The Pilot Base

S02E01 Noah Lieberman | CEO of Coradine Aviation Systems

May 24, 2021 Pilotbase.com feat. Ben Hall & Dave Rogers Season 2 Episode 1
The Pilot Base
S02E01 Noah Lieberman | CEO of Coradine Aviation Systems
Show Notes Transcript

Season 2 is a go! 🥳
We kick this season off speaking to the CEO of Coradine, Noah Lieberman. Noah is an American pilot and software engineer, who founded Coradine back in 2003.  He's so passionate about aviation and has a real desire and drive to improve the aviation software industry.

We hear about his aviation background, how and why he started Coradine and what his plans are for the future.

"Where we're going, we don't need roads..."

3 months free LogTen

Ben Hall:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Pilotbase podcast. We're pleased to be giving you Season Two and we've got a great selection of guests lined up for the next 10 weeks. We're kicking the season off by chatting to Noah Lieberman. Noah started his career as a software engineer, and is now the owner and CEO of Coradine Aviation Systems. You probably know them best for their LogTen Pro app. But as you're about to hear, he and Caroline have big plans for future. We've recently teamed up with Coradine to create a live link between their logbook our pilot profiles, which you can check out at pilot base.com. Stay tuned to hear all about Noah his life and career are game changing integration. His plans for the future of technology and aviation.

Dave Rogers:

Noah, welcome to pilot base. How are you? You look pretty healthy. hanging in there. Thanks for watching. Yeah, yeah, really? Well, did you know you might be the first person that's asked me that in all the episodes. So I appreciate you. Okay.

Noah Lieberman:

All right. Guess you need to interview more polite people.

Dave Rogers:

That is not a slant on the lovely people.

Ben Hall:

Various podcast guests. How you doing over there? Ben? Got your plants growing? Looks good. Oh, yeah. No, it's becoming a bit of a jungle in here, isn't it? Yeah. Do you just put it on a slightly higher platform every time so it looks like you've taken this is actually a trade out. My wife's been doing a bit of housework recently. And she's replaced a smaller firm with this massive one.

Noah Lieberman:

Nice, you're gonna have a observatory roof that just opens up so it can get some lighting. I mean,

Dave Rogers:

if pilot base subscriptions go up, you know where the money's going.

Noah Lieberman:

nice bit of shrubbery behind us. You know, we've got going on there. Yes, I've got a few plants don't recall what variety. I have to admit my wife helps with that as well. She's the gardener. And then

Dave Rogers:

for those who are watching and can just see a messy bedroom behind me. I've got plants too. All right. Yeah, sure. shady. To see you're joining us from is it Portland today? No. Yes, that's right. Portland, Oregon. Oh, what's happening? They're

Noah Lieberman:

pouring rain at the moment. That doesn't usually actually.

Dave Rogers:

Oh, you're talking to two guys in midwinter in Great Britain at the moment. So you know, we can relate retail? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So looking forward to getting to know you today, the man that the pilot the business man. And so can you just give us a bit of background on you as a pilot? First is a good place to start? Yeah. Always, as long as I can remember being interested in flying.

Noah Lieberman:

While back my mother actually dug up an old book that I had as a kid when I first was learning to write and it's got the little like, fill in the blank, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up and I actually had written pilot in there just barely legible. And then I had my first flight in a DC three in Mexico. As a passenger, I was a kid have not actually flown to DC three myself, but I was quite the experience, I'm sure and anyone who's written in a DC three, it's, it's wild. And it was it was really fun. And so DC three just I guess, in case someone isn't familiar with it's it's an old twin propeller aircraft that was used all over the world still is in some places that are very durable, giant landing gear. And I think that's a tailwheel aeroplane. So it's sloped back a lot of the back and you actually climb in a door at the back and you literally have to pull yourself up the seats because the the iOS is so steeply slanted, you kind of like, fall into your seat and buckle in. And, you know, when it takes off, the back lifts up. It's it's quite exhilarating for sure. I just loved it. And I've been interested ever since then. And High School, like 1991, I did my first student flight here in Southern Oregon, where I was going to school and I think I've managed all of four lessons before the lawnmowing money ran out. So that didn't didn't go too far. I definitely enjoyed it. But reality sanken so wasn't able to pursue that. So it actually took me Well, I didn't get my pilot's licence until 2008. So it was a long training period, I always say did a few different stints of flying over the years but wasn't able to actually have enough resources and everything to complete that till 2008. So thank you to Coraline. That was a helpful boost there at the end. Finally got it done. And that was brilliant. Over the years also been very interested in flight simulators to sort of feed the The love of planes and I couldn't afford to fly everyone.

