OFF PAGE ONE
Saturday, October 21, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 11A
RANGE: The state has invested $1.7M financial package in the UAS range
Continued from 1A
check processing center was
acquired from Community
Bank and started operations
in July. The city used the
proceeds from a $1.7 million
financial package from the
state to outfit the building
with the latest technology.
Its decor dominated by
pictures of sun-kissed drones
in mid-flight, the center acts
as the headquarters for the
UAS range. Range Manager
Darryl Abling said the
building is an upgrade over
the asbestos-laden offices at
the Eastern Oregon Regional
Airport.
Chrisman said the big
revenue generator for the
center was the command
room, a space almost entirely
comprised of desks and
computer monitors. From the
command room, customers
like
Pacific
Northwest
National Laboratory can
operate their UASs as they
run test operations.
The command room
is powered from a nearby
server room, where the whir-
ring machinery transmits 10
gigabytes of information per
second. That kind of speed
is necessary — Abling said
a 10-minute test can transmit
100 gigabytes of information
to the operators below.
If a customer uses
the center’s antenna, the
command center can handle
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Engineer Steve Lawn explains how he can design and build hardware onsite at the
Pendleton UAS Range Mission Control and Innovation Center on Friday in Pendleton.
flights within a 5-mile radius,
but the radius is practically
limitless if customers use
their high speed internet
connection, command center
manager Steve Lawn said.
The incubator
The “innovation” part of
the center is an incubator for
new tech businesses, a space
with low rent and access to
the center’s various equip-
ment.
The incubator’s only
current tenant is Digital
Harvest,
the
Virginia
company Lawn used to work
for before he was hired by
the test range.
Digital Harvest is using
the incubator to develop its
Remote Operated Vineyard
Robot, a remote-controlled
vehicle that resembles a golf
cart with a robot arm that’s
being designed to prune
clusters of wine grapes.
The vehicle’s develop-
ment is being aided by two
Pendleton High School
interns who are learning the
ropes in exchange for expe-
rience. Lawn said interns
from the high school and
Blue Mountain Community
College figure prominently
in the incubator’s future.
“Hopefully, (businesses
will) move into the airport
industrial park and take
interns with them,” he said.
Customers can use the
3-D printers as a part of the
testing process. For instance,
if they want to modify a
propeller on their drone,
they can quickly produce a
propeller with the printer and
put it into the field.
In the meantime, the
center has used the 3-D
printers for smaller projects
like a dropping mechanism
for the Umatilla County
Sheriff’s Office search and
rescue drone and a custom-
made splint for a woman
recovering from arthritis.
If a customer wants to see
how a modification looks
without actually making
it, they can use the virtual
reality room to get a full
three-dimensional
model
of the vehicle that can be
inspected up close.
As Lawn continued to
demonstrate the material, he
switched to rendering of three
maps that show the air spaces
of Pendleton, Portland and
Seattle. Lawn said he used
the maps to show a class of
farmers how air space works.
During a visit to Pend-
leton Thursday, the Oregon
State Aviation Board talked
with Chrisman about using
virtual reality to simulate the
effect a wind turbine would
have on a pilot descending
into an airport.
The stakes
All of these investments
into the UAS range need to
pay off or the city could face
some consequences.
On top of the $535,000
the city has already invested
into the UAS range, the
biggest investor has been
the state and its $1.7 million
financial package, which was
used to build the command
center and a hangar currently
occupied by Airbus.
Almost 40 percent of the
package is already a loan,
and if the range isn’t able to
generate 130 jobs by 2020,
another 30 percent of the
package will revert from a
grant to a loan.
Additionally, the city’s
auditor is also pushing
the city council to adopt a
payment plan for the $2.5
million in internal debt the
airport has accrued over the
past two decades.
Although Abling and
Lawn are the test range’s
only full-time staff members,
Abling said he’s documenting
all the hours customers are
putting into UAS testing,
which can be used to count
toward full-time jobs.
Additionally, the growth
at the test range has created
more supply than demand as
customers ask for more space
than there is available.
“You have to have hotel
rooms if you want someone
to stay in town,” Chrisman
said.
He added that the airport
is encouraging customers
to privately develop storage
space to help alleviate
demand.
———
Contact Antonio Sierra at
asierra@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0836.
APOLOGY: Council ‘not in a position’ to remove a fellow councilor from office
Continued from 1A
Full statement from the city of Echo
comment. The Facebook
comments
in
question
happened on the Facebook
page for “Kumu Hina,” a
documentary about a trans-
gender Hawaiian woman.
Nakapalau argued with
filmmaker Joe Wilson about
transgender rights, culmi-
nating in his comment about
spitting on Wilson’s grave.
