Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “FPV Drone Racing Goes Big League”.
Hey this is mike sedesi and i’m here with scott rexlan at the 2015 fat shark, drone racing national championships at the california state, fair got it yeah. Thank you. You must have practiced that for two years, uh uh about yeah yeah but uh. So this is the this actually, the first event of its of its sort. Uh that’s ever happened, and you are the guy that put this all together. So tell me everything.
Well, this is the the first event with 120 racers in it first person view fpv racing. So all the pilots sit in the rigs themselves that they, their cameras, are in there. They don’t actually sit in it, but they have a camera in there and they race it as if they are sitting in the in the racing uh.
The quad – and this is – we – have uh nine countries represented here uh, the biggest sponsorship list, the biggest stadium uh, it’s just the biggest stall in general. So how did all this come about? So um we’ve been racing over in berkeley for uh about a year and it just started getting you know: bigger and bigger uh, hereby parallel palarin from france, the argonay guy, who did the star wars style racing that everybody knows the forest racing so that kind of Catalyzed first and that really spun it got it into moving and then i got connected up through the network with um other guys. That said, hey the state fair’s interested in doing some drone racing and i’m like wow, that’s cool okay. So then they contacted us and the next thing you know we’re here at the state fair doing drone racing.
Well, i’m rich hanson with the academy of model aeronautics, i serve as the academy’s government regulatory affairs director, but here we’re at the u.s national drone racing championship in sacramento at the state fairgrounds and having a great time. Well, we’ve been involved with fpv, since the technology has blossomed, actually truth be known. That modelers have put cameras on and tried to institute fpv for a long time.
They were doing it back in the 90s, but we’ve always seen this as part of the hobby. But now it’s blossomed into a huge adjunct to the hobby and we’re glad to have it on board. My name is edie sellers and i’m a judge here at the drone nationals in 2015 drone nationals when you’re judging a fpv racing event. You are sitting next to the pilot. Every pilot has a judge that is right.
There we’re watching a video feed with goggles um exactly what the pilot is seeing. We’Re taking a good account of whether they’re going through all of the the gates making sure that they don’t go out of the lines making sure that they’re not going to get disqualified. For doing something unsafe or missing a gate, what’s impressed me, the most at least so far is that it not always the best pilot wins the race, there’s a really big difference between being a good pilot and being a good racer. There are some tremendous pilots out here who crashed or didn’t do well, simply because of the pressure.
These are the best in the world and they get into that pilot seat. They sit down next to me and their hands are shaking shaking so bad. They can barely pilot, it is a don’t crack under the pressure situation and a lot of them are – and i think that this is because this is the first time there’s been an event quite of this size and quite of this nature, i think a lot of The pilots are being surprised, rudely surprised that sometimes it’s a lot different to just go out and fly recreationally super fast and racing super fast. Well, i think this is really sort of like i mean it’s getting it out into the media and that’s you know before, like i said it was, we were racing, but it was groups of guys like going out into the forest in vancouver or out in the Middle of nowhere and racing each other, but now there’s a 10 000 prize for the for the winner and that’s bringing the best from around the world, and so you start to do that.
You start to get a lot more like companies behind it from there more money gets involved, and then people can start doing this professionally. It’S just like car racing, oh so my name is my name. Is carlos fernandez, puerto las and i’m i’m one of the pilots on the competition today online is my name. Is online? Is sharpu due to the stuff that we have to figure out the frequencies with the different video issues that you can have? Is it’s extremely complicated to put everything together and make it work like they’re doing the competition side of things is a little more complicated, because i realized that i can do this kind of stuff when it’s so many people like under pressure, have a hard time, but It’S great fun to meet up people and just get to fly with them after the competition as well.
When you bring to this level it you start getting stressed, and that kind of takes away from the whole point. I started doing this, so i definitely find out this this weekend that i have a hard time like really hard time yeah, but other than that. I mean there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to be really interested in this and really into the competition side of things and that’s great, because that brings more people in a lot of it is being able to contain your nervousness. You know during the whole time you’ll see people here that are amazing pilots when they’re with the friends.
I’M the same, i couldn’t even hold my controller, my quad, my drone was doing this. It’S really hard to to uh and there’s people who can deal with it. Really easily so, if i take away something from it, i feel like it’s being prepared not only flying but also mentally. It’S almost, i think, is exactly what i expected um.
I kind of i estimate things and i don’t know i’m pretty good at estimating. I didn’t think the last comp, the last race that we did was going to be as nerve-wracking as it was. I mean i’m pretty good at calming my nerves, but i was shaking a little bit and i think, all of the other, my buddies, that fly were as well and i think definitely the the the performance showed because a lot of these guys i fly with on A regular basis and they’re outstanding pilots so coming here and watching them not be able to do something that they’ve done a hundred thousand times. Is it’s a little frustrating for me just because i know that they can do better, but i don’t know it’s fun. Anyways they’re still having fun it’s cool to just have the camaraderie of hanging out with them all and then going out afterwards and hanging out with them, so hopefully some opportunities open up. I would prefer to do this as like a full-time job, and there are a few companies that are trying to get that going to where it’d be like motogp or f1, or something where you just go a weekend and fly or go to a weekend and race. And then hang out with your buddies and then race and then leave that’s all you do so that would be cool if it got to that point, but the technology is like on the cusp of breaking through to that. So i think it’ll it’ll be soon enough, but it can’t come sooner.
For me i don’t know, i think that would be the coolest job in the world being able to fly every day. If you liked this video subscribe to our website or send us a comment on facebook or twitter be sure to check out our other project videos or visit us on makezine.com, you .