Ben Hall:

So did you? Did you ever want to be a commercial pilot? Or was it always just a hobby? Yeah, I definitely thought about it. I actually had my plan after high school was actually to become an aerospace engineer, very interested in space and rockets and aviation stuff in general. So I was looking at doing aerospace and was also in computers and explored that a bit. So that was definitely adventure with many twists and turns.

Dave Rogers:

So when you got your pilot's licence and your career went in another direction, which I'm really looking forward to talking about, by the way, you've already mentioned, Corazon will be going there next. What was it that made you want to keep flying? Keep being a pilot? keep getting up in the air?

Noah Lieberman:

Well, it's it's tough to explain. I mean, I suppose most I'm sure everyone has some passion or some thing that just exhilarates them. But yeah, I mean, it's even. Even just driving by an airport and glimpsing down the runway. It's just like, my heart kind of beats faster. And just kind of like it just calls me for some reason. Looking at aeroplanes, I have a good doing, like my old screensaver is just aeroplanes. And I just, I don't know something about just the magic of flying is just I had a superpower it would be flying. I just the idea of being able to be able to fly is just really powerful.

Ben Hall:

If we need to get you an ally aircraft, I think yes. Getting getting the controls of an aeroplane is a really sort of special feeling. It's like a really, like, it's like a freedom that you just yeah, experience anywhere else.

Noah Lieberman:

Yeah, I mean, you remember when you got your first car, there's the idea that suddenly you could go, you know, maybe not anywhere and but anywhere in the UK anyway, without any money to boat to go to. You can get that freedom that you suddenly feel of when you're young. And it's like, oh, I can only go as far as I have to take buses and trains and buy my bike or whatever. But that sudden, like just that opening up. It's kind of like that on that on a whole nother level. But that just that freedom move. And you don't mean, so it's like my favourite line from Back to the Future where we're going. We don't need roads. Yeah.

Dave Rogers:

More 80s film references, please, we can add that to the Top Gun reference that we had in a previous episode as well. But also, I'm going to start asking all the

Noah Lieberman:

I'd have to give some credit to Top Gun to certainly probably inspired a very large number of Oh, yeah. Yeah,

Dave Rogers:

there was a brief time in my childhood where off the back of Top Gun I wanted to be a pilot and then out of nowhere developed a fear of flying so that soon got washed, but that's gone. They see

Noah Lieberman:

some flight lessons is the best way to cure a fear of flying.

Dave Rogers:

I will put them on my Christmas list next time round.

Ben Hall:

Right day, this year, I'm going to take you up in an aeroplane just menu. And we're just going to cruise around the south coast of England, just me you and a sick bag. You're gonna have to force him to open his eyes.

Dave Rogers:

No, I'd love that, then that'd be that'd be absolutely incredible. We also have certainly will hold you to it. Also, I'm going to start asking all of our guests from now on if you had a superpower, what would it be? And I wonder how many would say would say fly? Hopefully all of them? Although it's a good question, although in visibility would be quite cool. Yeah, that's

Noah Lieberman:

there's a that's an interview question. We use a quarter and actually with the weather you would choose which which of those were the Would you rather be invisible or be able to fly as your superpower? Is there? Well, it depends on your company, but according to

Ben Hall:

your read by the wrong thing.

Dave Rogers:

Right then Cora dine, it's your company. You're the CEO. Tell us about it. And tell us about sort of what brought you to set up the company?