The comment has since been
deleted and Facebook shows
Nakapalau edited another
part of the conversation to
remove profanity.
Thursday’s
meeting
started with public comment
from Vickie Read of Parents,
Families & Friends of
Lesbians and Gays. Read,
who is from Pendleton, said
if the city does not publicly
condemn
Nakapalau’s
words that could imply other
city leaders support the ideas
he expressed.
Read said she regrets her
own ignorance in years past,
when her son, who was 17 at
the time, told her he was gay
and she responded by saying
he didn’t fit the stereotypes
she had grown up with and
so it wasn’t possible for him
to actually be gay.
“He said, ‘Mom, why
would I choose to be
something people hate?’”
she said. “I realized he was
right.”
She said she felt like the
world had also grown more
tolerant in the years since,
but reading about Nakapa-
lau’s comments gave her the
realization that “we have not
moved on.”
Jenny Sullivan of Herm-
iston also spoke up, saying
she couldn’t imagine a gay
person wanting to move to
the area after reading the
comments.
“I’m absolutely disgusted
and think any self-respecting
council would throw him
off,” she said.
After
the
council
addressed agenda items,
Harris said he had not been
able to find any sort of policy
about Echo councilors’
speech or social media use,
and proposed that the council
come up with an ethics
statement and social media
policy to provide guidance
for any future incidents, and
also that the council issue an
apology.
City administrator Diane
Berry said she had brought
examples of such policies
before the council in the past
and they had not expressed
interest in adopting them, but
she could bring them forward
again.
She
cautioned,
however, that cities are much
more limited on what they
could do to an elected offi-
cial versus a city employee.
City attorney Bill Kuhn said
the council was “not in a
position” to remove a fellow
councilor from office, but
the council could ask for an
apology from Nakapalau or
“The Echo City Council would like to extend its sincerest apology to those who were
offended by comments made by a council member in a Facebook dialog reported by the
East Oregonian. Comments of individual council members on their personal social media
accounts do not have any endorsement or approval of the council as a whole nor do they
represent city policy. The City would never endorse or approve any statement that disparag-
es any person because of his or her race, ethnicity, religion, age, sex, or sexual orientation.
Further the City of Echo has never taken any action or set any policy that was in any sense
prejudicial or biased toward a class or group of people.
The city council is made up of elected volunteers who donate their time without any
form of compensation and who have rights like other citizens such as freedom of speech.”
Staff photo by Jade McDowell
A sign on the door of the Buttercreek Coffeehouse and
Mercantile in Echo states people of all sexual orienta-
tions are welcome.
post something on their own
Facebook pages.
Harris said he wasn’t
trying to remove Nakapalau
from the council but did
think they needed to send a
unified message.
“Something that goes to
the public that says we’re
dealing with it the best we
can,” he said. “I’m saying
we stand up and apologize
and say we’re doing some-
thing to fix it.”
Pam Reese, a Main Street
business owner who was
present at the meeting, said
in an email Friday that a
public apology is the “least
the council could do to send
a message that Echo is an
inclusive community.”
“It was mystifying to
watch a group of elected
officials struggle to under-
stand how to do the right
thing about the hate speech
of one of its members,”
Reese said.
She said that while she
supported an apology,
she thought it would be
more appropriate to take a
stronger stand by calling
for Nakapalau’s resignation.
She and a few other business
owners have placed signs on
their door stating that they
welcome all races, religions,
countries of origin, sexual
orientations and genders in
response to the controversy.
“We stand with you.
You are safe here,” the sign
states.
In 2014 Echo School’s
student government presi-
dent was Zach Christensen,
an openly gay senior.
Christensen, who lives in
Stanfield, said while he was
going to school in Echo he
did receive pushback from
some adults on a proposal
to start a Gay-Straight
Alliance chapter. But the
chapter was approved, and
he said friends, classmates,
family and members of his
church from the area were
mostly supportive, despite
Echo being a small, largely
conservative town.
He said he feels
Nakapalau is entitled to
express his opinions. But he
also said Nakapalau should
realize that the consequence
may be a backlash from
people who disagree with
his views.
“There (are) LGBT youth
in Echo and they probably
heard that by now and it
does affect them, so I think
it would be good for them
to hear an apology,” Chris-
tensen said, “but I think it
would make more sense for
him to make the apology.”
Harris has made a post
apologizing for Nakapa-
lau’s comments on his own
Facebook page, and told
the East Oregonian Friday
he couldn’t speak to what
other city councilors were
thinking but he hopes any
hesitation that happened
Thursday stemmed from
“a lack of knowing what
to do.”
“It’s not the mistakes we
make that define us, it’s how
we move forward from our
mistakes,” he said.
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at jmcdowell@eastorego-
nian.com or 541-564-4536.