David and the drones

He’s a self-described “mad scientist” based in Gisborne building drones that are operating far beyond the edge of existing commercial models. He has a patent pending for a drone that is driven by an RC jet engine, powering modified Formula One alternators, that may have a payload of 160kg and a flight time of three to four hours. 

David Drummond is Scottish by birth, spent his formative years living in London, has lived in the US and moved his family to Gisborne in 2013 to be closer to his mother and bring his kids up in a safe part of the world. 

He dropped out of school in the fifth form, was a trained ballet dancer working on the Tribe as an extra and also spent time as an extra for the Lord of the Rings Two Towers. He grew up hard, got himself into trouble as a juvenile, ran a bar in Wellington, and has a passion for street racing and sold his race car to finance drone development.  

His mother told him early on that “when you work for someone else you make them wealthy,” which drove him into the entrepreneurial channel. 

His first business was Biotech Security, and it poured money into responding to the “SmartGate” tender that Customs put out many years ago. When it didn’t win, the company folded. 

UA Systems is his latest venture and it’s fascinating. It is in startup mode and looking for funding from the right people. The first product is tongue-in-cheek titled “SkyNet” and looks to provide high-speed wifi and cellular coverage in places that otherwise don’t have it. 

Gisborne Net has a wireless Internet service that by land mass, covers over 20% of New Zealand. Its fixed microwave point to point allows remote communities and farmers relatively fast internet.

Drummund & Drone. The Scottish expatriate has run an experimental flight mounting a Vodafone SureSignal (essentially a mini cellsite) to a drone. Drone-borne wi-fi or cellular service could be used for remote areas or the likes of sports events where there's a sudden demand for bandwidth.

The"mad scientist's SkyNet” drone prototype has been using that network to drop internet access and cellular services into places where they just couldn’t otherwise exist. Gisborne is one of the remotest cities in New Zealand because it is blocked by hundreds of kilometres of harsh land including the Ureweras.

“SkyNet” works by putting a microwave transmission dish on the top of a massive drone, while providing a two-channel high-speed wireless connection under the drone that covers an area on the ground. The dish on top connects to Gisborne Net’s services, and cellular and internet access is painted across a particular geographic area, for example, a road or construction crew working on a specific site. 

Considering the physics required to do that, what Mr Drummond has achieved is significant. The drone has to remain in a very particular place, alter the angles of both microwave transceiver (which must align with fixed stations up to 100 km away), and the wifi equipment, in all weather. 

Here’s the amazing thing. From conception to reality, it took about a month to develop the prototype. 

I asked Mr Drummond what it was he needed to grow. “Capital.” Like a lot of startup businesses, he’s taken his money about as far as he can. He also knows that he isn’t a CEO, a salesman, or a CFO. “I don’t want to be CEO,” he told me, “I want to be the CTO that designs and builds the technology and I need others to do that administration work for me.”

Gisborne is remote and has disadvantages as well as advantages for high-tech startups. David is coy about the support from local government but I detect a hint of disappointment. It is my experience with Gisborne that it funds legacy, family-owned companies that, given automation and international competition, are likely to be redundant in a few years. 

I put that to Mr Drummond but he was politic about it, “The town is having trouble sustaining itself and it may need to consider the best place to invest the funds that it does have available.” I asked David if he thought that the local body in Gisborne was making itself redundant. He wouldn’t comment. “This could be a Silicon Valley” was the only response. 

From an experimental flight perspective, Gisborne is well-placed. UA Systems works with the local air traffic control in a way that would be far more challenging in larger centres. “I can ring them up on short notice, file a flight plan, have a discussion, and just get on with it.” Couple that with the fact that Gisborne has some of the best weather in New Zealand, then flying days are increased over say, Wellington. 

UA Systems suffers from the “Gisborne Gold Effect.” That being that local businesses often don’t support the local industries in their town. Sunshine Breweries, which makes Gisborne Gold (a good lager), sells almost nothing in Gisborne but has a huge following around the rest of New Zealand. It’s a common problem with high-tech companies in the country. 

“I get work in Samoa to do 3D mapping with my drones,” Mr Drummo0nd says “but I get almost no local work.”

It is interesting that Gisborne has some of the leading edge tech companies in New Zealand and is not well supported by the local legacy industries and local government. A wireless network that covers over 20% of the country, a drone industry that is touching areas that I have seen but cannot comment on for commercial reasons, to Rocket Lab, which is building a launch platform out of Gisborne, and other innovative products. 

A source tells me that Gisborne is missing a large slice of the high-tech industry because of its backward thinking. “Why would they spend millions on an old sawmill when the local high-tech industry could use that money to boost an industry that could potentially be worth hundreds of millions?” was one response. 

It’s a problem that I see across New Zealand. While organisations like the Callaghan Institute and other funders are available to release research and development capital, anecdotal feedback is that they are difficult to work with and slow. “It’s easier to get capital from international sources than New Zealand,” another source told me. 

Whatever the answer is, the mad scientist in Gisborne has patents pending, ideas coming out of his head at a great rate of knots (including bionics), and is someone that the industry needs to foster. 

IT consultant and blogger Ian Apperley posts at Strathmore Park.

Get full access to the NBR Rich List 2016, released July 28, by claiming your free 30-day trial to NBR ONLINE premium content at NBR.co.nz/free