Noah Lieberman:

Yeah, well, I'd go back kind of to tell my entire life story. But the, you know, I sort of ended up going down. I ended up in computers and was working at a company called Sun Microsystems, which doesn't exist anymore, sadly, but they really kind of were the backbone of the internet for quite a while during the.com boom in the 90s and everything. I worked there for eight years and quite large corporation at the time, and I was getting rather fed up with sort of large Corporate bureaucracy and things being outsourced and just kind of feeling like my time was really just being wasted. And it just didn't, didn't, I wasn't enjoying it. And so I was really kind of wanting to go back to flying. So I started taking flying lessons again. Saturday it was it was just sort of a little bit longer version of the first story, in that I ran out of credit card room before I was able to complete it. But I had during that process, everyone I spoke with was had told me that, hey, you really need an electronic logbook, Asian started spreadsheet, get an app, you know, whatever, you need to keep that because as soon as I had the intention was I was going to complete my training and become a commercial pilot, I was going to change careers. And I wanted to, to really do that. So being a software I of course, obviously, I would want to have an electronic logbook makes total sense saves countless hours adding things up and made a lot of sense. So that was in 2003. And there was obviously before the iPhone or the iPad or any kind of mobile apps really. So I was big, still a big apple fan always have been in was using a Mac and there was no local software for the Mac. And I certainly wasn't going to run Windows. And so I made one. The first one was just for myself, it was just based on my us student pilot logbook. And it was actually a FileMaker database for anyone who knows what that is. And it worked for me and but I figured well, you know, there's gonna be a there's obviously other Mac users out there who are pilots and put it online. It's kind of shareware back in the day. I don't remember what the first I think I might have checked probably charged something I don't know. And almost immediately started getting kind of because of that was such a nice thing like Mac pilot. And thanks to the internet, it was like, you know, someone from Germany and someone from Australia, they were like, Oh, this is cool. But I need this other thing because my country this mic Oh, crap. Okay. So I tried to kind of read jigger things, and then I quickly snowballed into a completely unmaintainable mess, because it was just FileMaker was not designed to be doing updates and changing things ever. So that was when I kind of broke, you know, sat down and wrote the first native Mac App. And it was it was the first pilot logbook for the Mac. Well, I should say for Mac OS 10. There was, had previously been an old log book called I think, was mentor or something. It was purchased by Jefferson, and they then killed it. But it only ran on the older versions. So anyway, that wasn't the first on the Mac, but it was the first for Mac OS 10, which is the current sort of the major change that Apple made back around that time. So yeah, so that was that was the first iteration basically. And it languished? Well, I wouldn't say language it percolated sort of hibernated grew grew slowly as a side project for several years, well, ultimately until 2007. And in 2007, we had just moved to Portland. We lived in Canada for a while and we decided to relocate here and I was no longer working for son. And I have been doing professional graphic design, sort of logten cordain stuff was was maybe like 30 or 40% of our income, something like that, and the rest of us doing graphic design. So when we moved to Portland, I convinced my wife that it was good, good idea to just focus all my energy on Cora dime, and it was a big leap. We definitely didn't have enough for a while. And it was a I'm sure it's let's you listen to how I built this or any other kind of, you know, business thing. It's the same. It's the same story. People starting business really it was just kind of like working seven days a week, blowing hours and trying to do everything yourself. And I remember our first we went to infinity with Oshkosh, Wisconsin, they had a huge airventure It's a giant aviation show. So we were there in 2008. So you may or may not remember the iPhone launched in 2007. And we kind of had a sort of web a way to access it. On a phone that allows you to sort of sync some send some data to the Mac, but it was March because there wasn't an app store. So anyway, 2008, they launched the App Store for the iPhone. And it, we had the first logbook app for the iPhone, and we were at Oshkosh to launch it, which happened to be literally I think it was in July. So it was literally just a couple of weeks or something after the app store opened. For the very first time. You know, there's like 100 apps in the app store or something, you could easily find everything. very different than today. And that was amazing and crazy. It was my wife and I running the booth and my wife who was not a pilot or into software, trying desperately to help people who are trying to ask about it while I was frantically trying to fix bugs in the back of the booth release updates, like Oh, god, it's not working. And dangerous. Yeah, it was. It was a it was stressful. But yeah, it was crazy. And then I think I was just about because only within a year, we hired my first employee to help try to do take care of tech support, because I just couldn't do it all trying to do the right the software and update the website and do everything, obviously. and beyond. And maybe it grew quite quickly. And then in 2010, Apple launched the iPad. And it was really quite, I think within a year or two airlines started adopting it. And it's really just become the gold standard really for aviation's extremely reliable, lightweight, it's just been adopted and mass across the world for aviation as the electronic flight bag. So and certainly in general aviation as well. But pilots everywhere, use an iPad because it's unbelievably helpful in, in flight planning, carrying all your charts carrying just carrying everything you need really in one easy place. I would say that there's still there certainly still people who are just using paper and everything. But but we're definitely I think I can't imagine that there's any pilots that are not aware of the fact that that there is an iPad, and there are cool apps for flying on it. So

