Pilots of the Caribbean Podcast
The Pilots of the Caribbean podcast is a weekly show about drones and the people that use them for fun, research or business in the Caribbean. In each episode, we'll cover a wide range of topics, including: How to use drones for business, fun, and research. New business opportunities in the drone industry. Regulatory changes affecting drone pilots. Exciting ways to take your interest in drones to the next level. We'll also feature interviews with drone pilots from around the Caribbean, who will share their stories and insights on how they're using drones to make a difference, make money, or just have fun. Whether you're a drone pilot, a business owner, or just someone who's interested in learning more about drones, Pilots of the Caribbean is the perfect podcast for you. So tune in every week for your dose of drone news, interviews, and insights. Subscribe today and never miss an episode!
Episodes
Genevieve DeCambra spent over a decade building Suncor Energy's enterprise drone program from a two-person side project into one of the largest in North America, running more than 4,000 missions a year and generating over 150 documented use cases. Now the founder of Nest Robotics and a board member of Canada's Aerial Evolution Association, she joins Alan Gabriel to break down what it actually takes to get leadership buy-in for dron...
Andrew Ashur never touched a robot before his junior year at Davidson College, where he watched a window-washing crew get thrown around by wind and decided there had to be a better way. Nine years, a $12 soldering iron, and $34 million in funding later, Andrew is the founder and CEO of Lucid Bots, and his team's Sherpa drone puts people on the ground instead of lifts, ladders, and scaffolding. Alan Gabriel talks with Andrew about t...
Stuart Smith spent decades touring arenas as a guitarist for the band Sweet before COVID collapsed his music income and pushed him into drones. Today he runs The Droning Company, a subscription platform connecting thousands of US drone pilots with paying work, without taking a cut of their earnings. Stuart breaks down how his no-commission model works, why niche gigs like ash scattering and gender-reveal flights can pay $500 a sess...
This month's Caribbean drone news: Barbados stands up a new multi-role drone unit spanning defence, disaster response, and agriculture. Antigua and Barbuda's Cabinet weighs a national BVLOS security network amid rising gun crime. And out of Washington, a Section 232 tariff proclamation and an FCC proposal to redefine "military-grade" drones could both reshape what Caribbean operators pay for thermal, LiDAR, and heavy-lift equipment...
Derrick Annan built a drone survey business in Ghana, then used one certification to expand into four more African countries. As Co-Founder and CEO of Axis Drone Surveys, Derrick grew the company from a single survey job into operations across Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Tanzania, riding on West Africa's ECOWAS framework for cross-border recognition. Alan and Derrick get into why Ghana's regulators moved fast once Zi...
Levi Hinds, better known across Trinidad and Tobago as DroneGuyTT, didn't set out to become one of the the Caribbean's most recognized FPV drone pilot. He wanted to be a commercial pilot, couldn't afford it, and found FPV instead, crashing his first drone before it even cleared the yard. A decade later he's flown Shal Marshall music videos, Tobago's Hill Climb, and enough Carnival trucks to lose count.
In this episode, Levi and ...
As Director of CERMES at UWI Cave Hill, he's spent years watching Caribbean drone policy lag behind Caribbean drone practice, and he's doing something about it. In this conversation, Alan Gabriel talks with Professor Yawson about how CERMES built one of the region's earliest drone programs around monitoring sargassum strandings, why "banned" is the wrong word for Barbados' cautious permitting process, and how the Caribbean Dr...
This month on Caribbean Drone News, Jamaica picks up hardware on two completely different fronts. Prime Minister Andrew Holness accepted the 2026 Esri President's Award for the National Drone Response that mapped Hurricane Melissa in real time, while Jamaica's Drone Soccer team came home from South Korea with a fifth place finish and a funding model worth studying. DJI also quietly flew its first cargo eVTO...
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Brian Smith episodes - Episode 1 | Episode 2
The Caribbean drone industry had a big June.
