<div dir="ltr"><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><div class="gmail_default">What you&#39;ve asked me is, with the best interest of the United States in mind, try to formulate a plan that lets us own or control the ingredients needed to make each one of these sub-assemblies.  It&#39;s a pretty straightforward request and I gave you my plan -- figure out how to build what&#39;s in the market now, then augment and maybe lose features in exchange for using design elements that are more controlled or inside the United States.</div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Some of those boards, the chips they use are not made in the United States.  For example, the Microhard modem is made in Canada.  What interested me the most about that one is they spent a lot of money figuring out how to avoid it from being jammed, but then they put it in a socket and brought all the little wires out -- that whole board still needs to be wrapped in metal!</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Then there&#39;s the Qualcomm chips some of these modules use.  They&#39;re made exclusively in Taiwan and South Korea.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">If you want, buy some of the modules you&#39;re curious about and send them to me, I&#39;ll take them apart and see what&#39;s under the hood.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">As to the 4-in-1 ESC, yes I&#39;ll try to tackle that too.  There are 3 parts on that board that are tough to source either domestically or from an ally:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><ul><li>FET</li><li>FET driver</li><li>Microprocessor</li></ul></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I believe I&#39;ve found manufacturers that aren&#39;t Chinese.  They might be in the Philippines, Indonesia, and some of them might be in the US.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">What you&#39;re asking me about is what you&#39;d be paying me for on the 2nd or 3rd stage -- it has nothing to do with the first stage, where we&#39;re figuring out how to crawl so that we can figure out how to walk.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">The fact that I can answer this question means I&#39;ve already been working on it for a while.</div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I didn&#39;t see anything on that website that we can&#39;t do, it&#39;s just time and money and making sure we&#39;re comparing apples to apples -- they use some slippery words.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I&#39;ve been making stuff like this for the past 30 years.  Either someone hands over their IP for me to lay out, or they come to me asking me to put my IP in.  I&#39;ve worked on things far more complicated that I can&#39;t even talk about, I&#39;ve worked on proof-of-concept things where money didn&#39;t matter so long as it worked.  I&#39;ve been in space, in planes, in submarines, in missiles, nuclear power plants, spy balloons, refrigerators, elevators, furnaces, cash registers -- I could keep going.<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Trying to figure out how to help you without spinning my wheels.  I thought I laid out a detailed plan.  You said you wanted to build a facility to assemble stuff, I told you I could have stuff for the facility to assemble.  I&#39;m familiar with the entire process of how to fabricate a circuit board, put components on, and everything in between.  I&#39;m familiar with manufacturing floors and every aspect of software and documentation you&#39;ll need in order to build a product -- which unfortunately includes ISO and AS9100 and MRP systems.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I hope this answers all your questions.  If you have any specific board you want me to look at, buy it and send it to me.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><div class="gmail_default">I&#39;m a little lost as to what you guys want -- I thought you wanted to be able to build the electronics and have a drone that is US-based, or at least have a plan to get the ingredients, and I seem to be all over the place at this point.</div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default">I&#39;ve been working on this with you for months.  A few weeks back you said we&#39;d be moving in a few weeks.  I stopped pulling in work and finished what was on my docket so I wouldn&#39;t be double-booked.  Here we are, almost a month later, and I don&#39;t know what we&#39;re doing.</div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><span style="font-family:&quot;courier new&quot;,monospace">Regards,</span><br></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="courier new, monospace">Thomas Pownall</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"><br></font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">CADX Services, Inc.</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"><br></font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">Tel: 585-624-1491 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