Ben Hall:

no, I was just going to ask you about the standard technology adoption curve. Where do you think we are on that with sort of electronic logbooks because I know tonnes of pilots still who are afraid for a better word to transition from carrying a book around in their bag to, you know, storing their data online? For a variety of reasons. So yeah, I was just wondering why you think we are with them? Yeah, it's

Noah Lieberman:

interesting. It's an interesting education. Challenge. I think there's still just a lot of people who don't fully understand perhaps, the security and advantages of using technology. And certainly, I think we can all relate to and, and empathise with their concerns or like, Oh, well, it's I can't I have to build relied on 100%. I don't want the battery to die or to crash or, or do whatever, which I think is particularly bad if you're on a PC or a non iPad, tablets that have a bit more problem. But anyway, just a smaller. No, but that the I think they've absolutely proved that they are reliable. But the I think the even bigger thing that we always talk about with especially specifically with logbooks is the fact that it actually is a backup, and that just having your logbook in one place, whether it's paper or electronic, is a bad idea. Right. So if something happened if you only have one source of all this data that is so critical to your career, I when we hear just the most heartbreaking stories of people whose bag got stolen and or their house burned down or whatever, and they've lost all of their flying history. And that is devastating to your I mean, it's just monumental if not impossible to rebuild that. And so, absolutely keep your paper logbook or even simpler. Log down lets you create paper log books you can print out your logbook anytime you like make as many copies as you'd like. And of course the same for the electronic it's click of a button and you can make a backup. Make a backup make a backup you can make as many backups as you want. You can store them in different places you can you know as secure as you want to be. You can have copies available. All over the world. But it makes it super easy to manage it when you use an electronic logbook, because you're inputting your data in one place. And then it's easy to print it out in different formats. super helpful if you happen to be in our global industry, people travel and take jobs all over the world, and logged in lets you print your logbook in the local country format. So that's also really helpful for interviews or different things like that. But I think that the adoption curve is, is definitely increasing. And and the more that people see pilots using iPads, airline pilots using iPads, they start to recognise that, well, if you know the professionals are using it, it must be good. You know, if American Airlines is going to buy 11,000 iPads for every pilot, it's probably you know, it's a pretty big investment, right. And they've gone through a significant amount of certification, it's actually insane how much work they have to go through to be able to allowed by the government to use an iPad in the cockpit. So it's gone through enormous amount of testing, because the pilots are relying on those iPads for their charts, for their manuals for checklists for all kinds of stuff. So it's just extremely reliable. So I think that that is becoming more and more recognised.

Dave Rogers:

security's a word you've mentioned there. What would be the risks? If, for example, Ben's flight logs got stolen? Why? Why would that be a problem?

Ben Hall:

When you want to answer that you want me to? So what do you mean from from?

Dave Rogers:

So I think you've you've both you've, you've both said it, like some pilots have got concerns about about security, if I, if I had,

Ben Hall:

pilots are too concerned about the actual security of the data, because I'm not sure people could do a huge amount with quick data, because it's, although it is personal, sort of data, it's pretty useless outside of the aviation industry. So I think it's the security in terms of not losing it is the problem rather than it getting stolen.