In this month's Caribbean Drone News, Alan Gabriel covers four stories from Ja...
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Matt Collins has spent the last year learning the commercial drone industry from the inside — as the man who shapes the program at Commercial UAV Expo and runs editorial at Commercia...
Ershad Mahamad walked away from a 20-year career maintaining aircraft for Caribbean Airlines and Bombardier — and came home to Guyana to build the country's first commercial drone company. What followed was five years of regulatory groundwork, ExxonMobil certifications, 12-subject training programmes, and a 31-person operation covering agriculture, oil and gas, mining, and now drone delivery.
In this episode, Ershad breaks dow...
Manoel Coelho has built what most drone founders only talk about: a commercially operating delivery network flying in 14 countries, powered by aircraft his company manufactures and never sells. As CEO of Speedbird Aero — Latin America's first BVLOS-certified drone operator — Manoel walks Alan through how a telemedicine startup in Arizona became the company powering the Royal Mail's first permanent UK drone service and t...
Discover how one global network is quietly shaping the future of drones, robotics, and AI across the entire energy industry — and why the Caribbean is more connected to this movement than you might think.
Sean Guerre, Executive Director of the Energy Drone and Robotics Coalition (EDRC), sits down with Alan to trace the organisation's journey from a 150-person event to a global network of over 20,000 professionals and 200+ ener...
From basement beginnings in Hungary to drones flying in 25 countries — this week's episode is for anyone who believes that the future of agriculture and infrastructure is aerial, and that Europe has a seat at the table.
Alan sits down with Károly Ludvigh, CEO and co-founder of ABZ Innovation, a Hungarian company that got fed up with poor-performing spray drones and simply decided to build their own. What started as a precision...
Turn a toy into a career — James Tobon of Drone Training School USA breaks down exactly how that transformation happens.
James Tobon started with a Christmas gift drone and turned it into one of the most recognised drone training operations in the United States. In this episode, he shares how he built Drone Training School USA from scratch, why professional certification matters more than ever, and how his school is now traini...
After Hurricane Melissa, one Jamaican organisation stepped up to coordinate 26+ drone pilots and nearly 30 international organisations in what may be the largest drone disaster response effort in history. Here's how they did it — and what they're building next.
Dr. Valrie Grant, founder of Jamaica Flying Labs and Geotech Vision, joins the podcast to unpack the Hurricane Melissa drone response, the upcoming Drones, AI and G...
This is the March 2026 edition of Caribbean Drone News, your monthly roundup covering the stories shaping how drones are being used across the region. From grassroots STEM programs to international aerospace partnerships, this month's edition is packed with proof that the Caribbean is not just consuming drone technology — it is creating it.
Dragonfly Drone Kids 2026 details: July 13–16, 2026 | dragonflyguyana.com | brian...
3 hours. 11 minutes. 53 seconds. One battery charge. A Guinness World Record and that's not even the most impressive part of what SiFly is building.
David Mazar, Chief Strategy Officer at SiFly and 12-year Boeing veteran, joins the Pilots of the Caribbean podcast to break down exactly how the Q12 achieves what most people in the drone industry thought was impossible — and what the company is planning next (spoiler: a 2...
Michael Joseph started farming in Antigua in September 2019 — just weeks before Covid hit. He had no drone experience. During lockdown, he was scrolling YouTube and came across an ad for a DJI agricultural spray drone. It took him three years to save enough to buy one.
In 2025, at 22 years old, he became the youngest person ever to win the CARICOM Young Farmer of the Year Award. He found out the week before the ceremony &mdash...
He's back. The most-viewed guest episode in Caribbean drone podcast history just got a sequel — and it's bigger than the first.
Brian Smith, founder of Dragonfly Drones & Geospatial Solutions in Guyana, joins us for the first guest episode of 2026 with a year's worth of breakthroughs. Gas-powered drone deployments deep in the jungle. Advanced LiDAR training in Miami. A competitive fellowship that took him to Mexico...
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