The drone and advanced air mobility (AAM) industries will not succeed without having significantly more fidelity on low altitude weather. Current equipment, systems and standards do not provide this. Don Berchoff, CEO of TruWeather Solutions, has made it his life’s mission to fill this weather “data desert” by advocating for a different approach. In this interview with Dawn Zoldi, Don explains how, through the use of advanced technology sensors, expert analytics and a new performance-based weather standard, TruWeather aims to reduce weather uncertainty and keep advanced aircraft flying.
Dawn Zoldi: Why did you pick the drone and AAM industry as TruWeather’s focal point?
Don Berchoff: We picked this industry because it’s so weather sensitive. That makes it the best business case ever for justifying expenditure on new weather infrastructure. Most microclimates are not captured in our models or our data. We have been lucky for many years with the current aviation weather system that primarily uses observations taken at airports. The observations at the airports are highly accurate at that exact location. But even at the same airport, it may not be accurate 10 feet 20 feet away, not to mention where you plan to fly your drone or air taxi. If you talk to helicopter pilots, they’ll tell you that microclimates scare the heck out of them. Sometimes they don’t know what’s going on and have had several near misses due to a lack of accurate weather data.
Dawn Zoldi: Backing up a bit, what is a microclimate?
Don Berchoff: When I talk about microclimates, I’m talking about measurements below 5,000 feet above ground level (AGL), in discrete locations across the country. Currently, our system does not account for this. The government does two balloon launches a day at 77 locations. We have measurements at airports that come through the lowest 2,000 feet of the atmosphere. For the rest of the 97% of the country, we do not know what the real cloud height is.
Dawn Zoldi: Aren’t there satellites that provide weather data also?
Don Berchoff: Yes, and satellites are great. They’ve done amazing things for predictability. It’s marvelous that we can forecast that a hurricane is going to form over the Atlantic seven days in advance. That’s macroscale. Satellites do not help us with a microscale forecast. They can’t see through the atmosphere.
Dawn Zoldi: How is TruSolutions trying to fill the weather data gap?
Don Berchoff: We do this by collecting microclimate data and turning it into useful insights for end users. It solves their pain points and allows them to make better decisions, through our V360 software as a service (SaaS) platform, as well as professional consulting. This reduces the Weather Tax on businesses.
Dawn Zoldi: You actually trademarked the term “Weather Tax.” What does it mean?
Don Berchoff: I like to define the Weather Tax as the price Mother Nature imposes upon operations, whether real or perceived. The perceived tax occurs when people think something might happen, they cancel their missions, the weather event does not occur, but the company pays a price for it. Now, there’s some weather you can’t do anything about. But there’s also an area of uncertainty that causes weather cancellations and delays that could have been avoided. That’s where we aim to make a difference. We can help businesses get more flight time by having more certainty through better weather data and minimizing the Weather Tax. We aim to recover 30% of what companies would otherwise lose in flight time.
Dawn Zoldi: Can you give us an example of the Weather Tax?
Don Berchoff: Let’s say a drone pilot is 10 miles away from an airport and it’s reporting a 300 foot ceiling. The pilot is outside and can see his ceiling may actually be 800 feet, but he doesn’t know that for sure. Nobody, not even weather observers, can determine that without measurements. So the pilot cancels his mission when he could have flown.
Dawn Zoldi: How important is it to have accurate microclimate data for advanced aviation in particular?
Don Berchoff: The industry is moving towards autonomy and other complex operations, such as beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). Pilots are the best weather sensor we have. They’re the ones that pick up heuristics and with experience, they pick up patterns. They’re actually a thinking component of the weather system while on the aircraft. You take the pilot off the aircraft and everything’s unknowable, especially BVLOS. Without microclimate weather data, companies are eventually going to have an issue or an incident that will impact their risk management framework.That’s not to say business should not fly BVLOS. On the contrary, I want to help them do it safely. What we want to do is get more certainty out there so we can open up the airspace and get businesses more flight time.