Dave Rogers:

And with regards to say, you did have a paper logbook, and you know, your house burned down, as you mentioned, or something terrible happened, and you had 5000 hours, I always use hours as a metric. I know there's more detail than that. But if that disappears, and that's your only copy is that you kind of done, people just take my word for it,

Ben Hall:

there'll be disaster, because basically, you every time you do a flight, you log that flight in your logbook, and you'll start with one training school. So you'll log a fly. And then when your training instructors like have to sign it and all sorts of stuff to make sure it's valid. And then when you do like a little flight check, you'll put like a little summary in there, and that will get stamped and signed off. So it's kind of like amalgamation of air schools and companies and instructors and examiners who kind of validate your logbook as it goes forward. So if you've just got a logbook, in paper format, and then you lose it, or, you know, it gets wet or something, you're in a bit bit of a pickle.

Noah Lieberman:

I'm just yeah, that's the real challenge to just, or one of the main challenges with attempting to recover from that would be usually you're talking most anyone who's commercially flying is probably got at least a couple 1000 hours. So quite probably, it's at least five years or more of history. And for me, it's like, you know, 30 years or whatever is that you can't even like I don't even have might even remember the name of the instructors that I was flying with if I didn't have my logbook, let alone what their phone number is or how to find them. And it's probably changed since then anyway. So being able to actually track down and get them to re endorse anything for you, there's really the only option and is extremely difficult. So you have this huge challenge because an airline or any buddy who's hiring, almost always the first thing they want to know is what's your total time or total time in a particular aircraft. And so you can say, Oh, yeah, I've got 5000 hours like Okay, great, prove it, you know, they want to see, they need to see that history to be able to validate this guy's not just saying he has the time. And it doesn't happen very often. But there's absolutely cases of pilots who completely made this stuff up, gotten jobs and have actually virtually no experience at all, and then have to be criminally process prosecuted. In fact, funnily enough, we're actually involved in a case in the UK against a pilot who was using long time and manufactured a whole bunch of his Lying was completely fake. And so trying to investigate that and validate, you know, is this a real thing? And how can you track it all down and all that sort of stuff. So your logbook is very, very important for your career. So there most companies are not very likely to just take it on faith, you know, they're gonna want to see the history. And so if you can't rebuild it, yeah, it could be devastating to your career.

Ben Hall:

There was a news report recently, I think it came out of Pakistan, where I think it was actually the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority said that up to 30% of their pilots in the country had forged hours. What? Yeah, it was terrifying. It was this huge news release, I don't know, out of interest unlocked, empro or Corona, and looking at any sort of verification type tools to sort of try and prevent that moving forward.

Dave Rogers:

Absolutely. Yeah, emotionally.

Noah Lieberman:

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things we can do that in that space. But yeah, we definitely want to find ways to help. You know, one of the services that we're sort of piloting right now is a more of a an audit service, where we would allow pilots to contact us and we would help them. This is more this isn't really to this isn't like trying to flesh out a fake pilot, obviously, this is to help a pilot find mistakes in their logbook and fix them. Because those can be problems as well. You know, if you turn in your logbooks to a company you're trying to get hired for and it's full of math errors, they're going to start to question like, is this legitimate? Why do you even add these up, right? is this? Did you fake some of this? What's going on here? So you want to be sure that all of those numbers and columns add up correctly, which over a long history is, it's a miracle, you're gonna have mistakes. So using electronic logbook is obviously another advantage in that sense. And it's pretty good adding up numbers,

Ben Hall:

it is a bit crazy that we're in 2021. And there's still no real way of a Civil Aviation Authority verifying a pilot's experience. I mean, it's they still rely on paper effectively, because even even if you got electronic logbook, most civil aviation authorities will want you to print it out and send it to them. Yep. And they just rely on sort of faith. But yeah, they've done that amount of time. Fine.

Noah Lieberman:

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, all of the Flying is certainly all of the flights are self certified. Well, all of them, I guess, you do have some that are examiners or flight instructors. But you know, over your career, 99% of the flights, no one is validating it. Besides the pilot, you write down what it is. And if you say it was one hour or 10 hours, no one knows, really, especially if it's older stuff. Nowadays, we've got electronic records of certainly commercial flights, and even many general aviation flights, especially if they're on an instrument flight plan, that data is being captured and recorded of this particular aircraft flew from here to here at this time on this date, and, and that sort of thing. So at least they could verify that that flight actually happened and was at least somewhat approached with the right amount of time, that sort of thing. But yeah, that's something that we definitely think is an interesting area to explore is how can we better help. Ultimately, we want to make it as seamless as possible for pilots so that they don't have to do any work at all. And their data just flows into their logbook, and they can then access it and generate reports and do whatever they need to do with the minimum amount of effort.

