of GPS mode. Home is wherever you start, doesn't have to have a specific position.New home, from wherever it originally took off. Lands within a foot of the square, with high wind gusts. SOP- 3 hours a month continuing training. Mechanics straightforward. Training shoudl be adequate. Other component is a thorough understanding of 463/423 of government code. Each pilot issued packet with that gov code, draft copy of SOP and also emergency procedures, what pilot needs to do to get it back home safely is lose connection. (didn't bring emergency procedures document). Living document, any changes would come back to the board, definitely go before the judge. Any time we come across something not in SOP that we need to address will go back and change the document. Also have flight log, any time it's flown, placed in flight log, who requested, date time, what it's for, and results of the flight. Requests by other outside agencies? FAA applied by COA (Certificate of Authorization) operates inside Somervell County. If another agency asks for it, that would be up to the judge to determine if it goes outside this county (life or death situation). Right now Sep 15 FAA supposed to come up with new regulations on UAVs. Word is that they are looking at doing away with all FAA regulations on anything less than 55 pounds. Would have to take a FAA UAV training course on safe operations. But right now, we're required to go take an FAA approved ground school as if we were going to be pilots. Asking for private ground school training course online $279 per pilot, Kings schools online will train 4 of us for the price of 3. Griffin has money in training budget to pay for this, asking if okay to take from training budget or from Comanche Peak grant. As of Sep 15, that will probably go away. Applied for a waiver, anythign that flies within 5 miles of any airport, privately owned, grass, paved, etc is an airport. We have 8 airports in Somervell County, only one that is still operational. Over last 8 years had 35 take off and land out of all airports, all but one are non-functional. Elio Brazos off 67 near CR 1003. 30 takeoffs and landings last year. Waiver requires you have a full pilots license if you fly within 5 miles of any airport, asked for ground school to be able to operate around private airporst, anyhing other than G class would be required to be full pilots. Lenght of ground school training, expiration? No. Brian (auditor) put on separate agenda to discuss where money needs to come from. Curtis. MOtion to accept SOP, Wood Second. Passes 4-0. 

Last post about this from meeting in 2014