Hi, I’m Paul Darley, and thanks for tuning into our April issue of Inside Darley. As it warms up here, we’re really excited to get back on the road, to the trade show season, and the end of this month, of course, we’ll be down at the FDIC. That’s the Fire Department Instructor’s Conference down in Indianapolis. Next month we’ll be with our military customers at the SOFIC show, that’s the Special Operation Forces Industry Conference, and we’re going to be in full force at both of those conferences. In fact, I spoke to the FDIC management this morning, that’s Eric Schlett, and he confirmed that compared to 2019’s preregistered attendance, they’re only down 10%. So they’re expecting 30,000 people down in Indianapolis later this month. That’s great news.
We are excited to be introducing so many new products down there, and hopefully you’ll download our first attachment, which is our Darley Times newsletter. On page one, you’ll see our brand-new division that we’re kicking off. It’s our USMR division, which is Unmanned Systems, Metaverse and Robotics. Our second attachment here is a catalog on all of our drones and robotics, and our third attachment is a Technology, Innovation and Metaverse brochure that features some of our new virtual reality products, such as FLAIM, RiVR, HazSim and AIT, which is Ascent, which is a firefighter locator and health monitoring system that you’ll see on page two of our newsletter.
On page three, you’ll see a bunch of our new pump products that we’re excited to introduce, which include a new electrically-driven fire pump that Kyle Darley and his team have been working on, as well as a new 2000 GPM end-suction pump. Our 2000 TSM pump really has no noise or vibration throughout the full range, even at low ranges, which has been an issue with a lot of pumps of that size. You can read about that in Just Ask Engineering. We’re also excited to introduce a new 2250 GPM full-cast pump in our EM pump, which can be set up as either a single stage or a two-stage pump, for whichever the department has a preference.
I think probably the biggest news coming out of our pump division is that we are increasing our warranty from 6 years to 10 years. So it’s not only now the longest warranty in the market, but it’s also the most comprehensive. And you can download details on that 10-year warranty here as well.
On page eight of this newsletter, you’ll see some of the stuff that we’ve got going on and a new Leadership Essay Contest, where we’re looking for what’s really making firefighters under good leadership respond in firefighting situations. We’ve got a great team of panelists who are going to be judging those essays, and we’re going to actually extend that due date from April 30th until May 20th. So there’s still some time for you to get those in. We’ve been getting some incredible essays.
We’ve also attached on that page some information relative to getting grant funding on our virtual reality products, because there is a lot of funding available for you.
Hopefully, you’ll stop by our booth at FDIC. We’re in the same location as previous, but if you miss that, hopefully you’ll come by and see us at the Smart Firefighting community event on Thursday evening at the Dugout Bar, or at our own reception on Friday evening.
On page seven you’ll see a rendering of what our booth looks like at INTERSCHUTZ, and there’s a lot of things happening right now with INTERSCHUTZ. As you may have heard, the fairgrounds in Hanover actually are being used now to accommodate Ukrainian refugees, and a lot of people are concerned about having to relocate those people respectfully. So recently, a lot of manufacturers, Magirus, and MAN and Bronto have actually pulled out entirely of that show. As of today, we’re still planning to attend, but we’re monitoring that closely. We do have a large block of hotel rooms, so if the show does go on and you’re planning to attend, reach out to Barb Pearlman, and we’ll see if we can accommodate you with some hotel rooms. The leadership from FAMA just met with the show organizers from INTERSCHUTZ this week. We’ve actually attached here a copy of a question and answer that they’re giving out relative to at least their perspective as of this date, relative to whether the show will go on.
So, hey, thanks for tuning into this issue of Inside Darley. If there’s anything we can be doing to support you, we hope you’ll reach out to us.