Dave Rogers:

Well, speaking of making life as easy for pilots as possible, there is a log 10 Pro and pilot based collaboration that you too can both Tell me and the listeners about who's going to take the lead on this one.

Ben Hall:

So I think probably from what I understand this is a bit of a world first. I mean, that probably sounds bigger than it actually is. But basically, we have launched an integration between an electronic logbook, so log 10, Pro, and pilot base, which provides other services or currently we provide recruitment services. So basically, you can dynamically link your logbook with pilot base. Every time you log a flight, it automatically updates your profile and pilot base, and then all of the functionality in pilot base, which has anything to do with the flight hours, then sort of work seamlessly. So we get we're building loads of cool functionality this year, but that will include sort of job matching. So if you you know you suddenly take over 3000 hours in your logbook, you're suddenly eligible for those jobs where 3000 hours minimum requirement and then also Moving on from that, with the application process. I mean, pilot application processes are a nightmare. I applied for one for a job in Japan once. And the breakdown of hours they wanted was absurd. They wanted like, how many cross country hours do you have at night? In an hour? Say 320? Or something ridiculous? Absolutely. But instead of manually doing that, we'll just be able to automatically sort of thing it all the way through from your logbook, to the job application. Super easy.

Noah Lieberman:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When if you don't mind me interrupting. I just wanted to add that the one of the things that we hear a lot in this sort of flow is that not only they want a lot of crazy stuff, these job applications generally take months, if not an entire year, or something of back and forth, and collecting data and doing different things and going through hoops and getting copies of your passport. And you know, it's just a lengthy and complex process. And then they have to review everything. And by the time they've reviewed it, you've been flying for three months, and your totals are all different. And then they want to see your totals again. And so then you have to go back and add them all up again and send them a new set of totals. And that takes two weeks. And so with this type of you know, when you're using log 10, and with this pilot based collaboration, your profile is just always up to date. So they can you don't have to do anything, they can just see your totals as of right now, anytime they want to look at it.

Dave Rogers:

Oh, well. So it's almost it's almost real time that if I'm a pilot, and I'm updating it on my iPad, as soon as I find a Wi Fi connection, I can sync that and any potential suitors can see my, my relevant information.

Ben Hall:

I mean, it's not even, it's not even a sync, it's, it's a live connection. So as soon as you close the log 10 Pro app pushes the data straight to pilot base. And just to be super clear, when you're in pilot base, we cannot change your log with details at all. So there's no, there's no corruption issues, or, you know, if you press delete something in pilot base, your logbooks not gonna be affected at all.

Dave Rogers:

Well, this seems like a great idea. I know. Genius. Oh, Pat yourselves on the back, gentlemen, well played? Well, there'll be people listening or watching this who are familiar with log 10 are not familiar with pilot base, but from or familiar with pilot base, and not familiar with log 10. So how do they do it? Is it easy? Is it difficult? What are the first of all, from pilot based perspective, Ben, what are the what are the key points for potential users.

Ben Hall:

So from pilot based point of view, it's super simple. So you can just go to pilot base calm, there's a big sign up button. So he click there. And you can just sign up with an email and password so you can get him really easily. And then take your time filling out your profile. In the logbook section, you'll find a button to connect to your electronic logbook. And from there, it takes you through a nice, easy flow can log into log 10 Pro, and it the connection can be done in you know, two or three minutes tops.

Dave Rogers:

And from a log 10 of site. No, I was gonna say from from a log 10 perspective, does anything change for your current users?

Noah Lieberman:

No, it's super easy, like Ben said, and it's completely free. And also, in fact, if you are new to log 10, you can get a free three month trial by signing up through pilot base. So by all means, check out log 10. It will save you a tonne of time. And you can get your profile connected up with pilot base and your totals go right in. So if you're already logged in user, you can easily go sign up for pilot base and your logbook totals will just sync right up.

