Mapping out the Future
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photo by Steddon Sikes '84
aden Morris is a third generation Yorkie. His grandparents James and Dixie (Sanner) Busch met at YC in the early 60s; his parents Chuck and Laura (Busch) Morris were students in the 80s. And he has a plethora of great uncles, great aunts, regular aunts and uncles, first cousins, second cousins, a brother, and sister-in-law who all claim York College as their alma mater. So it was an easy choice for Caden his freshman year to make the ritual pilgrimage from Savannah, Missouri, and stake his own claim to the family tradition. Not in the least. “I actually didn’t want to go to York because everyone else in my family did,” Morris said with a smile. He wanted to make his own path and go somewhere that he could be his own person. “But when I got a call from Dr. Turnbull about the agribusiness program,” he went on to say, “as well as the opportunities to be involved through the theatre tech program, running lights and sound for them, and through the business club (PBL) — those three things hit me all at once and I thought, ‘This is where I need to be.’” Fast forward a couple of years and Morris is now a junior agribusiness major at York College and an active leader on campus. Recruited as a PBL Scholar, he was runner-up at the 2021 Nebraska Phi Beta Lambda Leadership Conference in Client Services, qualifying for Nationals where he placed sixth this summer, and he serves this year as vice president of the York PBL Chapter. He runs either lights or sound at most of the theatre productions, and if that’s not enough, he was elected to serve as the male junior rep for student government this year. All the aforementioned would be in and of themselves good reasons to do a story on the very busy and talented Caden Morris. But wait… there’s more! Let’s throw into the mix numerous fastspinning propeller blades, geographic mapping, multispectral imaging sensors, and intense high-flying situations just for fun. Now that’s a story! “I’ve been working at Midwest Research since my freshman year doing basic research data collection,” said Morris. “Then last winter I eased myself into talking about drones at work as well as bought one of my own. The owner knew of my interest and gave me the opportunity to go to Iowa City last winter for training on the Agras drone. And I thought, this would be a cool summer job.” Morris put in about 40-50 hours/week during the summer
and a fourth of that time with the imposing Agras MG-1P RTK drone that boasts 8 propellers, spans more than 5’ in diameter, and weighs roughly 20 pounds. Asked if it had a nickname, Morris said they just call it, ‘Big Drone,’… all at the jaw dropping price tag of roughly $25,000-$30,000. “I had to get my pilot’s license because it’s a commercial application,” he said without hesitation. “You just have to yield to pilots’ right-of-way, which this time of year is fine. But when crop dusters are going, it’s a little bit of a handful.” Morris scooped about 20 pounds of a winter wheat seed blend into the bin mounted at the base of the drone, shut the lid, and stepped to a safe distance holding an impressive looking remote control. The drone lifted to a height of about 10 feet in the air, made straight for the edge of a field and started broadcasting the cover crop seed into standing soybeans. He looked to be a seasoned pro, piloting a very expensive piece of hardware up and down the trial plot, never varying in his mission. In reality, he just pushed a button to make it go. The complexities of the drone flying the systematic route lie in the programming, software applications, and GPS technology. Morris explained, “We have a smaller Phantom drone that connects to the RTK base station and its GPS accuracy is within 1-2 cm. I take the drone up about 200 feet in the air and it takes thousands of pictures of the area and then stitches it together kind of like google maps does. And on top of that we can draw the map that we want the drone to fly, upload it to the Cloud and then send it to Big Drone.” When Morris was asked how he got into this field of work, he replied, “I’ve always been interested in agriculture so this job was a pretty easy transition. I’ve learned a lot. Drones fascinate me at what they can do and their versatile applications." Morris jumped in with both feet and learned on the fly, so to speak. He made a 10-page user manual for Big Drone to pass on his knowledge and experience to the next operator. Morris was specific about his aspirations when questioned about what the future holds. “I’m liking this drone stuff so I’m looking at companies that do plant health analysis with drones. They use multispectral imaging cameras mounted to the drones and get the different spectrals of colors to manage crops, diagnose problems, and help farmers be more efficient.” After hearing the recent inaugural announcement concerning the college’s future brand, Morris is looking forward to graduating in December 2022 as one of the first with a York University degree. So you might be able to say that he didn’t just follow a family tradition after all. n FALL 2021 |
Heritage | 19