Dawn Zoldi: How then, as a practical matter, are you trying to collect this low altitude weather data?
Don Berchoff: It comes down to having additional sensors and monitoring in the area.
We are working with partners to put sensors in strategic areas. Municipalities could invest in a sensor package to get local data on cloud height, visibility and other key weather insights, integrate it into our platform, and provide that information to others as a one-stop-shop. This would provide relevant data, unlike the METAR located 20 miles away, or a model, that doesn’t pick up the local microclimate. Models can’t pick up something that is not being measured. We have not been measuring microclimate. The models are based on estimates using airport observations and are not good enough for complex operations. The only way we are going to fill the weather data gap is with more sensors. Superior data comes from better data sensors.
Dawn Zoldi: Are you deploying more of the government used sensors at a lower altitude to get data or using new technology?
Don Berchoff: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and trying to get a different result. That’s what we’ve been doing in aviation weather for years by using the same kind of sensors. They’re expensive and not getting the job done even for general aviation and helicopters. TruWeather is using cutting edge advanced tech sensors. For example, at the NASA test bed down in Hampton, Virginia, we have deployed two scanning wind LIDARS. LIDARS can see dirt and dust, laser it and track the Doppler movement for wind speed. With this technology, we can see the winds up to 6,000 feet in a 20 km area.
Dawn Zoldi: I know government weather sensors are expensive. What’s the cost range for the sensors you’ve been recommending?
Don Bercoff: Not all sensors are expensive. For example, we could get a $700 wind sensor on top of a tower. That data is unimaginably better than what you’re getting from your app today.
Dawn Zoldi: Do you think companies will pay for this infrastructure?
Don Berchoff: Yes. I’ve done the math on this and amortized the cost of services across the millions and millions of operations happening every day. Take, for example, an air taxi company that flies 30 air taxi missions a day. I know the weather tax is going to be 30%. The company thinks that it’s going to generate $5 million a year in revenue with one aircraft. I’m confident it’s only going to generate $3.5 million. That’s because it’s losing 1.5 million to the Weather Tax. I can get the company back 30% of that with the right sensor suites. That’s $450,000 per aircraft a year back to the company.
Dawn Zoldi: What’s the return-on-investment (ROI) for local municipalities to buy a weather sensor or a suite of sensors?
Don Berchoff: The ROI for local governments includes more flights and safer flights that support the local mobility and the economy. It also includes funds back to the municipality from reselling that data to others through us. Small drone operators will be able to use the data. Large airports and smaller regional airport operators can use it. Air taxis can use it. Other verticals can use it. They can also have a cost collection from the NWS, which will buy data from third party providers.
Dawn Zoldi: Do you work with other weather companies to help provide an optimal weather solution?
Don Berchoff: We agnostically pull in the best of the best in weather data and integrate it into our system. So, yes, we work with other weather companies. People look at us as the uber weather integrators for the drone and AAM industry.
Dawn Zoldi: What will the cost be to operators, businesses or local governments that just want to have access to the data?
Don Berchoff: Right now, everyone expects free weather data because the government has provided free weather data for years. I always tell people that “free is not free” when companies experience a 30% to 40% attrition rate. Everyone is spending money now trying to work around the weather. People should want to pay for the data because it’ll make sense from a ROI standpoint. I’m very confident that drone operators will eventually only pay 15 cents per flight for this data because I’m going to save them 60 cents per flight. And as more people pay for the data, we’ll be able to drive the cost down.
Dawn Zoldi: As you roll out this low altitude sensor network, what types of data and related services does TruWeather offer?
Don Berchoff: Our V360 provides an end to end solution that fuses all the sensor data. It contains Go/No Go decision tools such as MissionCAST. There is an alert function, advanced analytics, and on top of that, customers can call one of our forecasters if they have additional questions. We help you determine what are the right decision points to make good decisions based on the science, to give you the best opportunity for success. We also will do a sensor gap analysis and optimization, to understand where the gaps are for any given mission, and then we make recommendations to fill in those gaps.