Dave Rogers:

I'm going to go and get my three month trial when Ben takes me up and log my five minutes when he left.

Ben Hall:

In the remarks section, it's just gonna be blind panic. Yeah.

Dave Rogers:

And I'll also forget to cancel my subscription though, as he'll be making money off me forever. I've terrible stuff. Yeah, in terms of these collaborations, then Ben, if we can turn this into a bit of a pilot base hagiography. And this is exactly what you want, isn't it you want to make life as easy as possible for pilots to to have convenient lives to be able to find the jobs that they want, but also for the in potential employers as well as a two way street. And this is a sort of real step towards that. That user friendly nature that you want pilot base to be. Yeah, exactly. So

Ben Hall:

I think me And no, I've got really similar sort of mindsets on this. I'm actually going to Nick a quote from his LinkedIn bio. Oh, yeah. So this is what Noah said, are excited by change and the challenge of imagining and building the future. My goal is to revolutionise the aviation industry through design technology and services that make flying easier, safer and more fun. And I read that and I thought to myself, That's basically what we're doing to. So obviously, Cora Dinah focused on log 10 Pro for the time being, I'm sure they've got loads of cool stuff in the makings. And what we're doing at pilot base is trying to create sort of a centralised hub for pilots to basically manage their life. So currently, we're focusing on recruitment. But we're hoping to expand to basically an all encompassing platform where pilots that need stuff can just go to their pilot place platform, and, you know, find whatever they need to be doing.

Dave Rogers:

Invest now. free money to this address. Yeah, exactly. This is my, this is my paypal, that quote, Noah, just based on those few sentences alone, that makes me think that you've got big ideas. I mean, log 10 is already a really positive change and has been for over a decade now. But it does sound like you've got some some big irons in some some big fires, and you would like to do something absolutely huge in the future.

Noah Lieberman:

Yeah, I think we were always looking at new opportunities to help pilots, that's really our mission statement is helping pilots. And we want to try to make that as as, as long as it has been said that I said that, it's we want to make it you know, safer and easier and more fun. And, as I kind of alluded to earlier, we're looking at different ways that we can try to minimise the amount of work that pilots have to do, because I think, probably in most jobs, but particularly in pilots, that ends up being a lot more paperwork than you imagined when you dreamed of flying. I think for most pilots, it's the pushing the throttles forward and taking off is the part that they like the most not the filling out forms and sitting in airports waiting for things. So we want to try to minimise that part as much as possible and make you be able to keep up on those things. There's a lot of things that are very important with that that are difficult and not very fun to keep track of making sure that you get enough sleep and that your duty period isn't going over. And you're not breaking the law because you have to legally be within limits. And some of those things can be rather painful and difficult to track. And in most places in the world, interesting thing where you're legally liable, even though you're not the one setting the schedule. So you know that the airline could set you up for something that would break the law, and you could lose your licence. But you have to kind of keep track of it, and you're the one who gets in trouble. They may get in trouble as well. But But you know, you'd have to keep an eye on that. And a lot of pilots just let it go and figure out the company will figure it out. But mistakes happen. And when you're the one liable, it's nice to know that you've got your own system and tools for keeping track of all that and that you can be able to keep track of it because things get crazy weather roll then flights get delayed. There's people juggling lots of different things. And you know you want to be You're the one who's taking that flight and you want to be sure you've got enough duty to complete it safely and within limits. So if dispatch is saying, Yeah, you're good to go, like, doesn't look like it adds up to me. And I've been in that situation

Ben Hall:

many times now, especially when you get like a weather diversion. So I've been on a flight before where I was going Abu Dhabi to Sydney, so it's like a 15 hour flight anyway, diverted to Melbourne. So with that you're adding an extra hour or so. And then they wanted us like minimum rest in Melbourne before they you know, shimmy the aircraft over to Sydney. But there are basing on the original time schedule and all this sort of stuff. And it's up to me to you know, enact my licence legally. Yeah, and it's stuff like duty times is a night if you want to do that manually is a disaster.

Noah Lieberman:

Yeah, and so that's something that we work really hard to help log 10 be extremely flexible to support all the different rules around the world allow you to customise it and keep track of all those types of things on the fly while you're flying. While you're on duty, you can just open it up right to the plan tab and see all of your limits and currencies as of this moment. So it's super helpful and it also looks ahead at your schedule. So if you we support importing schedules from all over the world, you can import your flight schedule ahead of time and then you can look ahead monitor that for you so that your will notify you if there's any potential issues if your current flight gets delayed and you put in the actual times and then that says while you're scheduled to fly again in three hours, it's a good idea.

Dave Rogers:

Finally, then, what about you as a pilot any any plans to get airborne again soon?

Noah Lieberman:

as often as possible for sure. It's it's an interesting, I find myself torn actually and I do spend a fair amount of time in x plane my preferred flight simulator. But Mac because it doesn't have no co2 emissions. Low cost. Yeah, it's a challenge. I did own my own plane for a few years. And it was it was really fun, but ultimately just didn't feel like it made sense, environmentally or financially just just kind of a waste. You know, it's it's an interesting thing to do as a hobby, I guess. And I love flying and I'm avidly watching all the electric aeroplane projects that are underway and

Ben Hall:

I was going to ask Cardon getting into the electric aeroplane business.

Noah Lieberman:

Love to, we'll see. But absolutely, that is, the other piece of our mission really is log 10 is a tiny piece of it. But we do have a 10s of 1000s of pilots all over the world, using log 10. And that's less paper being consumed, you know, so part of our mission is to, we love flying, how can we ensure that there is a future for aviation, we need to think about the environmental impact of it, and how can we help reduce it and minimise that impact so that we can all keep flying and enjoy that amazing experience and service that allows us to travel all over the world and have delicious tomatoes in the middle of winter? And

Dave Rogers:

it's interesting, because people are talking more and more about that. I mean, we spoke to Dr. Kearns in the first series, didn't we and, and a lot of young people who are thinking about getting into aviation and becoming pilots, they go into university to study. And then they've got students on other courses saying, Well, why do you want to do that? Because of the environmental impact, it'll be absolutely fascinating to see, not only where it goes, but but sort of how quickly it goes in that direction as well. It's not going to happen overnight. But I'm very, very interested in in seeing sort of where it evolves and how quickly it evolves. But by the sounds of things not as not as interested as you, I wonder if that's something that the company, and

Noah Lieberman:

yeah, it's interesting, you know, in one sense, there may be the type of flying that pilots are doing may change, we definitely see anticipate definitely the move toward a more more flying short, small aircraft. There's a lot of companies working on small Air Mobility stuff, electric air taxis that allow us to help reduce pollution, but move quickly in large cities. I know, no one loves driving across London, the idea that you could, you know, hop in an air taxi downtown and be at Heathrow in 20 minutes or something. Lots of people would want to take advantage of that. And at least for I would imagine, at least for the next 1020 years, those are going to require a pilot. It's a very different kind of flying and it probably be a single pilot, but it's a whole nother type of flying. And there'll be pilots that have to keep track of logs and flights and all that stuff. So we'll see. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how it all evolves and how how we are able to transition to a sustainable future.

Dave Rogers:

I think that is a good note to end the podcast on Thank you know, and good luck to you as well, Ben, I never wish you good luck in business, even though you very kindly have me on his voice of this brilliant company of setup. Good luck, gentlemen. So this is this is launched and live now he asked people can head over to the pilot base and get stuck in straightaway.

Ben Hall:

Yeah, absolutely. So they can head over to pilot base. And you can either get your free three month trial log 10 pro or you can connect your existing account.

Dave Rogers:

Amazing. Good luck everyone. Let us know how you get on as well head over to all the socials pilot base HQ and tell everyone how brilliant it is. That's what we like, isn't it? share everything. Gordon? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Cheers. No. Cheers, Ben, I will speak to you soon, Ben and hopefully I'll speak to you in the not too distant future. Good luck.

Ben Hall:

Thanks for listening to the pirate base podcast. We'll be back next week with another great guest from the aviation industry. Don't forget to check out our new career platform@polybase.com and all the socials at pilot base HQ. Again, enjoyed this podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and rice review